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A friend of mine called me the other day, asking me for advice. This is dangerous business because all advice is autobiographical and she is not me, I am not her, and we are both happy about that. That said, I know her relatively well and the question she asked is one that I have some experience with. Here is her dilemma (in my words): “Jos, I am fed up with it all and I want to take some time off to think about my next move. Should I?”
This is a sentiment that is not uncommon in people who have been working for a decade or more and who are starting to feel the hamster wheel. Sometimes there is also a life event at play that reinforces this feeling, like the death of a loved one or a major divorce. Both of this happened to me simultaneously, which played a big part of me taking my first sabbatical.
A major divorce is of course fundamentally different from a minor divorce. Running the risk of getting off-topic a bit: There are two success models for marriage: Early and often and late and once. In the “early and often model” you get married when you are 18, divorce when you are 19, marry when you are 20, divorce when you are 20 (interesting year), marry again when you are 21, et cetera. In this model, divorces are usually not a big deal because you have no assets, no kids, and no real estate. One of you needs to find another apartment and that’s about it. When marrying “late and once”, you probably have enough life experience to make a good partner choice and there are usually no big personality changes in the pipeline any more. Everything in between these two success models is asking for trouble and the divorces that come out of this are major divorces because by now there are often assets and kids, which tend to be sticking points. I am speaking from some experience here…
Careers are long and intense these days. If you are (for example) 45 years old and have been running in the hamster wheel for 20 years or so, you might start feeling exhausted. Part of this is because, biologically speaking, you are over the hill and it is getting harder to keep up because this is not the type of hill where, once you are over it, you are picking up speed. But, here is some depressing news: You are still only mid-career! I know it might not feel that way, but it is; do the math!
Chances are that by now you have acquired major responsibilities: Children, aging parents who need support, a no-good sibling whose offspring needs help. You are not done working yet, but you really want some time off to figure a few things out, recharge your battery, maybe learn new things, and take care of some business.
Fortunately, your uncle Jos is here to tell you this is an excellent idea!
But it is never really the right time, is it? You just got a new project, you hired a few junior engineers who need mentoring, you are training up a new team in India, the economy is terrible, and how are you going to explain that gap in your resume?
Fortunately, your uncle Jos is here to tell you that, regardless of the time, it is an excellent idea!
In the early 2010s, I was exactly in this position. I had been at Google for a while and had become stuck because of some political infighting and a few reorganizations. I had been promoted twice, had broken up with a long-term girlfriend, and gotten a bit fed up with working in a very narrow but deep field on services that were so big that I had completely lost sight of the end-to-end cycle. I had talked to a few recruiters, but nothing really excited me. A friend of mine had a startup idea and I was intrigued by the prospect of being responsible for an entire service, front to back.
So, I scraped all my vacation days together, took some unpaid leave on top of that, and “disappeared” for three months: Traveling, thinking, and helping my friend investigate her idea. At the end of all of that, I went back to Google, but with new energy and intent because my time off had given me the opportunity to reflect and I knew for sure that this is where I wanted to be and this is what I wanted to do. Sabbaticals are not necessarily about change, they are about clarity.
Sabbaticals work, and here is the “proof”: Google used to have a policy that after five years of employment (or whatever, I forgot the exact number, maybe it was ten) you could get a sabbatical of some non-trivial amount of time (again, I forgot the details). They stopped doing that because too many people didn’t come back after the sabbatical, especially long-time Googlers who had done well in the IPO. Apparently, learning that there was a life outside of Google was not beneficial for retention 🙂…
We all know that you get your best ideas when your mind is seemingly not on the task, but for instance while in the shower, the gym, or when hiking around the Walensee. That approach might work well for smaller problems, such as how to implement a reasonable system of canarying using Terraform, but bigger problems, such as what to do with your life, need a bigger lake to hike around: One that might take weeks, if not months, to complete.
If you don’t like lakes, might I recommend the Camino de Santiago?
We all know that taking a sabbatical is an excellent idea. Of all the people that I talked to about this topic, I was never the one who brought it up. Instead, everyone figured it all out by themselves. What they were looking for is permission.
Fortunately, your uncle Jos is here to give you that permission!
I have done two sabbaticals in my life. One longer one (~9 months; big problems to solve) and one shorter one (which you just read about). Both amazing experiences, one life-changing and the other one life-affirming. I’d recommend this experience to everyone.
One of the major worries of people who are contemplating sabbaticals is that they might not be able to get back into their job, or into any job for that matter. The first one might be a problem, the second one probably is not. But please, be smart, and assess the state of the economy because we are in a bit of a pickle at the moment. Another worry many people bring up is how to explain the gap in their resume. I wouldn’t worry about that; it is definitely true that in the olden days, and even in these days in very traditional industries, potential employers cared or care about these things. But the times have mostly changed.
That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have a good story. All communication is strategic and so when people ask, you need a strategic answer, one that furthers your own goals. “I took six months off to care for my ailing parents” is a great story and one that soothes potential employers (because the reason they ask is that they are afraid you might leave them on a whim). Or what about: “I took off six months to pursue a nano-degree in artificial intelligence. See, you are not a whimsical hippie who took off time to surf the big waves, you are a dedicated professional who cares about self-improvement! When you are thinking about a sabbatical, also think about the story you are going to tell old-school employers who still worry about such things.
The state of the economy is a bigger issue right now and since I do not possess a working crystal ball, it is a bit hard for me to give good guidance. You probably need a job again in a few months so you should really pay some attention to how you are going to do that. If you have a great track record and you are in Silicon Valley, you’re probably going to be fine, but it might not be a bad idea to do a few interviews all the way to the offer stage to figure out your market position. I would say that in the current economy, taking a sabbatical might be a bit of a risk, but it might not be; it really depends on your personal circumstances.
Uncle Jos is also here to tell you to only take informed risks! Have a plan!
With that out of the way, I want to point out one major risk of the sabbatical and that is that you swap one hamster wheel for another one. The problem with the hamster wheel is that it conditions your brain and body to be running. This is already problematic on an average weekend as a lot of people (definitely me) get up on Saturdays at 7am, all ready to kick ass, only to be confronted with 48 hours of Enforced Recreation (though not Live Onstage in London). When taking a sabbatical, your mind and body are all too ready to exchange the hamster wheel of work for a hamster wheel of fun. So, in that four months, you might be planning to: Go to the gym every day, get your pilot’s license, take a cruise to the Antarctic, read the collected works of Shakespeare, cook healthy food every evening, bake your own bread, and go the Art House cinema every Monday evening (when tickets are half-price). That doesn’t sound like much of a rest to me…
Your work might be a stressful hamster wheel that you don’t enjoy much anymore, but the opposite of stress is not fun; it is relaxation. So in your sabbatical, plan to do nothing at all for at least a month. Just waste some time, have a lie in, maybe watch some Netflix (I can recommend The Good Place). During my first sabbatical I would get up, walk over to Tasca Eulalia II (opposite my apartment on the Av. Marqués de Campo), flirt with the waitress, drink a coffee, and eat a cheese sandwich. That was half the morning gone right there. After this exertion, I might walk over to the supermarket to buy something for lunch. In the afternoon, I would either take a nap to sleep off the half bottle of rosé that accompanied lunch or I might take out my kite and go to the beach to fly it. All in all a terrible waste of time. I loved it and I highly recommend it because if there is something that all IT professionals need to do, it is take a huge chill pill.
The peace of mind that doing nothing creates is essential for figuring out your next steps. In woo speak: You need to get closer to yourself and for that you need lots of space and no distractions. You need clarity, not a few fun-filled-action-packed weeks.
In my life so far I have made lots of mistakes but there are a few things I did well. Taking two very long breaks to figure out what I wanted to do at times when it was not at all obvious to me were among these. I can highly recommend it to everyone. It might be the greatest gift you have ever given yourself.
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