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Taking a year break in 2014. I lost potential to earn a few millions from continuity of my career. I also discovered I like coding and don't really enjoy trav

Taking a year break in 2014. I lost potential to earn a few millions from continuity of my career. I also discovered I like coding and don't really enjoy traveling. Traveling is romanticized too much in our culture.

blfr 5y ago
How can mere continuity be worth millions of dollars? Or did you skip a particularly lucrative opportunity? You're right about travelling. Unless you're travelling with a reason or at least knowing people at your destination, it's usually fairly unfulfilling.
- ergocoder 5y ago
  > How can mere continuity be worth millions of dollars? Or did you skip a particularly lucrative opportunity? If you are at tier 1 non-FAANG like Square, Stripe, yes, it is very lucrative. Back then I was a junior that got luck with IPO ~2011 and went up to senior fairly quickly. If I stuck to that company, I could have been staff/senior staff by now. Imagine being staff eng since 2015. That's a lot of millions probably. I regret a lot. I came back and join tier 1 non-FAANG and still hit a few millions. But I could have had ~10 millions instead of a few millions. This is a lifetime money that is worth sacrifice a few years of my life. Also, working at these companies are not bad. It's actually great and enjoyable as well. You live like a king (e.g. spending 20k for a 2 weeks vacation is kinda meh.) and still save like 200K-400K a year or something. For me, this kind of money is just crazy. I made like 10x more than my parents. This was why I took a year break. I thought I was already too wealthy (oh boy I was so wrong). Deciding to take a year break and traveling at the height of tech is one of the worst decisions I have made.
ghaff 5y ago
I've never taken a break year but I have taken full advanrage of travel opportunities. I took a few one month vacations at one company. Certainly didn't cost me millions though unless it would have been it discouraged me to make a big change regardless of changes in vacation time maybe. But I doubt it.
- ergocoder 5y ago
  One month vacation is great. it's a change of scenes and paces (you cannot just sprint all year long). We all need to slow down once in a while. Traveling for a year is just tiring...
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I could extrapolate to 2 or 3 months given I've done a month or so (whether pure pleasure or a mix of business and pleasure) a number of times. But even the practical issues aside, I think I'd find much more than that tiresome after a while. I've known a few people who jumped into the digital nomad thing and by and large it didn't last too long.
    - ergocoder 5y ago
      I could see 2-3 months sometimes. Working while traveling is very hard. It's very hard to focus. Digital Nomad who is productive is simply a different kind of person.

blfr 5y ago

How can mere continuity be worth millions of dollars? Or did you skip a particularly lucrative opportunity? You're right about travelling. Unless you're travelling with a reason or at least knowing people at your destination, it's usually fairly unfulfilling.

ergocoder 5y ago
> How can mere continuity be worth millions of dollars? Or did you skip a particularly lucrative opportunity? If you are at tier 1 non-FAANG like Square, Stripe, yes, it is very lucrative. Back then I was a junior that got luck with IPO ~2011 and went up to senior fairly quickly. If I stuck to that company, I could have been staff/senior staff by now. Imagine being staff eng since 2015. That's a lot of millions probably. I regret a lot. I came back and join tier 1 non-FAANG and still hit a few millions. But I could have had ~10 millions instead of a few millions. This is a lifetime money that is worth sacrifice a few years of my life. Also, working at these companies are not bad. It's actually great and enjoyable as well. You live like a king (e.g. spending 20k for a 2 weeks vacation is kinda meh.) and still save like 200K-400K a year or something. For me, this kind of money is just crazy. I made like 10x more than my parents. This was why I took a year break. I thought I was already too wealthy (oh boy I was so wrong). Deciding to take a year break and traveling at the height of tech is one of the worst decisions I have made.

ghaff 5y ago

I've never taken a break year but I have taken full advanrage of travel opportunities. I took a few one month vacations at one company. Certainly didn't cost me millions though unless it would have been it discouraged me to make a big change regardless of changes in vacation time maybe. But I doubt it.

ergocoder 5y ago
One month vacation is great. it's a change of scenes and paces (you cannot just sprint all year long). We all need to slow down once in a while. Traveling for a year is just tiring...
- ghaff 5y ago
  I could extrapolate to 2 or 3 months given I've done a month or so (whether pure pleasure or a mix of business and pleasure) a number of times. But even the practical issues aside, I think I'd find much more than that tiresome after a while. I've known a few people who jumped into the digital nomad thing and by and large it didn't last too long.
  - ergocoder 5y ago
    I could see 2-3 months sometimes. Working while traveling is very hard. It's very hard to focus. Digital Nomad who is productive is simply a different kind of person.