Hiring manager here. Knowledge has a half life. If you have taken 6 months off, and have an interesting story, this is not a big deal. (For example, I took 8 m

Hiring manager here. Knowledge has a half life. If you have taken 6 months off, and have an interesting story, this is not a big deal. (For example, I took 8 months off to live in Istanbul. I had two interviews and two offers when coming back, one of which was completely outside my network.) However, I had also just taken a month to do a functional course, and had worked half-heartedly on a startup that went nowhere. I had a story. The longer you take off, the more of a story you will need, even if that's "in the last 3 months, I built a small toy to get myself reacquainted with React and Python" even if this is a Rails omakase shop. Or, that story may be something completely different. All I care about is "can you hit the ground running?"