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> No-one will care about a month or two gap on your resume. On a related note, this "gap in resume" thing needs to stop being a thing at all. I don't know when

> No-one will care about a month or two gap on your resume. On a related note, this "gap in resume" thing needs to stop being a thing at all. I don't know when it became a thing, but it feels distinctively like forcing a wage slave class to keep their head down and continue wageslaving. Why would an employer care whether I took time off to pursue other things otherwise?

layer8 4y ago
> Why would an employer care whether I took time off to pursue other things otherwise? Because you might feel like doing so again, or because there’s the possibility the time off wasn‘t voluntary. Not saying employers should think like that, but there’s a portion that does.
michaelmior 4y ago
I would agree for small gaps. But I think it's at least somewhat understandable why a significant gap would be a concern. With the pace technology moves at, if you have not been working for an extended period of time, it's reasonable that you might have fallen behind. Certainly this shouldn't be reason in itself to reject a candidate and it at least somewhat depends on what you were doing during that time, but I find it hard to expect employers not to consider it at all.
- ivan_gammel 4y ago
  Significant gap in this case will be several years, no less, but regular technical interview can answer all the questions about qualification.
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  It really should be put in the context of someone's life. Did they spend a year or two travelling? Did they spend it working on personally productive projects? Or did they do nothing but play video games or do drugs? These are all very different extended gaps. The first two should be fine - if someone's skills have atrophied than that's another issue (but nothing a good interview or probation period won't pick up on if it's actually even a problem). The second one might be fine or a problem - and I can see why employers would be wary.
  - annyeonghada 4y ago
    And even if someone spent their time video gaming and doing drugs why can't they turn their life around if they want and demonstrate to have the skill. Burnout, depression, horrible circumstances and families all exists and sometimes you have to hit a stable rock bottom to start climbing.
    - bigDinosaur 4y ago
      Yes. I can see why people might be wary although I don't necessarily agree with those who would be (excessively) wary.
  - michaelmior 4y ago
    > It really should be put in the context of someone's life. Absolutely agree.
  - lentil_soup 4y ago
    why would I care as an employer that you spent a year playing video games and doing drugs? When I interview people I couldn't care less about any gaps in their resume, we're going to sit down, talk about tech, what you've done and what we need, etc. If there's a match in skills, needs, personality and expectations then that's it, anything else are invisible cargo-cult walls
    - bigDinosaur 4y ago
      You might care about their judgement and their state of mind and whether they'd be prepared for the job. I think understanding what someone did in a long gap is important - some are just very easy to understand (person in 20's decides to quit job for a year to go backpacking) while others might be harder. If I was interviewing I wouldn't ever automatically discard a resume because of a long gap, though, so I suppose I'm just thinking of what others might be cautious about, and other people may simply adopt a heuristic to automatically discard to minimise variance.
  - madeofpalk 4y ago
    I've taken sixth months off and mostly played video games and no one ever cared or asked??!
- nigma1337 4y ago
  Guess it depends on how you define a significant gap, 1 year? 5 years? Also working doesn't necessarily equal keeping up with technology. If i'm maintaining some legacy system, I wont have a gap but i might've not learnt anything new for years.
- deleted 4y ago
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- vultour 4y ago
  I worked a corporate job for several years where I pretty much learned nothing. As far as my skills go, the end result was almost no different to not working at all.
  - fch42 4y ago
    I'd second that. "Classical companies" are rarely-ever at the forefront of technology, even if they are technology companies themselves. It's a broad statement, so keep it in context. Examples: Think, Apple has had the iPhone out since 2008 now. Working there on the iPhone 16 HW / SW specs or the M3 processor design may well be cutting-edge stuff, but working there as SRE for the App Store infrastructure is likely "an SRE job with some legacy in it". And working on their developer infrastructure, devtools / CI etc, very very likely is full of "proprietary dead ends" (i.e. tech noone outside the AAPL orchard will use or have use for). A Wall Street bank, once above a certain size, is going to adopt tech more slowly - much of their proprietary software stack is likely still in C++ / Java where a five-year-old small trading house may have written all that in Rust. I've had jobs at such "S&P 500" corporates in the past; I wouldn't say "I learned nothing" - I learned how to navigate companies. Call it "coping strategies" if you like. It still helps to get stuff done knowing how-to-do-it on a procedural level - or via human-interaction. Tech-wise ... regretted some of these. My experience, though, is that one can "come back". "Just" keep the ambition under control that you need to know everything, and need to be able to do everything. Today's "tech stacks" have so many parts in it that are out of your control and that you cannot inspect - the sheer will to "rule them all" will burn you. It's easier said then done, but: know your limits. Everyone has them. You'll recognize the "boasters" soon enough, those that claim they can rule it all.
  - icedchai 4y ago
    Same. I think my skills may have regressed because they were working with legacy tech. I did get to go to a ton of zoom meetings, though.
- Findecanor 4y ago
  It's that attitude of recruiters' that keeps me unemployable. The fact is that the IT world does not progress in a linear direction. It's like a puddle that grows into multiple directions. But it is still covering most of the same spots as before. Banks still use COBOL. High-performance code is still in C or C++ with assembler (but that "C" may run on a GPU), etc.
  - mcv 4y ago
    Just give the gap a name and it stops being a gap. Maybe you started your own company to unproductively mess around with stuff. Or call it a sabbatical. Those are popular.
- Namari 4y ago
  No the real issue is not the gaps themselves but why so many different jobs that don't last long. Tech evolves fast but in a week or 2 you're up to date if you've been away few months. I have many gaps in my resume but I have many different jobs, which is a lot more problematic. A question that pops up often is why did I left after X months and I need to explain all my choices. It is fine because I either didn't like the projects/companies, I wanted to switch technologies ... they do ask why 6 month off and that seems fine when I tell them I've been travelling.
finikytou 4y ago
trust me they care. especially in a fast moving technology space like cloud, k8s, ML. if you are hired for COBOL yes sure a gap wont matter
- frading 4y ago
  Trust me they don't. I've had all sorts of gaps in my career. 6 months, 1 year and more, to explore different domains. I'm in computer graphics/front end, pretty fast paced. Nobody ever asked. Please, never feel guilty about taking a single month off. If your body needs rest, you need to listen to it.
  - heleninboodler 4y ago
    Yeah, all you have to do is say "I took a year off to tend to personal family matters," and they should hear "none of your damn business" loud and clear or they don't understand boundaries, in which case they're disqualified from employing you.
    - dogline 4y ago
      You have to be careful with this one. "Family matters" can raise a flag if it's an ongoing issue. You're trying not to look like you're going to be a problem employee, as much as that should or shouldn't be a thing. I think the proper answer is "I just took some time off between jobs." Sounds fine, sounds like you took advantage of an opportunity, and doesn't sound like you're somebody that had a hard time finding a job.
      - heleninboodler 4y ago
        To be frank, if they infer "ongoing problem" out of a single data point like that, they fall into the "not qualified to employ me" bucket. One instance of "tending to family matters" doesn't really say anything beyond, "I have a family."
  - ravenstine 4y ago
Tade0 4y ago
> On a related note, this "gap in resume" thing needs to stop being a thing at all. I think that at least in tech it was only ever a thing in companies that didn't know better. I mean, I throughout my career I was fired multiple times and at least twice that resulted in a 3-month gap, only one of them being voluntarily that long. I now take them on purpose and collected a total of five over the course of 10+ years. I don't remember anyone ever even touching the subject - perhaps there's something about the date format I'm using in my CV (MM-YYYY - MM-YYYY/present). In any case my experience is that companies with such ridiculous criteria end up hiring contractors to fill their gaps - this time in their workforce. Contractors, naturally, don't go through nearly the same recruitment process and yet they manage to do the same job and do it well - those who don't are promplty fired.
- sumtechguy 4y ago
  My last job search it came up a lot. I took about 8 months then started looking. Because I could at that time. Since it was the current thing I was doing it came up a decent amount. Took probably double the amount of time to get a job. I finally asked someone why they cared? They said it looks like others were passing me up for some reason and they did not want to pick someone up who everyone else was passing up. Hiring in many ways is a guess if you can stand to work with someone or not. Being in any way undesirable hurts you.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    So the opposite of FOMO... Hiring is broken.
  - Timpy 4y ago
    If I had a voluntary gap like this and I put something like "Sabbatical" on my resume and made a few notes of how I spent my time I wonder how that would go over. The last time I was in the interview process I saw my interviewer as a kind of interviewing pro, it wasn't until I got hired that I realized he was just a guy and he had really only interviewed and on-boarded a handful of people before.
r_c_a_d 4y ago
In 40 years I have only ever put the start and end year of each item on my resume. I guess this dates to when most jobs / education lasted multiple years. But I've stuck with it and no-one has ever questioned it. The couple of jobs I have had which were less than one year spanned a year-end so it never looked odd. When I am reviewing incoming resumes small gaps never bother me. Ocassionally I have seen multi-year gaps on interesting resumes and made enquires which always turned out to be completely legitimate career breaks and never lead to us not making offers.
- AlecSchueler 4y ago
  Curious what you would consider an illegitimate career break?
  - susodapop 4y ago
    Jail time.
    - r_c_a_d 4y ago
      Not all "jail time", but yes, many convictions would preclude candidates from employment at my current company... and most of the previous ones.
    - pnutjam 4y ago
      why this gap in your resume? Yale That's very impressive, you're hired. Thanks! I really need this yob!
    - giaour 4y ago
      If you're worried about a criminal history, do a background check. This heuristic would miss people who lie about "consulting" during the time they were in jail and would incorrectly catch someone who was falsely accused and then exonerated.
  - DonHopkins 4y ago
    Working for Oracle. ;)
madeofpalk 4y ago
I've taken multiple six month stints off, and in the UK no one has ever asked about it.
- zmxz 4y ago
  I'm in management, writing to confirm this. I've seen many CV's, many gaps, never asked about it, I don't even assume why it happened. Burnout is a known problem in our profession, I approach people with open mind, I experienced burnout myself and taking time off is desirable for mental health.
  - gardenhedge 4y ago
    I am replying to this reply here because I can't reply on the original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31203871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31203871 Firstly: Do you think every comment should be positive? Secondly, how is my comment negative enough for you to make that reply? I asked a question and gave (honest) feedback on my reading of the article/post. > The list is obviously not for you But it IS on HN which I read. HN is a public forum that anyone can join and make comments. It is fair game to give feedback on articles. > this reflex where one needs to be so angry and vocal about something so benign (and useful) is what makes me question what have we done to ourselves as a society. The usefulness of the advice is completely subjective and the main point of the comment section is to discuss that. Would you rather comments like "love this", "+1", "all great advice!". That seems completely useless to me. Your questioning of society based on my question and feedback seems outrageously ridiculous to me. Ironically, a quick look shows you have multiple grey posts and are not a positive commenter yourself. Maybe your reply was actually some self reflection.
- endymi0n 4y ago
  And if you feel self-concious about it, just write „freelance projects“ and in the ultra slim case someone still inquires about that telling them point blank you‘d love to divulge it because it was a very interesting project, but you‘re bound by an NDA.
  - 4y ago
chucksmash 4y ago
> On a related note, this "gap in resume" thing needs to stop being a thing at all. I don't know when it became a thing, but it feels distinctively like forcing a wage slave class to keep their head down and continue wageslaving. I think you can better make sense of it as a vestigial organ of hiring process from before background checks were widespread, no "wageslavery" explanation needed.
swiftcoder 4y ago
> Why would an employer care whether I took time off to pursue other things otherwise? Many (questionable) reasons, but among other things, it's a convenient way to exclude women trying to return to the workforce after they took time off to have kids, without overtly appearing to discriminate.
- deleted 4y ago
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- RektBoy 4y ago
  In my country, it's illegal to fire a woman(or man) on maternity leave and company must give her(him) same place back, when they return. Maternity leave is usually taken till a kid is 3yrs old, so after 3yrs they must give you your old place back, by law.
  - jermaustin1 4y ago
    These laws usually have loopholes, in the case of the job no longer existing. Which it is very easy to make a job no longer exist, especially in a 3 year time-span.
    - kayodelycaon 4y ago
      I'll second this. After I had to disclose a disability during a merger between two companies, HR moved me into a role they made just for me. That role was removed once a merger was complete.
itsoktocry 4y ago
>Why would an employer care whether I took time off to pursue other things otherwise? I agree, and if they do? I'm not telling you to lie on your resume, but...have a good story to tell about what you during that time off. If that doesn't cut it, you're probably not dealing with a company with a good culture.
- mikro2nd 4y ago
  "I was driving a startup venture that failed..." ought to do it.
  - sgt101 4y ago
    yeah - you better have your background story on that straight though, my next question would be "tell me about that" and then "what happened"
    - sjostrom7 4y ago
      Actually a great behavioral line of questioning - how clearly the the candidate can explain what happened, how they describe whatever part they played or mistakes they made...
misja111 4y ago
> Why would an employer care whether I took time off to pursue other things otherwise? It's not that. Having a gap in your resume might mean that the candidate is trying to hide something. E.g. a job where candidate was fired and doesn't want to be asked to provide references. If you took a gap to pursue other things, put whatever this was on your CV, don't just leave a gap. If it was something interesting, it might even put you in front of other candidates for some employers.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  Common gaps are for protected things (raising children) and can cause problems if put on CVs. The idea that employers need to treat every applicant with maximum suspicion is frustrating.
  - PragmaticPulp 4y ago
    The concern is that someone was fired for cause or has a pattern of abandoning jobs. Taking time off to raise children isn’t a big deal at most companies (at any big company, you’re more likely to find more parents than non-parents in hiring manager positions). Even gaps for things like travel aren’t really an issue as long as the candidate explains it. You have to consider that hiring managers aren’t only seeing resumes of flawless candidates. There are a lot of candidates out there with things like anger issues, chronic performance issues, interpersonal issues, and so on that have already been removed from other companies for these reasons. It’s difficult to deduce it from a resume alone but small signals like unexplained gaps can be a hint that you need to dig deeper.
    - randerp 4y ago
      just curious - if someone is "fired for cause" (don't feel that this term is universally accurate in its implications but thats another discussion), do you feel they should never get a job again? its some sort of Scarlett letter or brand on them?
      - kayodelycaon 4y ago
Namari 4y ago
I have many gaps in my resume, like 6 months here, few months there ... at the points it looks like I worked 2/3 of the time over the last 10 years. Sometime recruiters ask me why and I tell the truth that I went travelling, that I needed some time off. Why I had so many different jobs ... It may be a deal breaker for some but it doesn't seem to bother everyone as I've never had trouble finding a job, it could be because the market was in need of my skills, I guess IT people should worry much about that.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
It depends entirely on the company and how many other candidates they have. If I receive 200 resumes and 30% of them are picture perfect - Sorry, I can’t interview or even screen everyone. The resume with unexplained gaps isn’t getting sorted into the top of the pile simply because I have to be aggressive with filtering. On the other hand, if I’m hiring for a difficult position at a less popular company and I’m only getting 1 or 2 okay resumes per week, I’ll take the time to screen resumes with gaps as long as everything else looks fine. You have to understand that a lot of hiring managers simply couldn’t screen/interview everyone even if they wanted to. For those jobs, having unexplained gaps in an otherwise average resume could be the negative signal that moves you slightly down bellow the threshold. But for a lot of average jobs: No, it doesn’t actually matter that much.
- deleted 4y ago
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- arkitaip 4y ago
  The entire screening process is broken when recruiters try to find any and all reasons - or negative signals as you call them - to skip over candidates. Who knows how many amazing talents are skipped over due to trivial issues in their application process.
  - crispyambulance 4y ago
    > Who knows how many amazing talents are skipped over due to trivial issues in their application process. No one has an actual number, but I expect it's A LOT. The best thing folks can do is to NOT rely on just dropping their resumes into some anonymous web-based corporate application system. Instead, it's much better to network and to use your contacts (previous co-workers, folks you know, family, friends-- anyone really) to get get leads and bypass HR drones entirely or as much as possible. The other thing that, IMHO, works really well is to specialize. Positioning oneself for "hot" in-demand jobs, ironically, just ends up putting people into an ocean of competition where each job has hundreds of equally qualified people going after it. That's awesome for employers who can then be absurdly picky, but it's terrible for candidates. The way many technical candidates shoot themselves in the foot before even getting started is they fail to network and fail to specialize (or target their search properly). They're often honest to a fault and go up against competition that is unscrupulous. There's a reason why so many candidates completely flunk fizzbuzz.
gumby 4y ago
Interesting: over the last 30 years I’ve been lucky enough that my resume is more gap than “work”. I wonder if that would be a problem if I tried to apply for a job at a a big company.
- pragmatic 4y ago
  Teach me your ways master!
  - deleted 4y ago
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kirso 4y ago
Its a thing for legacy organisations. If someone is puzzled and gives me a red flag that I had time to rest after my 6 month depression and burnout => its a huge red flag for me that people don't understand the world we live in these days and probably a culture that I will never fit it. I have 4 gaps on my resume (1 failed startup, 1 burnout episode, 1 travel the world & 1 family care). My resume is a total mess of jobs in sales, growth & product. And yet the best organisations I ever worked for, always tried to understand the context before judging.
ajkjk 4y ago
I have a three year gap in my resume and getting a good tech job afterwards was EASY. If anything it made me more employable because people tend like people who do more than write code all day. (Of course the lack of career progression was probably a net disadvantage in terms of raw money-making ability, but I don't care about that). Incidentally I like to also tell people who are a bit behind the times that these days it seems like having visible tattoos is a net benefit for your employability. Everyone likes hiring interesting people who aren't mindless drones. Tattoos, piercings, quirky style .. all serves as evidence of that. At least on the west coast!
- inkblotuniverse 4y ago
  Tattoos, piercings, and a quirky style signal you're the right kind of (cultural) drone. (A corporate wageslave could run away and integrate somewhere else; better to brand them with distinctive, permanent markers.)
  - ajkjk 4y ago
    I don't know how you got that from my post, but I can assure you that you have misunderstood.
- yCombLinks 4y ago
  I think of tattoos completely differently than you. I only have one(small, not visible). I view it more as a group identification than any sort of interesting personality. I've met plenty of boring people covered in tats. I also know and spend time with several interesting people covered in tats. It's more of a social identifier.
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    Since tattoos are so mainstream and common now, they probably send the opposite signal today than they did in the past. When I meet people under 40 or so -without- tattoos, my first impression is they might be more interesting, trend-bucking, counterculture, free thinking, etc. Obviously tattoo/no tattoo is a bad, low-signal way to size someone up, just pointing out the signal itself has phase-inverted from say 20 years ago.
maerF0x0 4y ago
> Why would an employer care whether I took time off to pursue other things otherwise? Let me start off saying I dont agree with this logical fallacy. So don't downvote me if you don't like that some employers think this way. I think many interviewers/managers worry that a gap in resume is actually you got fired and then spent months looking for a new role (possibly this one). Or that you started at a company and then left within a month or two. I guess the belief is an employee who gets fired ought to be red lettered and too big a risk to employ ever again? (fallacy) Now starting at a company and leaving early could be a red flag on the employee in that they agreed to do something and then didnt follow through. But it could just as easily be that the company really misrepresented themselves during the interviewing process and lo and behold it's actually a shit show once you start working for them.
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  Problem being interviewers can spin almost every arbitrary detail into a "red flag", and they have done so for decades. It's the benefit which comes with being in a position of power where they get to be far pickier than most candidates can comparatively. It's the same reason so many arbitrary things go from "this is absolutely necessary" to "this would be nice" to "oh we can remove that please don't walk away!" depending on the state of the job market. Interviewers are surprisingly flexible when they are no longer the ones holding the reins.
  - maerF0x0 4y ago
    Yeah I do think there are a ton of fallacies that the modern corporation brings to interviewing, which you'd think if someone could break the pattern they might have an advantage? Like one big one for me is the idea that holding out for a better candidate vs hiring an adequate one and giving them world class training? How many months of lost productivity from interviewing another month vs having a fully productive employee one month sooner... and your whole team back on track with building the products that customers supposedly want "right now!" ?
i_am_proteus 4y ago
Aside from the "fired and couldn't find another job" and "had personal problems that prevented him from working angles," there's also the possibility that said employee lives well within his means and can take large blocks of time away from full-time work if he chooses. Which means that said employee could walk away from the company if he's dissatisfied. The company would rather have someone who needs the paycheck— he'll put up with more.
- FerociousTimes 4y ago
  I am not saying that you necessarily endorse this line of reasoning or justification but if this is what passes for talent retention strategies at these firms, they're really in for a lot, lot of pain.
  - i_am_proteus 4y ago
    I absolutely don't endorse, but rather strive to understand.
- ynniv 4y ago
  I can see the reasoning in that, but in my 20 years in industry this has never come up. When my first child was born I spent a whole year with him, and the only person who was concerned about a twelve month "gap" was me. Take the time to care for yourself.
L_Rahman 4y ago
Echoing this to say I took a full two years off and came back to a 30k raise and that too as a product manager - meaning no hard skills to show in a leetcode type setting. The right team will always understand why you had to take a break. In my case, the first year was for post burnout travel and personal time, the second to recover from a difficult bout of covid. No one blinked at the situation. OP, if your financial position allows it, consider taking as much as six months off. I don't know what part of the world you are, but a big change in geography and culture and people around you will probably help break your rut. Consider taking a long trip out to somewhere affordable and sunny and give yourself permission to do nothing but walk around. Email is my profile bio if you want tips on how to plan something like this.
pkilgore 4y ago
good news: the people most likely to care are exactly the people to avoid, so you're not losing much.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
In a candidate-rich environment when it comes to selecting workers companies do a lot of crazy and irrational things. Just look at interviewing processes, they tend to be more superstition than anything. Having a gap in your resume that the interviewer can fill in with whatever horror story strikes their fancy (was it drug rehab!?) is a disadvantage.
dudeinjapan 4y ago
It says here that for 22 years you "went Kerouac on everyone's ass."
bartimus 4y ago
I've always put years but have also openly admitted having gaps. I simply told I wanted some free time. Or were messing around with some pet-project (which I do put on my CV). Or learning some new language (which I don't put on my CV). It's never been a problem. Perhaps because I never acted weird about it.
jasonm23 4y ago
As someone who spent the last 8 years in VP & C suite positions... If someone is asking questions about a resume gap (implying it's important)... LEAVE THE INTERVIEW. It will stop being a thing when people realize it's none of anyone's business except yours. The push for arbitrary obedience is part of the same problem. You will find companies that aren't run by psychopaths but you must vote with your feet. Discourage yourself and others from putting up with this shabby behavior.

layer8 4y ago

> Why would an employer care whether I took time off to pursue other things otherwise? Because you might feel like doing so again, or because there’s the possibility the time off wasn‘t voluntary. Not saying employers should think like that, but there’s a portion that does.

michaelmior 4y ago

I would agree for small gaps. But I think it's at least somewhat understandable why a significant gap would be a concern. With the pace technology moves at, if you have not been working for an extended period of time, it's reasonable that you might have fallen behind. Certainly this shouldn't be reason in itself to reject a candidate and it at least somewhat depends on what you were doing during that time, but I find it hard to expect employers not to consider it at all.

ivan_gammel 4y ago
Significant gap in this case will be several years, no less, but regular technical interview can answer all the questions about qualification.
bigDinosaur 4y ago
It really should be put in the context of someone's life. Did they spend a year or two travelling? Did they spend it working on personally productive projects? Or did they do nothing but play video games or do drugs? These are all very different extended gaps. The first two should be fine - if someone's skills have atrophied than that's another issue (but nothing a good interview or probation period won't pick up on if it's actually even a problem). The second one might be fine or a problem - and I can see why employers would be wary.
- annyeonghada 4y ago
  And even if someone spent their time video gaming and doing drugs why can't they turn their life around if they want and demonstrate to have the skill. Burnout, depression, horrible circumstances and families all exists and sometimes you have to hit a stable rock bottom to start climbing.
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    Yes. I can see why people might be wary although I don't necessarily agree with those who would be (excessively) wary.
- michaelmior 4y ago
  > It really should be put in the context of someone's life. Absolutely agree.
- lentil_soup 4y ago
  why would I care as an employer that you spent a year playing video games and doing drugs? When I interview people I couldn't care less about any gaps in their resume, we're going to sit down, talk about tech, what you've done and what we need, etc. If there's a match in skills, needs, personality and expectations then that's it, anything else are invisible cargo-cult walls
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    You might care about their judgement and their state of mind and whether they'd be prepared for the job. I think understanding what someone did in a long gap is important - some are just very easy to understand (person in 20's decides to quit job for a year to go backpacking) while others might be harder. If I was interviewing I wouldn't ever automatically discard a resume because of a long gap, though, so I suppose I'm just thinking of what others might be cautious about, and other people may simply adopt a heuristic to automatically discard to minimise variance.
- madeofpalk 4y ago
  I've taken sixth months off and mostly played video games and no one ever cared or asked??!
nigma1337 4y ago
Guess it depends on how you define a significant gap, 1 year? 5 years? Also working doesn't necessarily equal keeping up with technology. If i'm maintaining some legacy system, I wont have a gap but i might've not learnt anything new for years.
deleted 4y ago
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vultour 4y ago
I worked a corporate job for several years where I pretty much learned nothing. As far as my skills go, the end result was almost no different to not working at all.
- fch42 4y ago
  I'd second that. "Classical companies" are rarely-ever at the forefront of technology, even if they are technology companies themselves. It's a broad statement, so keep it in context. Examples: Think, Apple has had the iPhone out since 2008 now. Working there on the iPhone 16 HW / SW specs or the M3 processor design may well be cutting-edge stuff, but working there as SRE for the App Store infrastructure is likely "an SRE job with some legacy in it". And working on their developer infrastructure, devtools / CI etc, very very likely is full of "proprietary dead ends" (i.e. tech noone outside the AAPL orchard will use or have use for). A Wall Street bank, once above a certain size, is going to adopt tech more slowly - much of their proprietary software stack is likely still in C++ / Java where a five-year-old small trading house may have written all that in Rust. I've had jobs at such "S&P 500" corporates in the past; I wouldn't say "I learned nothing" - I learned how to navigate companies. Call it "coping strategies" if you like. It still helps to get stuff done knowing how-to-do-it on a procedural level - or via human-interaction. Tech-wise ... regretted some of these. My experience, though, is that one can "come back". "Just" keep the ambition under control that you need to know everything, and need to be able to do everything. Today's "tech stacks" have so many parts in it that are out of your control and that you cannot inspect - the sheer will to "rule them all" will burn you. It's easier said then done, but: know your limits. Everyone has them. You'll recognize the "boasters" soon enough, those that claim they can rule it all.
- icedchai 4y ago
  Same. I think my skills may have regressed because they were working with legacy tech. I did get to go to a ton of zoom meetings, though.
Findecanor 4y ago
It's that attitude of recruiters' that keeps me unemployable. The fact is that the IT world does not progress in a linear direction. It's like a puddle that grows into multiple directions. But it is still covering most of the same spots as before. Banks still use COBOL. High-performance code is still in C or C++ with assembler (but that "C" may run on a GPU), etc.
- mcv 4y ago
  Just give the gap a name and it stops being a gap. Maybe you started your own company to unproductively mess around with stuff. Or call it a sabbatical. Those are popular.
Namari 4y ago
No the real issue is not the gaps themselves but why so many different jobs that don't last long. Tech evolves fast but in a week or 2 you're up to date if you've been away few months. I have many gaps in my resume but I have many different jobs, which is a lot more problematic. A question that pops up often is why did I left after X months and I need to explain all my choices. It is fine because I either didn't like the projects/companies, I wanted to switch technologies ... they do ask why 6 month off and that seems fine when I tell them I've been travelling.

finikytou 4y ago

trust me they care. especially in a fast moving technology space like cloud, k8s, ML. if you are hired for COBOL yes sure a gap wont matter

frading 4y ago
Trust me they don't. I've had all sorts of gaps in my career. 6 months, 1 year and more, to explore different domains. I'm in computer graphics/front end, pretty fast paced. Nobody ever asked. Please, never feel guilty about taking a single month off. If your body needs rest, you need to listen to it.
- heleninboodler 4y ago
  Yeah, all you have to do is say "I took a year off to tend to personal family matters," and they should hear "none of your damn business" loud and clear or they don't understand boundaries, in which case they're disqualified from employing you.
  - dogline 4y ago
    You have to be careful with this one. "Family matters" can raise a flag if it's an ongoing issue. You're trying not to look like you're going to be a problem employee, as much as that should or shouldn't be a thing. I think the proper answer is "I just took some time off between jobs." Sounds fine, sounds like you took advantage of an opportunity, and doesn't sound like you're somebody that had a hard time finding a job.
    - heleninboodler 4y ago
      To be frank, if they infer "ongoing problem" out of a single data point like that, they fall into the "not qualified to employ me" bucket. One instance of "tending to family matters" doesn't really say anything beyond, "I have a family."
- ravenstine 4y ago

Tade0 4y ago

> On a related note, this "gap in resume" thing needs to stop being a thing at all. I think that at least in tech it was only ever a thing in companies that didn't know better. I mean, I throughout my career I was fired multiple times and at least twice that resulted in a 3-month gap, only one of them being voluntarily that long. I now take them on purpose and collected a total of five over the course of 10+ years. I don't remember anyone ever even touching the subject - perhaps there's something about the date format I'm using in my CV (MM-YYYY - MM-YYYY/present). In any case my experience is that companies with such ridiculous criteria end up hiring contractors to fill their gaps - this time in their workforce. Contractors, naturally, don't go through nearly the same recruitment process and yet they manage to do the same job and do it well - those who don't are promplty fired.

sumtechguy 4y ago
My last job search it came up a lot. I took about 8 months then started looking. Because I could at that time. Since it was the current thing I was doing it came up a decent amount. Took probably double the amount of time to get a job. I finally asked someone why they cared? They said it looks like others were passing me up for some reason and they did not want to pick someone up who everyone else was passing up. Hiring in many ways is a guess if you can stand to work with someone or not. Being in any way undesirable hurts you.
- hef19898 4y ago
  So the opposite of FOMO... Hiring is broken.
- Timpy 4y ago
  If I had a voluntary gap like this and I put something like "Sabbatical" on my resume and made a few notes of how I spent my time I wonder how that would go over. The last time I was in the interview process I saw my interviewer as a kind of interviewing pro, it wasn't until I got hired that I realized he was just a guy and he had really only interviewed and on-boarded a handful of people before.

r_c_a_d 4y ago

In 40 years I have only ever put the start and end year of each item on my resume. I guess this dates to when most jobs / education lasted multiple years. But I've stuck with it and no-one has ever questioned it. The couple of jobs I have had which were less than one year spanned a year-end so it never looked odd. When I am reviewing incoming resumes small gaps never bother me. Ocassionally I have seen multi-year gaps on interesting resumes and made enquires which always turned out to be completely legitimate career breaks and never lead to us not making offers.

AlecSchueler 4y ago
Curious what you would consider an illegitimate career break?
- susodapop 4y ago
  Jail time.
  - r_c_a_d 4y ago
    Not all "jail time", but yes, many convictions would preclude candidates from employment at my current company... and most of the previous ones.
  - pnutjam 4y ago
    why this gap in your resume? Yale That's very impressive, you're hired. Thanks! I really need this yob!
  - giaour 4y ago
    If you're worried about a criminal history, do a background check. This heuristic would miss people who lie about "consulting" during the time they were in jail and would incorrectly catch someone who was falsely accused and then exonerated.
- DonHopkins 4y ago
  Working for Oracle. ;)

madeofpalk 4y ago

I've taken multiple six month stints off, and in the UK no one has ever asked about it.

zmxz 4y ago
I'm in management, writing to confirm this. I've seen many CV's, many gaps, never asked about it, I don't even assume why it happened. Burnout is a known problem in our profession, I approach people with open mind, I experienced burnout myself and taking time off is desirable for mental health.
- gardenhedge 4y ago
  I am replying to this reply here because I can't reply on the original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31203871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31203871 Firstly: Do you think every comment should be positive? Secondly, how is my comment negative enough for you to make that reply? I asked a question and gave (honest) feedback on my reading of the article/post. > The list is obviously not for you But it IS on HN which I read. HN is a public forum that anyone can join and make comments. It is fair game to give feedback on articles. > this reflex where one needs to be so angry and vocal about something so benign (and useful) is what makes me question what have we done to ourselves as a society. The usefulness of the advice is completely subjective and the main point of the comment section is to discuss that. Would you rather comments like "love this", "+1", "all great advice!". That seems completely useless to me. Your questioning of society based on my question and feedback seems outrageously ridiculous to me. Ironically, a quick look shows you have multiple grey posts and are not a positive commenter yourself. Maybe your reply was actually some self reflection.
endymi0n 4y ago
And if you feel self-concious about it, just write „freelance projects“ and in the ultra slim case someone still inquires about that telling them point blank you‘d love to divulge it because it was a very interesting project, but you‘re bound by an NDA.
- 4y ago

chucksmash 4y ago

> On a related note, this "gap in resume" thing needs to stop being a thing at all. I don't know when it became a thing, but it feels distinctively like forcing a wage slave class to keep their head down and continue wageslaving. I think you can better make sense of it as a vestigial organ of hiring process from before background checks were widespread, no "wageslavery" explanation needed.

swiftcoder 4y ago

> Why would an employer care whether I took time off to pursue other things otherwise? Many (questionable) reasons, but among other things, it's a convenient way to exclude women trying to return to the workforce after they took time off to have kids, without overtly appearing to discriminate.

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RektBoy 4y ago
In my country, it's illegal to fire a woman(or man) on maternity leave and company must give her(him) same place back, when they return. Maternity leave is usually taken till a kid is 3yrs old, so after 3yrs they must give you your old place back, by law.
- jermaustin1 4y ago
  These laws usually have loopholes, in the case of the job no longer existing. Which it is very easy to make a job no longer exist, especially in a 3 year time-span.
  - kayodelycaon 4y ago
    I'll second this. After I had to disclose a disability during a merger between two companies, HR moved me into a role they made just for me. That role was removed once a merger was complete.

itsoktocry 4y ago

>Why would an employer care whether I took time off to pursue other things otherwise? I agree, and if they do? I'm not telling you to lie on your resume, but...have a good story to tell about what you during that time off. If that doesn't cut it, you're probably not dealing with a company with a good culture.

mikro2nd 4y ago
"I was driving a startup venture that failed..." ought to do it.
- sgt101 4y ago
  yeah - you better have your background story on that straight though, my next question would be "tell me about that" and then "what happened"
  - sjostrom7 4y ago
    Actually a great behavioral line of questioning - how clearly the the candidate can explain what happened, how they describe whatever part they played or mistakes they made...

misja111 4y ago

> Why would an employer care whether I took time off to pursue other things otherwise? It's not that. Having a gap in your resume might mean that the candidate is trying to hide something. E.g. a job where candidate was fired and doesn't want to be asked to provide references. If you took a gap to pursue other things, put whatever this was on your CV, don't just leave a gap. If it was something interesting, it might even put you in front of other candidates for some employers.

UncleMeat 4y ago
Common gaps are for protected things (raising children) and can cause problems if put on CVs. The idea that employers need to treat every applicant with maximum suspicion is frustrating.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  The concern is that someone was fired for cause or has a pattern of abandoning jobs. Taking time off to raise children isn’t a big deal at most companies (at any big company, you’re more likely to find more parents than non-parents in hiring manager positions). Even gaps for things like travel aren’t really an issue as long as the candidate explains it. You have to consider that hiring managers aren’t only seeing resumes of flawless candidates. There are a lot of candidates out there with things like anger issues, chronic performance issues, interpersonal issues, and so on that have already been removed from other companies for these reasons. It’s difficult to deduce it from a resume alone but small signals like unexplained gaps can be a hint that you need to dig deeper.
  - randerp 4y ago
    just curious - if someone is "fired for cause" (don't feel that this term is universally accurate in its implications but thats another discussion), do you feel they should never get a job again? its some sort of Scarlett letter or brand on them?
    - kayodelycaon 4y ago

Namari 4y ago

I have many gaps in my resume, like 6 months here, few months there ... at the points it looks like I worked 2/3 of the time over the last 10 years. Sometime recruiters ask me why and I tell the truth that I went travelling, that I needed some time off. Why I had so many different jobs ... It may be a deal breaker for some but it doesn't seem to bother everyone as I've never had trouble finding a job, it could be because the market was in need of my skills, I guess IT people should worry much about that.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

It depends entirely on the company and how many other candidates they have. If I receive 200 resumes and 30% of them are picture perfect - Sorry, I can’t interview or even screen everyone. The resume with unexplained gaps isn’t getting sorted into the top of the pile simply because I have to be aggressive with filtering. On the other hand, if I’m hiring for a difficult position at a less popular company and I’m only getting 1 or 2 okay resumes per week, I’ll take the time to screen resumes with gaps as long as everything else looks fine. You have to understand that a lot of hiring managers simply couldn’t screen/interview everyone even if they wanted to. For those jobs, having unexplained gaps in an otherwise average resume could be the negative signal that moves you slightly down bellow the threshold. But for a lot of average jobs: No, it doesn’t actually matter that much.

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arkitaip 4y ago
The entire screening process is broken when recruiters try to find any and all reasons - or negative signals as you call them - to skip over candidates. Who knows how many amazing talents are skipped over due to trivial issues in their application process.
- crispyambulance 4y ago
  > Who knows how many amazing talents are skipped over due to trivial issues in their application process. No one has an actual number, but I expect it's A LOT. The best thing folks can do is to NOT rely on just dropping their resumes into some anonymous web-based corporate application system. Instead, it's much better to network and to use your contacts (previous co-workers, folks you know, family, friends-- anyone really) to get get leads and bypass HR drones entirely or as much as possible. The other thing that, IMHO, works really well is to specialize. Positioning oneself for "hot" in-demand jobs, ironically, just ends up putting people into an ocean of competition where each job has hundreds of equally qualified people going after it. That's awesome for employers who can then be absurdly picky, but it's terrible for candidates. The way many technical candidates shoot themselves in the foot before even getting started is they fail to network and fail to specialize (or target their search properly). They're often honest to a fault and go up against competition that is unscrupulous. There's a reason why so many candidates completely flunk fizzbuzz.

gumby 4y ago

Interesting: over the last 30 years I’ve been lucky enough that my resume is more gap than “work”. I wonder if that would be a problem if I tried to apply for a job at a a big company.

pragmatic 4y ago
Teach me your ways master!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

kirso 4y ago

Its a thing for legacy organisations. If someone is puzzled and gives me a red flag that I had time to rest after my 6 month depression and burnout => its a huge red flag for me that people don't understand the world we live in these days and probably a culture that I will never fit it. I have 4 gaps on my resume (1 failed startup, 1 burnout episode, 1 travel the world & 1 family care). My resume is a total mess of jobs in sales, growth & product. And yet the best organisations I ever worked for, always tried to understand the context before judging.

ajkjk 4y ago

I have a three year gap in my resume and getting a good tech job afterwards was EASY. If anything it made me more employable because people tend like people who do more than write code all day. (Of course the lack of career progression was probably a net disadvantage in terms of raw money-making ability, but I don't care about that). Incidentally I like to also tell people who are a bit behind the times that these days it seems like having visible tattoos is a net benefit for your employability. Everyone likes hiring interesting people who aren't mindless drones. Tattoos, piercings, quirky style .. all serves as evidence of that. At least on the west coast!

inkblotuniverse 4y ago
Tattoos, piercings, and a quirky style signal you're the right kind of (cultural) drone. (A corporate wageslave could run away and integrate somewhere else; better to brand them with distinctive, permanent markers.)
- ajkjk 4y ago
  I don't know how you got that from my post, but I can assure you that you have misunderstood.
yCombLinks 4y ago
I think of tattoos completely differently than you. I only have one(small, not visible). I view it more as a group identification than any sort of interesting personality. I've met plenty of boring people covered in tats. I also know and spend time with several interesting people covered in tats. It's more of a social identifier.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  Since tattoos are so mainstream and common now, they probably send the opposite signal today than they did in the past. When I meet people under 40 or so -without- tattoos, my first impression is they might be more interesting, trend-bucking, counterculture, free thinking, etc. Obviously tattoo/no tattoo is a bad, low-signal way to size someone up, just pointing out the signal itself has phase-inverted from say 20 years ago.

maerF0x0 4y ago

> Why would an employer care whether I took time off to pursue other things otherwise? Let me start off saying I dont agree with this logical fallacy. So don't downvote me if you don't like that some employers think this way. I think many interviewers/managers worry that a gap in resume is actually you got fired and then spent months looking for a new role (possibly this one). Or that you started at a company and then left within a month or two. I guess the belief is an employee who gets fired ought to be red lettered and too big a risk to employ ever again? (fallacy) Now starting at a company and leaving early could be a red flag on the employee in that they agreed to do something and then didnt follow through. But it could just as easily be that the company really misrepresented themselves during the interviewing process and lo and behold it's actually a shit show once you start working for them.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
Problem being interviewers can spin almost every arbitrary detail into a "red flag", and they have done so for decades. It's the benefit which comes with being in a position of power where they get to be far pickier than most candidates can comparatively. It's the same reason so many arbitrary things go from "this is absolutely necessary" to "this would be nice" to "oh we can remove that please don't walk away!" depending on the state of the job market. Interviewers are surprisingly flexible when they are no longer the ones holding the reins.
- maerF0x0 4y ago
  Yeah I do think there are a ton of fallacies that the modern corporation brings to interviewing, which you'd think if someone could break the pattern they might have an advantage? Like one big one for me is the idea that holding out for a better candidate vs hiring an adequate one and giving them world class training? How many months of lost productivity from interviewing another month vs having a fully productive employee one month sooner... and your whole team back on track with building the products that customers supposedly want "right now!" ?

i_am_proteus 4y ago

Aside from the "fired and couldn't find another job" and "had personal problems that prevented him from working angles," there's also the possibility that said employee lives well within his means and can take large blocks of time away from full-time work if he chooses. Which means that said employee could walk away from the company if he's dissatisfied. The company would rather have someone who needs the paycheck— he'll put up with more.

FerociousTimes 4y ago
I am not saying that you necessarily endorse this line of reasoning or justification but if this is what passes for talent retention strategies at these firms, they're really in for a lot, lot of pain.
- i_am_proteus 4y ago
  I absolutely don't endorse, but rather strive to understand.
ynniv 4y ago
I can see the reasoning in that, but in my 20 years in industry this has never come up. When my first child was born I spent a whole year with him, and the only person who was concerned about a twelve month "gap" was me. Take the time to care for yourself.

L_Rahman 4y ago

Echoing this to say I took a full two years off and came back to a 30k raise and that too as a product manager - meaning no hard skills to show in a leetcode type setting. The right team will always understand why you had to take a break. In my case, the first year was for post burnout travel and personal time, the second to recover from a difficult bout of covid. No one blinked at the situation. OP, if your financial position allows it, consider taking as much as six months off. I don't know what part of the world you are, but a big change in geography and culture and people around you will probably help break your rut. Consider taking a long trip out to somewhere affordable and sunny and give yourself permission to do nothing but walk around. Email is my profile bio if you want tips on how to plan something like this.

pkilgore 4y ago

good news: the people most likely to care are exactly the people to avoid, so you're not losing much.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago

In a candidate-rich environment when it comes to selecting workers companies do a lot of crazy and irrational things. Just look at interviewing processes, they tend to be more superstition than anything. Having a gap in your resume that the interviewer can fill in with whatever horror story strikes their fancy (was it drug rehab!?) is a disadvantage.

dudeinjapan 4y ago

It says here that for 22 years you "went Kerouac on everyone's ass."

bartimus 4y ago

I've always put years but have also openly admitted having gaps. I simply told I wanted some free time. Or were messing around with some pet-project (which I do put on my CV). Or learning some new language (which I don't put on my CV). It's never been a problem. Perhaps because I never acted weird about it.

jasonm23 4y ago

As someone who spent the last 8 years in VP & C suite positions... If someone is asking questions about a resume gap (implying it's important)... LEAVE THE INTERVIEW. It will stop being a thing when people realize it's none of anyone's business except yours. The push for arbitrary obedience is part of the same problem. You will find companies that aren't run by psychopaths but you must vote with your feet. Discourage yourself and others from putting up with this shabby behavior.