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Ask HN: What would you do if given a sabbatical?

33 points by linsomniac 4y ago

In academia it is more common to give a year for every 7 worked, to take time off work to do something of your choosing that ultimately enhances your employer in some way. Say, writing a book. If your employer offered you a sabbatical, what would you do with yourself? I work in operations, I'd want something like 3 months to experiment with some ideas related to the software release cycle: version control, building, testing, releasing, and deploying a complex application (~50 packages, 20 clusters, 5 environments).

m3talsmith 4y ago
I would work for a decentralized platform and a video game that would run on it. The platform and the video game work hand in hand and have been planned since 1996, but I’ve never had enough time.
scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
When I was a kid, my father got a sabbatical - he was a professor in a respected design program in a relatively well known area of the US. I struggled to comprehend how it is possible and this sounded like an incredible luxury; offered only to tenured, old respected faculty. Without the constraints and demands of his normal 10-2 academia job he wound down into a productivity-free state in which he did very little aside from his usual scribbling and sketching of ideas on scraps of paper and generating loads of notes. Not that many years later he retired. While it didn’t seem to me like the lack of results for the sabbatical were the main problem, knowing him full well I have this hunch that the sabbatical was really just a politically gracious way to get rid of him for a year, so that it would be even easier to get rid of him later for others who wanted his position, influence, whatever within that university. If my employer offered me a sabbatical I would be suspicious. I think given a sabbatical I would do exactly what I already am doing, which is an attempt at building a small community around our product (with an SPA/webapp) while using that as an opportunity for UX testing and research with users of our products which are surgical simulation devices. I am not a fan of the sabbatical because that is too long to go off working on something without bringing it back for feedback/scrutiny. But I do think companies should give employees at least a day or two a week of freedom to do the projects that interest them for personal growth within the scope of the company.
- muzani 4y ago
  As a former founder, I used to be invited to do "entrepreneurship training" for some senior employees of large corporations. They'd be given training on the basic entrepreneurship stuff (MVP, lean canvas, rapid iteration), and then encouraged to start their own thing for a few months while still on a paycheck. It was a lot of fun. I sat down with the people we were training for lunch and asked what they thought of it. They said it was very clever. It was a way to get rid of the senior employees who were around for over 10 years and too expensive to legally fire. It was a way to get them to quit on their own will.
- linsomniac 4y ago
  I agree about a year being too long to be in a bubble without feedback. I think a quarter makes more sense. A day a week is too much switching of gears to feel like it'd be productive.
- gaws 4y ago
  > Without the constraints and demands of his normal 10-2 academia job he 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.? Was that a full workday for your father?
toomuchtodo 4y ago
Scale up efforts like https://www.atinyhomeforgood.org/about-2 https://www.atinyhomeforgood.org/about-2
jwstarr 4y ago
I used my sabbatical to research and write a history paper. One of my colleagues used his sabbatical to just spend the summer with his kids.
_8j50 4y ago
Exploit research, ctfs and I have two or three projects I think are great and useful ideas I want to work on but my current freetime just doesn't let me write code for hobby projects, so I would give those a shot. But yeah, no way that will happen.
diogenescynic 4y ago
I'd probably go to Japan or Argentina and Chile.
vips7L 4y ago
Absolutely nothing.
- linsomniac 4y ago
  If doing absolutely nothing on sabbatical conforms to the "ultimately benefiting your employer" aspect of the year away, I'd be rethinking what I'm doing at work... ;-/
muzani 4y ago
"to do something of your choosing that ultimately enhances your employer in some way." I'd probably mess around a lot with AI. Not necessarily anything useful. Stuff like generating cover images for documents, utilizing emojis to replace common phrases, making stuff more concise and easier to read. I've got a console line command to write UATs in the form of crappy poetry.
ftio 4y ago
I’d spend a lot of time with my kids and play golf almost every day.
marginalia_nu 4y ago
I was really dissatisfied with life a few years back, so I took a year off work and lived off my savings. I attributed my dissatisfaction to work and I basically said to my boss I needed to do something else for a while, and I'd come back in a year if they'd have me. I had a decent bunch of savings and nobody to support, so I could afford to gamble this way. But they did take me back. I had a bunch of ideas beforehand about what I wanted to do, projects and so on, and many thoughts about what I was fed up with at work and a feeling I needed more time for my own projects. I tested these notions and ended up realizing that I was mostly wrong in my analysis. I thought I wanted was more time to decide what I wanted to do with, to hack on projects, but in the end what I realized I lacked was variety in life. So since then I picked up a bunch of new hobbies. Like in the years since I've dabbled in everything from partner dancing to latin. I'm a lot more well rounded now and I'm a lot happier for it. I've also worked 32 week hours since then to have some more time for other stuff. Well worth the pay cut. In the end, I never really accomplished very much on my sabbatical, but I did come back a much more well rounded and happy person. It's probably a far better tool for personal growth than it is for productivity or career advancement.
- bravasaurus 4y ago
  > I did come back a much more well rounded and happy person That in itself is a tremendous accomplishment.
- GianFabien 4y ago
  "realizing you were mostly wrong about your analysis" is a wonderful WIN. Just imagine if you had run off, started a business and discovered you didn't have a viable product/service. That would have been a fart worse outcome. Having balance in life is far more valuable than a couple of more technical skills to add to your CV.
gregoryl 4y ago
I'm hiking the TA trail (top to bottom of NZ) end of next year. I'll probably even come back to the same job/role.
j7ake 4y ago
Some productive academics insert themselves into a lab where they want to learn something new. After sabbatical they try to combine their new ideas into their existing research programme. The really top academics don’t take sabbaticals because they are already in a place where money, talent, and collaborations are flowing and taking any time off would break that momentum.
GianFabien 4y ago
In academia, a sabbatical is an opportunity to work on a new project, in a new environment with new collaborators. It is not a time to just goof off. Many advances in CS/SE have come about as a result of focused projects at places like Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, etc.
vegetablepotpie 4y ago
I’ve been considering taking a leave of absence. I’m single, no partner, no kids, I have savings and I feel my performance at coding is declining. I would go on some through hikes and travel to national parks, and car camp in BLM land along the way. I would try to have very inexpensive traveling experiences, build up stories to tell, and meet new people. This could be a good time to reset. Because of inflation and stagnant wages, the opportunity cost of working has gone up. I could get a new job, but I don’t want to continue to be a developer. I also spend a lot of my time working, and I’m single because of that. I see a leave of absent as an opportunity to explore other options and find a partner.
- gaws 4y ago
  > I’m single, no partner, no kids > I’ve been considering taking a leave of absence Do it. You have no obligations dragging you down. This is the perfect time to take the leave.
- wreath 4y ago
  > and car camp in BLM land What's a BLM land?
  - grzm 4y ago
    Bureau of Land Management: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Land_Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Land_Management Among other things, > "The BLM administers 205,498 miles (330,717 km) of fishable streams, 2.2 million acres (8,900 km2) of lakes and reservoirs, 6,600 miles (10,600 km) of floatable rivers, over 500 boating access points, 69 National Back Country Byways, and 300 Watchable Wildlife sites. The agency also manages 4,500 miles (7,200 km) of National Scenic, National Historic and National Recreation Trails, as well as thousands of miles of multiple use trails used by motorcyclists, hikers, equestrians, and mountain bikers.[61] In 2013, BLM lands received an estimated 61.7 million recreational visitors. Over 99% of BLM-managed lands are open to hunting, recreational shooting opportunities, and fishing."
gardenhedge 4y ago
I travelled the world. I was able to do that at the time because I had no debt or dependants. Now, I wouldn't look for one because I feel I could use the time well.
FintechRisen 4y ago
I recently took some significant time off from work and it was a game-changer for my psyche. Tbh I didn't do any trips, I didn't have any absurd adventures planned (although if the circumstances were a little different I might have planned some), but I really just hung out with my kids and spent time bonding with them. It was extremely recharging to have that time to spend with them and also for my hobbies. A great reminder about how I can improve on work-life balance.