3 ms·

I'd like to hear from people that have done sabbaticals or even a longish unpaid time off (say 6 weeks or more). How many times have you done it? How did you

by tra3 3y ago

I'd like to hear from people that have done sabbaticals or even a longish unpaid time off (say 6 weeks or more). How many times have you done it? How did you manager take it? How did you colleagues react? I'd like to take a few weeks off, unpaid but I'm quite fearful about how the business will react.

bee_rider 3y ago
A friend of mine at Intel got a sabbatical after a few years. IIRC, they are the “default” path, at least for engineers, although I don’t know if everybody does it or what. It seems like an awesome perk. A well run company shouldn’t have a big problem if a single engineer vanishes. If management has trouble getting you time for a sabbatical, it would seem you are in a position to ask them for a ton of money.
Tade0 3y ago
I did a total of four 3-month sabbaticals - three of them via quitting, one time I got fired and was too burned out to immediately look for a job. The most common reaction was surprise that I don't have anything lined up mixed with only half-joking displays of envy that I have the means to just do nothing for this long(which was somewhat of a headscratcher considering we all had similar salaries). Nevertheless my current employer(or actually middleman, since I'm a contractor) is fine with them as long as they're betweeen projects - I need to notify them two months in advance and can pick up where I left. No guarantee that I'll end up in the same organisation though. I wholeheartedly recommend doing them at least once every three years. Not only you get to focus on other things in life than just work, you can time your job hunt for the hottest moments of the year - typically last months of each quarter except for Q2.
ghaff 3y ago
6 weeks is honestly not that much. In a long-ago product management job I took several month long vacations. I planned things around product schedules as best I could. I could probably have added some time with unpaid leave (though I didn't) but it was never an issue. Some colleagues were shocked that I could just go off and do this but no one responsible for actually paying me ever had a problem.
- tra3 3y ago
  If you can share -- how big was the company you were working for?
  - ghaff 3y ago
    It was one of the big minicomputer companies (Data General). Certainly something over 10K employees. Yes, this sort of thing is harder with smaller firms and I never tried more than 2-3 weeks when I was an analyst at small firms. Could probably do the same thing in my current role but work and personal travel have been sufficiently intertwined I've never really tried. (You also don't generally need to be off-the-grid as completely as you used to be.)

by tra3 3y ago

bee_rider 3y ago

A friend of mine at Intel got a sabbatical after a few years. IIRC, they are the “default” path, at least for engineers, although I don’t know if everybody does it or what. It seems like an awesome perk. A well run company shouldn’t have a big problem if a single engineer vanishes. If management has trouble getting you time for a sabbatical, it would seem you are in a position to ask them for a ton of money.

Tade0 3y ago

I did a total of four 3-month sabbaticals - three of them via quitting, one time I got fired and was too burned out to immediately look for a job. The most common reaction was surprise that I don't have anything lined up mixed with only half-joking displays of envy that I have the means to just do nothing for this long(which was somewhat of a headscratcher considering we all had similar salaries). Nevertheless my current employer(or actually middleman, since I'm a contractor) is fine with them as long as they're betweeen projects - I need to notify them two months in advance and can pick up where I left. No guarantee that I'll end up in the same organisation though. I wholeheartedly recommend doing them at least once every three years. Not only you get to focus on other things in life than just work, you can time your job hunt for the hottest moments of the year - typically last months of each quarter except for Q2.

ghaff 3y ago

6 weeks is honestly not that much. In a long-ago product management job I took several month long vacations. I planned things around product schedules as best I could. I could probably have added some time with unpaid leave (though I didn't) but it was never an issue. Some colleagues were shocked that I could just go off and do this but no one responsible for actually paying me ever had a problem.

tra3 3y ago
If you can share -- how big was the company you were working for?
- ghaff 3y ago
  It was one of the big minicomputer companies (Data General). Certainly something over 10K employees. Yes, this sort of thing is harder with smaller firms and I never tried more than 2-3 weeks when I was an analyst at small firms. Could probably do the same thing in my current role but work and personal travel have been sufficiently intertwined I've never really tried. (You also don't generally need to be off-the-grid as completely as you used to be.)