13 ms·

The Five Year Itch

98 points by swombat 13y ago

haar 13y ago
If I were to have one question to ask the author based on that blog, it would be 'What job/career does his other half have?'. I have pretty much free-roam of where I am, considering I work remotely and have flexibility over which hours I work due to clients in numerous time zones, however my girlfriend is a micro-biologist which makes where she can work rather limited to Universities and other research locations.
- jacquesm 13y ago
  > What job/career does his other half have? During all this we worked together running the same business in various stages/products for 15 years. She's currently a successful glass works artist: http://www.worldinglass.nl/Site/Afbeeldingen/Afbeeldingen.html http://www.worldinglass.nl/Site/Afbeeldingen/Afbeeldingen.ht...
martin-adams 13y ago
The best corporate presentation I saw at my time at IBM was a speaker with a bio on the first slide which highlighted his career history. While I can't remember the specifics, it pretty much looked something like this: 1995 - 2000: Role at company X 2000 - 2005: Role at company Y 2005 - present: Role at IBM We were half way through 2009.
- Tyrant505 13y ago
  Probably wouldn't be a bad time to leave IBM back then.
mjolk 13y ago
Working in the same 100km radius is hardly "nomadic." The only real move the author did was to Canada, before relatively quickly moving back home.
- jacquesm 13y ago
  Amsterdam, Poznan -> 1065 km, Amsterdam, Toronto -> 5500 km, Toronto, St. Josephs Island -> 650 Km, St. Josephs Island, Exloerveen -> 6000 km, Groningen, Landgraaf -> 300 km, Groningen, present -> another 300 km. It's a bit more than a 100 km radius, I can assure you and whether or not you think 5 years is quick is up to you.
  - pedalpete 13y ago
    Here's mine (without distances) Toronto->LA->Toronto->St.Catharines->Ottawa->Toronto->Whistler->New Jersey->Whistler->Frisco(Colorado)->Vancouver->Whistler->LA->Whistler->Santiago->Sydney(AU)
    - jacquesm 13y ago
      Whistler is pretty awesome, I can see why that one keeps coming back :) If you find yourself in or near NL let me know please.
- micheljansen 13y ago
  The author doesn't speak about just changing jobs, he is talking about picking up his whole live and physically moving. Moving 100km may seem like nothing to you, but in the Netherlands, this means quite literally moving to the other end of the country, which is a lot in a country where most people aren't used to driving hundreds of kilometres daily or even weekly. The impact on one's lifestyle (family, friends, environment etc.) would probably be equivalent to moving to another state in the US.
  - mjn 13y ago
    People aren't used to driving 100km, but taking the train that distance is quite common. I've never lived in the Netherlands, but from what I understand it's even more compact and better connected than Denmark, and in Denmark people travel that distance pretty regularly, especially if they have friends/family somewhere. If you moved from Copenhagen to Odense (160km) or vice versa, it'd be a change certainly, but not a real rupture like moving to another country would be.
narag 13y ago
Have you ever thought of buying a boat to live?
- jacquesm 13y ago
  Yes, but my s.o. wouldn't have it (it can get pretty cold in winter on a boat). The closest I've come to this is building a small RV (and I'm busy right now building an even smaller one).
- dexen 13y ago
  Seconded, Kasten (1) produces some very cozy floating houses ;-) [1] http://www.kastenmarine.com/plans_list.htm http://www.kastenmarine.com/plans_list.htm
Luyt 13y ago
"After five years in one place it is amazing how much stuff gets collected." Indeed! And it's hard to stay organized. Paul Graham wrote an essay on this: http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html, which I found worthwile to translate into Dutch: http://www.michielovertoom.com/articles/paul-graham-spullen/ http://www.michielovertoom.com/articles/paul-graham-spullen/
- Kurtz79 13y ago
  It's probably my favorite of pg's essays, no wonder has been translated in several languages.
  - Luyt 13y ago
    I also found 'The Blub Paradox' (part of Beating the Averages) eye-opening. http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
kfk 13y ago
During the past 6-7 years I lived in: Spain (10 months), China (4 months), Italy (1 year), Denmark (1.5 years), Germany (2 years) and now I am in Belgium. Lately I was considering settling down a bit. However, I am pretty sure if somebody comes offering me a job in Patagonia, Chile or similar I would live tomorrow. As the OP says, it weights more on others than you, you get used to it at some point. The only real problem is rebooting your social life every time, especially if you end up in a small city: if you are introvert, you need to get a hell out of your comfort zone to make this work. Anyway, my question to the OP: how did you do this financially? I mean, were you always able to get into a good position and keep building up savings? If so, was this due to your technical skills, networking or other? I am asking because in my line of work (finance-controlling) having manual work in the CV would be quite detrimental.
- jacquesm 13y ago
  The consultancy / software licenses / services / whatever I'm doing thingy has so far brought more than enough to finance all this and several 10's of manyears of employee salaries to boot. I could have saved a lot by staying in one place and doing just one thing though, that is definitely something to consider. Being born at the right time (just in time to pick up the PC revolution) didn't hurt either, nor does having marketable skills and a pretty disciplined attitude towards hard work and getting your hands dirty. I often joke that I'm on a decade long vacation and it really feels like that some days but there is plenty of hard work in between.
- xzkakjel 13y ago
  Similar experience: since leaving my country (Germany) I have been 1.5 yrs US, 3 yrs UK, 1 yr Mexico, now for 3 yrs in Spain. Even though I do feel lonely sometimes due to culture difference and language barrier I love it and cant imagine going back, I'd rather go somewhere else. However, my wife wants a baby and is pretty much nailed to her job so I prepare myself to settle at least for a while. Btw I'm 43
- Kurtz79 13y ago
  My work experience : Italy(6 months, I'm Italian), USA (5 months), UK (1.5 years), Spain (4 years running). I agree that the main problem is rebooting your social life... finding a job (at least whithin Europe, for a European, employed in tech) in my experience is not. Apart from the first two jobs, derived from projects I started at the end of college, I have always applied to job offers online, went to interviews etc...
quaffapint 13y ago
This is only based on how I read the article, and may not be the case at all, but it seems the OP comes across as rather selfish. He gets bored and so he makes his wife and kids uproot their lives and go somewhere else. I've been in the same job and place for 15 years because it's steady work and place for the wife and kids. I often get bored with it, but deal with it - do different projects on the side, et al. Again, just my take on it. For all I know the family enjoys it. Too often I read articles on guys with families that are more worried about themselves than their families and it just bugs me.
- jacquesm 13y ago
  Oh yes, selfish, that's me to a 'T' ;) Of course it would never enter into my head to discuss these plans ahead of times with those involved and people are being dragged screaming and kicking to the furthest corners of the earth. And I pick the spot, every time. Really, you couldn't be more wrong, if you want we can take this up via email (I've tried to keep my family members and private life out of my blog / public life as much as possible but I can see that in this case that isn't really doable without potentially giving the wrong impression). The spot was picked by my s.o. in two cases and by me in the others, but we all agreed on roughly where we'd move ahead of time, in so far as agreement from small children counts they had a voice too, but if there would have been strong disagreement we'd definitely not have done any of this. For sure we enjoyed it and looking back there are definitely no regrets.
  - quaffapint 13y ago
    Again, I don't know the full story, just based on what and how I read the article. If your family enjoys it, then by all means it sounds great :]. Heck, maybe it's even better for them than sticking around. It's just like I had mentioned, it seems more people these days think that they are privileged and they're too self centered and not seeing what their true role should be. It's an issue that bothers me and it's simply how I read the article.
  - switch007 13y ago
    "if you want we can take this up via email" sounded so much like "do you want to take this outside" ;-)
ewams 13y ago
That's funny, I consider myself a nomad and have almost your introduction word-for-word as my bio on my website. Your article portrays the moving activities well and a few things I haven't tried (the new house stuff). I am surprised to find this is you considering some of the physical projects you have written about (windmill, gas station, RV, etc). The stuff accumulation is a big one for me too. Before I started this lifestyle definitely was doing all I could to save things and then I just realized that most of it I never touch so I took the nostalgia things, took pictures, and then donated to charity. That way my stuff's "soul" can give happy memories to others.
shortlived 13y ago
Where there any challenges for your kids or any advice you can give to other families trying this? My initial feeling is that uprooting kids is not a good thing, but it clearly works for your family.
- jacquesm 13y ago
  Buy in is key, if you don't all agree on where to go in principle and you can't feel all of you that the new place is one where you could be happy then simply don't do it. The world is large enough and there are plenty of options. Our origins were a factor in the early moves (Poland, Netherlands), the way the business developed in the later ones (Canada). The final move back to NL was because we liked the school system and some other infrastructure here better than the one where we were at the time. But we'd have moved somewhere regardless of origins, business, schools or infrastructure and even today I'm quite sure this isn't the end of the story just yet.
- david927 13y ago
  It really depends on how old your children are. We knew that our third move, to a third country/language, when my daughter was about to turn five, would be our last for a while. Chomsky's "critical age" says that up until six kids can take the culture and language as their own. It falls off pretty rapidly after that. It's sometimes hard for me and my wife (we actually have a three-year itch :-) but we're really lucky to have found a good location and overall we're all really happy here (southern France).
- benmccann 13y ago
  I grew up in a military family which meant moving every few years. I'm pretty happy to have had that experience. I see my friends now sometimes pass up what would be great opportunities because they're too uncomfortable with the idea of making a big change. Moving certainly can be difficult, but it also makes you more adaptable and becomes easier subsequent times you do it. I was lucky in that our moves mostly lined up well with switching schools anyway (e.g. going from elementary to middle school), so that made it easier. Plus, as a nerdy kid in school, it had the positive side effect of getting to start over. And my brother who is very sociable became even more so as he had more and more practice making new friends. I think it's probably one of the reasons I'm a startup founder today. Taking a risk of leaving a high paying job to start a company didn't seem quite as scary when I'd made big jumps to new things in the past and had them turn out just fine. I'm sure moving would be tough for your kids at first, but it's also a great opportunity to teach them how to adapt to change.
yardie 13y ago
We are currently at the looking to move phase having come to the agreement that, yes, we are moving, and have informed our friends and family. What we haven't done is figured out where to go from here. Traveling seems to come up a lot in our family discussion, so we've agreed to do that for 6mo-1.5years. But after that it is the logistics of what to bring, what sell, what to store, and where to keep it. We've begun to give/sell our things, throw out things when they're worn out or broken (we have a dining table with no chairs). Scan and shred the inordinate amount of paperwork a family accumulates over a decade. Also at the end of our travels we're not sure where we want to be. Wife is EU passport holder and I am a US passport holder so either side of the pond won't be a problem as far as visas are concerned. But, those places are not where we want to live, yet. Places we're interested in moving to are AUS, NZ, and SA (costa rica, and chile for my wife). But we're not really sure we'd ever want to live there in the long term, either. I'm curious if there is a short term visa that allows you to "sample" a country before making a big commitment. Most of the ones I've found appear to be for students under 30.
- jacquesm 13y ago
  Tourist visa are good for 90 days usually, you can ask for extensions once you get close to the end of your 90 days. Some countries (Germany for instance) have special permits during which you can figure out what you want to do, provided you are self supporting in the interim. Once you have a permit like that for one EU country you can go to any other (though formally you have a deal with the Germans).
  - yardie 13y ago
    Tourist visas wouldn't be adequate in our case. For example, I had some friends move to Barcelona, rent an apartment, find jobs, open a bank account and travel every weekend to different regions in Spain. Then after 2 years they decided to move to Melbourne on a holiday work visa for 2 years. Then after that they moved to the south of France. In each case they had a work permit (one is a French national, so France doesn't count) based on some work holiday scheme. But a few of these have age or education limits. Our next adventure is to buy a boat and circumnavigate. First we have to buy a boat, then we have to equip it to cross oceans. BTW, Berlin does appeal to me, and I recently discovered my wife speaks a little German. What is it with the french not wanting to speak any other language?
dexen 13y ago
I find this post inspiring. For years I've been struggling with un-named itch, now you put forth exactly what makes me tick. Will follow your steps. Thanks for sharing, Jacques :-)
josh_fyi 13y ago
I know the feeling, and yes, it itches! Every red-blooded engineer wants to switch technologies and find new challenges every few years. So, a few months ago, we launched a site to scratch the itch for ourselves and others who are experiencing it. Guess what domain name we chose? It's http://FiveYearItch.com http://FiveYearItch.com Perfect! I hope it helps!
OldSchool 13y ago
Hmmm, I can understand getting bored and switching jobs as a way to stay stimulated, or to take on the "opportunity of a lifetime" that comes along every so often, but when there are other innocents whose lives are interrupted as a result, my empathy ends there. Once we had children, before any were in school, my wife and I picked a place where we could reasonably expect to stay until they were finished with school, and we're still here. Their lives are more important than mine (my amusement ranks far below), and in my opinion, a stable childhood provides the foundation to take some risk as an adult.
- justinhj 13y ago
  Whilst I did the same as you, who are we to say that this is best for all families? I'm sure some would adapt and thrive whilst others would be desperately unhappy.
- Clanan 13y ago
  I have to agree, based on the anecdotal evidence of my children. Moving several times, just in the same city, had a marked effect on them. It was subtle though, and unexplained, until we talked to the pediatrician about behavior. He made it very clear that children require a strong sense of home and stability for their emotional growth and security. Any sort of move can disrupt that easily.
  - johnward 13y ago
    Was this a negative effect? I stayed in the same place as a child but I could see a major benefit from experiencing different places and having to learn how to interact with new people. it wouldn't be easy as a child but there could be some lo g term benefits.
- edanm 13y ago
  My parents moved us to the US when I was younger, then to England, and finally back to Israel. There are pros and cons to moving around. Experiencing other cultures, learning new languages, and so on are all things I'm very glad happened. On the flipside, having less permanent friends, starting to study in another language when you're 13, and so on, are fairly hard. I don't think I'm able to honestly bet on which of these is better for children.
w0rd-driven 13y ago
Your shelf-life so to speak at a potential opportunity is more averaged around 3.5-4 years. I'm not sure if you're open about this to employers but it made me think of a somewhat typical question of "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" "Anywhere but here!" is likely not the response they're looking for even though it would be entirely accurate. Personally, I don't really care. Our skillset and drive doesn't keep us in long, tenured positions. Having an upward ceiling of 5 years at any company is truly impressive. Most developers I know cap themselves at 1 or possibly 2 years. I wanted to bring this up primarily to highlight that if an employer of software developers is looking to retain talent for > 5 years they have an extremely hard road ahead of them. The number of Googlers (a random but high metric) that are still there after 5 years is probably much less than most of us think. I'm sure Google has the data to prove or disprove the theory but I'm not sure it's accessible to the public. That's not to say it can't be done but it shouldn't be the same push as other industries seem to require. Those industries tend to have skills that are highly specialized where that much knowledge gathered over time is not only prized but highly required. Our "knowledge cap" seems to reset quite often in comparison and our base understanding of "computer sciency things" tends to transcend the technology we're using those things on.
AndrewKemendo 13y ago
Currently there are about 1 million people who do this on about as regular a basis and they are the members of the US Military. So it's not as rare as it would seem. It is a little different, but in reality not so different as to not be applicable. For most of us, it is exactly what we want to do - we like to see new places and get new experiences and it often is great. The toll is also pretty tough for our families and there are plenty of stories and studies about those impacts. For those who like it and it works, great, but often even if kids say they like it, there are things that they don't talk about that impacts them regardless.

98 points by swombat 13y ago

haar 13y ago

If I were to have one question to ask the author based on that blog, it would be 'What job/career does his other half have?'. I have pretty much free-roam of where I am, considering I work remotely and have flexibility over which hours I work due to clients in numerous time zones, however my girlfriend is a micro-biologist which makes where she can work rather limited to Universities and other research locations.

jacquesm 13y ago
> What job/career does his other half have? During all this we worked together running the same business in various stages/products for 15 years. She's currently a successful glass works artist: http://www.worldinglass.nl/Site/Afbeeldingen/Afbeeldingen.html http://www.worldinglass.nl/Site/Afbeeldingen/Afbeeldingen.ht...

martin-adams 13y ago

The best corporate presentation I saw at my time at IBM was a speaker with a bio on the first slide which highlighted his career history. While I can't remember the specifics, it pretty much looked something like this: 1995 - 2000: Role at company X 2000 - 2005: Role at company Y 2005 - present: Role at IBM We were half way through 2009.

Tyrant505 13y ago
Probably wouldn't be a bad time to leave IBM back then.

mjolk 13y ago

Working in the same 100km radius is hardly "nomadic." The only real move the author did was to Canada, before relatively quickly moving back home.

jacquesm 13y ago
Amsterdam, Poznan -> 1065 km, Amsterdam, Toronto -> 5500 km, Toronto, St. Josephs Island -> 650 Km, St. Josephs Island, Exloerveen -> 6000 km, Groningen, Landgraaf -> 300 km, Groningen, present -> another 300 km. It's a bit more than a 100 km radius, I can assure you and whether or not you think 5 years is quick is up to you.
- pedalpete 13y ago
  Here's mine (without distances) Toronto->LA->Toronto->St.Catharines->Ottawa->Toronto->Whistler->New Jersey->Whistler->Frisco(Colorado)->Vancouver->Whistler->LA->Whistler->Santiago->Sydney(AU)
  - jacquesm 13y ago
    Whistler is pretty awesome, I can see why that one keeps coming back :) If you find yourself in or near NL let me know please.
micheljansen 13y ago
The author doesn't speak about just changing jobs, he is talking about picking up his whole live and physically moving. Moving 100km may seem like nothing to you, but in the Netherlands, this means quite literally moving to the other end of the country, which is a lot in a country where most people aren't used to driving hundreds of kilometres daily or even weekly. The impact on one's lifestyle (family, friends, environment etc.) would probably be equivalent to moving to another state in the US.
- mjn 13y ago
  People aren't used to driving 100km, but taking the train that distance is quite common. I've never lived in the Netherlands, but from what I understand it's even more compact and better connected than Denmark, and in Denmark people travel that distance pretty regularly, especially if they have friends/family somewhere. If you moved from Copenhagen to Odense (160km) or vice versa, it'd be a change certainly, but not a real rupture like moving to another country would be.

narag 13y ago

Have you ever thought of buying a boat to live?

jacquesm 13y ago
Yes, but my s.o. wouldn't have it (it can get pretty cold in winter on a boat). The closest I've come to this is building a small RV (and I'm busy right now building an even smaller one).
dexen 13y ago
Seconded, Kasten (1) produces some very cozy floating houses ;-) [1] http://www.kastenmarine.com/plans_list.htm http://www.kastenmarine.com/plans_list.htm

Luyt 13y ago

"After five years in one place it is amazing how much stuff gets collected." Indeed! And it's hard to stay organized. Paul Graham wrote an essay on this: http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html, which I found worthwile to translate into Dutch: http://www.michielovertoom.com/articles/paul-graham-spullen/ http://www.michielovertoom.com/articles/paul-graham-spullen/

Kurtz79 13y ago
It's probably my favorite of pg's essays, no wonder has been translated in several languages.
- Luyt 13y ago
  I also found 'The Blub Paradox' (part of Beating the Averages) eye-opening. http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

kfk 13y ago

During the past 6-7 years I lived in: Spain (10 months), China (4 months), Italy (1 year), Denmark (1.5 years), Germany (2 years) and now I am in Belgium. Lately I was considering settling down a bit. However, I am pretty sure if somebody comes offering me a job in Patagonia, Chile or similar I would live tomorrow. As the OP says, it weights more on others than you, you get used to it at some point. The only real problem is rebooting your social life every time, especially if you end up in a small city: if you are introvert, you need to get a hell out of your comfort zone to make this work. Anyway, my question to the OP: how did you do this financially? I mean, were you always able to get into a good position and keep building up savings? If so, was this due to your technical skills, networking or other? I am asking because in my line of work (finance-controlling) having manual work in the CV would be quite detrimental.

jacquesm 13y ago
The consultancy / software licenses / services / whatever I'm doing thingy has so far brought more than enough to finance all this and several 10's of manyears of employee salaries to boot. I could have saved a lot by staying in one place and doing just one thing though, that is definitely something to consider. Being born at the right time (just in time to pick up the PC revolution) didn't hurt either, nor does having marketable skills and a pretty disciplined attitude towards hard work and getting your hands dirty. I often joke that I'm on a decade long vacation and it really feels like that some days but there is plenty of hard work in between.
xzkakjel 13y ago
Similar experience: since leaving my country (Germany) I have been 1.5 yrs US, 3 yrs UK, 1 yr Mexico, now for 3 yrs in Spain. Even though I do feel lonely sometimes due to culture difference and language barrier I love it and cant imagine going back, I'd rather go somewhere else. However, my wife wants a baby and is pretty much nailed to her job so I prepare myself to settle at least for a while. Btw I'm 43
Kurtz79 13y ago
My work experience : Italy(6 months, I'm Italian), USA (5 months), UK (1.5 years), Spain (4 years running). I agree that the main problem is rebooting your social life... finding a job (at least whithin Europe, for a European, employed in tech) in my experience is not. Apart from the first two jobs, derived from projects I started at the end of college, I have always applied to job offers online, went to interviews etc...

quaffapint 13y ago

This is only based on how I read the article, and may not be the case at all, but it seems the OP comes across as rather selfish. He gets bored and so he makes his wife and kids uproot their lives and go somewhere else. I've been in the same job and place for 15 years because it's steady work and place for the wife and kids. I often get bored with it, but deal with it - do different projects on the side, et al. Again, just my take on it. For all I know the family enjoys it. Too often I read articles on guys with families that are more worried about themselves than their families and it just bugs me.

jacquesm 13y ago
Oh yes, selfish, that's me to a 'T' ;) Of course it would never enter into my head to discuss these plans ahead of times with those involved and people are being dragged screaming and kicking to the furthest corners of the earth. And I pick the spot, every time. Really, you couldn't be more wrong, if you want we can take this up via email (I've tried to keep my family members and private life out of my blog / public life as much as possible but I can see that in this case that isn't really doable without potentially giving the wrong impression). The spot was picked by my s.o. in two cases and by me in the others, but we all agreed on roughly where we'd move ahead of time, in so far as agreement from small children counts they had a voice too, but if there would have been strong disagreement we'd definitely not have done any of this. For sure we enjoyed it and looking back there are definitely no regrets.
- quaffapint 13y ago
  Again, I don't know the full story, just based on what and how I read the article. If your family enjoys it, then by all means it sounds great :]. Heck, maybe it's even better for them than sticking around. It's just like I had mentioned, it seems more people these days think that they are privileged and they're too self centered and not seeing what their true role should be. It's an issue that bothers me and it's simply how I read the article.
- switch007 13y ago
  "if you want we can take this up via email" sounded so much like "do you want to take this outside" ;-)

ewams 13y ago

That's funny, I consider myself a nomad and have almost your introduction word-for-word as my bio on my website. Your article portrays the moving activities well and a few things I haven't tried (the new house stuff). I am surprised to find this is you considering some of the physical projects you have written about (windmill, gas station, RV, etc). The stuff accumulation is a big one for me too. Before I started this lifestyle definitely was doing all I could to save things and then I just realized that most of it I never touch so I took the nostalgia things, took pictures, and then donated to charity. That way my stuff's "soul" can give happy memories to others.

shortlived 13y ago

Where there any challenges for your kids or any advice you can give to other families trying this? My initial feeling is that uprooting kids is not a good thing, but it clearly works for your family.

jacquesm 13y ago
Buy in is key, if you don't all agree on where to go in principle and you can't feel all of you that the new place is one where you could be happy then simply don't do it. The world is large enough and there are plenty of options. Our origins were a factor in the early moves (Poland, Netherlands), the way the business developed in the later ones (Canada). The final move back to NL was because we liked the school system and some other infrastructure here better than the one where we were at the time. But we'd have moved somewhere regardless of origins, business, schools or infrastructure and even today I'm quite sure this isn't the end of the story just yet.
david927 13y ago
It really depends on how old your children are. We knew that our third move, to a third country/language, when my daughter was about to turn five, would be our last for a while. Chomsky's "critical age" says that up until six kids can take the culture and language as their own. It falls off pretty rapidly after that. It's sometimes hard for me and my wife (we actually have a three-year itch :-) but we're really lucky to have found a good location and overall we're all really happy here (southern France).
benmccann 13y ago
I grew up in a military family which meant moving every few years. I'm pretty happy to have had that experience. I see my friends now sometimes pass up what would be great opportunities because they're too uncomfortable with the idea of making a big change. Moving certainly can be difficult, but it also makes you more adaptable and becomes easier subsequent times you do it. I was lucky in that our moves mostly lined up well with switching schools anyway (e.g. going from elementary to middle school), so that made it easier. Plus, as a nerdy kid in school, it had the positive side effect of getting to start over. And my brother who is very sociable became even more so as he had more and more practice making new friends. I think it's probably one of the reasons I'm a startup founder today. Taking a risk of leaving a high paying job to start a company didn't seem quite as scary when I'd made big jumps to new things in the past and had them turn out just fine. I'm sure moving would be tough for your kids at first, but it's also a great opportunity to teach them how to adapt to change.

yardie 13y ago

We are currently at the looking to move phase having come to the agreement that, yes, we are moving, and have informed our friends and family. What we haven't done is figured out where to go from here. Traveling seems to come up a lot in our family discussion, so we've agreed to do that for 6mo-1.5years. But after that it is the logistics of what to bring, what sell, what to store, and where to keep it. We've begun to give/sell our things, throw out things when they're worn out or broken (we have a dining table with no chairs). Scan and shred the inordinate amount of paperwork a family accumulates over a decade. Also at the end of our travels we're not sure where we want to be. Wife is EU passport holder and I am a US passport holder so either side of the pond won't be a problem as far as visas are concerned. But, those places are not where we want to live, yet. Places we're interested in moving to are AUS, NZ, and SA (costa rica, and chile for my wife). But we're not really sure we'd ever want to live there in the long term, either. I'm curious if there is a short term visa that allows you to "sample" a country before making a big commitment. Most of the ones I've found appear to be for students under 30.

jacquesm 13y ago
Tourist visa are good for 90 days usually, you can ask for extensions once you get close to the end of your 90 days. Some countries (Germany for instance) have special permits during which you can figure out what you want to do, provided you are self supporting in the interim. Once you have a permit like that for one EU country you can go to any other (though formally you have a deal with the Germans).
- yardie 13y ago
  Tourist visas wouldn't be adequate in our case. For example, I had some friends move to Barcelona, rent an apartment, find jobs, open a bank account and travel every weekend to different regions in Spain. Then after 2 years they decided to move to Melbourne on a holiday work visa for 2 years. Then after that they moved to the south of France. In each case they had a work permit (one is a French national, so France doesn't count) based on some work holiday scheme. But a few of these have age or education limits. Our next adventure is to buy a boat and circumnavigate. First we have to buy a boat, then we have to equip it to cross oceans. BTW, Berlin does appeal to me, and I recently discovered my wife speaks a little German. What is it with the french not wanting to speak any other language?

dexen 13y ago

I find this post inspiring. For years I've been struggling with un-named itch, now you put forth exactly what makes me tick. Will follow your steps. Thanks for sharing, Jacques :-)

josh_fyi 13y ago

I know the feeling, and yes, it itches! Every red-blooded engineer wants to switch technologies and find new challenges every few years. So, a few months ago, we launched a site to scratch the itch for ourselves and others who are experiencing it. Guess what domain name we chose? It's http://FiveYearItch.com http://FiveYearItch.com Perfect! I hope it helps!

OldSchool 13y ago

Hmmm, I can understand getting bored and switching jobs as a way to stay stimulated, or to take on the "opportunity of a lifetime" that comes along every so often, but when there are other innocents whose lives are interrupted as a result, my empathy ends there. Once we had children, before any were in school, my wife and I picked a place where we could reasonably expect to stay until they were finished with school, and we're still here. Their lives are more important than mine (my amusement ranks far below), and in my opinion, a stable childhood provides the foundation to take some risk as an adult.

justinhj 13y ago
Whilst I did the same as you, who are we to say that this is best for all families? I'm sure some would adapt and thrive whilst others would be desperately unhappy.
Clanan 13y ago
I have to agree, based on the anecdotal evidence of my children. Moving several times, just in the same city, had a marked effect on them. It was subtle though, and unexplained, until we talked to the pediatrician about behavior. He made it very clear that children require a strong sense of home and stability for their emotional growth and security. Any sort of move can disrupt that easily.
- johnward 13y ago
  Was this a negative effect? I stayed in the same place as a child but I could see a major benefit from experiencing different places and having to learn how to interact with new people. it wouldn't be easy as a child but there could be some lo g term benefits.
edanm 13y ago
My parents moved us to the US when I was younger, then to England, and finally back to Israel. There are pros and cons to moving around. Experiencing other cultures, learning new languages, and so on are all things I'm very glad happened. On the flipside, having less permanent friends, starting to study in another language when you're 13, and so on, are fairly hard. I don't think I'm able to honestly bet on which of these is better for children.

w0rd-driven 13y ago

Your shelf-life so to speak at a potential opportunity is more averaged around 3.5-4 years. I'm not sure if you're open about this to employers but it made me think of a somewhat typical question of "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" "Anywhere but here!" is likely not the response they're looking for even though it would be entirely accurate. Personally, I don't really care. Our skillset and drive doesn't keep us in long, tenured positions. Having an upward ceiling of 5 years at any company is truly impressive. Most developers I know cap themselves at 1 or possibly 2 years. I wanted to bring this up primarily to highlight that if an employer of software developers is looking to retain talent for > 5 years they have an extremely hard road ahead of them. The number of Googlers (a random but high metric) that are still there after 5 years is probably much less than most of us think. I'm sure Google has the data to prove or disprove the theory but I'm not sure it's accessible to the public. That's not to say it can't be done but it shouldn't be the same push as other industries seem to require. Those industries tend to have skills that are highly specialized where that much knowledge gathered over time is not only prized but highly required. Our "knowledge cap" seems to reset quite often in comparison and our base understanding of "computer sciency things" tends to transcend the technology we're using those things on.

AndrewKemendo 13y ago

Currently there are about 1 million people who do this on about as regular a basis and they are the members of the US Military. So it's not as rare as it would seem. It is a little different, but in reality not so different as to not be applicable. For most of us, it is exactly what we want to do - we like to see new places and get new experiences and it often is great. The toll is also pretty tough for our families and there are plenty of stories and studies about those impacts. For those who like it and it works, great, but often even if kids say they like it, there are things that they don't talk about that impacts them regardless.