Its a red flag. If you are capable of taking of for an year, whats stopping you from taking off again. No one wants to hire someone who will leave after sometime. And there are probably other hires who dont have this red flag.
However a dinstinctly high frequency of changing jobs, say in the 90th percentile among candidates (and how many people take sabbaticals?), now that could be a red flag already. And for exactly that reason - it implies the candidate is relatively likely to jump teams again.
Hence it is not absurd to assume quite a few employers would prefer someone who worked at 2 places throughout the past few years over someone who worked at 5 - all other things being equal, obviously.
I am not arguing whether it's right or justified - or to what extent. That's another story.
I was actually considering chasing another job last week, which would have better pay and more responsibilities, but decided not to, because I've only been in my current job for 6 months. It really isn't a good look if you're constantly jumping ship.
Probably not - all I'm saying is that a single gap year doesn't carry the same weight as a one job switch decision. The conversion rate cannot be, and isn't one-to-one, so to speak; unless we're going ad absurdum
Your parent compared one (1) gap year in a resume being a red flag for the explicit reason that they might leave again, to someone else having switched employers atleast once, for the exact same reason given by GP.
It's a totally apt analogy. Leaving is leaving.
Your further reasoning doesn't change this analogy. Many employment changes in a resume is no different to many gap years, in regards to the initially stated premise.
The willingness to do former indicates lesser degree of dependence (or sense of dependence) on an ongoing employment than mere willingness to trade one job for another. That's why the "leaving is leaving" line of argument doesn't speak to me.
That being said, the red flag is how recruiters see this. And no argument on the internets will change this perception. Recruiters spend a lot of time and money hiring tech workers - the last thing they want is any indication that the guy is not 'stable'. Its a demand/supply problem.
The only 'solution' to this problem is if everyone starts taking sabbaticals and it stops being a big deal.
That said, I should note that the two primary things I did during my sabbatical are pretty much the antithesis of screwing around. I started a very successful non-profit and released a very well received update to an open source consumer-focused app that gets used by a couple hundred thousand people. So, YMMV.
You're almost guaranteed that someone you're hiring will leave after some time.