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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

You can quit and take time between jobs. $10K should let you backpack around Europe for about 3-6 months, which is more of a perk than Europeans get.

I'm not quite sure why more people don't do this. Bank a bunch of money at a nice professional job, then quit and be funemployed for 6-12 months while they do lots of cool, life-affirming things. A bunch of my friends have done it - either backpacking around the U.S, or buying a Eurail pass and traveling around Europe, or vacationing in Thailand, or helping orphans in Uganda, or joining the Peace Corps - and have said it's one of the best things they ever did. It doesn't even take much money - most of these are liberal arts majors, not computer programmers, and make much closer to $50K/year than $100K/year.

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For a few months that's possible, but at 12 months it starts getting tricky if you ever want a job again. May be less of a problem in tech, but in a lot of areas if you're "long-term unemployed", HR just screens out your resume; companies seem to only want to hire employed or recently-employed people (cf. http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/tribu/ct-biz-0905-wor...).

Start a blog about your experiences and then call yourself a self-employed travel blogger. Might even make a little AdSense cash off of it too.

There are all sorts of creative ways to get around HR.

HR isn't going to read your blog, and HR is, sadly, the gateway to (just a guess here) 90% of job opportunities. If you have an 'in' at the company, you can bypass HR's initial gating, and your plan will work, otherwise it's unlikely.

The point isn't to get HR to read your blog; the point is to fill up that timeslot on your resume so that automated screening systems don't reject you for having a gap. If you'd worked at a regular corporation, it's virtually certain that HR wouldn't be able to see your work product either.

Or just lie and have someone you know in the industry say you worked for them during that period of time.

Hate the game, not those who must survive within it.

The obvious idealistic response being.. would you want to work somewhere that showed such shallow thinking?

If you need the money and can't find work?

Yes.

I'm not quite sure why more people don't do this

It's currently pretty hard to get a job again on the other side of the vacation. Plus for most people in the USA wages are so low it's hard to even save $10K. 48% of the population are living on or below the poverty line.

I did this last year and found a new job within 3 months of coming back. (The job is incomparably better than my old job in every way.)

Plus, when your audience is the Hacker News readership it would seem to make little sense to draw conclusions based on the bottom 48% of the population.

Hate to burst your bubble, but even poor people read hacker news. In my job, I make 14851 per year. I also drive 45 minutes to this job, because it was the only one I could find.

Or, perhaps, you'd like to make a supposition that smart people can never be poor?

Your poverty statistics are wrong.

According to the Census Bureau, the poverty rate was 15.1% in 2010.

Source: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/incpovhlth/2010/...

Has it somehow managed to more than triple in the last year?

Sorry, that was wrong. I meant "low income."

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/12/census-says-...

there is no job security with that, way too stressful for most people...if it's official vacation, it'll actually be a vacation to enjoy

There's no job security in having a job, these days.

I think that if you want job security, you're much better off at developing the skills to interview well and the resume to make people sit up and take note of you. You can take that from job to job with you, and know that if you ever get laid off or fired, you can just get another job.

Germany, Switzerland, Austria, etc. have protection against dismissal.

- Germany: 1 month in first 2 years, 2 months for years 5 to 8, ..., 7 months from year 20 on.

- Switzerland: 1 month first year, 2 months for years 2 - 9, 3 months from year 10.

And (at least in Switzerland) a dismissal notice is void if you're on vacation and were not able to receive the registered letter.

I've heard this called "serial balancing" among startuppers, in this old piece and a more recent one I can't find the link for at the moment:

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/27/jobs/in-high-technology-th...

Health insurance makes employees "sticky".

If you're taking <12 months between jobs, COBRA takes care of health insurance. It can get expensive, but that's why you bank money while you're working...

Really tried contact some one in France in August have we?

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