Ask HN: Those who quit their jobs without anything planned. How did it go?

After skimming half the thread and only seeing one view (DO IT! It’s GREAT!), I’m going to throw this out there:<p>- You will have heavy selection bias here (people who did not succeed might be working at a crappier job and unable to comment at this moment)<p>- You will also have confirmation bias among those who willingly quit (“of course it was the right move”)<p>- You are asking a very unique set of people with very valuable skills in high demand (you may fall into this category, but worth keeping in mind)<p>- The last 10 years has been a historic bull market and hard to fail in if you fall into the last category. We don’t know what the future brings (Not knowing what the future holds has been true every year of the last 10 years, especially January 2020. But I bring it up to say past results from others in this thread do not guarantee future performance for you).<p>All in all, if you are financially stable or have a supportive safety net, it seems like a potentially good risk to take. It also looks like you should have a strong plan to do something (hobby, hike, or work in another capacity). If you don’t, you may just stagnate and waste some of your prime years for growth and development.<p>But absolutely - if you have support and a plan, you keep the downsides in mind (it will be painful at times, and not roses and butterflies the whole way through), then sure - give it a shot. If you are growing and developing skills in a field you don’t care about, you should definitely change it up.<p>Reframing it - nearly everyone who goes to grad school full time quits their job (or takes a leave). Quitting to do your own thing, as long as you show employers why you did it in a year or two, shouldn’t be a detriment for getting rehired. That said, hiring managers may question if you’d quit again in a year (depending on your past employment tenure)…

I was laid off five years ago, and I never found another job. Ended up spending a month doing the Camino de Santiago in Spain, and doing more stuff like swing dancing.<p>Later on I met someone at a swing dance that I worked on a &quot;side project&quot; for a long time that became our current startup, which has been more meaningful to me than any job I&#x27;ve worked previously. (We&#x27;re doing health and biotech and save people from horrible infections, but I&#x27;m a UX&#x2F;full stack engineer).<p>I think that having had a tech job with tons of savings (and living in a cheap city in the South) really helped. Also, for many years I thought that a job was like air, and if you quit or lose your job you start suffocating, but the opposite has been true.

I quit my job due to stress-related flame out a few years ago, abruptly and with no plan at all (mentioned here[0]). I am a single father with no support network. It was a ridiculously stupid move in retrospect, but at the time I really couldn&#x27;t face another day due to stress coming from all directions in my life. I froze up.<p>Thankfully, the company I work(ed) for was unreasonably cool about it - they gave me a good 5-6 weeks off, kept in touch while making it clear I would be welcomed back, and finally, re-instated me and offered a significant promotion and raise if I could move to another office in another state.<p>That&#x27;s what did the trick - I was unable to see clearly that it wasn&#x27;t the job, it was the living conditions that were really the problem (shared a house with my brother as he descended into alcoholism). Accepting the new position and moving across country was reinvigorating, even though we got to the new city mere days before the lockdowns hit.<p>Anyway, turns out I got a massively lucky break here and doubt I&#x27;ll ever pull such a stunt in the future. Despite the lockdowns _everything_ has improved and my child and I are flourishing.<p>Point is - if you are about to make such a stress induced, abrupt, massive decision with no backup plan... it&#x27;s worth being clear about it to your employer, taking a leave and gaining some perspective. It really is the case that you may regret it!<p>This little episode messed up my credit, threatened the well being of my kid, put even _more_ stress on me to figure things out. Despite the good outcome I&#x27;d strongly recommend nobody ever do anything like this. I could very easily ended up in a hovel or out on the street or some sort of horrible crap like that.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20951444" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20951444</a>

I&#x27;ve done this 3 times in my 8 year career so far. I pretty much leave every job this way. I like to take a few months between jobs to do my own thing and take a break.<p>If you are financially stable enough and are in a spot in your career where you don&#x27;t think you&#x27;ll need to worry about getting another job too much. DO IT. Looking back at the last 8 years, those periods off are the periods I remember the most.<p>One time I had a tougher time finding a job (but I was also only a little over a year into my career). The other times I haven&#x27;t had a problem. One time my old company hired me back with a promotion&#x2F;raise. Most recently, I did some VERY easy part time contract work for about 6 months. I think these breaks are becoming much more common and I don&#x27;t think it impacts my resume too much.<p>I wish there was a way to get a new job with a starting date 3-6 months in the future. That would be the ideal situation.

I quit just last week. Saved up 10 years worth of salaries. Currently on the doing nothing stage. Doing more sports, running&#x2F;cycling everyday, taking my time to cook, more time for kids, so far so good, i have no plans for the future, whatever happens happens. Previously i was working 15 hours a day, i did like my job but was impacting my health severely.

I quit in December 2019 (best time for that kind of thing). I had some money put aside and decided to put my time and effort into getting a deeper understanding of ML to find a more meaningful job (my old one was draining me so much).<p>After a few months it looked like the job perspectives weren&#x27;t as good during the pandemic so I decided to finish my side project - get some more experience, maybe even earn some side income if all goes well.<p>After a bit over 1 year working on it on and off I can say it is really hard to stay focused and disciplined when being alone. I feel ashamed (I probably shouldn&#x27;t) but it seems like I can only be a slave. When working along other people or under a boss I have no problem in getting things done.<p>I am determined to at least get to the minimum sensible demo to show potential users. It will probably take another few months to make it and if everything looks good, a few more to get to a point where it can be a a solid value proposition.<p>It really isn&#x27;t great, I am not diagnosed with any mental illnesses but one day I feel it all is going to be great and help many people, the next day I can see in my mind how its value is seen as minuscule or Windows or Android API changes and kills it off in a year.<p>Keeping the good mental state and working reliably is very hard.

Note: I am not an engineer. I’m mostly skilled in telling stories.<p>I got fired from every job I ever had before I started working for myself. Each time I left I ended up in a better job until the last time when I got laid off from a telecom PM role. I went to look for another job and never found one. At the time I was living paycheck to paycheck (barely) so this was quite scary. I did have a small severance but that was it.<p>I decided to make a startup and begged my friends for enough money to get going (secretparty.io). It started to grow. At the same time, one of my dear friends told me to put all of my severance into ethereum. It helped that he said he’d give me the money back if I lost it, he just wanted me to see what was going to happen.<p>My severance 10x’d in a month. I stopped working on the startup and begged my friends for money to start a crypto hedge fund. That was crypto lotus and ended up being one of the first serious crypto funds.<p>While being at crypto lotus, I grew frustrated that no one was making a consumer-friendly crypto project. That’s when I started working on mobilecoin.<p>Now mobilecoin is worth over a billion dollars in equity and several billion in coins.<p>All I can say is that I never would’ve gotten any of this without an insane amount of luck. It all could’ve very easily have gone another way and I might be homeless right now. Life is a series of dice rolls. You’re lucky if you can avoid getting snake eyes every now and again.<p>If I had it to do all over again, I would’ve started working for myself much sooner despite all of the risk.

I quit a previous job in 2016. The role had transitioned from software development to system administration. I realized it was no different for my career&#x27;s future to just stay home instead of upgrading build servers. I gave a two and a half week notice and quit.<p>I was fortunate to have little debt, plenty of savings, and a supportive spouse. I ended up playing a lot of Counter-Strike Global Offensive and other computer games. I attended more meetups. I applied and interviewed for jobs that sounded interesting. I turned down two offers and accepted a third. In total, I took 9 months off work.<p>There&#x27;s a piece of me that wished I had been more productive during that time off. But it was relaxing, and I attribute that time off as my best career move yet. The job I finally took paid 2x more to start and I still feel like I am thriving at my &quot;new&quot; job 5 years in.

I quit a place once, it rhymes with brudwick wealth strategies. I was told by the proprietor that he didn&#x27;t have to calm down because &quot;he signs my fucking paychecks&quot; in that second I realized that I didn&#x27;t want to work for someone who thought like that. I told him have a nice day Barry and enjoy the extra money.<p>I applied for unemployment and almost lost the case but then I learned of the term hostile workplace and won. Unemployment was backpaid. During the time of fighting for it. I studied for my A+ and Sec+ certs, learned to program, and worked odd jobs from CL until every IT job eventually called me back and I had a couple to choose from. Eventually found a gig that I have been at for about 10 years. I&#x27;m happy, the organization appreciates my contributions and I&#x27;m in a comfortable place financially. I am currently looking for an remote gig in the evening US EST hours. Some sort of grunt work that someone doesn&#x27;t want to do. I&#x27;m open to anything.

I quit in May, and since then have hiked the Appalachian Trail and just landed in New Orleans. I&#x27;ll do a little part-time research work but my main goal is to write a lot and play music.<p>Before I left, I was depressed, and now I&#x27;m not. IMO everything else is totally second order to not feeling so darn bad all the time.<p>My plans extend to about the end of this current month, and then, we shall see.

I did this, with a passive income cushion from some investments. I live very simply. I found travel pretty boring after a few weeks. I found whatever I was doing outside of work (YouTube and mindless browsing) filled up all my free time after I quit.<p>I started learning web development but haven&#x27;t had any ideas that stuck. I mean I had a lot of ideas before quitting but perhaps lack of motivation or discipline killed them all.

I quit Google after five years and moved to NYC right before the pandemic started.<p>Working on my startup now. Pays infinitely less but makes me a lot happier. I love getting put in situations I would&#x27;ve never dreamed I would be in.<p>My biggest lesson so far was that I should&#x27;ve left Google earlier. I didn&#x27;t need nearly as much saved as I had expected. The only thing I could wish for is more friends who did the same. I do miss having coworkers.

I quit my job in 2018 without any other opportunity lined up.<p>I used all of my savings to go on an extended trip to Asia, the idea being that I&#x27;ll travel around, work on my own projects, and do some freelancing to cover my expenses.<p>Things didn&#x27;t go as planned though, I got robbed in the hostel I was staying at and lost my macbook. Eventually I decided to cut my trip short and go back home where I started freelancing (which I&#x27;m still doing currently) and I would say it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

I love this question! I’m planning on quitting my job next month and taking some time off. It’s unplanned because I thought I would find a new job right away but just realized about 2 weeks ago that I wanted to do personal projects and see if I could find a way to work on more interesting projects with more variety. Currently focusing on infrastructure (kubernetes, terraform, and AWS), Unity (making my first 3D game!), making an app with Flutter (used to use Ionic but wanted to see the flutter hype), and researching how to get into Dapp development.<p>THERE IS SO MUCH COOL STUFF TO DO&#x2F;LEARN!! Jobs aren’t going to dry up and disappear! If you can take some time to yourself to learn and play and have fun, you should do it!

I did this. Started a drop shipping business with friends. That didn’t pan out. Then tried to build a startup. That didn’t pan out either, so I started consulting. It was fine, but consulting and full time employment are really two sides of the same coin. I figured I might as well get the benefits and equity that come with full time roles. Since quitting I have more than doubled my previous salary, and gained a ton of front end knowledge I never would have learned just by working at my old job.

Great. I took three years off after the first three of my career, until my savings ran out. Easy enough on regular tech salary if you don&#x27;t live extravagantly. I didn&#x27;t use the time particularly well (I wish I had traveled a lot more, and for longer), but it was still good.<p>It&#x27;s so strange that we expect adults to work continuously until they are too old to do so. Do whatever you feel like and can reasonably make work. If you don&#x27;t want to work for a while, don&#x27;t. Make it happen. Go make some art or start a band or hike across the country or live in the woods or make a video game or play sports or party a lot or get in great shape or read a lot of books or do a lot of volunteering or have a garden. Whatever. it&#x27;s your life.

I&#x27;ll add another cautionary tale....<p>At the start of my career, I worked as a SWE at one of the FAANGs. After 3 years, I couldn&#x27;t take it anymore. I hated everything I worked on, nothing was meeting my lofty expectations, and I thought about quitting constantly.<p>Eventually I pulled the trigger to go and &quot;do my own thing.&quot; I didn&#x27;t have a backup job - instead I worked on my own projects with a cofounder and tried to turn them into a startup. We struggled mightily. We didn&#x27;t raise money, and we couldn&#x27;t find product market fit. Every month I was watching my bank account drain, and I wasn&#x27;t drawing a salary from anywhere. The stock in my own startup was worthless.<p>This continued for 2.5 years. Eventually, I had had enough, and I knew something had to change. I went and tried to get my old FAANG job back, but couldn&#x27;t - probably due to my entitled attitude when I was there. I struggled with interviews for a couple of months, and eventually landed at a company several steps down from my old position, making about half of what I had at FAANG.<p>About a year ago, I switched back to a different FAANG after having been at that other company for 6.5 years. Why I stayed for so many years is a long story.<p>So ironically I&#x27;m back to where I started, but wow did I cause myself a lot of trouble. I watched for years as my old friends went on to make double and triple what I did, for doing the exact same job. In the meantime, I was more stressed out, dealing with a worse bureaucracy at a company that didn&#x27;t value engineering.<p>Leaving FAANG was something I had to do. I had to get the startup out of my system, and I couldn&#x27;t continue at my original job the way that I was. You can&#x27;t buy perspective, but I probably cost myself something like 1-2 million dollars in the process. Many times over the years I&#x27;ve questioned &quot;Why couldn&#x27;t I have just stayed at that cushy job like so many of the people that I knew?&quot; I know there&#x27;s no way that I could have given my emotional state at the time, but I can&#x27;t help thinking about it.<p>So I could tell you a bunch of lessons from my experiences, but unfortunately they&#x27;re probably best learned yourself. You have to follow whatever you think is right and hope that things will work out for you. Usually they will in the long run - but the short term might be painful.

1. Have savings<p>2. Have your resume always up to date<p>3. Have a network of people who can hook you up<p>4. Take a deep breath, commit to leaving but do it on YOUR schedule - quitting on the spot is emotional, not rational - avoid doing that if you can.<p>Back in the day I learned something that my employer was doing that I knew I could not abide by. I did #4 but I had #1, #2 and #3. Within a month I had a job offer and so I THEN quit and took the new jobs. In the exit interview I told them exactly why I was leaving; and not surprisingly they didn&#x27;t care. Decision validated!

Since most of these answers are tech-related, here&#x27;s my financial services perspective.<p>I spent two years working as an auditor for a large public accounting firm. This was my first post-college job. I disliked the job from the beginning, but was not confident I would find another good entry level job, so I stuck with it until I burnt myself out. Covid resulted in more work hours than usual. Compensation per hour was terrible for the number of hours worked, and I felt like I was wasting my life.<p>Near the end (August 2020), I struggled to do anything. Since I didn&#x27;t have strong relationships with coworkers, I quit without much discussion or a plan. It was easy because: the parents paid for college, I don&#x27;t spend much, I have minimal monthly expenses, and I have no major commitments.<p>After quitting, I drove around the US for two months seeing cool places and old friends. Eventually I was offered a short-term contract as an auditor again, and I took it. I really didn&#x27;t want to be an auditor, but the hourly pay was great, and it was a promotion. Turns out, higher compensation made me a happier auditor.<p>Bonus points, after that contract I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, which I just finished. The 6 month gap from the hike did not cause any issues when finding a new job, and actually made interview conversations fun and easy.

So I have done this a couple of times and both outcomes were not so great during the journey. In hindsight however, yes it feels great.<p>First job at IBM - I quit in a heartbeat. Had no idea what to do next. Attended a Startupweekend event and started working on a startup, didn&#x27;t go anywhere. After a year or so got hired at MSFT as a contractor. Quit that for another startup. Reason - this was just turning into another cushy job, no real focus just some high level strategy etc.<p>Again quit that startup, without any plan. I was the engineering manager I wanted to try building a startup again. A long time friend had come down so we teamed up. No idea, nothing to go with. We were not in our 20s and had families to support and all that. Tried multiple ideas for a year and we split. I pursued startups for about 5 years got tired and am now a DE at big tech. Like I said, in hindsight all this feels great - but during the journey I felt quite miserable. None of my ideas were taking off, damn frustrating.<p>If you want to start your own thing, it&#x27;s best to not look for ideas. My approach is to get to a job where you&#x27;ll get as close as humanly possible to interact with customers and find out where their pain points are. Are they happy with the current company, what are the issues etc. Try solving those pain points from within the company - and you&#x27;ll know what it really feels like to run a startup. If you succeed, great the company will support you, you grow and all that. If you figure that the company is unsupportive, quit and start up. By then, you already know the pain points, and you have some idea of how to solve them. You just have to execute.

I worked as a data analyst at a hospital, but by early 2020 I was tired of it. They harassed me whenever my butt wasn&#x27;t in the seat from 9 to 530, a seat which was in a cubicle dungeon with barred windows and bright fluorescent tubes. I asked for WFH for years and they never relented. Right after I left, no job lined up, the pandemic hit, and they all got moved to WFH: guess it was possible after all, bad luck for me!<p>I was funemployed throughout the pandemic. I did a lot of childcare, art projects, home repairs, and yardwork for my family. I kept my eyes open, eventually finding a massive upgrade in QoL job after 12 months of looking.<p>You only have one life. If your job is unbearable, you need to make a change. Every year is 2% of your career, don&#x27;t waste it at a dead end. If you can&#x27;t afford to leave, figure out how to lower your expenses, or use time at your current job to search for other jobs.<p>Life is too short for miserable jobs.

I&#x27;ve quit my job with no plans several times. As I got older, it got harder to find a job.<p>When I left the Navy at age 25, I had just been overseas. I had applied to a Master&#x27;s degree program at the same university where I got a BS. There was a mix-up and no one had ever looked at my application, but several people knew me and they had my grades from my BS, so when I showed up in person one week before classes, they accepted me (I was paying my own way) and I started. I ended up getting a Ph.D. instead.<p>In 1999 at age 34, I quit my job as CFO for a small unsuccessful hedge fund. I applied at Raytheon where I had worked briefly before (they were impressed with me) and I applied to work at a lab at the university where I got my degrees. I got offers from both places within a month, and I was working again.<p>In 2004 at age 39, I quit my research job at another small unsuccessful hedge fund (run by the same people). I once again applied at Raytheon and at the same university job and again got two offers. I was working again in two months.<p>In 2006 at age 41, I quit again. I spent a year taking fun classes in Machine Learning and Astrophysics. In 2007, the people at the small hedge fund convinced me to work again for them.<p>In 2009, I quit again because my son was having very serious health issues and I wanted to stay with him in the hospital for six months (he is OK now). In 2010, I applied at the university lab where I had worked before and I ended up working there for 7 years. After 7 years, I was laid off.<p><pre><code> About a year later, I ended up getting a job a huge prestigious hedge fund as a quantitative analyst. I quit about six months later in 2017 (I just could not hack living in New York City). The same night that I quit, my old boss from the small hedge fund called me just to say hi. When he heard that I quit, he immediately offered me a position which gave me a small salary but also made me a partner in the firm. I still work there now.</code></pre>

I quit my job of four years because I got a green card and wanted to try to work in the US. I am from Denmark and got the green card through marriage.<p>Moved to Orlando (as my wife had a job there) and applied to roughly 300 IT jobs but only got 2 interviews. Nothing really came of it, as they either wanted to pay me pennies or I didn’t have enough experience. I had about 4 years of project management experience with a year as a senior project manager (and a MSc in CS). Maybe I was picky but coming from a $95k&#x2F;y salary and going to a $20&#x2F;h hourly position wasn’t what I wanted.<p>My wife’s job couldn’t sustain the both of us, so after 5 months our savings were kinda gone and I got an offer to move back to Denmark and get my old position back.<p>Pretty happy that I at least tried, else I’m sure I would regret it, but we are happier in Denmark than in the US.

My former senior developer was an incredibly competent nodejs dev and a great mentor. He left our company because management wouldn&#x27;t really respect his opinions because he&#x27;d only been with us for 3 years when others had been for 20. The company he moved to was a fintech startup that worked him insanely hard but again didn&#x27;t give him much respect or agency over what he was building. Then the pandemic hit and they reduced his pay, so he left that job without anything lined up.<p>He ended up in a 6 month job search, and when he finally got a job it was in a role no more senior than either of the 2 he had just left. Those 6 months were pretty grueling for him, and I&#x27;m sure a lot of the reason it took so long was because it was hard to find a job in the pandemic, but when you&#x27;re trying to find a job and failing to, it wears on your self esteem and your soul, in ways that compound the difficulty of finding the job. And realistically, 6 months isn&#x27;t even that long when it could&#x27;ve become 1 or 2 years.<p>That said, I became insanely burnt out at my job after he left and kept telling him that I was going to quit with nothing lined up. He just kept telling me it would be the stupidest mistake for me to do that and for my situation (still early in my career, have some savings but not a ton, some minor family-related issues going on) he was definitely right. I did work through the burn-out, though I may have permanently lost some enthusiasm for software development because of it. Or possibly I&#x27;m just still burnt out.

Probably depends a lot on whether you&#x27;re renting or not? (or whether your finances are solid enough that you can buy a place whenever)<p>For me quitting would immediately mean I&#x27;d be losing four figures a month to rent before accounting for anything else so there wouldn&#x27;t be much of a feeling of a grace period; the option of traveling or whatever else would also come with the knowledge that I&#x27;d likely have to set myself up somewhere else eventually. Then beyond that I&#x27;d have to be on a salary long enough to get a mortgage.<p>So like... there&#x27;s a lot of stuff that needs to be accounted for where if I owned a place it&#x27;d just be &quot;do I pack up my stuff and let this place for a couple of years if I want to travel or will I return regularly and keep it as a hub.

I can&#x27;t say I didn&#x27;t have a plan because I did have one but after a few years since quitting here are a few not so positive things that I didn&#x27;t plan on.<p>1. Early mornings and late nights ----- I really thought I would be able to unwind and relax but I guess that is just not my nature. I still find it very difficult to turn off, the stresses and thoughts that used to center around my job gone but new ones have replaced them. Eg. Current ones are based on inflation and my savings burn rates, investment bubbles and on and on.<p>2. Loneliness ----- I really do miss having those daily interactions with coworkers, even the &quot;useless&quot; meetings. Things may be different now as I left long before Covid so it could be that those interactions are gone forever.<p>3. Weight Gain ----- Correlation isn&#x27;t causation and it is also likely as much to do with my aging as not having a job, but not being on a daily schedule has contributed to the extra weight I am carrying.<p>4. Stigma from financial and services institutions ----- This one might be more of a personal perception but when starting relationships with banks, investment firms and even utility providers there are always questions regarding employment. I have a very healthy bank account but still feel it is more difficult to get a credit card for example without filling out the employer section.<p>Anyways I don&#x27;t want to stomp on anyone&#x27;s dreams here, I just wanted to share a few things I found through personal experience. I am still content with my decision and the good outweighs the bad.

Here&#x27;s my personal perspective on this:<p>- I was at an abusive job and was underpaid<p>- I had interviewed with Flickr and got the role, but didn&#x27;t realize I&#x27;d have to move out west and so said no. I now understood I was marketable<p>- I quit the job with the plan to take a month+ to decide on my next move<p>- I shopped around a bit and had 2 roles lined up, and took the one that sounded the most fun to work at and most sustainable (the one I turned down had a 45+hour a week MINIMUM)<p>THEN<p>that company got acquired and I was once again without a job. A few of us thought about starting a company, and I seriously focused on leveling up my Ruby on Rails skills. Within 6 weeks I had a role at a new incubator which was one of the most fun jobs i ever had.<p>THEN<p>That incubator got shut down, and a few of us thought about spinning out one of the companies or raising money. In the end, 2 of us decided to start our own development shop. That was 10 years ago and it&#x27;s been hard work but awesomely rewarding.<p>I would NEVER have achieved all of that if I didn&#x27;t take the leap to leave the abusive job. I highly value the time I took between jobs to test things out and make the right decision at each turn.<p>I didn&#x27;t have to take the time off to do it, but if it&#x27;s financially viable for you to take a few weeks and see the playing field in front of you, my personal experience is that it pays off well in the medium to long term.

I quit my job 3 months ago, in late August. I didn&#x27;t have a plan but I was feeling pretty burnt out (the work culture was pretty toxic) and a bit depressed so I wanted to take some time off to figure out my next steps. I also have a lot saved up so I knew my financials wouldn&#x27;t be a problem short-term.<p>The first month or so was tough. It felt weird not working on something. Which I think is part of a healthy process to get used to not binding my self-worth to my productivity. I traveled a bit, reconnected with friends and did some freelancing. I tried finding enjoyment in programming again, something I felt I&#x27;d lost at my last job.<p>All in all, I&#x27;m really happy I quit before things got worse. I still don&#x27;t have a plan really, but I know I will probably never accept a position as a full-time employee unless I am <i>really</i> passionate about the work and feel I have a lot of impact. I am considering continuing my CS degree (I&#x27;m 22). I&#x27;m in a pretty fortunate position financially because of some successful side projects, so I&#x27;ve decided to take advantage of that and just keep working for myself. It&#x27;s what I truly enjoy, and as long as I make a decent living there&#x27;s no point in earning more money if I&#x27;m miserable for it.

It went very well - much better than expected.<p>My wife was enthusiastic about it and gave me the confidence to quit. Until then I&#x27;d been looking to get the transition locked in before quitting, which wasn&#x27;t happening and probably never would have. At the time I was working in corporate finance and my first child had just been born.<p>I think the added pressure of being scared or uncomfortable gives you a huge edge when learning new skills, taking calculated risks and trying new things, and working super hard. Working hard in a grind or dead-end is sole destroying (I think), working harder on something you chose, with tangible personal benefits is exhilarating. My career took a new direction and a much steeper upwards trajectory.<p>That was 3 years ago. I&#x27;ve become a freelance data-scientist, working remotely in a new country, with a much higher quality of life.<p>I wrote a couple of blog posts at the time reflecting on corporate life in London with a young family. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;johnmathews.is&#x2F;corporate.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;johnmathews.is&#x2F;corporate.html</a>, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;johnmathews.is&#x2F;london.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;johnmathews.is&#x2F;london.html</a>

I quit my last real full time job in 2015 (CTO at my own tech startup with around 130 employees at the time), with no plans whatsoever. I felt burned out and wanted some rest and a new career path.<p>The first project I tried was writing a book. A few months in I realized I didn&#x27;t enjoy writing as much as I thought I would, but I found myself taking longer and longer breaks to go out photographing with my camera.<p>Photography was something I had never done earlier in life, and it came pretty unexpectedly for me that I would enjoy it so much. Photography quickly became an obsession, while my book project never sold well at all. I took a couple of part time jobs to sustain myself while starting a youtube channel about photography in 2017.<p>Now 4 years later I have quit all part time engagements and can actually kind of make a living from my youtube channel, which is pretty amazing. I am so very happy and thankful for where I am today, as I truly love my new career. I would have never found it if I didn&#x27;t give myself a year to explore different possibilities.

I&#x27;ve had quite a journey since quitting, so sorry for the long post!<p>I worked at a company writing mathematical software for 8 years. The work was interesting, but I kept feeling there was a deeper way of thinking about some particular topic I was working on (e.g. data science, array programming, visualization, deep learning). Unfortunately, writing production code didn&#x27;t leave me the time and energy to pursue these &quot;deeper truths&quot;. Thinking deeply takes a lot of time!<p>It was a hugely difficult decision, but in 2018 I quit, without much of a plan. I attended some summer schools in different things, taught at some other summer schools, started reading papers and watching lectures on youtube about things that interested me. I trained with a friend to get a job as research engineer at DeepMind, but when it came time to apply, I worried I&#x27;d repeat the same pattern as before if I got the job. So I got cold feet.<p>The second decision, even more difficult, was to trust my instincts that I could learn topics and work on my own proto-ideas independently without the imprimatur of a PhD program or industrial lab. I had saved money, and I had enough runway for a couple years.<p>I have roughly 3 ideas in me that I need to formalize -- or die trying (meaning run out of money). I have cute names for them: hyperbooks, algebraic arrays, and discrete geometry. I&#x27;m working on the last one right now [1].<p>My inspiration was people like Andrew Kelley (author of Zig), and Rich Hickey (author of Clojure). They just did the things they believed in, worked hard, and have contributed something useful and novel to the world. Of course, I don&#x27;t know if what I&#x27;m working on will be useful to others, but I have reason to be hopeful.<p>If one of my ideas succeeds, I&#x27;ll be able to find a way to make a living off of it somehow. If they all fail, I&#x27;ll have learned an enormous amount, had an adventure, and I can still go back to the ordinary career path.<p>In the end, the fundamental question was: &quot;do I believe in an idea enough to pay my own salary to work on it?&quot; Realizing I could honestly answer &quot;yes&quot; was a profound inflection point in my life.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;quivergeometry.net" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;quivergeometry.net</a>

I did this about a decade ago. I spent a couple of years just helping other people with web things (sort of consulting &#x2F; freelancing, but more from an advice perspective than writing any code), and then some friends and I founded our first startup. It didn&#x27;t work out in the end, but I had a fun 5 years or so learning a lot and helping people take their businesses online in ways that would be better than if I&#x27;d not been there. The startup, raising a couple of rounds, and closing down was quite fun too. I&#x27;m back being a proper developer again now.<p>If you have the resources to do it without too much risk then I&#x27;d definitely recommend it. You&#x27;ll get a lot from it in terms of personal development and skills, but you&#x27;ll probably end up with less money than you went in with. You can always make more money though.

I left my job in February 2021 due to being overstressed and eventually burning out. I was in a role where I was essentially on call 24&#x2F;7, with the only calls actually coming in at early AM hours on holidays. This made it impossible for me to relax during time off, which contributed to the burnout. Around the same time, my SO was finishing cancer treatment, so work stress was not the only stress I was dealing with.<p>I left with the stated goals of working on personal projects and of going on a road trip to national parks. I have now been on two significant road trips - one about 10 days, and the next about 35 days.<p>As far as projects go, I have created a few toys that scratched itches - a pi calculator, a sudoku solver, and a market data collector&#x2F;analyzer. I also worked on establishing some passive income during this time.<p>I&#x27;m now working as a consultant in the same industry I was working in previously. I&#x27;m not sure yet when I will return to full time employment. My plan is to definitely find a job before the COBRA insurance coverage expires (October 2022 I believe.)<p>My advice to anyone planning to take time off is to have some idea of what you want to do. Don&#x27;t end up quitting your job thinking all of the free time off will be great, then sit around and do nothing for months on end - at the time it may feel great, but after those months go by it&#x27;s nice to be able to look back and see that you did something. You don&#x27;t have to be productive, but at least get out of bed, have a routine, and do something besides sit around. To that end, I recommend journaling.<p>I also recommend that if you&#x27;re going to quit and you like your job but just need some extended time off - talk with your manager! Mine wasn&#x27;t very agreeable to a sabbatical on the timeframe I wanted, but my SO was able to secure 6 months of PAID time off just by talking to her manager about what was going on with her and her plans to leave (keep in mind her case may be unique due to cancer and working for the company for 8+ years).

I have quit a couple of times without anything to land on. The first lesson of the first time (for me, that is, YMMV) was to have a plan what to do after you quit. Even if you financially can afford the break, having nothing to do is quite different from having a full time job. Surprisingly soon after the first time I quit I got a strong feeling I am wasting my time doing nothing - even if I had always thought I have plenty to do.

I saw burnout happen to a few guys around me, the work was pretty interesting but constantly moving goal posts caused a great deal of undue stress at work. I was also preparing to undergo a big change in my personal life too so decided to quit with a month’s notice. I’ve been off work since mid September and did a week long silent meditation retreat, walked&#x2F;solo wild camped the Pennine Way for 16 days and spent some time in Rwanda exploring at my own pace.<p>In between i’ve been cycling, reading and working on things I neglected for the past few years. I feel much better for it<p>Today I’m going to polish my CV up and have started letting my network know I’m keen to work again. I have a better sense of what I want to do this time and tools to prevent as much stress in future

A few years ago my project pipeline was going to pure maintenance and upper management was obviously 6mo+ away from knowing what they wanted in the next decent sized project. So I talked to my manager (CTO) about going down to a 4 day week (pro-rata) to do more in my own time. The CEO gets wind, comes in and is really agressive and dismissive of what I&#x27;m suggesting. This behaviour (ceo&#x2F;cto dynamic) was pretty much the bane of my employment there so I wrote up and handed in my resignation.<p>I had more money than id ever had before and no commitments beyond rent and my gf. There were a bunch of things I wanted to do, so I did them. Lots of small things like seeing family (spread all across tye country, most of whom I hadn&#x27;t seen as an adult&#x2F;since parents divorce), side projects, and exploring nearby cities.<p>I started freelancing part-time after 6 months (bored mainly) and six months after that joined a great company (that I had freelanced for).<p>Honestly, I keep my finances and lifestyle in a place such that I can quit when I want, as a result I&#x27;m happier and can choose work I want when I am prioritising money.<p>I&#x27;m fully remote now and with covid &quot;in decline&quot; have been able to spend high quality time with family and friends whilst working. Remote work is the best work, no work is better. However it is certainly the money that makes it low stress.

Traveled the world for a year and a half, then started contracting remotely while remaining abroad, making more money than I was before in NYC (I wasn&#x27;t working at a FAANG type company though). Zero regrets, life is too short to be miserable, and people severely overestimate the repercussions of quitting one&#x27;s job and difficult of finding employment again.<p>Although NYC is fun to visit from time to time, I don&#x27;t miss living there one bit. And nowhere else in the U.S really appealed to me as someone who actually likes cities, though who knows maybe that would change when I start a family.<p>Spent this year living in South&#x2F;Central America and Europe, and currently in Rome of all places. Not my ideal city, but been seeing a girl here and want to see where it goes.<p>Financially, lucked out on going all in on crypto a year ago at some friends&#x27; advice. That being said I still wouldn&#x27;t consider myself FIRE. I would have millions had I not sold my altcoins a month or two too early against my friends&#x27; wishes (who&#x27;s now definitely FIRE). I might&#x27;ve been better off focusing more on crypto and less on my day job, but can&#x27;t blame anyone but myself, and it takes some real cajones to hold for a year and not sell even after 5-10xing. Once this contract ends though, I&#x27;ll definitely be doing something in the crypto space.

It worked great when I did it, though I&#x27;d put an asterisk on the &quot;without anything planned&quot;. I decided I wanted to move to NYC, but on my terms, not anybody else&#x27;s. So I quit my job and kind of treated planning on moving as a job, as well as doing a few other things with the extra free time.<p>But I also was pretty confident in my ability to find a new tech job in a good market. It worked well the last few times, and I changed my Linkedin location before I went just to see how many recruiters popped up. The traffic left me confident I&#x27;d be able to get a tech job there when I was ready.<p>I also had a rough idea of how long I planned to stay without a job and how much it would cost and had enough to cover that comfortably, with enough extra buffer to come up with a new plan if getting a new job turned out to be harder than I thought.<p>You don&#x27;t necessarily need a &quot;plan&quot; like having a job, but you should do that sort of planning. Some people have enough rich family or friends that they&#x27;ll never really end up on the streets somewhere if something goes wrong. If you don&#x27;t, you&#x27;ll just need to plan a little better, and beware of unknowns. There&#x27;s a lot of ways things can go wrong, it&#x27;d be best to account for them. And to have the life experience to know what might go wrong and how.

Maybe not quite the answer you&#x27;re looking for, but I&#x27;ll throw it in anyway.<p>- I planned on quitting my FAANG job in February 2020 to go travel the world for 9 months (midlife crisis, sabbatical, whatever you want to call it).<p>- COVID hit, we came back March 2020.<p>- Decided to take the opportunity to leave the Bay Area and try our hand at freelance &#x2F; contracting for time flexibility so we could go travel again once lockdown ended and international travel became a possibility.<p>- We thought we might come back to the Bay Area once &quot;it was over&quot; and we&#x27;d travelled.<p>- Lockdown stretched on, borders stayed closed.<p>- Contracting picked up, was able to negotiate part-time hours making enough to live on.<p>- My partner switched careers successfully, starting a new business.<p>- Fast forward to now, I&#x27;m still contracting. We&#x27;ve put down roots in the small town we moved to. My partner&#x27;s business is thriving. We&#x27;re saving up for a house.<p>Overall life is good. We&#x27;ve traded the stresses of the Bay Area for a different set of stresses - it&#x27;s equally difficult finding housing here, starting a new business has been hard, and figuring out what I want out of a freelance career has been a struggle as well. We&#x27;ve got a lot more free time, and the flexible hours have been a huge blessing.

It worked for me. I quit my job due to problems after a management switcheroo that shafted me, planned on applying for jobs - I specifically wanted something in FinTech, that used Elixir - and applied for four jobs, plus one &quot;why the hell not&quot; application I did at Facebook. If I didn&#x27;t get a job, my plan was to do Recurse Center until february and then try again with a wider search. I got into RC, did not get the Facebook interview (it was a miserable experience, where they had me whiteboard over coderpad -- code running was disable, WTF seriously, what&#x27;s the point? might as well code over google docs), and then I got a job at a fintech that uses Elixir. I didn&#x27;t even get a tech question in my interview.<p>This probably won&#x27;t work for everyone. I have a LOT of public bona fides as an elixir developer (I have six libraries on the public elixir repository that I pinned to the top of my github), elixir companies are hiring a LOT, and as an elixir dev, you don&#x27;t have to compete as much with the market of lemons among programmers. I also had no debt, and about seven months of drawdown.

I left a dead-end and soul-sucking job without anything planned. I did stay at that job for 7 years so I had already learned as much as I could.<p>Some of my reasoning for leaving was that it was much better for my mental health for me to leave and also, I would have some good job prospects since I had already gained 7 years of experience from it.<p>I took a month off to recharge and reset mentally and then I began my job search. After about a month, I was lucky enough to find a good job that was a better fit for my interests.<p>My network did help me out during this difficult transition. So I&#x27;d recommend having a good network for such a move.<p>I was also a little bit lucky since it was through my network that I came to know of my new company and so if not for my network then I probably would have had a much more difficult time in getting a better job and in worse case, I could have been unemployed for a long-time.<p>I did take the risk though because I was already at the a low point during that time. I guess sometimes that works out but it was indeed a risky thing for me to do as well.

When I quit my last job my plan was to work on some personal projects for a few months while looking for a new position, hoping to land something before the money ran out.<p>One of the personal projects was writing up a short memoir for family&#x2F;friends[1]. This was a mistake as it fed some mental health issues that had contributed to me walking out of my job. Things got a bit serious for a while, and then the money ran out. Thankfully I had the massive good fortune to get a referral to a psychotherapist who helped guide me to a safer place. Then Covid struck.<p>All-in-all I was without a pay check for just under 2 and a half years. I did manage to complete some projects in that time, which I&#x27;m really proud of ... but next time I think I&#x27;ll listen to my Mum&#x27;s advice: don&#x27;t walk out of a job until you&#x27;ve got another job to walk into.<p>[1] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rikverse2020.rikweb.org.uk&#x2F;book&#x2F;riks-army-career" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rikverse2020.rikweb.org.uk&#x2F;book&#x2F;riks-army-career</a>

Not too bad, I&#x27;m still riding it a bit.<p>I went part-time at my coding job before the pandemic due to stress&#x2F;anxiety from some unknown work-related source. I then quit during the pandemic from constant erosion of salary and quality of work life.<p>I ended up kinda floating undecided for a couple months. Tried a couple game jams and realized my dreams of game design were not my life-long calling.<p>Then needed money so ended up starting to freelance. I didn&#x27;t really market myself, so I didn&#x27;t have many clients, but I had one big one through a friend that paid well and I did a couple really big things for them.<p>I&#x27;m now doing a contract that&#x27;s 3x my previous salary (but also 1099 so more taxes) and struggling to figure out if I&#x27;d ever want to be W2&#x2F;full time employee again.<p>I also got about 6 or so months of near full-time work on a personal project, and it&#x27;s been very enlightening to get that much effort behind something of my own for once. Also isolating socially

I quit my great first job because I wanted to move to a new country. My plan was to not work at all (my partner would support me). Then the lockdown started.<p>I realized it might not be a good time to not work, so I applied to a bunch of remote websites (Toptal, Upwork and others) and after 2 months I had a full-time remote position.<p>That year I earned a bit less, living in a high life-standard country than I did at my first job.<p>Figured out remote work sucks and most companies aren&#x27;t as great as my first job. Also, figured that it&#x27;s hard to find meaningful programming work. Work that pays seem to be mobile apps and the teams are much less experienced that the one from my first job. No idea how to get back to something that pays more but on-site (no one can match remote US&#x2F;UK salaries).<p>I would say it was a mistake. Probably wouldn&#x27;t be if the pandemic did not start. Wasted 18 months earning money doing silly work and not showing my full potential.

The first time I did it the startup I was working for was drying up and blowing away so I decided that was a good time to start my own startup. I figured it would take a couple months.<p>That was a spectacular failure where I realized that most of my mental models were either explicitly broken or the Fischer Price version of the actual model. I learned an outrageous amount. By the end I was glad I did it and wondered if I would do it again.<p>I found it easy to get a new job. Quitting and working on my own project was probably the best career move that I had made up to that point.<p>I took the next job and realized that I no longer enjoyed working for other people. I had seen too much. Office politics now seemed extra goofy too. It&#x27;s just hard to take seriously.<p>So I reloaded my savings and then after a while quit again and I&#x27;m back to working on my own projects.<p>I learned a lot since last time but I&#x27;m sure I still have a lot to learn. Learning has always been the fun part for me. This time rather than working on just one thing I wanted to experiment with a bunch of different projects which is proving to be fun and already yielding more traction.<p>I&#x27;ll tell you what the not fun part of the whole thing is, part of this is just the part of the world I live in and people I hang out with. People hate it! Boy do they hate it. Did you remember the part in pulp fiction where Jules is telling Vincent &quot;I&#x27;m just gonna walk the earth, like Caine&quot; and Vincent is going &quot;No, Jules you&#x27;re gonna be a god damn bum&quot;. Most conversations I have seem to have that undertone.<p>Not having a boss, especially before you reach success seems to make people really uncomfortable and sometimes upset. On the other hand not everyone reacts that way and I feel like it can shine a light on who your best friends are so thats cool.<p>It&#x27;s a weird path, but I&#x27;ve enjoyed it quite a lot so far. I&#x27;m also sort of a weird person so I don&#x27;t think it would work for everyone. I don&#x27;t have any kids. I&#x27;m not really into material things so my expenses are extremely low. I usually work for longer than this but I&#x27;ve done the math and I&#x27;m pretty sure I could cover 1 year of expenses with 1 month of work. It&#x27;s a good ratio.<p>I&#x27;ve also thought about doing this in SEA or Eastern Europe to cut expenses more. The idea of being a &quot;digital nomad&quot; (if thats what they still call it) seems super fun.

It went really well! I wanted to do something different in my career so I thought I had to be in between jobs for as long as 6 months. Less than 2 months I found a much better job without really looking. My wife was almost disappointed as she got used to me doing much more around the house and with our child. Oh well.

How do you make sure you don&#x27;t get survivor bias from the responses to this post?

I think it’s important to have detailed plans (daily schedules etc) to keep yourself busy albeit at leisurely pace. More importantly have specific goals. It doesn’t have to be career-oriented goals. It can be something simple like “learning to play an instrument”. If you’re planning on going back to the same field, have a side project going (doesn’t even have to be successful) to keep up with the latest technologies (toolings, trends, etc). This is especially important now because things move rather fast.<p>Don’t burn any bridges and keep regular contacts with people from your prior work. Do not completely unplug. Lastly, do focus on your mental health. I am assuming people who do this are burnt out and have worked stupid hours for years on end. It takes longer than you think to recover from all the physical and mental stress. Focus on yourself!

Oooo one I can answer!<p>I moved from Seattle -&gt; Hong Kong, circa 2012, with a contracting job to an old team in Seattle. About 6-7 months in HK, the team said no more contractors or remote members, and I was effectively out of a job.<p>The original goal of moving to HK was to learn Cantonese (mother tongue) so I said maybe I should actually do my goal and started taking classes. That didn&#x27;t work out so well. While I learned Cantonese, it&#x27;s not at any useful left (can&#x27;t even speak to 5 year olds for any meaningful length). I did get married instead! So it worked out.<p>If you&#x27;re young with little responsibilities, I say do it.<p>&quot;They&quot; always say it&#x27;s harder to do it while you&#x27;re older. For me and everyone I know, this is 100% true. While always possible, a lot more care and planning needs to happen even with a significant other.

My job sucked and I hated it (doing sales analytics for a FinTech startup). Boss was an asshole, his boss was an asshole. You know how it goes. I had probably a year&#x27;s worth of living expenses so I said fuck it and just quit with nothing lined up. I had the idea that I was going to try to start a business. That didn&#x27;t really get off the ground. I&#x27;m still piecing together why exactly. Perhaps I&#x27;m not the kind of person that&#x27;s good at that kind of thing.<p>In the end I spent about 4 months unemployed. I did get a new job, which paid better than my previous one (and had less assholes). And then about month into that, a FAANG recruiter hit me up and I got a job at one of those places. Ended up doubling the salary I had originally quit at. So it all worked out. But I feel I got very lucky.

I quit my full time job as a Software Engineer in 2019 without a solid plan. I had some money saved up and knew I wanted to work on a startup, and had a laundry list of ideas I wanted to explore. But none were built or had any traction.<p>I&#x27;ve tried working on side projects and startups while fully employed in the past and never made any serious progress. It was always too easy for things to drag on for months. For my personality type, I needed the pressure and continuous blocks of focus time to make any meaningful progress.<p>During 2020 I went through a few ideas and eventually landed on one that has since found some traction. I found a cofounder, went through YC and am now finding our place in a competitive market.<p>All-in-all, it was a great decision, and one I would do again in a heartbeat.

I&#x27;ve quit my job without a plan a few times in my life. Sometimes things get a bit tough, but it works out in the end and I think everyone should do it at least once so they can get over the fear. Once you don&#x27;t fear quitting, you&#x27;re much more psychologically free.<p>I will say that a cash reserve is definitely key. The second time I left a job without a plan, I underestimated how much cash I would need to sustain myself for a long period of time. I ended up moving in with a friend and did a combination of contract work and GrubHub for around 6 months. In that time I also wrote and shipped a mobile app that I ultimately abandoned because I didn&#x27;t have a good model for monetization.<p>The closest thing I had to a &quot;plan&quot; for if things really went south was to live out of my car. I spent some time to retrofit the trunk of my car into covert sleeping quarters and practiced sleeping in it. LOL<p>When I started applying for jobs again, I simply explained that I took the time off from traditional employment because I had a few apps I wanted to write and needed to dedicate my time to, which was 100% true. Employers seemed to have no problem with this at all; I actually got more interviews that year than I did in the past.<p>The last time I left I had quite a bit of cash saved up and had less rent to pay, thus it was much easier to simply leave without another job lined up. I had a few business and engineering projects to work on, so my plan was to work on those.<p>IMO, having more than a simple <i>financial</i> plan is overrated. It&#x27;s industry dependent, no doubt, but as a developer it can be scary to leave a job without another one lined up, and everyone will tell you to never quit without already having another job. If you are single or at least don&#x27;t have kids, it&#x27;s not that hard to recover from mistakes, especially if you have a support system.<p>The one other thing I would say is that I think it&#x27;s best to have a <i>purpose</i> when quitting. Definitely quit if you are miserable, but quitting and then not having something to do can also be bad.

I quit my job early this year with no plan on what to do next. I had reached a savings milestone, and so had enough to feel secure with no plan.<p>In that time I travelled with my wife, found and nurtured a passion for guitar, and in retrospect it&#x27;s been one of my favourite and most satisfying years in memory. I say in retrospect because I find it incredibly hard to recognize &quot;happy times&quot; in the moment. The hard parts of life always seem more apparent day to day. Also, it took me about a month to start feeling anything other than emptiness after I quit.<p>Having savings was SUPER helpful. It&#x27;s taken a lot longer to find a job than I thought it would. I have a new one lined up, but at the moment I&#x27;m a little worried it&#x27;s too soon.

I had a backpacking trip planned, so maybe I don&#x27;t count.. But I&#x27;ve been home longer than backpacking by now, and still don&#x27;t regret quitting.<p>Work is a conditioning program for your brain. Own your thoughts for a while. Experience your own stress and solve your own problems.

I did it once. Did absolutely nothing of value for 8 months and went back to work. I had savings so I was ok financially. Mostly played games and watched movies. Traveled a bit. Didn&#x27;t realize I needed it until I was doing it.<p>I think I will do it every 5 years of work.

Overall, pretty well. I was able to make a major career shift, going from a data analyst to a software engineer in the span of about 9 months of self-directed study. I reckon this was one of the biggest positive changes in my life to-date.<p>On the other hand, I developed quite a bit of anxiety and felt a little lost and depressed at times.<p>My advice to get the most out of your time would be: make sure the other key areas of your life are stable first (e.g. relationships, geography, finances, social life).<p>If you change multiple major facets of your life all at once, you are running the risk of becoming a bit untethered.<p>That being said, maybe it&#x27;s the feeling of being untethered that catalyzes the growth in the first place.

I quit my job at a FAANG back in the fall of 2020 without anything else lined up. I had been suffering from burnout and an existential crisis for over a year. I initially expected to take 3 months off before looking for a new job, but ended up taking over 12 months off. I received an offer for a new job after looking in a fairly niche space and being very picky after searching for 2-3 months.<p>I didn&#x27;t set any goals for myself. I just woke up and did what made me happy every day, which was exactly what I needed. After 6 months off, I also put nearly all of my belongings in a storage unit and traveled around the US in my car.<p>Had a blast. Would do again.

I quit a normal job in 2015 to do freelance consulting. I had no plan, luckily I found two clients for part time work and for the rest of my hours I created a e-commerce site that I operated for myself. That quickly escalated and made more money than in a normal job, but running an e-commerce site isn&#x27;t much fun.<p>1.5 years later I joined a startup, with 3 other ambitious guys which was super successful. The first years was really a lot of fun and work. But over time that changed. Now I have left that startup and I am planning on building another one, just need to find the right ambitious people with a good and realistic business plan.

Since I think burn out is often caused by work issues in combination with personal issues, here&#x27;s my two cents on quitting while in it or close to it.<p>I&#x27;ve been working as a contractor for several years now, and for about 2 years now I am also working on my own start up together with a partner but it&#x27;s earning 0 because reasons. After having worked A LOT over the past few years, I had a big financial buffer that allowed me complete freedom in my decision to quit, which was a very important factor.<p>For a long time I felt like I might be close to burning out due to working too much, getting bored of work, being unable to get anything changed at the company I was working for (as a software architect), and dealing with relationship issues. I took all of March off to see if that would help, but within 1-2 weeks after getting back I realized I wasn&#x27;t really ready yet but I kept going because it was a very convenient job. Second last week of April something small happened that pissed me off more than it should, revealing to me that I wasn&#x27;t in a good state of mind to keep working there. The next day I informed the company I would quit as soon as possible (which ended up end of April).<p>I decided I was going to be working on my own startup for the foreseeable future while taking it easy to get my head straight again. I ended up just coding endlessly on the project as a means of being distracted while never really dealing with real issues because I did not have the energy to confront them. Meanwhile I keep going in circles dealing with the end of my relationship and I seem to be unable to move on. I&#x27;ve come to realize spending so much time on my own with little distraction has been an issue.<p>I ended up deciding to try to find a new job again and work for my start up only 2 days a week, but it has been hard finding something for 3 days a week. I obviously want to work on location 1-2 days, which is also not ideal with Covid.<p>The lesson I learned from this is not to quit when you&#x27;re not happy about your personal situation, even if you can afford to financially and professionally. The distraction is probably healthy, and if your current job isn&#x27;t, find another one that is instead of quitting altogether.

I&#x27;m going to caution that I have NOT quit my job, but I did take a ~3mo leave of absence from work to study full-time for getting a job as a senior software engineer.<p>This thread seems to take a very optimistic view of quitting, and that getting another job was easy as a fallback option. I can say as an average dev in the Bay Area, I&#x27;ve failed the vast majority of first round technical screens I&#x27;ve encountered. Consequently, I basically have nothing to show for the last 3 months. For someone like me, I guess I&#x27;ll be working the same job (which I am rated highly at) until I can actually retire.

I was really sick of where I was living, I quit my job, drove across the country. Took one week off to relax, unpack, etc. Put up my resume on the usual sites and started getting calls 9 am the next day. Had a job in a week.

I tend to have 2-3 months of new hobbies picking between jobs. It is easy to unnotice burning out but harder to pick oneself up after it happens. A start of a burnout has always been the main reason for me to move away&#x2F;forward from a job.<p>I find vacationing between jobs more rewarding than during a job. My mind is clear and I have increasingly more willingness to try and do new stuff. It&#x27;s easier for me to pick up new hobbies where there is no unpleasantness that I have to go back to soon.<p>I have a comfort of working in a field where landing a job is easy enough not to worry that quitting will result in homelessness.

I worked at agencies for about 8 years and always wanted to go freelance. I handed in my 1 month notice with nothing lined up, created a LinkedIn, made a CV, sent some emails. I started my first freelance contract a week after my last day at my old job.<p>Honestly I thought I was going to take a while to get the ball rolling but nah it was super easy. Best choice I ever made. My life is 10 times better now. If you&#x27;re thinking about it make sure you&#x27;ve got a bit of money saved just in case but otherwise go for it. Life is short.

I quit my post-doc 6 weeks ago. Was really burned out and had postponed the decision for months already. However, I could never motivate myself to look in to other jobs. In the end, I quit without anything else planned. Only then I could notice how bad that job had made me feel. Now I am working on a small startup idea. If this doesn&#x27;t work out, I&#x27;ll try something else. I&#x27;m working from a cheap co-working space, and it is great so far. Have more time for my kids as well. Don&#x27;t regret it at all.

Few years back I was a co-founder and director of tech and research. We were not doing well. I was personally struggling financially not just at startup level but also at my person&#x2F;family level. For 8 months nobody (co-founders) took any salaries. Because of personal financial struggles, I was drowning in a mild debt (asking money from friends) to even sustain everyday life. After a year, due to some internal politics (which I absolutely hate on any organization and given my more &quot;nice guy&quot; personality, I couldn&#x27;t bare), I decided to quit. I quit without any second thoughts. I remember giving resignation without anyone anticipating it. I didn&#x27;t have any plans. After quitting, I asked for some compensations which lasted me for only 2 months. It was hard for me and my family (you know how Asian parents are). Out of nowhere, I decided to pursue grad school. So started GRE+TOEFL. Gave it. That was 2 years back. I am still in &quot;going to grad school&quot; phase for my Master&#x27;s. Let&#x27;s see how it goes in next 2 months.<p>However, out of nowhere during the end of 2019 I was approached by a startup here which works in Document AI space. I am the only senior. I am juggling through research + engineering ML. But in some ways, I didn&#x27;t anticipate that I would be enjoying so much here. But still, imposter syndrome hits hard often.<p>If I hadn&#x27;t quit my initial startup plan, I don&#x27;t know what might have happened to my research and career. I might have been more miserable.<p>:) ---

Why cant you start your own thing now, and then travel or does your own thing need a physical presence from you that will hinder any desires to travel?<p>Looking for inspiration?<p>Virtually everyone is living paycheck to paycheck, some live a frugal lifestyle others live an extravagant lifestyle and bang it on finance hoping judgement day never arrives. Even businesses are only as good as their long term contracts and share of a market, so are not much different to people, if we are to be honest about things.<p>Some big name companies are still only going because they have diversified, and that&#x27;s it, so working many jobs is for most people just a form of diversification in all but name, but then spreading the risk amongst employers in todays world can be a good thing, reducing exposure is common in finance and there are parallels for people as well.<p>Besides running a business gives you access to finance&#x2F;credit which will have less impact on your personal life if things don&#x27;t work out, than taking on finance&#x2F;credit in your personal life and things then not working out. Most shareholders of small businesses take out a lot of money which keeps their personal finances a lot cleaner. I don&#x27;t know why more people don&#x27;t do it?<p>The only other thing is remember that the global population is still going up, so prices will continue to go up as populations in develop countries can undercut developed countries, so choose your business venture wisely for a multitude of reasons.

I quit my job as an actuary 2 months ago, and I&#x27;m only 3 years out of college. I did work setting up Python backends for annuity inventories. I felt underapplied. Quitting was a good decision for me.<p>Another post mentions the common expectation that, without a job, you would &quot;suffocate&quot; (though it&#x27;s far from that). I like that idea.<p>My worldview is pretty similar. To me, money is just a way of organizing value. So if I&#x27;m a valuable person, why worry about money?<p>I&#x27;m very relaxed and better attuned to the humdrum of the world.

It was a much needed break. I was burnt out working at Qualcomm during the first two years of my career, and to be honest I don&#x27;t think I was a good fit for my team as I lacked understanding of hardware. I took a three month break to interview with startups and big-tech companies, got an offer from Amazon for 44% more pay and travelled to Turkey. I am returning to work in two weeks with a fresh mind.<p>Maybe I will start my own entrepreneurial journey in my late-20&#x27;s but for now I am young.

I quit my former employer earlier this year (largely due to management). They tried retaining me, however I simply think the company was a poor fit for the remainder of my career. I had worked there almost 10 years out of college.<p>Afterwards, I spent a month seeing members of my family. Unfortunately, while I was away on my travels, my car happened to be damaged. Had to spend several days fixing that amongst other things. Then I just spent about another month of just relaxing, before even looking for a new job.<p>From there I took about 3 months of 8 hour days looking for, applying and interviewing for jobs in two metros I wanted to live in. I think I had applied to ~80 jobs, had ~20 interviews, and received 3 job offers. Accepted an offer in late June, approximately 5 months after leaving my last employer.<p>Was it worth it? Yes in some aspects. I now make 25% more, have an easier work-life balance, and was able to resolve some things I was putting off for years. The process wasn&#x27;t easy though, and even though I make more now, it&#x27;ll take ~18 months for me to recoup the money I missed from being unemployed for 5 months. I also learned a lot I otherwise wouldn&#x27;t have. Only downside I&#x27;d say, is that I feel this may just be a temporary stepping stone in my career...

So far, so good. I quit in July with nothing else lined up. I took about two months off where I was just reading and taking care of our new puppy.<p>I&#x27;ve started a job board for FPGA&#x2F;RTL engineers at www.rtljobs.com. The mailing list is growing at an appreciable clip and paid postings should be live early in the new year.<p>I&#x27;ve also been doing some electronics consulting work. Not much. Only about 2-3 hours a day.<p>I&#x27;m making about half as much as I was at my job, but with functionally no stress.

I quit so I could finish grad school full-time, learn more about ML, and just relax a bit from burnout induced by 2020.<p>I don&#x27;t have a recommendation either way, on the one hand I really needed the time away and I felt much much better after not working full-time for a few months. It has been a major relief to not have to stick to someone else&#x27;s schedule, do scrum, pick up jira tickets, etc.<p>On the other hand, it is super stressful looking for a job when you don&#x27;t have a fallback. Even with lots of experience, demand, ease of getting interviews, it is still hard. Interviews have gotten crazy hard and luck is such a huge factor as to passing an interview (talking about big tech, leetcode style ones), the pressure is immense when you know you _need_ to pass because you don&#x27;t have a fallback plan.<p>I had a ton of cash runway saved up, but still it has been scary at times. Got pretty sick once and so did one of my parents. US society is structured such that you really need the safety net provided by an employer to feel capable of handling these kind of emergencies.<p>Personally, I can&#x27;t say I regret quitting, but I&#x27;m never going to do it again without something lined up. Just not worth it for me.

&gt; OK, so job quitting and breaking up both have “very large, positive, and statistically significant coefficients at six months”. How big? Ludicrously, insanely big.<p>&gt; <i>The causal effect of quitting a job is estimated to be a gain of 5.2 happiness points out of 10, and breaking up as a gain of 2.7 out of 10!</i> This is the kind of welfare jump you might expect if you moved from one of the least happiness countries in the world to one of the happiest, though presumably these effects would fade over time.<p>&gt; Both results are significant at the p=0.04 level, and fortunately I don’t think Levitt had many if any opportunities for specification mining here to artificially drive down the p value.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;80000hours.org&#x2F;2018&#x2F;08&#x2F;randomised-experiment-if-youre-really-unsure-whether-to-quit-your-job-or-break-up-you-really-probably-should&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;80000hours.org&#x2F;2018&#x2F;08&#x2F;randomised-experiment-if-your...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17840275" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17840275</a><p>^^ big caveat emptor in the top comment though ;-)

I quitted high paying job as a Software Engineer to peruse my dream of FREEDOM lifestyle.<p>For me it went very well in terms of overall exposure, experience but in terms of finance it was not that good.<p>But I never regretted it.<p>During, journey I failed in 4 business attempts, but I never stop learning and exploring new opportunities.<p>Fast forward, after 9 months of break, I again joined full time and I have been running a digital side hustle along with the job.<p>During those 9 months of break I learned so many things and developed new high income Digital skills like Blogging, Content Writing, SEO, Marketing, Web Development, Graphics design, etc.<p>I have noted my entire journey of side hustle here in this job free life post: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.growthfunda.com&#x2F;job-free-life&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.growthfunda.com&#x2F;job-free-life&#x2F;</a><p>Feel free to read and share you thoughts. And Here are my closing thoughts: If anyone of you planning to quit job then don&#x27;t quit it without any backup (backup as in backup plan, finances) I would rather recommend one should parallely start side hustle.

I&#x27;ve done it a few times, and am doing it now. Just make sure you have a plan and a realistic idea about what getting that next job would look like. The plan doesn&#x27;t need to be very detailed but should include a realistic idea of when you would NEED to become employed again, and what you want to accomplish in the time off. That could be &quot;I want to play video games for 3 months straight&quot;. It doesn&#x27;t really matter as long as you don&#x27;t finish your sabbatical wishing you would have done something else. The entire point is to reset your mental health, or to simply live life as though you didn&#x27;t HAVE to work for a living. Generally speaking people work because they have to, there&#x27;s nothing wrong with simply not wanting to do it for a while.<p>I think if you don&#x27;t know what you&#x27;d do, there&#x27;s a chance you&#x27;ll end up regretting it. But there&#x27;s also a chance you realize there&#x27;s a ton of life you aren&#x27;t living, and find ways to reconnect with it.

I&#x27;ve done this twice and I&#x27;m about to do it a third time in a couple weeks. Each time I&#x27;ve only had about 40k of liquid assets I could spend, and managed to mostly eff out of wherever I lived and not worry about a lease. Also I was single and have no kids. Both times I spent about a year not working. It didn&#x27;t really help me at all. I didn&#x27;t give me any direction, I didn&#x27;t learn much new about myself. I dated a lot and really hyperfocused on dating, so I guess I got better at that. For my upcoming time off I do feel like I have a somewhat good idea of what I want to do in 6 months to a year career wise, so that&#x27;s a good improvement.<p>My advice: be sure to have at least some cushion of money, it&#x27;s a hell of a lot easier when single and no kids, force yourself to have some structure and discipline after a month or so of grace period, consider staying with family and friends to save on money, and finally try to live a little. You only live once.

A while back I quit with nothing to go to due to promises not being kept. Wonderfully liberating and empowering, and I found a new job within weeks. Strangely I&#x27;ve found it much harder finding a job while I&#x27;m in work... Got some ideas about drone routing if anyone&#x27;s interested in working on something (current company aren&#x27;t bothered!).

Depends a bit on how long you want to be out of a job. However if you want to do this for some months&#x2F;years, then consider investing in relationships. Either creating new or strengthening existing ones.<p>Whatever you decide to do, if you don&#x27;t have people that can (and want to) accompany you during this time, this is just a recipe for loneliness and depression.

I quit my investment banking job in 2017 and set up my own SaaS. Very tough for the first two years, making little to no money (but I had a good amount of savings). Four years since quitting, I&#x27;m better off (many times over), both financially and in terms of how much time I have to do the things I want to.<p>Not for the faint hearted, but I definitely recommend it.

I’ve done it twice so far. Both times were great for me. I am on the cusp of doing it a third time. Hopefully, permanently this time.<p>Keep in mind, I have an advantage of being a decent software engineer in the biggest industry boom in history. So it has always been easy for me to step back into the market when I wanted.<p>The first time was for about 6 months to welcome a child. I had had enough of my job at the time and decided to stop without a plan. It was great and possibly planted the seed of future breaks. After 6 months I was ready to start again and got a job within a week or two.<p>The second time was for 4 years. I moved my family to another continent. Eventually, moved back for personal reasons and so had to find employment again. This time I found a job through connections.<p>I’m now financially at the point that I likely don’t need to work anymore and I’m itching to break free again so I’m likely to do it in the near future.<p>My advice is to have enough saved up for at least a year and to jump. It’s liberating.

It sucked financially but it was the right choice for my mental health, at least in the short term.<p>Just don’t wait too long to find something new.

I quit without another traditional job lined up. But I definitely had a plan. I highly recommend having a plan too.<p>I got pretty high up on the traditional engineering corporate ladder (junior to senior to lead to managing managers at a startup) and realized, even though I was pretty good at it, it just wasn&#x27;t where I wanted my life to go.<p>I enrolled in a part time language learning school for Chinese and spend the other half trying to get a engineer training business off the ground. I figure the worst case scenario was I&#x27;d learn Chinese and have plenty content in my portfolio to become a Developer Advocate for The Man later. Worst worst case scenario I&#x27;d already developed a great reputation with previous colleagues in the past I could send a text message to and get work fixing broken websites again.<p>I further hedged my risk by giving a 1 month notice at my last job to ensure no bridges were burned. Also relocated from California to Taiwan which halved my living expenses and doubled my quality of life.<p>Even though I had a multi year run way of savings, an impending IPO that would give me even more cash, and the bonkers bull market of 2021, I _still_ got a bit anxious about not making an income right away at first.<p>Instead of planning on doing nothing I&#x27;d recommend finding a 10-20 hour a week contract gig, or interviewing at somewhere like karat.com to give freelance interviews. At the very least, have a plan of WHAT you&#x27;ll be doing if you&#x27;re not working, maybe it&#x27;s signing up for a foreign language course, or grad school, or flamenco dancing, whatever. Just make sure you have some sort of routine planned. You can start your own thing while taking a part time class, and it&#x27;ll make it much easier to make friends and not accidentally waste your time on social media by accident.<p>That being said, if you have a plan of what you&#x27;ll do, have a specific place in mind, and have the cash saved up, go for it.

It was great! So good in-fact, that I made a point to stop actively looking for work. I&#x27;m a contract software architect|developer|consultant|etc. When one contract ends I do not start looking, as long as I can afford it. Work comes knocking and I take it on if it&#x27;s too good to refuse.<p>HOWEVER|BUT|NONETHELESS<p>This is just me... You will hear a lot of positives about taking the plunge|risk|adventure. I learned the hard way to stop recommending stuff that works for me to other people without heavy disclaimers and caveats. What works for one, does not necessarily works for the other. There are simply too many variables not including the biggest one - yourself.<p>So, if I was you, and had savings and no dependents, I&#x27;d go roam the world &quot;like Cain in Kong-Fu&quot; AND do my own thing while I&#x27;m at it. But I&#x27;m not you. Nobody is so take everything being said to you here with large grains of crystal salt.

Depends on how much money you saved up. Did it once with barely any savings (&lt;1 month) due to the toll it was taking on my health, and it was ultimately the right decision, but I wouldn’t recommend it.<p>Spend 4 months doing interview after interview and failing miserably (not in the bay area). Until I finally found my current position.

I had a grand but I had a friend. Moved to another state with a suitcase of stuff. Took some time off, tried to freelance didn&#x27;t happen. I was living on lentil soup and rice. Eventually had to work at a factory&#x2F;restaurant&#x2F;till I got into a web agency job. Before that I was doing data entry and before that dishwashing. My finances imploded (like 300s credit score, was sued by JDBs) and yeah it was really dumb on my part but I was able to recover. I crashed my car too (in a parking lot doing dumb stuff eg. drifting, not bad just busted a tie rod) and yeah, I rode my bike around like a dumbass for a few years. Still poor but in a better place and helping my families out. I&#x27;ve built my CL back up it&#x27;s nice to have.<p>A cool thing is I had so much time, like months of time to learn. I dove into web development, I didn&#x27;t know what a CSR was, how to get a server to work, learned about XSS&#x2F;sql injection, etc...<p>This was in 2016 left from NY moved to Missouri&#x2F;KS.<p>I still have that fear of &quot;what if I go homeless&quot; but I&#x27;ve also learned not to get too attached to my possessions I can in theory sell them on the spot at 70% of their price to get immediate buyers. It&#x27;s not great but guarantees me cash. I can do computing on second-hand stuff, in a better position to freelance. I have a burn rate of my net worth based on assets&#x2F;cash&#x2F;CL divided by my monthly needs so I know how many months I can live for ha not to get dramatic.<p>I shouldn&#x27;t be poor now, I make more than I really need but I also keep saying yes to my families, I&#x27;ve given away $30K so far which is a lot for me. Funny I could have paid off my student loans with that money or I could have saved that. Oh well adapt and survive that&#x27;s the name of the game. Also try not to be too much of a nice guy.<p>I had some crazy experiences though, like riding a bike at midnight through a road cutting across a huge field (like a mile or two in length) pitch black at night that was scary.

I had been planning to quit my job for a while. Got an exciting offer from a startup, handed in my resignation, then had the offer rescinded. Since I had zero savings, I had to find a new job in a month, 2 max. I wish I had the opportunity to do more stuff in that time, but the burden and anxiety was too crippling :\

After almost 3 years of work for huge marketplace I resigned because I didn&#x27;t feel company goals. Took 2 months of vacation and after that, spent about month looking for job.<p>It was hard work to be honest. At first I scheduled interviews to &quot;warm up&quot; and get used to questions. It was for first 2 weeks. Then I felt that I was ready for real interviews. Have to say that I have list of companies where I want to work. Try to keep it up to date. It helped a lot, I knew where I should apply. Also Hacker News has great topic &quot;Who is hiring&quot;. I had interviews for whole day, starting early for Europe and finishing late after meetings with North America. I admin, it was a challenge for me.<p>Currently I work for US based company that do good things for environment and have impact for many people lives. It feels good.

I quit a job in defense around October of 2019 then COVID hit so I took a job at another defense company. I quit that job around June of this year and I&#x27;m still looking. I enjoy the time off but I&#x27;d really like to get back to work, every company that I apply to seems to take their sweet time recruiting.

I have quited like 3 times and been fired 2 times. Had small savings so I didn&#x27;t starve, also could live at our family house, where I didnt need to pay rent, so that helped.<p>But I always got better job next time, because when I was unemployed, I learned lots of new things in webdevelopment and app development.

It went fine. I did this ins 2019. I had more than enough in savings and no other responsibilities (no mortgage, wife or kids). I took about 5 months off during which I travelled for a couple of months. Felt it was worth it and had no trouble finding a new job when I was ready to go back.

If you can afford it, do it! The worst that can happen is you&#x27;ll just get another job.<p>I quit a job about 15 years ago with no plans and enough money to last me a year or two. It taught me a lot about myself. I had planned on hiking and skiing and maybe starting my own company, but mostly I just sat around catching up on TV shows and movies because all my friends were working full-time. I also did some volunteer work to fill the time and keep up contact with other people.<p>After about a year of that, I was really bored, and it only took a month or two to line up another job, even in the 2008 recession. I took a pay cut relative to my previous job, but I met great new people, learned a lot of new stuff, and eventually got enough equity to more than make up the salary difference.

If you&#x27;re in tech, saved a rainy day fund, and good at what you do it&#x27;s fine. I prefer contracts this one. Couple months off between 1 and to 1.5 year stints are fantastic. If you love your job and your team and your pay&#x2F;benefits, I would highly suggest sticking it out and seeking &quot;life fullfillment&quot; elsewhere. Don&#x27;t just join the &quot;great resignation&quot; just because it&#x27;s there. I am someone who gets bored easily with the same people and company, so I move along every year or two and don&#x27;t take full time, salaried positions deliberately.What works for one person doesn&#x27;t mean it will work for others. That doesn&#x27;t fit everyone&#x27;s MO though. Talk it out with your friends and family.

Have done this several times and it&#x27;s generally been very easy to find a better job than the one I was in.<p>The only thing I will say is that you are in a much worse negotiating position which can be a problem if you&#x27;re heading towards the top of the payscale in your area when you quit.

Years ago, I YOLO quit Apple after my professional development stalled (HN discussion then: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14270897" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14270897</a>) and I felt I had enough in my personal data science portfolio that I could leverage it to get a job in the industry. I had overestimated my hireability but I eventually did get a DS job after four months, and am still at that company.<p>In retrospect, it was correct from a career standpoint, but I will not quit a job again without having another job lined up, especially since for data science in particular the industry is competitive and would result in another prolonged job search.

I quit my job last November. In January I started my own business doing machine learning consulting. It took off slowly, until July I was not making too much, only small clients.<p>Then business started taking off and now I&#x27;m too busy for my own good. I learned a lot. Biggest lesson is that I need to charge more. A lot more. Another thing that surprised me was what brought in the most income, both in absolute terms and in a per hour rate, so I&#x27;ll have to reconsider my positioning and marketing strategy for next year.<p>And I love what I&#x27;m doing and I feel like growing a lot. There have been many moments where I doubted things (The Dip as Seth Godin calls it), but somehow I got over them.

I left a job earlier this year due to health issues both for me and my wife, plus the strained childcare situation due to Covid had us both close to burnout already. It was the best decision we could make for the health of our family. Instead I&#x27;ve been working on something which I still haven&#x27;t released, but it&#x27;s close. Our financial future is not really dependent on this project replacing my full salary within X months or anything, so I find that it hasn&#x27;t added any extra stress so far. We&#x27;ll see what happens long term though. I&#x27;m not ruling out getting a job again if this project fails, but so far it&#x27;s been very nice!

I was very much burnt out from work and had some other Life Stuff happen so I sort of had to do it. I have some savings so I&#x27;m taking it slow to get back into looking for work etc.<p>I would say it&#x27;s not going great, but my hand was forced a bit.

Both times I&#x27;ve taken time off without plans have been really transformative for me.<p>In the first I discovered I had a passion for helping other people learn and ended up working at MIT on the Scratch project and then with Bret Victor (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;worrydream.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;worrydream.com</a>) at his research lab, both really amazing opportunities.<p>In the second I decided to quit tech to become a therapist. You can read about that here: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;glench.com&#x2F;WhyIQuitTechAndBecameATherapist&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;glench.com&#x2F;WhyIQuitTechAndBecameATherapist&#x2F;</a><p>Your mileage may vary.

I quit my job a few years back without anything lined up. I had enough saved up to last a couple years and the hiring market was booming so I wasn&#x27;t worried about my next job, I was pretty burned out and just wanted a break.<p>I spent a couple months lazying around until I felt like going back to work, then spent a month doing interviews until I got a couple offers I liked. Nobody seemed to care that I took a break between jobs, and the only time it came up I said I had the chance to relax for a bit so I just took advantage of it and they didn&#x27;t question it or anything.

I took 3 months off after shutting down my startup back in 2019 without knowing what was next. Went travelling, spent some time in London reading books and chilling out and enjoyed sitting at coffee shops at 8am watching other people go to work.<p>If you can afford it and have some confidence that you can easily get a job afterwards, I&#x27;d highly recommend it.<p>For me, it really helped not at all thinking about what was next until 2.5 months in. If you start interviewing already after a few weeks you don&#x27;t get proper headspace to really relax and get out of the work mindset.

I did this in 2010 and I now run a profitable software company with 45 employees.<p>Do it. There is literally no downside. If things don’t work out, you can just go back to the company you left. They will take you back!

I mean, I will preface this by saying I have a significant sum in the bank which allowed me to take the risk of leaving my job in the first place. I&#x27;ve got maybe a 3 year runway before things start getting scary. (As in homeless and eating ramen)<p>I have traveled for the past 6 months and haven&#x27;t really found myself yet. I want the freedom so I could do what I want, but now I feel like I don&#x27;t have a purpose.<p>I have been taking voice&#x2F;acting classes and taking singing lessons, and reading alot.<p>I don&#x27;t want to go back to a W2 job, unless I absolutely have to.

I quit my job in May 2019... before the pandemic started.<p>I was working as a senior data analyst at an insurance company in Canada. The work was boring, thankless and pretty exhausting but I was paid well (for a data analyst, anyway). There were no opportunities on the data science team since I didn&#x27;t have an MSc so I didn&#x27;t have a clear next step. At the same time, I had started the OMSCS program that January and that was eating up my off time.<p>I was too busy just trying to stay on top of school and work that I just couldn&#x27;t see myself having the time to prep for tech interviews or do some side projects to jump-start the tech side of my resume. I decided I just wanted a breather.<p>I resigned and cited wanting to get ahead on my degree. I figured this would be a reasonable narrative if the gap in my employment were to ever come up during an interview.<p>I spent 10 months focusing on school, enjoying my time and improving my development skills.<p>When I started looking, I applied to about 25 data scientist and a handful of ML engineer roles. I received no callbacks except for one ML Eng role which didn&#x27;t go anywhere. Luckily an old manager was starting a data science team at another insurance company at the same time as I was looking. He basically handed me a data engineer role with a bump in compensation in early 2020.<p>If I reflect:<p>- It worked out extremely well for me. I left a non-technical job, had a nice 10 month break and ended up getting a development job where I get to write code all day. I actually enjoy my work now and I have learned so much since then. Zero regrets for me.<p>- At the same time, I underestimated how little my experience as a data analyst meant to data science teams. I would have had to apply to many more jobs to get something via the standard online application approach. I think that would have been really stressful.<p>- I ate through about 25% of my cash which was a little painful to watch.<p>I think if you have a strong skill set and experience profile, its probably just fine. If you were like me and trying to make a big switch (eg. data analyst to data scientist or some kind of eng), it was a risky move and I wouldn&#x27;t recommend it without a plan. I lucked out. YMMV.

I used to change out jobs at a maximum of 2 years in. Whatever they hired me to do has usually been done and automated by 2 years and I&#x27;m bored. A lot changed for me, nothing to do with cov19d though, that has barely affected me because I&#x27;m in the social class that doesn&#x27;t have to give a fuck. Though I am reminded of that quote from nazi Germany, first they came for... anyways I digress as usual. The only reason to stay at a job or leave a job is the people or the pay. Stay for the people, leave for the pay.

About a year ago a quit my job. I was unhappy with some decisions the employer and just left. I had some savings and a side project I wanted to make.<p>Spent the following seven months making an Android game. I wasn&#x27;t expecting to make any money from it, but really wanted to build and launch MY GAME :)<p>Following that, I spent two to three months interviewing... And I&#x27;m now employed at a foreign, fully remote early stage startup. So everything turned out just I wanted it to.<p>I have no children nor any loans, so all my finances were very flexible and manageable.

&gt; Those who quit their jobs without anything planned. How did it go?<p>I was planning to quit in the fall of 2009 to do a startup, but things turned sour in my job so I quit earlier and worked on my side project.<p>My side project &#x2F; startup was a disaster, but in early 2010 I was able to devote my full time energies to my job search.<p>In general, I prefer looking for a job when &quot;it&#x27;s my job to look for a job.&quot; It makes it easy to compare different opportunities, and I don&#x27;t need to sneak around on the sly.

I quit in May of this year. I don&#x27;t regret it, but starting to feel like maybe it wasn&#x27;t the best financial decision. I&#x27;m not very good with finances and I didn&#x27;t really adjust my lifestyle, so I dwindled my savings quite a bit more than I wanted.<p>On the other hand, I did a bunch of sweat equity work for a startup and now own almost 10% of the company. So I&#x27;m thinking of it as an investment. A risky, not-very-well-thought-out investment, but still.

Was in a rough spot a year ago so I took 3 months off. Found myself with a better company, less stress, and more interesting work.<p>We&#x27;re pretty lucky a lot of us are able to do that.

I resigned in July. So far things have been going well as I&#x27;ve concentrated on a combination of relaxation, studying, traveling, and exercise&#x2F;yoga. Last week was my first week actively looking for new employment, so far that has been going well too as I have recruiter introduction calls booked for the next 3 weeks. Right now I&#x27;m not sure how to frame my period of unemployment so I&#x27;ve just been speaking as if I&#x27;m still employed.

Take as much leave now as possible and use that time to come up with a plan. A friend quit a couple of years ago, and for 18 month he couldn&#x27;t decide what he wants to do. Eventually he said, &#x27;well anything&#x27; that pays the bills and then looked for another job (which he found). But these 18 month were a total waste of time.<p>And I also believe if you do not have a dream now, it also won&#x27;t come magically to you while doing nothing.

I think whether it&#x27;s the right or wrong decision is very personal. However, the worst case scenario of quitting with nothing to do is:<p>1. You have less money 2. You have less upto date skills (perhaps) 3. You will then need to get another job at a later point in time.<p>If you can budget correctly and you are a passionate learner, I only see 3 as the biggest issue. Even then perhaps that time off gives you perspective and you then get a job that fits you better.

I quit mega tech co 1 over sexual harassment and commute after a few years there. Enjoyed being unemployed for about 6 months. Then got a job at “hit startup about to ipo. That job was good and extremely lucrative, but provided little fulfillment.<p>Quit and did my own thing for a year. That worked out pretty well, but one man team got old. Now been working at mega tech co 2, best job of my career. Comp doesn’t match the hot startup though.<p>Do it, nobody cares.

Not during the last two years but ~2017 I quit and moved to a new city. It was a great experience, I eventually got a new job after 3 months that paid double what I was making before. Those 3 months off were such a breath of fresh air, and undid my burnout.<p>I kind of just explored the city every day, tried new food, got myself in slightly better shape, and formed some new habits.<p>Obvious caveat here is I was fairly young (mid 20s) with no responsibilities.

I actually did this once when I was 20 or so, and I had absolutely no safety net if things didn&#x27;t go right.<p>I was working a job that was so stressful, I would regularly take unpaid sick days just because I couldn&#x27;t do it. Now considering I didn&#x27;t have any kids, this wasn&#x27;t that big of a choice to make. I&#x27;m okay with putting myself on the line, but if you have a family to take care of this is absolutely reckless

I went from making $3500 a month to making $500 a month. Barely scraping by. Also, I didn&#x27;t exactly quit but was let go. I just didn&#x27;t want to go back to a job. Making my own games and freelancing right now. I wouldn&#x27;t recommend quitting your job unless you have a plan or are secure enough in your self worth that the amount of money you make doesn&#x27;t change your own opinion about yourself.

I’ve done it twice - moving overseas and moving back again.<p>I did enjoy some travel however it is REALLY difficult getting a job without having a job when you do want to look again. I also spent way too much time stressing about it while I was trying to enjoy the time off.<p>For me the hardest part was being confident in interviews when I was unemployed - maybe that comes easier to others.<p>I don’t think I’ll ever resign a job again without the next one lined up.

I quit just before lockdown hit in the UK. Had planned to walk Lands end to John O&#x27;Groats and then get another job in a similar field, but obviously COVID put a stop to that.<p>I had saved up a lot, so I just gave myself a lot of time to think and re-assess what I wanted to do with my life. Ended up becoming a developer. So overall, very positive experience and I couldn&#x27;t imagine going back to my old job now.

I once quit due to burnout and it was not great. Mild depression plus slight health problems lasted for about half a year and due to that I was unable to fully enjoy my freedom and was in a bit of hurry while looking for next job.<p>So, if you have a choice between planned and unplanned quitting - stick to planned one.<p>To everyone reading this: start planning your quitting when you feel first symptoms of burnout.

I did it a couple of times in my past (with the intention of starting my own thing), and it never played out quite as well as I envisioned in my mind beforehand. If you do it, and then you end up needing to get another job because the runway ends, then it&#x27;s always more difficult and stressful vs. getting a job while you already have a job&#x2F;paycheck.

Would also love to know, sometimes I feel like to really change paths, I can&#x27;t do the whole interview and switch thing while employed, but I&#x27;m scared of &quot;falling off the train&quot; if that makes sense. Also I do take other&#x27;s experiences with a grain of salt, but in general appreciate seeing things from others&#x27; points of view.

I left my job in July, and took a bit of break to introspect, focus on my health, spend time taking care of my family members, did a few investments, read up a lot and figuring out what I want to do next.<p>I have just started to talk to people wrt to different jobs, although I am not sure I want to take up another job. will figure it out in due time.

The end of the notice period roughly lined up with the start of the ski season, so I&#x27;m going to do a ski season.

Was going bonkers without having anything to do during the raging second wave. Started interviewing and joined another job which, now, I already find miserable after these few months.<p>Do it, but iff, and this is just my opinion, you have clarity about what to do next with or without pay (if your finances allow that).

I had severe burnout after doing 2 years remotely. I spent 4 months doing very little. A friend then convinced me to join his startup and I had a lot of fun (this time IRL). I&#x27;m still there 1.5 years later and we&#x27;re doing well.<p>Random luck I reckon. I needed a break though.

Twice I&#x27;ve quit without anything lined up.<p>In both cases, I spent tens of thousands of dollars during the interim lull.<p>Had I invested that money in our crazy stock market... more money.<p>It&#x27;s fine, I&#x27;m a spoiled brat in a bubble.<p>Quit your fucking job. The worst that can happen is a very expensive lesson in humility.

I was terminated after asking for a raise and better working conditions. It&#x27;s only been a few weeks but I&#x27;ve been focusing on health and hobbies. I plan on traveling for a few months while looking for a better opportunity to secure my finances again.

I had a job I didn’t like and left without a backup. It was a great move for me cause the next job I liked and stayed with for a couple of years.<p>If you have skills, a good resume, and know how to market yourself you should be able to land on your feet.

I&#x27;ve had different outcomes:<p>- the very next day I called up another company and was doing similar work at a company that was in much better financial shape two days later<p>- the beginning of an (ultimately failed) 2.5 year search for the right consulting work

It&#x27;s really nice to have an extended break where your return to work date is mutable. As long as you have some savings, surely you have recruiters messaging you enough on linkedin to find something quickly when you want to.

I quit my job in June 2021. I&#x27;ve been keeping weekly updates here [1]. Long story short it&#x27;s been great so far. I went to Brazil and met my partner&#x27;s (now fiancée) family.<p>I&#x27;ve seen things you people wouldn&#x27;t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. If only you could see what I&#x27;ve seen with your eyes. [+++]<p>I made decent progress on projects that I have been kicking around for YEARS, including Bookwork Club [2] and my grandpa&#x27;s autobiography [3]. I have read 14 books, including <i>Thinking In Bets</i> which led me to get much more systematic about thinking probabilistically. I am almost done with a Python class which will enable me to finally earn an Associate&#x27;s in CS that I started literally 10 years ago. I had time to go into rabbitholes to build tools that allow me to get more systematic with my investing&#x2F;trading&#x2F;speculating. I got to make some new connections and work in a completely new space when I did a 1-month contract working on Corrily&#x27;s docs. Right now I&#x27;m planning out our mid-January wedding. Yes it&#x27;s kind of close but on the other hand it&#x27;s not like I&#x27;m trying to juggle this wedding planning with a job. In Feb&#x2F;March I&#x27;ll probably go back on the market and hopefully won&#x27;t struggle too much to land a new decent job! This comment has just been a stream-of-conscious reflection on &quot;things&quot; I did but I also want to emphasize that it has been rejuvenating and healing to not deal with the low-level constant stress of deadlines, interpersonal conflicts, strategy ambiguity, etc. that is pretty natural in the software industry. You can read my sabbatical manifesto at [4]. In that post I really tried to document all my thinking about why I was taking this risk.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kayce.basqu.es&#x2F;sabbatical" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kayce.basqu.es&#x2F;sabbatical</a><p>[+++] In case you don&#x27;t get the reference and think I&#x27;m a crazy person, this is a quote from Blade Runner. As I wrote this comment I was reminded of Roy and couldn&#x27;t resist throwing that in. Just having some fun... sabbatical will do that to you! ;)<p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bookworm.club" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bookworm.club</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tony.basqu.es" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tony.basqu.es</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kayce.basqu.es&#x2F;sabbatical&#x2F;prologue" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kayce.basqu.es&#x2F;sabbatical&#x2F;prologue</a>

I did this almost a decade ago when I was younger and it went ok. I worked a service job at first and then went through an alternative teaching certification program. Back in software work now.

Question to those in that did this<p>What did you do about your health insurance?

Considering how &quot;judgey&quot; bay area tech is I would never make such a move. Any sign of not being a steadfast workaholic is a &quot;red flag.&quot;

Did this twice (never left a real job any other way lol) and it turned out fine. Both times I ended up getting a job offer before my notice period ended.

A friend did this. His plan was to start a consulting business, but he had no clients lined up. He&#x27;s been mostly unemployed for the last 12 years.

I&#x27;m on day one, it&#x27;s going great.

Mostly positive experiences here. Would be interesting to hear from some for whom it didn&#x27;t go so well...

I left my job (Senior Developer at an Agency) a little over a year ago. I did have a plan in that I&#x27;ve always wanted to build a SAAS product, but I knew going in that it was very unlikely to be successful enough to make a living at.<p>It&#x27;s been overwhelmingly positive experience for me. Caveat is that I have no children, no debt outside of student loans, and had several years of living expenses saved if I needed it.<p>The peaks:<p>- I built a SAAS product I&#x27;m proud of that a few companies are using and paying for. This has been on my bucket list for a decade or more.<p>- I have total control over how I spend my day, which has mostly (see valleys) been a tremendous boon for my mental health.<p>- I&#x27;ve had a healthy amount of time to spend with my partner and loved ones (although Covid obviously complicated this pre-vaccine).<p>- I&#x27;ve had more time to focus on my hobbies, and have made more progress on music in the last year than ever before.<p>- I&#x27;ve managed to contract with some great companies and individuals to cobble together a meager living while still having a lot of control over my time.<p>The valleys:<p>- Some days can feel directionless. Sometimes I can turn this into a positive and take a meandering walk and think about things, sometimes it makes me feel unproductive and down on myself.<p>- Even though I&#x27;ve barely tapped into my savings, I&#x27;m frequently concerned about money &#x2F; unplanned expenses.

fucking great<p>removed myself from an incredibly toxic environment. the relief was incredible.<p>I then landed my first job in my new field and loved it.<p>10&#x2F;10 would recommend to anyone (providing you have at least a few months runway of personal funds)

It went as not planned

Survived the first year then flourished the 2nd and 3rd!

Every time someone is in the middle of a career change, I send them “Settling” from XKCD: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;1768&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;1768&#x2F;</a>.

Awful.<p>The alternative was awful, tho, so...

shit...^^

I took an extended leave from my work to travel. I did wonder what I was doing going to places and basically looking around&#x2F;being a tourist, but at the end of it I came with the realization that I was capable of tackling any problem that came at me (not that I encountered any huge problems during the trip, although of course I was nervous of what I might face before I went), so that&#x27;s encouraged me to go freelance, and I&#x27;ve handed in my notice recently.<p>The final boost was talking to someone who said I should recognize my own strengths, like having the bravery to leave home at a young age to go to college. I told her &quot;I didn&#x27;t feel very brave, I had my parents to fall back to in case things went wrong.&quot;, and I realized, if the freelancing idea didn&#x27;t work out straight away I currently also have enough saved to fall back to.

Did it a couple months ago and haven&#x27;t started looking for a new job yet. Based on my email inbox, when I haven&#x27;t even updated my LinkedIn status, I don&#x27;t foresee any issues.<p>I still don&#x27;t feel like I&#x27;m 100% back to normal, but I&#x27;m definitely improving. I didn&#x27;t even want to touch tech before, but lately I&#x27;ve been tinkering around with some light things. I feel no desire to go back to work, but I also feel little to no dread anymore, which is good. Probably give it a bit longer and then get back to the grind. If you can afford it, I would recommend it. It took over a month before I stopped feeling stressed about work memories.