- cross-posted to:
- funny@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- funny@lemmy.ml
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Boomers were trying to ruin it for us.
Only works if you are not working a shitty job and living paycheck to paycheck. Good fucking luck in most economies greedy billionaires are keeping this from happening.
Yeah and if the job market sucks and you’re out a job
I mean, I don’t see how it’s possible if you’re only going to have entry level skills… You’re not really building up a wealth of marketable skills if you quit all the jobs after a year.
It works if you can build up the relationships and reputation, which will depend heavily on the industry and the job.
I know two people who do this, and they have jobs that allow them to.
One is an emergency room physician. His shifts are staffed through a middleman at 3 different local hospitals, and the nature of the work is that he just does work during the shift and doesn’t bring any home with him or continuing onto the next shift he works. He gets paid very well when he’s working (average annual salary of an emergency physician in the U.S. is about $375,000 per year). And occasionally just lines up a long sabbatical, does volunteer work overseas (Doctors Without Borders/MSF), and takes time off for himself and his family. He basically budgets a $200k lifestyle and takes unpaid time off. But his pathway basically required him to just dominate school, from kindergarten through a bachelor’s degree and 4 years of medical school, and then put in his time as a resident.
Another friend of mine works as an electrician and lighting crew member on TV shows and movies. He always has to line up his next project after the current one ends, but occasionally can line something up in the future so that he can take a calculated 3-6 months between projects. He’s got a good working relationship with some producers and directors, so he basically knows he can find a job anytime with whatever production those people happen to be working on. Whenever he has enough cash, he can go and travel, timed out to where he’s not paying rent for an unoccupied apartment. Then he lines up another gig, signs a new lease, and then continues working. I think he lives very frugally on the job (I think stuff like food is covered when filming on location, so not a lot of out of pocket expenses for food/drink while working), and saves money that way.
With that, I think there are a few opportunities to think through which careers might actually allow for this.
Project-based jobs, where people work for a few months or a year towards a particular project completion, might be good for intentionally taking gaps between projects. I wonder if construction and similar industries would allow for this. Academia often has formal sabbatical policies, too, but that’s relatively late career.
Personal independent gigs can do this, if you can earn enough money doing it (so, like, not Uber and Doordash). Some people do contract design work, create independent art, write essays and op eds for different publications, etc. If you’re paid by the job, taking a break doesn’t really hurt your “resume,” so to speak. Even some who are expected to publish on a defined schedule can get ahead of the curve by producing a bunch of work for publication on that schedule (some webcomic authors and social media influencers are known to do this).
Jobs where you are employed by some firm but actually work for a client that hired your firm might also be a good candidate, if you have the seniority and flexibility and credibility to just take unpaid time off while still being on the books and website as an employee. I know people who took off a year of parental leave as lawyers, but it really depends on practice area and firm culture whether that will permanently hold them back on career growth.
Jobs that are basically shift work are designed so that no one person is totally indispensable or non replaceable, which gives the worker the flexibility to leave without hard feelings, and come back whenever they’re ready. My emergency medicine friend probably fits in this category. But also, maybe any kind of 24/7 coverage job sorta fits this category, too, in health care, IT, critical infrastructure, etc.
Yeah wtf jobs is she getting where she builds up a safety net in 1-2 years? I’ve been at this shit for a decade and have 3 digits in my bank account
Living with parents probably (/gen, non-derogatory)
Live with a group in a LCOL area, eat rice and beans, no other hobbies.
There’s a thing called lifestyle creep. You may not necessarily be living paycheck to paycheck on the bare minimum. Going out with friends, having the latest phone, having hobbies, if you cut out all fun you may be able to save up significantly. You can also live like a bum in the least accommodating space you can stand. Being comfortable is expensive, but not everybody wants to be uncomfortable for long stretches just to fuck off to the Bahamas for a month every few years. That or credit card debt.
That is for sure a thing, but in my case it genuinely is having little income
Been making minimum wage for way too long, and at this point I’m too old and don’t have the skills to get a significantly better job. My retirement plan is
If you’re making minimum wage, what do you really have to lose by improving your marketable skills?
It’s a pretty neat trap, you see I can’t afford to take any time off work to even look for another job, let alone any unpaid training
I’m sure if I locked the fuck in and pulled myself up by my bootstraps and got extremely lucky, I could jump ship into a better position, but that target is like 5 feet wide and a hundred feet away and surrounded by homelessness on all sides
You obviously have the internet. I doubt you worked 24/7. Use some of that internet to study.
Well sure if you never got out of minimum wage jobs then it’s no wonder you can’t accumulate a safety net, the majority of people don’t keep working minimum wage for decades though (median income is above minimum annual salary).
I think current ‘lifestyle creep’ for many is getting used to things like ‘health insurance’ and ‘something other than beans and rice’. Hard to give up simple human dignity once you’ve had a taste of it.
people living like this don’t think into next week much less health insurance
these are the dudes social safety nets and medivac helicopters support
I mean almost anyone with a stem education is able to do this.
Before you say: “buh have you seen the job market?”
The point of the plan isn’t to get stinking rich off of each 1-2 year stint, it’s to make just enough money that you can travel around and reset to nearly 0 after not working for a few months to a year
If I was looking at a hire who only gives a year I’m thinking that’s a big investment to get them up to speed on our tech, train them, and start getting them projects only to know they’re going to bounce. Not to mention provisioning tech and tools for them. I think experience and a company willing to hire you becomes the issue if you do this too often.
Stem jobs aren’t a spot where you want to be losing your talent every year, it’s hard to push forward with that. I see companies avoiding those hires honestly.
Also, how do you advance and make more, if that’s what you want, without working somewhere long enough to grow. Self education helps, but practical experience is needed.
If I were them, just be a freelancer. It gives you the freedom and you’re your own boss.
That’s the key, you don’t tell the company you’re working for that you only plan to stay for a year or two. After you’ve done it twice maybe your resume will start to show a pattern, but at that point you’ve been doing this for 4-6 years, and I can think of plenty of lies to tell corporate that will make for a good excuse.
As for making more, your progress will definitely be stymied by taking breaks, but you’re not taking breaks in order to advance your career. It’s just a difference in life goals, clearly you value climbing a corporate ladder to increase your salary. Besides, it’s well documented that changing employers is one of the best ways to increase your salary so if your goal is making more money you would want to change jobs every couple of years no matter what.
clearly you value climbing a corporate ladder to increase your salary
That’s not at all true, and I feel like people with this very casual stance on a career think that everyone else is that way. We’re not. If anything I feel like we just can think beyond the short term.
Let me ask you, this person that lives this life, are they still working at 70? How much do they really have left to invest with these breaks? What if the market has a down turn when you’re on vacation and you come back to a job market you can’t get a foothold in? How is your 401k really looking with all these breaks?
My goal is to not work a day after 45. I have taken many vacations and enjoyed my life while working but I plan to never answer to anyone after 45, just live my life for me. The rest of my life without worry and with security. That’s what I work for, not climbing a ladder. Security and an exit plan.
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Ah yes, for all those 55 year old Gen Z’ers with a couple kids and a heart condition.
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Do you think young people can’t have medical issues or kids? What is this?
You know, you can pay for private health insurance if you don’t have a job. And if you have an emergency fund or (micro) retirement fund, it should include funds for health insurance.
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Leaving your job qualifies as a “life changing event” and allows you to sign up for private insurance under ACA. You don’t need to wait for open enrollment.
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Move to a better state. If you are already quitting your job to travel, you can just list yourself as living at a friend’s house or whatever on paper, and then apply for health insurance.
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Yes, fear is a major factor for why people don’t do risky things for potential rewards.
As for having a spouse and children or a pre-existing medical condition, you’re correct that only a certain portion of the population is able to do this. We already cut it down to people with something like a STEM degree that are able to do this.
The biggest problem I see with this is staying current and sharp with your tech skills and also explaining those gaps. It’s definitely possible though, especially if you’re able to live frugally.
Most industries do not move that fast. And yeah, I’m including software in those industries. Really, how much changes in 2 years in Accounting, HR, plumbing, or electrical engineering?
As for the gap -
Them: “Can you explain this gap in your resume?”
You: “Yeah, I was travelling.”
Them: “Oh, that’s cool. You know, I wish I’d done that when I was younger.”
explaining those gaps
“I didn’t feel like working” is perfectly acceptable. Any job that takes offense to that is not worth taking.
Any hiring manager who hears that is going to hear it as “this employee will up and leave us without warning at any time”
Not saying they’re right, but that’s what it is. Most people are looking to hire permanently if possible, you’re telling them straight up that you are not going to be a permanent employee.
I thought Gen Z aren’t really into drinking or drugs. I hope they do this. Make holes in your resume the norm so they can’t hold anything against you. I have friends that did/do this and they got it out of their system. They’re pretty happy with their lives.
From what I’ve seen as a gen-z/millennial aged outgoing person: older gen-z still drinks quite a lot, younger ones (17-22) drink less but use significantly more drugs.
But that’s just my two cents. Drugs do seem to have normalised a significant amount. Most nightlife people are clearly using coke, mdma or designer stuff, which used to be more subtle.
This is a Gen X thing but whatever
Who do you think raised Gen Z?
Bad idea because
- Jobs hiring will complain about the gaps in your resume
- when you are too old to work anymore you will have nothing
- Not if you’re a freelancer. I know some people who’ve been doing that for years, no issues getting a new gig.
- Then you retire.
My 401k is being destroyed by an orange idiot who’s literally enjoyed entitlement his entire life. When I’m too old to work, I’ll just die.
If everybody suffers at the same time it kind of equals out. 401ks are typically based on market indexes, so with wages stagnating and markets slowing everybody loses. And if everybody loses, nobody loses.
Everybody isn’t going to lose. All of us will, but the rich assholes are gonna win.
Ask the French.
I don’t think we have the stomach to pull that off.
I’d love to be wrong, though.
No person does until the conditions force them. Many people in the US are still comfortable enough and have a lot to lose, but the time might come. At a certain point it becomes the easier choice.
I mean we as a group. Some of us will, but they will be decried by the rest of us. Too much, too far, too soon.
If we could all get on the same page, that would be one thing. But it’s like unions, isn’t it? Once man stopping work is just quitting. The whole factory stopping work is industrial action.
Are you paying attention to your 401k? S&P is up ytd. If youre actively paying attention to your 401k, yours should be doing even better than that.
I dont care what side of the political aisle youre on, but your retirement 401k shouldn’t be being deatroyed right now
They were all in on Tesla
- Be good enough to get hired and maintain industry connections. Have various skills sets you can use to get hired in various fields. Taking time off to travel is high status, and many companies won’t blink if that is your reason.
- Max out your 401k first. Retire to Thailand.
So just longer “camp” work? Some people work for 3 months and get a month off.
I knew a landscaper who would work for the 6 months you can and then all winter would go and stay on the mountains. The company he worked for only needed to keep a couple guys for snow clearing, so it worked perfectly.
Nothing new.
A woman I know worked as an escort on and off and spent most of her time traveling, but I don’t think most people have the looks and the charisma to do that even if they want to. I’m not sure what other careers both pay enough and let you quit and then start again easily, but presumably there are some.
Just read this thread. There are a million ways to do it. You just have to want it.
This is literally the route I took in my life. Entered the workforce in the early 2000s in IT as helpdesk. Worked till I had a resume good enough for the next level up. Lived below my means. Take several months off to do whatever. Apply for a higher level position. Rinse and repeat every couple years until I was in my 40s at a company I intend to retire with.
I always lived in a smaller place than what I could afford. Never owned a new car. My current vehicle is a 2001 pickup truck, purchased in like 2018. So, gotta trade one luxury for another.
2 caveats: IT as a career was not in the state its in now. Much easier to move up and around. I’m also now in my late 40s and looking to buy my first home, since I wasn’t building a nest egg my whole life, and that’s no fun.
Also, it was really important to have some significant achievements on the resume as I left each place to show growth professionally so I could always jump up in role/salary with each move.
My career is solid and I make a great salary for my age, but homes are just insane. My brother is 6 years younger and took a more traditional route and started a family, he was able to score a good home before COVID.
Still, I wouldn’t trade anything material for the life I took and the places I went.
I work in a place where they had specific arrangements for that.
It was something like after 5 years of employment there you could take a year off and come back to the same position you left.
That’s kinda cool, really
Similar at my previous job, get paid 75% of your regular salary for 5 years and they would keep your position on hold for one year of paid vacation where you would get paid whatever they didn’t pay you all this time.
She thinks the jobs will be waiting for her. That’s adorable.
if you’re a native English speaker, you can start doing this next week.
every month you teach english generally results in 2 to 3 months of savings.
My friend spent a few years in Taiwan and Thailand this way, no need to be a teacher by trade either.
it’s a great job.
teach as little or much as you want, save as much money as you want, go pretty much wherever you want, and then chill out the rest of the time.
I taught for several years and am still traveling on the savings a decade years later.
did you use to teach online or in-person? i have heard of people doing this but i always just assume its already too full of people doing it that it would be hard to make space for yourself to get into it
both.
I taught in person in China at first, and then after I started traveling full-time I taught online because all you need is a smartphone.
and no, the market is not at all saturated, it is wide open. there are literally thousands of jobs available right now across dozens of countries and online.
if you have any interest in traveling, or you need money, and are a native or fluent English speaker, teaching English is such a great deal.
I’m happy to answer any other questions you have.
thats great thanks for being so open to share your experience, how did you manage to get people driven to enroll to be your student? i get that online you would usually join a platform for it (there are many which is hard to know which to use, but they have many users so they do the work of marketing your service for you, but so comes with the competitiveness for students with other teachers)
for sure! I love talking about this stuff.
if you join an online platform with in-place curriculum, then they assign you to classes so the students are already there.
I didn’t want a schedule, so i made myself available to casually chat with ESL learners on an app called palfish.
enough people called me up each month for me to make a few hundred a month, which is all I needed to travel. dorms are $100 a month in SE Asia, food is 1 to $4 a portion in all of asia, and I was backpacking half the time anyway.
when I landed in a country, I bought the unlimited data-only plan, clicked the “online” button, and then people called me up whenever they wanted to practice their english with me.
that online work was partially to offset using my savings, but i had already taught in person for ~7 years.
with each month of in-person teaching affording me ~3 months of living expenses, i had enough savings to travel for a couple decades by the time i started traveling full-time.
quick note: there’s no competition for ESL students at the teacher level. there are way too many ESL students and not nearly enough English teachers to fulfill the demand. it’s not even close.
Im already doing this, can recommend
Millennial here and I’ve been doing this my entire adult life. If companies had better vacation policies and a less boring work flow, I’d be less compelled to job hop every year or two.
They ever ask you about your repetitive gap on your resume?
No because the last time I worked a job that that a proper interview process was over 15 years ago.
These days interviews mostly go like this for me:
"This is what we expect from you; does this sound like the kind of job you’d like? " I say “yes” and then a week or two later I’m working. The hardest part is landing the interview. On average it takes about 200-300 applications before I get a single one.Sounds like a huge pain
Well that’s what the job market is like now, so if yours pays well It’d be best to stick with it.
How does that work when you don’t live with your parents?
Rents are extremely expensive and would slow down the “build a safety net” part of the cycle.
Live with roommates, stop living with roommates since you’re now traveling, no rent payment.
As someone with kids, that’s not happening. Then again, my sibling did this and went on a year-long trip with their kids, and it worked out for them.
