Anyone took a long break (6 - 12 months) from corporate world? Can share experience?

Anyone took a long break (6 - 12 months) from corporate world? Can share experience? - Redpanda

Anyone took a long break (6 - 12 months) from corporate world? Can share experience?

- Male in 40s in IT sector. Main breadwinner. (Total household income 12k/mth) - Family with two children (8 and 5) - Essential Expenses 4K/month - HDB and car fully paid - Liquid assets (250-300k in stocks, mostly dividend stocks ard 4-5% yield) Abit jaded from corporate world and want to see if I can do something more fulfilling which sadly I don’t know what I am really looking for. So want to take a year break and recharge and reflect. Company allows that and I can go back but possibly a different role/team. Family is supportive. But I also don’t want to drain too much savings during this period, so I want to do some side gigs (Eg lalamove). Can’t do private hire as car has child seats. Have experience in wordpress site, mobile app dev, creating marketing content such as infographics and doodle animation video. Would like to hear from anyone with similar experience and took a break? Can share experience? Any regrets? Love to hear any suggestions on how to earn some side income. Thanks folks!

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Maybe try to shorten the sabbatical to 3 months? Unfortunate reality is that you probably do not have enough to call for FIRE, and 30-40 are your peak earning years. Your skill sets for side hustles are now easily done by AI. Investment is the way to go to be honest, but also to each your own. All the best

Thanks! Yes, maybe a shorter break is the really the way to go.

Personally don't feel like it's a good time to be doing that, because the market is bad and there are many IT grads looking for jobs. May be replaced by the company if you're gone for too long. It depends on your relationship with your company and the people in your department.

The company will likely still take me back. The variables are likely to be the job scope and supervisors.

You are going to float straight to the top of layoff list if you do that, unless your company doesn't do layoffs. I was extended unemployed a few times and each time, I found it hard to find a job again. We are in the nuclear winter for IT jobs and no guarantee things will recover by next year, and even when I just want to work for fun, I couldn't find anything that is not actually more pain and stress than a proper job. I understand the desire for breaks but now seems like a really bad time. Also, I find a vacation more recharging than months of unemployment frantically applying for jobs and attending interviews. Why dont you just take a slightly longer leave to do your dream vacation? A few years back, my then company organised an official company volunteer work to build houses in Cambodia. Maybe you can organise something like that and get a good company sanctioned break.

Thank you for sharing. Because taking a vacation means I will still be back clearing th backlog and people still calling me for job related stuff. So the only way is a clean break. But you are right, there will be risks involved.

Are you Singaporean? You might want to consider upskilling and receive a training allowance up to $3000 per month for selected full time courses under Skillsfuture. I've done the whole sabbatical thing 2x in the past 10 years, always found a corporate job after but found it unfulfilling again, so break again and rinse repeat. I believe there's a term for this now - micro-retirement.

Thank you! Will check that out. Did you try other avenues of income?

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Anyone took a long break (6 - 12 months) from corporate world? Can share experience?