I was laid off abruptly two months ago. It was a foreign situation to me; I had always lined up a bigger and better position. I was a bit like a fish out of water: filing for unemployment, sprucing up the resume, going to all the job boards. With a mortgage and a 14 month old, it was constantly on my mind.
They gave me two months' severance, so that plus our emergency fund took a little of the heat off. I landed a job that, while not an immediate step up, has room for growth.
What was nice was the extra time I had after say a half day of hitting the job boards and applying, to take my daughter to the park or help out with errands. In the evenings, I was able to focus on getting my latest game released on the app stores, which launched right before I started the new job.
While I wouldn't want to repeat that scenario for a while, I'm grateful for it. It really opened up the possibilities of where I wanted to move next (career-wise and location-wise).
It sounds great in theory, but if you aren't careful, you will come back with less motivation and skills than you had before you left.
I lived in Asia for a few years as a digital nomad of sorts. My only means of income was freelance software development.
It only worked for me because I have excellent discipline, but most expats I met had a lifestyle of: drinking, partying, smoking weed, and not doing everything possible to not have a regular job. The long-term expats (more that 5 years) were a pretty miserable bunch a well.
While this is fun, it's a rude awakening when you have to come back to the real world and actually make a living and you have been left in the dust. I know a few people that had to move back in with their parents because they couldn't find work after their travel experience.
..and involving your kids? A bad idea. Many governments do not offer you the same protections and rights that you have in the USA. It's hard enough with couples, nearly impossible with kids.
The long-term expats (more that 5 years) were a pretty miserable bunch a well.
Yeah, what's the deal with this, anyway? It's something I've noticed as well.
The worst case seems to be US Expat Surfers living in Central America, preferably owning property there. None of those guys seem to have been surfing at all in the last month, but they're certainly quick to make sure you know you're not welcome intruding on their waves or taking up a table in their personal favorite bar.
I was actually considering setting up shop down in Nicaragua at one point, but that factor quickly put me off.
Check out the Expat Climbers you find in SE Asia for the counterpoint. Mostly nice folk leading pleasant lives in a pleasant part of the world and getting out on the rock all the time. Figure out what's causing the difference between those two groups and you'll have the secret to happiness.
I did the expat thing for just under two years. Leaving behind your old life isn't the least bit appealing if you like your old life. If you don't like your old life due to temporary circumstances, then you'll go back home after a few years when circumstances change. IME, the people who stay significantly longer than that have more internal problems than external.
It's also possible that they're either more interested in deeply exploring another culture or simply more flexible than those who spend nearly their entire lives in one culture are.
It certainly is possible, but in my experience not very common. The long-term expats tended to stick to the expat community, which was mostly about creating a tiny bubble of "home" in the host country. Or at least a television-inspired approximation thereof.
The ones who really did want to explore and immerse themselves in another culture usually did that for a few years before moving on to explore another culture.
Japanese expats are also pretty surly but I think in their case it's because the reality eventually sinks in that Japanese people are always going to treat you like a tourist no matter how long you're there or how well you speak the language.
Riding the face of a wave is one of the most amazing experiences you can have. Make those wave faces larger and more powerful and the experience is even more intense. Unlike other board sports or rock climbing, every wave experience is different. The water is constantly changing under you depending on the tides, wind, wave size+direction, ocean bottom, the list goes on.
Part of the pull is also that you simply cannot go surf whenever you want. You have to wait for waves. Every surfer is also an amateur meteorologist for this reason. Even when waves finally show up, you have to paddle out and wait more. Surfing is not a group sport, even though you may see many surfers in the same location. They are all jockeying for position to catch the next wave and get a hit of the drug they all crave.
The only times I've gotten hurt surfing was when idiots who who had no business being out in the conditions have hit me. So yeah, surfers can be jerks if you are new and have not proven you know what you're doing yet.
> The long-term expats (more that 5 years) were a pretty miserable bunch a well.
i've known a lot of ex-pats. the ones who go overseas for real jobs do just fine. so do the ones that start an actual business, i.e. one that they have to work at least a couple of hours every day, while overseas.
of course you'll be depressed and crazy if you do nothing but dick around for 5 years. you can't really do that anywhere, home or abroad. not even if you have a trust fund (maybe especially not if you have a trust fund).
> But nobody will hire me after six months away...
> Not true. Nobody will hire you if you're bad at what you do and have terrible interviewing skills.
Instead of "...and have terrible interviewing skills," it should really be "...or have terrible interviewing skills." Being good at what you do and having good interview skills are very different things. I can't do much of anything with someone literally looking over my shoulder, or while being put on the spot in front of a whiteboard, but I'm 3.5 years into my career as a developer and doing just fine on the job.
After 6 months of unemployment, companies do start giving you glances. It's rare to get much more than that. Taking 6 months off can also put a big dent in your net worth if you have fixed expenses.
Hasn't been my experience. I have recent 11-month and 7-month gaps and it hasn't been a problem. Additionally, I've switched companies a LOT during my career and I don't get asked about that very often. When I do, I just say "I kept getting offered better opportunities and more money" (100% true statement).
That usually ends that part of the conversation and we get onto something more relevant.
What do you mean by glances? You mean they are suspicious of your work quality? They dont want to hire you? Or they just give you a quick glance (because of the gap) and hire you anyways?
I'm sorry - was too vague. Meaning they look at you poorly for having had extended periods of unemployment. Unless it's a mass-hysteria time like 2008, they'll ask "Why can't this person find a job when unemployment is so low?" When you add this to age discrimination, it can be very tough.
Yes - and add Happy Customers to that. Whether it's internal or external, if you have a lot of people happy with your output, you won't be unemployed for too long. But you do have to keep in contact with them.
Yup you are right this is the best counter to these problems. If you have a good network of people you worked with in the industry they can vouch for you.
Absolutely. Who knows what else they'll lie on later. Status? Their ability to hit a deadline? What a customer said? I wouldn't be able to trust them again.
By your logic, if someone is doing their job satisfactorily, but they hid several major felonies (say armed robbery, and robbing from their prior employer) from you during the interview process, you wouldn't fire them?
I'd rather have someone have the courage to own up to their issues. If they don't in the interview process, they won't later. And I like to hire folks who have something to prove. But not folks who overtly lie.
> Absolutely. Who knows what else they'll lie on later. Status? Their ability to hit a deadline? What a customer said? I wouldn't be able to trust them again.
But in this case you're firing them for being honest and not keeping up the lie.
You'd be sending a signal to all your staff that they better keep lying.
I've never seen anyone confess to lying on their resume. I've seen several instances of people being caught. If someone came clean, that's one thing, but I've never seen it happen.
the incongruences in your resume won't matter, the number of vacation days you took compared to someone else won't matter, the number of hours you stayed late won't matter
solve the inefficiencies in the hiring process if it bothers you
May be is just me, but I can't possibly enjoy a vacation knowing I need to get back to look for a job. I much rather negotiate with my employer taking 3 to 6 months off without pay to go travel, or 3 to 6 months part time. Not an option for everyone, but if you're good and you're in a company that values you that's a very realistic option. I have a small kid and soon a mortgage, so what I will probably end up doing is negotiate part time working remotely for ~4 months so I can travel with my family.
When I'm on holidays I don't want to think about money. If you don't have a job to go back to then how long your cash reserves will last is something you think about every time you pull your wallet out. Especially if you've got a mortgage, I imagine having kids would make it even worse.
I am not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with my comment. It does seem like we're saying kind of the same thing. May be you meant to post a parent comment? :)
> You're going to get blasted by 100 degree heat, power-wafted by smells of the most amazing street food one minute and an open sewer the next, assaulted with music from a thousand bars, and crammed into a tiny room overlooking it all with a fan that doesn't work.
To each his/her own I guess but that doesn't sound appealing at all.
You can replace that sentence with similar ones about hiking the AP trail, riding your bike from Portland to San Diego or building the biggest slip n slide in your neighborhood and the authors argument holds though.
Most of the time I'm with the comedienne that said "Roughing it is when room service answers on the second ring". What you described sounds like hell. I would visit for the street food and then Uber it back to the .
Tangential, but I'm curious if people have any staycation ideas?
For peeps who aren't laid off but just want to chillax at home. Isn't traveling to some exotic location after all about switching your scenery, breaking out of your routine to give yourself permission for the unconscious mind free to wander, reflect and renew?
For instance, instead of going to Bangkok, for cuisine, the beach, nightlife and Buddhist temples, why not order something that you normally don't get at a Thai takeout menu and eat it at a place you normally wouldn't eat at, book a day-spa appointment at a local 5-star hotel instead of your local gym, go to a concert at a music venue you have been before (or other nightlife establishment you'd otherwise go to in SE Asia) and go to a local meditation/wellness center for sitting meditation or some other random place that induces meditation, reflection and all that "wanderlust" feeling evoked in traveling brochures. Try to schedule all of your appointments in a span of 3-4 days, give yourself permission to spend liberally as you'd at a normal vacation and resist the urges to do any of your usual routine you'd normally and take the following Monday or Friday off.
More specially, not necessarily as a Sunday routine to prepare and get in gear for the upcoming week; but what do you guys do after a major stress event, burn-out, in midst of existential crisis, post-breakup, the hangover cure morning after going on an alcoholic, drug-induced or emotionally-induced bender; is it as simple as getting a latte espresso fix at your Starbucks or does it have to be flying out to Bangkok for a 6-month recovery getaway?
Learn a fun instrument. buy a drumset, take some lessons from a good local teacher, have a blast. Once you get some basic skills, playing drums or electric bass with your favorite record is a huge amount of fun.
Or, learn to box or other fun sport. I've sparred with the author of the gawker article for many years every sunday.
> For instance, instead of going to Bangkok, for cuisine, the beach, nightlife and Buddhist temples, why not order something that you normally don't get at a Thai takeout menu and eat it at a place you normally wouldn't eat at
Another destination: India. If you are a female, then south India. You can stay at descent hotels in Bangalore or Chennai for $25/day. Another $20 per day for food. Watch how multinational IT companies treat their employees. Feel good about yourself and come back rejuvenated.
My destination recommendation would be Taiwan. Not quite as cheap as Thailand or India, but still very inexpensive. Eat some of the most amazing street food for a dollar per item; take super convenient, clean and cheap public transit; and hell, there's even cheap and good quality health care. Spend $20 to get your teeth cleaned and cavities fixed while you're there. You'll also meet some of the nicest people you'll ever know. It's like a cheaper, friendlier Japan.
I don't spend $20/day on food in Boston or Paris. Does it really cost that in India? Are my nationalist blinders on? Somehow I imagined that it would be much cheaper there.
Although the third world can be surprisingly cheap, it is often surprisingly expensive. Add that to the cost of flights (a $990 round-trip flight to a place equals $33 a day if you stay a month) and things begin to add up. And although billions of people in the third world do eat for cheap, the cheap/local food and what you want to eat may not match up. Combine that with different prices for foreigners and your lack of local knowledge about cheap, good places and you'll be paying a lot more than you'd think.
Only go to places that maintain an illusion of hygiene and prices will rise fast. For example, you might pay the equivalent of $3 more per meal for a place whose employees wear gloves. But in reality, the dirty-looking place next door is actually cleaner; they throw lemon juice on their boards after cutting meat. At the same time the nicer-looking place lets raw chicken touch everything while handling money with the same gloves they use for food.
You can easily spend a tenth of that and get good food in India if you eat at places where the average local person does. However, speaking as an Indian, most foreigners probably don't want to play that crapshoot, because there is always a chance you'll get sick due to lack of hygiene in food prep.
The hotels that cater to Westerners typically charge a lot more, and rates are more comparable to hotels in a cheap European city. Theoretically, with them you get a guarantee of food that is prepared with better safety standards. Whether this is practically true I have no idea.
Ironically, the cheapest way to live and eat in India would be to rent an apartment and get a trustworthy cook to come in and cook fresh food for you every day. Your daily bill will be way less than $20. However, setting this up requires a fair amount of legwork and contacts, which (understandably) someone who is looking for a vacation will not find attractive.
> Theoretically, with them you get a guarantee of food that is prepared with better safety standards. Whether this is practically true I have no idea.
Anecdotally, working in Maharashtra with Indians in an Indian company for a few months I was never ill. This was eating $1 "luxury" 8 course meals brought to me in the morning by a dabbawalla on his motorbike which - as with all my co-workers' food - stayed out in the searing heat for a few hours before lunch; I also eventually had him bring me dinner. I lived in the same company housing as everybody else. No idea how you'd find a dabbawalla though, I just took the stack of leaflets dropped at the office and tried them all until I found a good one.
Coming back for 2 weeks to Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Bangalore staying at a famous and very nice 5 star hotel chain and eating only in their restaurants, I caught the worst bout of my life. Bit wary of hotel kitchens since then.
I realize this is a fucking gross idea that amounts to poop pills, but there is probably a market for a market for digestive inoculations against local bacteria. Being able to build up a resistance to the local gut bacteria in advance - before you have to commit 100% to all of the local fauna - would be invaluable. Gut bacteria almost certainly play a large part in that balance.
They exist. Cost me $15 at a local chemist (in Australia) to get an immunization for common stomach bugs in Southeast Asia/India). It also isn't impossible to buy antibiotics before you go and to take them with you.
> Ironically, the cheapest way to live and eat in India would be to rent an apartment and get a trustworthy cook to come in and cook fresh food for you every day.
I met a seed-stage startup person who has this setup (somewhere in India) while traveling through a hostel in SF recently. Two meals cooked per day and cleaning. It sounded like a great setup and much more affordable than what that would cost in the US.
If you are travelling in Boston or Paris (e.g. not cooking your own meals) $20 is really a pretty restrictive budget. Scaling your expectations elsewhere similarly will mean you can probably also do it on a lot less in India...
You mean eating out? When I'm traveling on a budget, I tend to just buy bread and cheese in a grocery store, and use a knife (or whatever I can improvise) to make a meal on the go.
Although I agree with you it's also worth pointing out that very often the bread and cheese _is_ the local food. Even in places that aren't known for their cheese, if you head to a market you might find an inexpensive, unique and rather tasty cheese.
No, that's not healthy. I didn't say "eat nothing but bread and cheese". If someone recommends you try the bonbons in France, do you eat 3 meals a day of only bonbons for 30 days? When people suggest you try a food they usually aren't suggesting you try and make it your entire diet. I was instead recommending eating the local bread and cheese (of course in moderation.) For the places I've lived in this holds:
- NYC? Get a bagel with cream cheese, or a chopped cheese ($3).
- Idaho Falls? Go to Reed's Dairy and the bakery by the public library with free samples (can't remember the name.) Amazing stuff, and pretty cheap.
- Netherlands? Cheese is pretty cheap and good quality everywhere in the country. Bread is incredibly cheap, and even if you're literally surviving off change you find on the sidewalk you can afford it.
- New Hampshire? Go to Cabot Cheese. Best cheddar in the world.
Of course also remember to eat fruits and veggies, but those are always cheap. I just bought 3 large peppers and a kilo of apples for €1.50 here in the Netherlands.
There's nothing wrong with inexpensive food. You should try the bagel and schmear in nyc, and if you haven't had pork belly buns, tacos de lengua, or pupusas con curtido you should drop what you're doing and fix that. All of those are amazing. Pupusas, in particular, are pork and cheese in a pancake.
Cabot cheese is the best cheddar though? That's fighting words if you grew up near Wisconsin. If you're ever near there go to Bobby Nelson Cheese Shop. The aged cheddar is amazing and they make their sausage.
Have you tried Cabot's whole assortment? For a few weeks a year they lay out a truly ridiculous assortment of cheeses, all free to try. Their hyper-local stuff kicks the ass of the (still fantastic) Cabot you'll buy in the grocery store. What you guys get in Wisconsin trucked across the country is probably not even close to what I ate when I lived a stone's throw from Cabot.
Also, my tastes run seriously sharp. Does Bobby Nelson have anything really sharp? If so I've got to check it out.
Secretly, my favorite cheddar - which I'd bet trumps Bobby Nelson, even if Cabot's hidden stuff doesn't - is made by an older woman who wraps all her cheeses in black paper and sells them at various markets around the Quechee Gorge. But it's somewhat expensive and very hard to find. The last time I bought some I weighed it before and after eating to make sure nobody else touched it, it's that good.
If you want to get more global, try obscure Welsh cheddars. Amazing but expensive. They go very well in between scotches.
My contract job ended abruptly recently and I'm now in this very situation. I put $10k away for an emergency fund to carry me through until my next gig. No children (someday!), no mortage/debt, no obligations. It's great!
While I personally decided not to travel as I've done a lot of that in the past couple years, I have tried to just relax and enjoy the time off. I've been spending time learning new languages and frameworks, working out religiously, eating healthy, and just going with the flow of life. It's been great for my overall happiness.
There's a quote that comes to mind after reading this article: "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
You are not a good developer if you don't interview well, because by not interviewing well you just deprived that company of your skills.
Now that code is worse. And it's your fault. Had you done your job (interviewing) properly, that code would be better.
It's part of your job to show people how good you are.
It's sales, yes. You know your product (you) very well and know how it would help the customer. So make sure you get that message across. Go read some books about sales.
I disagree. There are people that I know that might not interview well, but have a huge list of people that are willing to vouch for them, because they do great work.
There's the opposite extreme - go to Shentzen. Visit the shops that sell electronics parts. Take some factory tours. Meet people who are doing advanced electronics work in the back of a small shop. Buy a phone whose kernel was compiled three days ago. Get a sense of how stuff is made.
“One week of work in Shenzhen is equal to one month at the Silicon Valley”.
Taking six months or a year off and then jumping back into the work force was a lot different in (early) 2008 than it is now.
Edit: Tim Ferriss said (in 2007) that employers will be impressed and amazed if you tell them that you took a year off to travel. In 2016, I don't think you would get a chance to tell them about it.
I did it in 2015, didn't have any trouble coming back and getting a job last October. Definitely a lot of people sounded amazed and impressed during interviews.
Well, I was only out of work eight months so I can't say for sure that people don't cut off at 'a year'. But based on the reactions I got, I'd be quite surprised if that was a standard practice. I can imagine it being more likely if being out of work was 'I lost my job and couldn't find another one' instead of 'I quit my job to do x instead for a while'.
Ugh, if you want to travel, then travel, but glorifying being a rich tourist in a poor country like it's some great calling that will cleanse your soul is obnoxious to me. I've traveled. I hate traveling. If I get laid off I'm going to read some books and practice painting.
I got laid off recently. I took two weeks vacation; one week to see some friends in a place I love, and one week just to myself, to get all the errands done that I never had time for when working at the demanding startup job. My mind wandered far in vacation land, and it felt great. Yet, I felt my conscience nagging me.
Because of that little mosquito-like feeling, I suspect that if I vacationed any longer, I wouldn't be doing my best in interviews now. To each their own, I suppose. The writer's long term suggestion really surprised me. Maybe I'm missing out on a feeling of true detachment and serenity? Hmmm.
> By 9 months [traveling], I'm pretty much ready to commit to a real job in a real office just so that I can start using my brain again.
I use my brain intensively while traveling. Lot's of brain functions are running at full throttle: cognition, language, problem solving, spacial, to name a few. I don't understand how can the OP feel that he's not using his brain while roaming the planet, specially developing countries where your day-to-day "templates" tend to apply the least.
I didn't really care for the tone of this piece and I think I'd have a lot harder time enjoying a vacation if I were worrying about the fact that I'd just been laid off.
Traveling is not for everyone, so it depends on your financial situation, but I do approve of the Africa recommendation. Absolutely loved southern Africa (South Africa up to Malawi).
I took this advice back in 2007 (I arrived at the conclusions he makes here on my own, one year earlier when the financial crisis was starting to emerge), but I didn't go to southeast Asia then, I went to Israel. And I met my future wife there for the first time. The year after that I got another job back in the States.
This is terrible advice. I've lived the digital nomad life the author describes and worked in the areas he names [1], and his recommendation of Bangkok's Khao San Rd as a nice place to relax is alarming enough to cast doubt on everything else he says.
Or perhaps he's just really into prostitutes.
Regardless, there's a kernel of good advice here: take the opportunity to do something crazy, something outside the norm when laid off. Write, build, draw, compete, whatever it is you love that your job prevented you from doing all the time. It'll be far more rewarding during and after your unemployment than drinking cheap beers in foreign cafes for six months.
Ah, but as I said in the article, Khao San Road is a terrible place to relax.
It is, however, a very in-your-face slice of Thailand, and it will put you quickly in contact with tons of backpackers who will steer you to the places you actually want to go in SE Asia. You can substitute Siam Square in 2016 if you prefer, as that feels about the same now as Khao San felt in 2008, apart from the glass hotel towers.
"Your trip will plan itself from there". But yeah, don't spend more than a night or so.
Yeah that stood out to me as well. Khao San road isn't the place you go to relax. However, I recommend going there during songkran at least once in your life.
He doesn't say go to Khao San to relax. He says go, grab a beer, chat to other travellers and make travel plans. Khao San is good for that. It's like the budget travel hub for SE Asia.
This is the 4th article that people have submitted from my blog in the last hour, evidently hoping to score some points off the success of the other thing I have on the front page and thus be able to... well... there must be some benefit I'm not aware of.
But sure. It's fun to watch, and I'm happy for the traffic. Here's a link to the original discussion for this article, which actually turns out to be one of the first things that put Hacker News on to my radar:
>This is the 4th article that people have submitted from my blog in the last hour
I wouldn't be at all surprised if there are some people who run ml or simpler algorithms to suggest posts- I at one time experimented with this kind of stuff on Reddit (ShittyCommentBot sadly got banned for some reason, and now appears to be deleted (thankfully))
So let's say you get laid off and you've got a year's worth of savings in the bank.
Spending the next six months burning half of that with nothing but memories to show for it is really terrible advice! That stash of money is a precious asset. It's the thing that will obviate the need for any special mental tricks to take job interviews without fear and negotiate salary and working conditions from a strong bargaining position.
I'm not saying you shouldn't spend six months in Thailand if that's what you want to do. But, unless you are already independently wealthy, only do it after you have arranged for some kind of income while you are there.
What's the point of having a year's worth of savings if it's all sacrosanct? It's there to be spent on rainy days. I agree that sitting in a coffee shop drinking and smoking the days away isn't a good idea, but by all means take some time to decompress and get your head right after a blow to the ego and psyche that getting laid off might represent.
3 months in, you've still got more runway than most job seekers and can still interview and negotiate from a neutral position. You don't have to go walking in tail between your legs and begging for a job to put food on the table.
If you do it in your thirties then the moments of self reflection and wealth of unfamiliar experiences will color the way you think for the rest of your life and career.
If you are OK with that train of thought, then you most likely won't bother going away in your 60s for any other reason (being old, not fit, family, kids… whatever). So, it all looks like an argument for people who don't want to ever get out of their comfort zone even though they can clearly afford it.
One day your "responsible money stash" will drop in value by 20% and you notice all of the material goods and experiences you COULD HAVE enjoyed now, except you were saving everything to enjoy them at some future time but in vain.
I've never done the 6 month thing, but there is a compromise possible.
> You have a pile of saving and a severance package.
Well, there's your first bad assumption. Oh, wait, later you address this:
> You can't possibly be serious. Are you saying that you've been working in IT for all these years and haven't put away a lousy ten grand??? Shame on you. Get a book on life skills and open a bank account fer cryin' out loud.
OK, thanks for the lecture. I'm still not the audience for your advice. How to alienate an audience!
What's with the judgement? A lot of people work in IT in places where the pay is good but not that good that many situations can lead to little or no savings. Having many dependants doesn't help either (kids, sick family members, elders you need to support and what not).
It reminds me of the bubble some of us live on thinking everyone has it good and that it's just a matter of being disciplined to save money.
I don't get this type of structure or fear of being "judged" when addressing articles. When you say this:
> What's with the judgement?
How does one feel judged by the writer of an article who doesn't know the reader.
It's a writing device addressing the reader as if they were physically there, but of course they are not. It feels like eminently sensible advice to "save money", I don't see how anyone can disagree with that, but of course there are a legion of specific circumstances that would prevent someone from being able to do so - none of which the writer can know, which consequently means they are not "judging" the reader.
How has it become a thing to feel that some sort of judgement over preferred patterns of behaviour is negative. If everything is written in just plain "of course all choices are good choices" then conversation/writing is inherently uninteresting. Of course, one does not have to agree with the point of view of the article. Ultimately, it's not as if any individual reader is going to be deeply emotionally damaged by the random "judgements" of a writer on the Internet surely?
Fair enough, I may very well be reading too much into it, but, just to explain myself: A comment strongly advising to do personal changes in someone's life, and lifestyle in particular, based on barely any information on that person's life, does sound judgmental to me. It's implying that he or she is doing something seriously wrong if he/she hasn't managed to save money and it's on the IT business (like if that were a guarantee of earning good money). The "seriously wrong" interpretation comes from the "strong advice emphasis". The comment is clearly making it sound like someone in IT who hasn't managed to save doesn't know what his doing with his finances and needs basic advice on lifestyle and saving choices.
> All of those things can lead to surprise costs, which serves to justify saving some coin
I think you're missing my point here. Of course it's a good idea to save, but not everyone's circumstances at any time allow to.
Also not everyone is working in the valley, or even the US for that matter. My German income would allow for a nice life in Thailand, but by no means indefinitely and not to a much higher standard than I have here.
Still, I'm going to be travelling a lot next year since I a) just did get laid off and b) get 80% of my last wage as unemployment bonus for a year.
Anyway, thanks Jason for this blog. I've recently turned thirty and feel like you have listed all the right reasons to just go for it.
Same in Holland. I make a very decent living as a freelancer to the point of feeling uncomfortable around many of my peers, many of whom are struggling just to find a non-menial job and/or make ends meet.
But it's primarily ease of finding work and a decent salary, not so much that I make tons of money.
But being just past thirty and hearing of other developers making bank in SV, Switzerland, or BigCorps, as well as hearing about the problems 'we' will most likely face in older age, I'm getting more serious about trying to find one of those really high paying jobs for a few years.
Plus, I can't help but wonder how long all this will last, especially web/mobile development.
1. laid off after three months into your first job after an expensive education, still have negative net worth with a lot of student debt to pay off
2. unexpected events (e.g. serious medical ongoing problems requiring expensive treatment) completely wiped out savings
3. working somewhere for years that doesn't pay enough money beyond what's required to subsist.
I've probably missed a bunch of other things.
I'm lucky enough to: be in a country where student debt repayments are tied to income and managed by the government and there's no interest beyond an index for inflation; have never been laid off; live in a country with a functional public health system where health insurance is affordable; have no dependants; have never needed to pay for ongoing serious medical treatment for myself or another person; have always been paid enough (even in non-IT jobs) such that it is possible to save a bit of money.
Bingo. Additionally, any "book on life skills" is going to emphasize:
1. Building an emergency fund
2. Funding retirement account
3. Paying down debt, highest rate first
_IF_ I've managed to "put away a lousy ten grand" it's gone into one of those things, not into a discretionary spending account. Further, even if I was to become so fortunate as to have $10K in discretionary savings (which, by the way, in the real world is an awful lot of money for working folks), I'm sure as shit not going to blow it on an international vacation when I'm surviving on my emergency fund without an income.
Take it from someone who has lost their job suddenly in a bad job market: The second that happens, time is your worst enemy. Do the long division, and mark a big red X on your calendar on the day you run out of money. Take any job you find before that day comes.
They gave me two months' severance, so that plus our emergency fund took a little of the heat off. I landed a job that, while not an immediate step up, has room for growth.
What was nice was the extra time I had after say a half day of hitting the job boards and applying, to take my daughter to the park or help out with errands. In the evenings, I was able to focus on getting my latest game released on the app stores, which launched right before I started the new job.
While I wouldn't want to repeat that scenario for a while, I'm grateful for it. It really opened up the possibilities of where I wanted to move next (career-wise and location-wise).