On F-You Money and Sabbaticals
I've been working in software engineering for 5+ years now while keeping my expenses close to the levels I had as a graduate student. One benefit of maintaining this considerable gap between income and spending (and not picking up any debts) is that I now have what I would consider "F-You Money."
Different people have different interpretations for what that means, but for me it means having liquid funds to support several months worth of expenses, and slightly less-liquid funds to support several years of expenses.
The great thing about having "F-You Money" is that you can use it! And I recently did!
My last job was at a mega-corp maintaining systems that probably weren't good for humanity, working with teammates I didn't share many values with. I stuck it out for a few months to see if it would get better, but once it was clear that it wasn't for me, I exercised the "F-you" option and left that job with nothing lined up next.
Rather than scramble to find my next job, I've decided to take a half year sabbatical before looking for whatever is next.
It has been great so far! Some of the things I've done:
- Read 20+ books, including fiction, non-fiction, and a couple heavy technical texts
- Developed a consistent meditation practice
- Helped my partner out during their medical leave
- Gone to see weird movies at local indie theaters
- Hung out at cafes in the middle of the day
- Went on many long walks wandering through the city
- Improved all my lifts
All while writing more code than I typically would have when I was employed full-time! Turns out that working on software projects to meet my own needs and to solve the problems of people close to me is a lot more motivating than aiming to hit some quarterly goals cooked up in the spreadsheets of some org directors.
Having the temporal and mental space to relax and reflect has been wonderful! Being able to comfortably take 6+ months off of work is certainly a privilege that isn't available to everyone, but it doesn't seem to be a common occurrence even for those who clearly have the means to do so.
2025 is supposedly a pretty rough job market in tech, but we'll see how things go once I start looking in earnest. At least this time I have a better sense of what I'm looking for in my next job.