I feel like it's a bit like the stock market. You can't predict it, and timing the market may not be helpful. If you need a break - you need a break. If we imagine a graph, the damage from burnout will at some point exceed the damage of taking a break and not immediately finding a new job.
Might not be super helpful, but mental health quote I read recently was: if you're strong enough to leave, you're strong enough to find your way again afterwards.
Rebuilt my kitchen (manual work, accomplishments, yay!), visited some cool places, reconnected with old friends.
Didn’t think about work for _weeks_, at least.
Even though there’s nothing good in the horizon, yet, and, quite honestly, the money is drying up, I’m glad I took that break.
Would have been pretty miserable by now.
Burn out is not worth it.
The first months were amazing, I felt great even started coding again for fun. The last six months, even without working have almost undone all that refreshed feeling and given me a refreshed hatered of corporate America.
Don’t forget to just take a lot of regular vacation time, especially if your company is one of those “unlimited” shops. Until you get a nastygram from HR I would just take whatever time you want off and don’t worry about using too much of it. Typically as long as you don’t exceed about 2 or 3 weeks at a time you’re fine.
If your employer doesn’t give you at least 20 days plus holidays, shop around for employers.
If your employer has separate sick days, don’t forget to “randomly” use those in a realistic fashion.
I’m also generally in favor of a sabbatical. Don’t quit your job, asked for extended unpaid leave. I think they’d hold your position for you as long as your leave isn’t a huge amount of time, hiring a new employee takes a lot of money and time.
I think it depends on the stage of the startup, and how much of a key employee you are to it. Can they afford to have you away for that long? Do they have a PTO accrual policy? Have you been making use of it? Do you have at least 6 months of savings for bills / rent should you not have a job? Also consider the expenditures you'll have while taking the sabbatical with half the household income.
A strategy I used to do was that I took unpaid PTO when I wanted time off to let the PTO accrue, then took all of it at once when it maxed out (when that happened, I was on PTO for a month and half) after finishing a major project that took a year to complete. The PTO would also increase in value as I got raises over time.
The company wised up and stopped letting people do unpaid PTO if you had PTO to use because of me.
Even if it's unpaid leave, they still have to pay for your benefits while you're away I think.
Going on the face value of what your original post says, it sounds like a very risky thing to do. PMs are going to have a significantly more difficult time getting a job than an engineer I think.
Another option is look for another job, with a starting date set in the future.
Q. Are you in an at-will employment jurisdiction? Or do you have more rights?
Having survived through all the tech downturns from 2000 onward, I would say: If you think your job is reasonably secure, don't even think about leaving it right now. Slow down a bit, maybe coast some and see if your mental health improves, take a week here and a week there of sick time, but don't let go of the life boat!
If you think burnout is bad, try having to send out hundreds of resumes and get one or two responses. That sucks. It sucks doubly when you are doing it at 11AM on a Tuesday because you're unemployed. Don't voluntarily do this to yourself.
Are you sure you're not really just done with a stagnant business and ready for something fresh? Have you been considering the opportunity cost of staying at a single startup for 12 years? It's generally a 1-year vesting cliff for a reason...
As far as if it's a good time for a sabbatical in terms of the economy/job market, I have nothing sufficiently informed to contribute.
Maybe start with a two-three possibly four week vacation totally unplugged and see if that helps you.
However, you need to take a step back and look at the forest rather than the trees with respect to the demands being made of you (and that you say 'yes' to). These can be family demands, work demands etc... They build and build causing stress eventually leading to burnout and possibly depression. Also a question to ask yourself is "are these demands asked of me aligned with my values?". Many times we are living the lives of other people and not our own. So you experience an emotional dissonance.
You also have to let go of the things you cannot control. You can't control the economy, you can't even control your job or necessarily the fate of your startup itself. If you stay, your company could implode. Since you have two incomes and can make some sacrifices maybe things will be ok.
Also while you are on sabbatical or vacation or just in general you probably need to learn some stress management skills. I would take up mindfulness meditation and see what that brings you. Connect with the present. Explore your mind body connection. The people really into meditation say it works so may as well give it a serious try.
Clearly something has to change and that could be something a simple as your perspective.
Also I'm not really writing to you here, but rather as a note to myself.
My only advice is: structure the sabbatical in some way. Give yourself some OKRs. Doesn't matter what they are. If you don't you'll find yourself at the start of the last month wondering where the time went (and, in my case, extending another few months).
Second piece of advice: set up a job to return to before you take the break. Once you leave the company/organization, regardless of the terms, it's much more difficult to line up roles. Lining up a role is never a guarantee, of course, but it's better than waiting until the last month and trying to get rehired.
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34971129 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27238018
I'm thinking that since finances and such are pushing me to the end of my rope my only option is menial work for the time being. I think I am depressed. Even if I got another screen and passed I don't know if I'd be capable of the work any longer. It's all hideously demoralizing and it's as if there's no light at the end of the tunnel. I was at a reasonably large company for five years previous, I guess there's only so much that can do in a zero-sum situation like now.
But again, I'm not sure if you'd have worse luck getting any sort of interview for an IC position at least. If burnout at work is that much of a concern and you're confident it makes less sense to go with "keep the job." But I certainly would have regretted leaving (if I had any control over the matter), knowing the job search has now turned into its own job for me, a mentally exhausting unpaid job with no guarantee of positive prospects and an endless stream of employers that reject you every week for no identifiable reason.
Something I didn’t fully recognize when I was burnt out: burnout is a personal emotional issue. At that time I (mistakenly) considered emotions a bug and not a feature.
So whatever direction you decide to go on the sabbatical, I highly recommend endeavoring to discover some emotional support and growth.
Online talk therapy has helped me greatly, but mostly the book I wish I had back then is “The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living”
https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Trap-Struggling-Start-Livin...
If you are a straight white man now is absolutely a terrible time to go on a sabbatical. The DEI initiatives in tech are in full swing, and I'm personally familiar with many many cases where those applicants are summarily rejected without any consideration whatsoever.