

The Five Year Itch - swombat
http://jacquesmattheij.com/the-five-year-itch

======
quaffapint
This is only based on how I read the article, and may not be the case at all,
but it seems the OP comes across as rather selfish.

He gets bored and so he makes his wife and kids uproot their lives and go
somewhere else. I've been in the same job and place for 15 years because it's
steady work and place for the wife and kids. I often get bored with it, but
deal with it - do different projects on the side, et al.

Again, just my take on it. For all I know the family enjoys it. Too often I
read articles on guys with families that are more worried about themselves
than their families and it just bugs me.

~~~
jacquesm
Oh yes, selfish, that's me to a 'T' ;)

Of course it would never enter into my head to discuss these plans ahead of
times with those involved and people are being dragged screaming and kicking
to the furthest corners of the earth. And I pick the spot, every time.

Really, you couldn't be more wrong, if you want we can take this up via email
(I've tried to keep my family members and private life out of my blog / public
life as much as possible but I can see that in this case that isn't really
doable without potentially giving the wrong impression).

The spot was picked by my s.o. in two cases and by me in the others, but we
all agreed on roughly where we'd move ahead of time, in so far as agreement
from small children counts they had a voice too, but if there would have been
strong disagreement we'd definitely not have done any of this. For sure we
enjoyed it and looking back there are definitely no regrets.

~~~
switch007
"if you want we can take this up via email" sounded so much like "do you want
to take this outside" ;-)

~~~
joshbert
That's exactly what I thought. "Say that to my face, not online and see what
happens."

~~~
jacquesm
It's a good day for getting things interpreted in the worst possible way. It
is more because I don't want to spill the details of my family in an open
access forum, not because I want to start a fight. Blogging about generalities
is one thing, this is getting pretty specific.

~~~
switch007
I meant it more in the sense that's it's the online version of "taking it
outside" and it sounded funny :p I wasn't meaning to highlight unintended
interpretations.

------
OldSchool
Hmmm, I can understand getting bored and switching jobs as a way to stay
stimulated, or to take on the "opportunity of a lifetime" that comes along
every so often, but when there are other innocents whose lives are interrupted
as a result, my empathy ends there.

Once we had children, before any were in school, my wife and I picked a place
where we could reasonably expect to stay until they were finished with school,
and we're still here.

Their lives are more important than mine (my amusement ranks far below), and
in my opinion, a stable childhood provides the foundation to take some risk as
an adult.

~~~
edanm
My parents moved us to the US when I was younger, then to England, and finally
back to Israel.

There are pros and cons to moving around. Experiencing other cultures,
learning new languages, and so on are all things I'm very glad happened. On
the flipside, having less permanent friends, starting to study in another
language when you're 13, and so on, are fairly hard.

I don't think I'm able to honestly bet on which of these is better for
children.

~~~
dllthomas
The "less permanent friends" issue is probably _lessened_ \- though absolutely
not _eliminated_ \- by the modern communications environment.

------
kfk
During the past 6-7 years I lived in: Spain (10 months), China (4 months),
Italy (1 year), Denmark (1.5 years), Germany (2 years) and now I am in
Belgium.

Lately I was considering settling down a bit. However, I am pretty sure if
somebody comes offering me a job in Patagonia, Chile or similar I would live
tomorrow. As the OP says, it weights more on others than you, you get used to
it at some point. The only real problem is rebooting your social life every
time, especially if you end up in a small city: if you are introvert, you need
to get a hell out of your comfort zone to make this work.

Anyway, my question to the OP: how did you do this financially? I mean, were
you always able to get into a good position and keep building up savings? If
so, was this due to your technical skills, networking or other? I am asking
because in my line of work (finance-controlling) having manual work in the CV
would be quite detrimental.

~~~
jacquesm
The consultancy / software licenses / services / whatever I'm doing thingy has
so far brought more than enough to finance all this and several 10's of
manyears of employee salaries to boot. I could have saved a lot by staying in
one place and doing just one thing though, that is definitely something to
consider. Being born at the right time (just in time to pick up the PC
revolution) didn't hurt either, nor does having marketable skills and a pretty
disciplined attitude towards hard work and getting your hands dirty.

I often joke that I'm on a decade long vacation and it really feels like that
some days but there is plenty of hard work in between.

------
martin-adams
The best corporate presentation I saw at my time at IBM was a speaker with a
bio on the first slide which highlighted his career history. While I can't
remember the specifics, it pretty much looked something like this:

1995 - 2000: Role at company X

2000 - 2005: Role at company Y

2005 - present: Role at IBM

We were half way through 2009.

~~~
Tyrant505
Probably wouldn't be a bad time to leave IBM back then.

------
ewams
That's funny, I consider myself a nomad and have almost your introduction
word-for-word as my bio on my website. Your article portrays the moving
activities well and a few things I haven't tried (the new house stuff). I am
surprised to find this is you considering some of the physical projects you
have written about (windmill, gas station, RV, etc).

The stuff accumulation is a big one for me too. Before I started this
lifestyle definitely was doing all I could to save things and then I just
realized that most of it I never touch so I took the nostalgia things, took
pictures, and then donated to charity. That way my stuff's "soul" can give
happy memories to others.

------
haar
If I were to have one question to ask the author based on that blog, it would
be 'What job/career does his other half have?'.

I have pretty much free-roam of where I am, considering I work remotely and
have flexibility over which hours I work due to clients in numerous time
zones, however my girlfriend is a micro-biologist which makes where she can
work rather limited to Universities and other research locations.

~~~
jacquesm
> What job/career does his other half have?

During all this we worked together running the same business in various
stages/products for 15 years. She's currently a successful glass works artist:
[http://www.worldinglass.nl/Site/Afbeeldingen/Afbeeldingen.ht...](http://www.worldinglass.nl/Site/Afbeeldingen/Afbeeldingen.html)

------
w0rd-driven
Your shelf-life so to speak at a potential opportunity is more averaged around
3.5-4 years. I'm not sure if you're open about this to employers but it made
me think of a somewhat typical question of "Where do you see yourself in 5
years?" "Anywhere but here!" is likely _not_ the response they're looking for
even though it would be entirely accurate.

Personally, I don't really care. Our skillset and drive doesn't keep us in
long, tenured positions. Having an upward ceiling of 5 years at _any company_
is truly impressive. Most developers I know cap themselves at 1 or possibly 2
years.

I wanted to bring this up primarily to highlight that if an employer of
software developers is looking to retain talent for > 5 years they have an
extremely hard road ahead of them. The number of Googlers (a random but high
metric) that are still there after 5 years is probably much less than most of
us think. I'm sure Google has the data to prove or disprove the theory but I'm
not sure it's accessible to the public. That's not to say it can't be done but
it shouldn't be the same push as other industries seem to require. Those
industries tend to have skills that are highly specialized where that much
knowledge gathered over time is not only prized but highly required. Our
"knowledge cap" seems to reset quite often in comparison and our base
understanding of "computer sciency things" tends to transcend the technology
we're using those things on.

------
Luyt
_" After five years in one place it is amazing how much stuff gets
collected."_

Indeed! And it's hard to stay organized. Paul Graham wrote an essay on this:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html),
which I found worthwile to translate into Dutch:
[http://www.michielovertoom.com/articles/paul-graham-
spullen/](http://www.michielovertoom.com/articles/paul-graham-spullen/)

~~~
Kurtz79
It's probably my favorite of pg's essays, no wonder has been translated in
several languages.

~~~
Luyt
I also found 'The Blub Paradox' (part of Beating the Averages) eye-opening.
[http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html)

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josh_fyi
I know the feeling, and yes, it itches!

Every red-blooded engineer wants to switch technologies and find new
challenges every few years.

So, a few months ago, we launched a site to scratch the itch for ourselves and
others who are experiencing it.

Guess what domain name we chose? It's
[http://FiveYearItch.com](http://FiveYearItch.com)

Perfect!

I hope it helps!

------
AndrewKemendo
Currently there are about 1 million people who do this on about as regular a
basis and they are the members of the US Military. So it's not as rare as it
would seem. It is a little different, but in reality not so different as to
not be applicable.

For most of us, it is exactly what we want to do - we like to see new places
and get new experiences and it often is great. The toll is also pretty tough
for our families and there are plenty of stories and studies about those
impacts. For those who like it and it works, great, but often even if kids say
they like it, there are things that they don't talk about that impacts them
regardless.

------
dexen
I find this post inspiring. For years I've been struggling with un-named itch,
now you put forth exactly what makes me tick. Will follow your steps. Thanks
for sharing, Jacques :-)

------
yardie
We are currently at the looking to move phase having come to the agreement
that, yes, we are moving, and have informed our friends and family. What we
haven't done is figured out where to go from here. Traveling seems to come up
a lot in our family discussion, so we've agreed to do that for 6mo-1.5years.
But after that it is the logistics of what to bring, what sell, what to store,
and where to keep it.

We've begun to give/sell our things, throw out things when they're worn out or
broken (we have a dining table with no chairs). Scan and shred the inordinate
amount of paperwork a family accumulates over a decade.

Also at the end of our travels we're not sure where we want to be. Wife is EU
passport holder and I am a US passport holder so either side of the pond won't
be a problem as far as visas are concerned. But, those places are not where we
want to live, yet. Places we're interested in moving to are AUS, NZ, and SA
(costa rica, and chile for my wife). But we're not really sure we'd ever want
to live there in the long term, either.

I'm curious if there is a short term visa that allows you to "sample" a
country before making a big commitment. Most of the ones I've found appear to
be for students under 30.

~~~
jacquesm
Tourist visa are good for 90 days usually, you can ask for extensions once you
get close to the end of your 90 days. Some countries (Germany for instance)
have special permits during which you can figure out what you want to do,
provided you are self supporting in the interim. Once you have a permit like
that for one EU country you can go to any other (though formally you have a
deal with the Germans).

~~~
yardie
Tourist visas wouldn't be adequate in our case. For example, I had some
friends move to Barcelona, rent an apartment, find jobs, open a bank account
and travel every weekend to different regions in Spain. Then after 2 years
they decided to move to Melbourne on a holiday work visa for 2 years. Then
after that they moved to the south of France.

In each case they had a work permit (one is a French national, so France
doesn't count) based on some work holiday scheme. But a few of these have age
or education limits.

Our next adventure is to buy a boat and circumnavigate. First we have to buy a
boat, then we have to equip it to cross oceans.

BTW, Berlin does appeal to me, and I recently discovered my wife speaks a
little German. What is it with the french not wanting to speak any other
language?

~~~
jacquesm
For work you'd indeed need a bit more than a tourist visum but if you just
want to get a feel of a place to see if you'd like to grow some more roots
then it may work if your income stream does not require invoicing others. I
was on a work visum in Canada employed by a company that I held the shares in,
applied for permanent resident status and never even got the papers before we
decided to move again.

The French speak plenty of languages, especially the younger generation. You
may have to prod them a bit and if you speak a little bit of French that may
help to grease the wheels.

------
narag
Have you ever thought of buying a boat to live?

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, but my s.o. wouldn't have it (it can get pretty cold in winter on a
boat). The closest I've come to this is building a small RV (and I'm busy
right now building an even smaller one).

------
shortlived
Where there any challenges for your kids or any advice you can give to other
families trying this? My initial feeling is that uprooting kids is not a good
thing, but it clearly works for your family.

~~~
jacquesm
Buy in is key, if you don't all agree on where to go in principle and you
can't feel all of you that the new place is one where you could be happy then
simply don't do it. The world is large enough and there are plenty of options.
Our origins were a factor in the early moves (Poland, Netherlands), the way
the business developed in the later ones (Canada). The final move back to NL
was because we liked the school system and some other infrastructure here
better than the one where we were at the time.

But we'd have moved _somewhere_ regardless of origins, business, schools or
infrastructure and even today I'm quite sure this isn't the end of the story
just yet.

------
mjolk
Working in the same 100km radius is hardly "nomadic." The only real move the
author did was to Canada, before relatively quickly moving back home.

~~~
jacquesm
Amsterdam, Poznan -> 1065 km, Amsterdam, Toronto -> 5500 km, Toronto, St.
Josephs Island -> 650 Km, St. Josephs Island, Exloerveen -> 6000 km,
Groningen, Landgraaf -> 300 km, Groningen, present -> another 300 km.

It's a bit more than a 100 km radius, I can assure you and whether or not you
think 5 years is quick is up to you.

~~~
pedalpete
Here's mine (without distances)

Toronto->LA->Toronto->St.Catharines->Ottawa->Toronto->Whistler->New
Jersey->Whistler->Frisco(Colorado)->Vancouver->Whistler->LA->Whistler->Santiago->Sydney(AU)

~~~
jacquesm
Whistler is pretty awesome, I can see why that one keeps coming back :)

If you find yourself in or near NL let me know please.

