
Ask HN: Have you taken 6 months to 1 year break to do self study? - sun123
There are so many nice lectures on AI, Machine learning etc., by Stanford, MIT etc., Have anyone took a break from work ,went home just to study these ? I am thinking about taking a break.How does it feel to be not earning that time ?
======
cletus
Good question. I've done this a couple of times. Self-study can be incredibly
useful. Being able to do it within the "distraction" of a full time job can
also be extremely rewarding.

I have a very conservative financial point of view in that if I got fired
tomorrow I would want to be fine for the next year without working.

This has in the past allowed me to work on my own stuff a couple of times
without much worry (although in Australia, lack of health insurance isn't the
issue it is in the US).

It's very easy to get distracted and not finish things (at least for me)
without the external pressure of someone pushing you to finish. YMMV.

As far as "not earning" goes, these periods of self-improvement are pretty
much directly responsible for me getting the great job I have now (at Google)
so I'd say it was a worthwhile investment.

Pick something you want to learn. Don't be directionless and say "self-
improvement" is your goal. As long as you can reasonably afford to do it.

~~~
ken
In the US if you quit your job you can buy the same health insurance plan you
had, for up to 18 months ("COBRA"). It's not going to be the cheapest thing in
the world, but if you're talking about taking a year off, you're probably not
on the verge of going broke. (It looks like it'd be far less than what I pay
for rent, for example.)

Another option could be to take a part-time job. A fair number of stores seem
to offer health insurance for any employee working 20 hours a week. Of course,
that may or may not be compatible with one's idea of a "break".

~~~
losvedir
When I quit my job last year to join a start-up the cost to continue my COBRA
benefits would have been $700/month (and I'm a healthy guy in my 20s).
Fortunately, I'm in MA with its private health insurance market, and I was
able to find a plan for $200/month. I still had to go without health insurance
at all for a month, though, to make myself become inelegible for COBRA and
therefore eligible for the other plan.

"Not the cheapest thing in the world" is quite an understatement.

~~~
ken
From what I'd found (also for a young single person), it would have been more
like $500/month, but even at $700, that's still cheaper than rent at any
apartment I've seen since I was a college student.

And remember the context: this is someone who wants to take a year off with
_no work at all_ , and so is voluntarily giving up tens of thousands of
dollars, in exchange for his own time. Yes, there are almost certainly cheaper
health insurance options, depending on how much effort you want to put into
the research, but COBRA is the upper bound, and takes practically no time to
sign up for, which, again, was the whole point of the exercise.

------
compay
I quit my job and worked only on open source projects for almost two years.
This is the article I wrote about my decision at the time:

[http://njclarke.com/posts/why-i-quit-my-job-to-work-on-
open-...](http://njclarke.com/posts/why-i-quit-my-job-to-work-on-open-
source.html)

I never wrote a follow up to it, I guess in part because I'm still not sure
exactly what I got out of it. I certainly improved a lot as a programmer - I'd
say I worked harder on programming than at any time in my life, and doing
almost all of my work in public held me to a higher standard than what I was
used to. I spoke at several conferences and managed to get over my fear of
public speaking, which was another goal of mine.

Most importantly, I also got to be a lot more present in my 1-year old son's
life for that time, which I will _never_ regret.

It did however take a big toll on my family financially, and I can't help
coming away with the feeling that there are ways I may have accomplished those
same goals without having gone to the extreme of sacrificing almost all
income. I'm almost 40 now and given the historic ageism in our profession I
worry a little about the kinds of jobs that will remain open to me over the
next 20 years.

Anyway I think that if you're at the point in your life where you have enough
money to satisfy the kind of lifestyle you want to live, but don't have the
responsibility of a spouse and children, then absolutely go for it.

------
jasonkester
I've taken several 6 month - 1 year breaks, but probably not for what you have
in mind when you wrote this question.

Still, I think it was very much worth it.

Initially, I would spend my entire years off travelling, pausing from time to
time at a spot with good rock climbing. Eventually, I started adding a bit of
freelance development work into the mix, and spent a few years turning that
into a consulting business that meant I didn't ever need to come home.

Nowadays, when I'm on the road, you'll often find me working on my own
products, which incidentally are a much nicer form of income than consulting.
A lot of the things I do during these periods might in fact fit your
description of self study, since there's a lot of non-programming knowledge
that you need to take a SaaS business from "pile of code" to "product that
pays your rent".

Overall though, I'd consider all my years of travel to be about learning. Self
study, studying the world. As I said above, I'd highly recommend finding a way
to do it.

------
scarmig
I've built up a solid fund over the past 4 months for this kind of self-study.
The plan is to quit my job around May 1st, and use the resulting free time to
spend 20 hours more a week on edification and 20 hours more on personal
projects.

I'm explicitly committing for six months, with the option to continue it six
more without even giving a thought to job-hunting.

The downside is that, at the end of it, I'll be down a bit more than 12 months
of savings than I would be otherwise. So compared to the "stick with my job"
plan, in my particular case I'd have 75% what I otherwise would. That's
assuming I don't change my consumption habits from current.

In terms of intellectual growth, I've stagnated at my current position. So the
skills built by taking this route are pure benefit. There's no trade off. The
alternative of getting a job where I'm both challenging myself and getting
paid (likely more than I am now) is more appealing, but getting a much more
solid grasp of the fundamentals seems to trump that (I've never taken any CS
classes).

I figure that the investment should pay itself off financially within 5 years,
as a pessimistic estimate.

As far as the actual feeling... that's an open question for me, too. The big
issues I see are making sure that I follow through with my intentions. No
wasting any time on HN/Reddit. I shouldn't be doing that now, even.

------
varelse
Did it 12 years ago after a tiny windfall from stock options...

During that time I launched one of the first distributed computing projects
and almost finished porting a console game to Java. At that point, I made the
decision that getting paid is good and went back to work.

More recently, I took a month off after working briefly at Google nearly
sapped my will to live. But in this case, I already had the next and better
gig lined up.

But I made the call that the first hour of every day from then on would be
devoted to reading tech books. In just a few months I went from crusty niche
engineer to working knowledge of Javascript, Python, Django, GWT, and HTML 5
and I'm already applying all of it. Ironically, I think if I had gone into
google with this in my head, I would have had far more opportunities made
available to me instead of the wretched allocation that was my only choice.

(Now if any googlers are about to chime in about the smoke blown up one's
patootie at orientation that it takes ~6 months to come up to speed there, I
was told point blank by my manager that rule only applies to NCGs and that I
was already falling short by not having come up to full speed in 2 to 3 weeks)

------
stungeye
In late 2003 I was laid off from my job as a hardware/firmware design
engineer. I spent the next two years away from work. During this time I spent
nearly a year on self-study, got married, and then went travelling with my
wife in Europe and south-east Asia. We worked on and off while travelling to
be able to afford to continue our adventures.

If you are a self-motivated learner I would highly recommend a study break.
The stuff I learnt during my break helped me secure my current job. I spent
most of my time learning about web development, both client-side and server-
side technologies. I now teach these technologies at a local college. I also
do contract web work on the side.

As others have mentioned, be sure to pick some solid learning outcomes. Map
out your study goals. Give yourself timeframes and be sure to reward yourself
when you meet these milestones.

I'd recommend either blogging about your experiences or putting together a
portfolio of work. This will come in handy when future employers ask about the
gap in your resume. Working on one or two open-source projects might also be
worth while.

Learning to live frugally and within your means is also key.

~~~
bwarp
> Learning to live frugally and within your means is also key.

Spot on! That is one of the most important things in my mind. I live very
frugally but I live very well!

------
espeed
I took much of last year off to focus on learning the technologies needed to
build the product for my startup -- graph databases was the big one, and
during the time I built Bulbs (<https://github.com/espeed/bulbs>), a Python
framework for graph databases like Neo4j Server.

Eliminating all distractions has been key -- no side jobs, no girlfriends, no
going out -- a period of complete focus.

Working out and exercising has been critical though for keeping my energy
level up and maintaining mental clarity.

------
FranklinChen
After I dropped out of a theoretical physics Ph.D. program a long time ago, I
decided to try to become a computer programmer. I had not taken a single
computer science course in college. I was lucky that my parents allowed me to
live at home for a year while I spent my entire time teaching myself
programming. A friend told me to learn Scheme, so I went through all of SICP
using my sister's Mac (I did not own a computer at the time). Then I started
to learn C and Unix, hacked a bit with that, learned C++, and applied for jobs
after doing some open source work so that I could have something to show. I
got hired as a software engineer a year after I started my self-study.

------
andrewcooke
i took 3 months off at the end of 2010 because my partner was on sabattical in
the states and i wanted to travel with her (and can't work their due to visa
issues). it was great not working (or more exactly, being able to choose what
i did), but i don't think i learnt much more than i would have in, say, 6-9
months of doing stuff on an evening and at weekends. the biggest win was that
it brought us closer together (another bonus, more particular to my case, was
that living in the usa gave me access to new egg, amazon and adlibris, so i
read a pile and built a new machine - mini-itx based - that came back as hand
luggage) .

financially i didn't have any worries - i had a pile of savings, a job to
return to, and my partner earns enough for us to survive on anyway. one thing
i would suggest is talking to your employer about it - while they may be
unhappy to have you take time off, it is also likely in their interest to take
you back afterwards (assuming you're a decent programmer, which i would guess
is the case if you care about learning) (although a year ago the economy was
heading down, so it made more sense to give me a break then).

------
Loic
> How does it feel to be not earning that time ?

You are earning during this study time, you are earning through a long term
investment in yourself.

------
chriseidhof
It would probably helpful to have a very clear goal with what you want to
accomplish. And some way to force yourself to actually sit down and put in the
hours. For me, it would be too tempting to have coffee dates all the time, or
refresh hacker news every minute.

------
dekz
Every morning (or almost every morning) I get up at 5am for self study. Then
finish up and go to work from 8-5. I find myself less motivated to work during
the night after work. I've still been able to put in a few hours every other
day. There has been 3 times where I snuck in some study during my lunch hour
but I find that harder to 'get into'.

I have no kids so that might be different from your situation.

You can perform self study while still working full time hours, you just need
to be motivated and find the time out of your day. You need to focus on the
long term goal, which shouldn't simply be 'Finish AI lectures' but something
potentially life altering, 'Finish AI lectures to better my chance at a job
for Y/to create Z'.

------
santa_boy
I think it worth every penny lost. But, I would suggest to do enough
groundwork on what you would like to achieve in that period.

No financial earning periods can be quite challenging but if you have a job,
like I had, that does not allow any time to explore yourself, I think it is
worth taking time off if you are really serious and confident about doing
something different. Also, bear in mind that your efforts could (will) take
substantially longer to bear fruit. So, it is really important to set your
expectations appropriately before taking the step forward.

As far as I can see, all successful stories are basically breaks that involved
a lot of hard-work, luck and which finally materialized!

Just my 2p.

------
corkill
Not earning for 6 months, a year or more isn't a big deal. Just plan for it
financially ahead of time and leave a nice buffer so you are comfortable.

If your going to come out with a new skill set or even just a better outlook
on life it's worth it IMO.

------
bwarp
In the UK we have The Open University (which is open for international study
too).

You can get a real degree in your spare time without a massive spend, working
or not.

I'm doing a mathematics degree at the moment, whilst employed. No
holiday/vacation required!

~~~
seanos
In the UK, if you work for a company with 250 or more employees, you are also
entitled to request time off work to train (including degree study):
[http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/Timeoffandh...](http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/Timeoffandholidays/DG_183635)

------
siavosh
How do future employers look at this time of unemployment?

~~~
rhnoble
Is that still a thing? It's not like you'll be applying to law firms. I've
found making yourself less available only makes your demand higher.

~~~
spacemanaki
It is absolutely still a thing. Since the current top comment (from cletus)
mentions working at Google I'll relate a story from when I interviewed there.
From what I understand, I made it pretty far in the process (to the "executive
committee review") and that's when they asked me to explain a gap in my
resume. They pressed me for a detailed breakdown of what I did during the gap
and the reasons behind it, and said that they take it seriously. This was
after 8 technical interviews and after I'd passed their hiring committee. I
didn't get the job, although I suspect that this was not the reason. I'm sure
experience varies here, and this would likely be less of an issue at a startup
or other small company where a record of getting shit done is more important,
but it's worth noting.

I would recommend that if you take time off for whatever reason, prepare for
questions like these and be ready to provide a succinct and compelling
explanation at the drop of a hat, because being blindsided isn't fun.

~~~
mtrn
> It is absolutely still a thing.

A bit of a pity.

------
eneveu
_Just posted this on Google Plus. Thought I should re-post it here too._

I often think about doing exactly this. There is so much I want to learn:

\- many awesome free online courses ( <http://www.crypto-class.org> ,
<http://www.ai-class.com> , <http://www.ml-class.org> ,
<http://www.modelthinker-class.org> , ... )

\- dozens of non-fiction books sitting on my shelf I have yet to read (on
computer science, programming, design, UX, software project management, system
administration, computer security, business, time management...)

\- thousands of articles and blog posts, bookmarked in my "to-read-later"
folder

I've sometimes been asked if I'd want to go back to school to do a master that
would complement my engineering diploma (e.g. MBA). But I think I could learn
so much more by simply taking a year off and doing self-directed learning,
using all these resources... Of course, I've set aside some learning time
outside of work, but it feels like I'll never catch up.

Reminds me of this great article:
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/04/21/135508305/the-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/04/21/135508305/the-
sad-beautiful-fact-that-were-all-going-to-miss-almost-everything)

~~~
adaptives
I think self directed learning is far better than going back to school. You
can pic and choose and curate the exact learning experiences you want.

Don't mean to self promote, but you are welcome to be part of the free peer
learning community on <http://diycomputerscience.com/> You might actually like
the 'Elements of Computing Systems' course a lot.

------
toonketels
Nice to see others who rather take some time to study instead of only working.

I studied business and landed a job as a Project Manager. Meeting developers,
I felt the urge to learn to code and become a programmer. While doing Project
Management work at day time, I used my evenings to practice and learn coding.
I loved working with developers because I could learn from them.

But there is only so much you can do working full time, taking care of your
other stuff in life and find as much time to learn and practice coding. I
thing it's easier if you can focus full time on something instead of the
learning being too much spread out.

So I talked to my boss and asked to work 4 days a week and have three days for
learning and coding (with less salary of course). I did this for five months
and my skills really improved.

After five months, it was clear for me I was ready to earn money from
developing. So I stepped down as a Project Manager, had to give in some more
salary and started as a programmer (junior).

It was one of the best decisions in my life.

For me, it's not relevant for the moment to stop working and study, because I
learn so much working as a dev. But I can imagine myself stop working for a
couple of months if I reach a plateau and want to focus and learn in a
specific field.

It is a lot of fun to be able to focus on something and improve fast. So if
you can afford it and you want it, I think you should do it. It's not only a
lot of fun, but you probably be worth more on the job market.

------
jchrisa
Totally worth it. Write open source code, it just might turn out to be the
foundation of a career.

~~~
subpixel
Just to reiterate what others have said: work on something concrete.
Opensource projects, your own side project, a subject-specific blog, etc.

A year of study is worth significantly less if the results are only in your
head.

Also - working on something real can give you measurable milestones to work
toward completing. (The fact is, the longer time you set aside, the more time
you are in danger of wasting.)

------
SatvikBeri
Honestly, I've found that getting a job in a field that I'm interested in is a
much faster way to learn. You have the advantage of working with people
already in the field, an existing codebase and set of data to tap into, and
clear projects with deadlines and impact to the bottom line.

Example: Machine Learning. I learned much more in a few weeks at a job at a
Machine Learning company than I ever did trying working through _Elements of
Statistical Learning_ on my own.

~~~
sun123
How do you get into Machine Learning company in the first place? You need
certain basics to get into one.

~~~
SatvikBeri
If you can prove that you're smart and capable of contributing to the bottom
line, it's very possible to get hired with the assumption that you'll quickly
pick up anything you need to know.

Eg, at a previous job I'd saved the company $3MM/year using a technology I'd
never really worked with before. With that kind of track record this company
was happy to hire me even if I didn't have direct ML experience.

------
adaptives
I have worked independently for over a decade., so I often factor in time for
study in my regular work schedule, but at times I have also taken longer
breaks.

One I too about a year off on a startup idea I had. It did not work out, but I
learned some important lessons.

I have also taken 3 months off to be part of a startup accelerator as a
fellow. I did not have any product, but just spend my time working on a few
experiments / prototypes and generally helping other teams wherever I could.

The ideas experimented did become my startup, which I have been working on
since the past year or so. It is actually related to peer based learning
(<http://diycomputerscience.com/>), so I am hoping that learning will be an
integral part of working for me.

------
namidark
I don't think you'd need to quit or take off for a year, many people have full
time jobs and go to school at the same time. You should be able to take these
classes at your leisure while maintaining a paycheck. Or you can just quit and
focus fully on this for a year.

------
cottonseed
I did something like this to study math after a startup exit (so money wasn't
an issue), around 2005, well before the recent spate of free online courses. I
did a combination of self-study (reading books), informally sitting in on
classes in the local university, and some small study groups I organized. That
was all well and good, but it eventually became clear I'd make much faster
progress in a more formal setting, so I went back to school. Formal deadlines
are a powerful motivator. Also, reading math is hard and conversations with
experts can often speed along understanding. Five years later, I'm in my 3rd
year of grad school in a pure math program.

------
danneu
I just graduated from university and have been relishing in the sudden
freetime. I can easily spend 8-10 hours per day just consuming and practicing
new technology, or just reading unrelated literature that I had little time
for. I've been more active in my sideprojects than ever before in my life.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the wherewithal that unversity might not be for
me until I was 51% done with my degree. Sometimes I fantasize about taking the
past four years of debt and expenses, going back in time, and using all that
money to live in Bangkok for a fraction of the rent and work on my own
craft/projects for a few years.

------
jordhy
I consider self-study to be a key part of entrepreneurship. In particular,
extended self-study has worked very well for me whenever I've wanted to change
careers, geographies or industries. Indeed a major professional change
justifies this effort.

However, given the current pace of technology, it might be a better idea to
develop a discipline for continuous learning and try to fit your
educational/updating needs into a conventional agenda.

As far as "not earning" goes, granted, it sucks, but consider the option of
doing this while freelancing, writing a book or starting a new company...
there are many, many ways to skin a cat.

------
EzGraphs
Took the Stanford Database class online (while working) at the end of last
year. It was one of the best technical education experiences I have ever had.
That said...

Self study does not include credentials and evidence of specific work that
traditional education does. If your future work is largely freelancing, this
is probably irrelevant. If you are targeting work in the corporate world HR
still looks for gaps in employment.

------
j45
Forget a few months, I took a few years.

Of course survival is neccesary during that time. You could do any of the
following:

1) Move home 2) Consult with a higher rate and work very part time (5-10 hours
a week tops) 3) Move somewhere cheap with your savings 4) Consider going back
to school or see if there's a program you can use for learning / training that
will help.

I took a combination of #1 and #2, worked great.

------
TomaszZielinski
In my opinion 1 year break is far too long. I find that 2 weeks of intensive
self education every now and then is perfectly enough to stay up to date with
the industry.

Example: Last week I played with backbone.js & Co., this week I'm playing with
the cutting edge stuff from HTML5. And next week I'll probably get another job
for which I'll be able to use my new knowledge.

~~~
gfodor
Learning the basics of new frameworks/libraries can be done in two weeks.
Learning an entirely new field of study or research can be justified in terms
of many months.

~~~
TomaszZielinski
I disagree - unless you are talking about becoming an expert. But I prefer to
become an expert in the course of using things in the real world.

This applies to the theoretical knowledge as well - you can easily learn new
data structures or algorithms in two weeks. Then you can master them when you
have a problem that requires you to use them.

------
haraball
I'm going to have a break doing exactly this while trying to make something
out of my ideas starting in July, and I'm aiming for six months before I'll
see if I need a job or have something working on my own.

So if anyone in Frankfurt wants to hang out or have some tips on available
coworker offices feel free to send me an email.

------
codex
Such a break would be more effective with structure. Everybody can benefit
from a coach. Even those who are the best in the world (Tiger Woods, Michael
Jordan) use coaching. Humans have a natural lazy instinct and a coach can make
your efforts more effective than if you were left to your own devices.

------
jason53
I am engaged in a one-year course of self-study. My focus is on quantitative,
numerical subjects. So far I have not narrowed it any further. I was raised in
an atmosphere of "well-rounded generalism." I would welcome any suggestions on
how to overcome a congenital inability to specialize.

------
thibaut_barrere
Not that long but I did take 3 months vacations, or 2 weeks to learn
something.

It feels absolutely great to be able to just learn for the sake of learning
(but that learning can be: build a product etc too).

Now you have to secure your finances: know your burn rate, define a date in
advance to start looking for work etc.

------
Ixiaus
I have - I left a a very stable job and pursued self-study for 9 months. I
still pursue it, but not in a rigorous fashion as I had for those 9 months;
once my startup levels out a bit more and I can hire more people to do my job,
I will probably start going after more self-study.

------
kingkilr
Yes. I dropped out of high school during my sophomore year, I spent the next
18 months of so teaching myself to program, economics, and a bunch of other
stuff. It wasn't taking a break from work, but I figure it's relevant.

------
ivanjovanovic
I'm currently doing self education beside my full time job. Did not take time
off for self study, but I'd like to if I get chance.

------
joelmaat
I tried to, given the opportunity. I thought it time to level up yet again.

------
berntb
A bit of hard earned experience: Check for health problems. If you hate what
you're doing, you might just be sick.

That said, it is really good to think about what you _really_ want to do every
few years.

------
wavephorm
You mean periods of time where you earn little to no money, and learn new
skills constantly? That's a startup.

------
mkramlich
You can self-study your entire life, whenever you make the time for it. I do.

