Career: Considering a 3–6 Month Sabbatical – Burnt Out and Exhausted from Team Politics

Posted by Interesting-Grade-70@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 62 comments

Hey all,

I’m a Staff Software Engineer at a 15k+ employee company in the Bay Area. I’ve been here for several years (started as a SWE2) and generally enjoyed the work — but the past few months have taken a toll. My current team started off well, but it’s become increasingly toxic. It’s a top-heavy team with a “dog-eat-dog” dynamic, and that kind of constant posturing has honestly drained any motivation or joy I used to have for building products.

There’s a strong chance I’ll be laid off in July, and frankly, I’m okay with that. I’ve been holding on mostly because I have stock vesting on July 1st. I have decent savings and I’m considering taking a 3–6 month sabbatical — partly to decompress, and partly to reset and figure out what I want next.

I’m curious to hear from others who’ve done something similar: • How did taking a sabbatical affect your job search? • Did the employment gap create any issues? • If you left voluntarily, how did you position that in interviews? • Anything you wish you’d done differently?

For context, I’ve been working on LLM and RAG-based AI applications recently, and I’d like to continue in that direction after the break. My goal is to be in a new role by early 2026 or earlier, ideally somewhere smaller and more mission-driven.

Would love any thoughts or experiences — thanks!

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Designer_Holiday3284@reddit

Your life is your life. And we only live once. Follow your heart and mind, man! Everyone here will die.

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NotMyself@reddit

I did this about a year ago. I was fortunate enough to have the funds to take 5 months off and just play my guitar and walk my dogs.

The effects on my mental health were immense. I feel like a different person.

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mrsweavers@reddit

Did you plan for 5 months funds or would you have more money saved up if needed? If I’d use up all my cash I could be unemployed for 12 months, but I don’t want to do this for longer than 3 months (I think). I’m in much need of a break but I’m stressed out of using my savings for this.

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brown_man_bob@reddit

It really speaks volumes that the vast majority on this sub are unhappy. We all got into coding because it was fun and interesting. What happened to us?

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Flaky_Pass_4293@reddit

or is it this post / subreddit may attract negativity.

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brown_man_bob@reddit

I think that’s part of it, but I notice similar attitudes in my real life as well.

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Heavy_Discussion3518@reddit

Preach it, I'm living this same dream, same 5-month plan, with a wife and kids in addition to the dog. Insane how much impact this has had on my mental health, and frankly my soul.

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justUseAnSvm@reddit

Take the time. Do a project that reminds you why it's fun to work in software.

if you are a passionate dev, with good experience, there's a lot of benefit to an emotional reset.

Personally, I took a 7 month break between being a tech lead at a infra company, then getting into big tech and being a team lead there. Hugely helpful: i could focus on my interview skills, I launched a side project that got a few users, and I got to simply rest.

At my current company, we just have more development than people on the team, and that's basically my scope right now. I can say with confidence, when things are failing and not working, the pressure from management sucks, and you get into all of these zero sum games when you start to wind down the size of a team.

At least for my break, I was able to live entirely off unemployment, and was just a bit more frugal around things. Right when unemployment was over, my current offer came through. no regrets.

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kodakdaughter@reddit

Important question: Do you have a therapist? Sounds like you could be experiencing some burnout. You might want to talk to your therapist about using your 3months using FMLA. They won’t pay you but can’t fire you during that period and can get into legal trouble for firing you right after.

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Interesting-Grade-70@reddit (OP)

I do yes. I’m meeting them next week and I’ll definitely bring this up

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kodakdaughter@reddit

Feel free to DM me if you have questions.

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Interesting-Grade-70@reddit (OP)

Thank you! DM’d!

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MyDongIsSoBig@reddit

I work in the Bay Area too (office in SF). If you send me your resume I can forward it to my boss.

Our place is pretty chill I think, it’s a finance company but I don’t feel like it’s too corporate

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atheliens@reddit

I've taken multiple sabbaticals in my career (even took 2 full years off once) and I've never felt like it's impacted me negatively. 3-6 months won't even be long enough to mention. In fact, my current job search has been about 4 months because I'm taking it slow, and no recruiter has even brought it up. 10 YOE.

Take care of yourself, and when you're ready, get back at it. Your life is more than your career.

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golemwhoa@reddit

Man I feel weak that I'm considering this after only \~3.5 yoe. (nearly 3 at AWS) But I'm very close to just quitting.

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Interesting-Grade-70@reddit (OP)

My company hired a bunch of AWS leaders in the past few years and since then it’s been downhill 🥲

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Any-Conclusion3816@reddit

lol I can imagine - management here is fucked. bizarrely robotic and unfeeling

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Interesting-Grade-70@reddit (OP)

Seriously. We got a new VP from AWS come in January and we’ve been in a shithole since. He lives in Seattle and works remote but sent expects folks in the Bay Area to come in the office atleast 4 times a week. 🙄

I set up a meeting with his EA to get to know him and omg he pushed back so hard. “Why do you need to talk?” “Can you talk to your manager” “what are you trying to gain from this meeting” he declined the invite and made a massive deal about it

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marm_alarm@reddit

Wow that VP sounds like a total d---. I believe in karma though. Treat someone badly, and get the same treatment back 10x.

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gravteck@reddit

Man that sucks to hear dude. I've always worked for very traditional fortune 100 companies in the Midwest with 20 YOE. The director and VP in my massive org will invite me out for coffee when hes in town and usually once a year I have a skip-skip and a skip-skip-skip meeting just shooting the breeze. I am decently well known in the org, but nothing special beyond that. I know for a fact he does it downstream from me too. It really is a reassuring feeling when you have that type of buy in and face time with leadership who like you as a person.

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Interesting-Grade-70@reddit (OP)

His boss, our SVP is the complete opposite. He’s cheerful and fun. We went to the same school in Atlanta and he loves catching up discussing about our time there.

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Coldmode@reddit

3 years at AWS is like 50 at a chill company.

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golemwhoa@reddit

Lol tbh my team is not a horror story. Has had some real rough patches but we are not a team getting paged 50x/week + 70 hour weeks. Though the general scope/demands/pace are pretty intense within a very meh culture...

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vulkkan@reddit

I've responded to similar posts on this subreddit (since I too, am both looking for advice on a sabbatical and sharing what I know) if you want to read what I've written for others. But I think the most helpful thing for me was some advice from bay area techies that I met in-person who had taken sabbaticals.

I was living in the Bay up until recently for a few years, and happened to meet a handful of people who had taken sabbaticals at various points of their 10-20+ year careers in tech. Long story short - the sabbaticals didn't affect their job search for the most part. Some recruiters were more interested in their sabbatical than their resume. All of these sabbatical-takers did not regret their sabbatical, and just told me that as long as you don't somehow make it weird for the recruiter, nobody will really blink an eye at your employment gap. Just be prepared for interviews as you normally would, and be ready to deal with whatever the job market looks like.

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noodlebucket@reddit

I took a 7 month sabbatical and hiked 2,600 mile long PCT. Absolute hi light of my life and don’t regret it at all.

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masterJ@reddit

I spent 2 years living out of my car climbing and hiking and generally being out in the mountains every day. No one even blinked in interviews. Zero regrets. Would absolutely do again if life permitted.

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xdevnullx@reddit

This is really good info.

I went to a 3 year school to get my undergrad, so the last time I had more than a month "without responsibility" was my junior year of high school in 96.

I've been going for a little over 25 years now and I'm strongly considering this.

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Interesting-Grade-70@reddit (OP)

Thank you, I’ll take a look what you’ve written about this!

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vulkkan@reddit

Hope some of my words help! I have yet to take the sabbatical leap myself, but I've been reading and listening a ton to folks who've jumped ship, and a lot of their advice has made sense to me (and so here I am playing a game of telephone with their words.)

I think your seniority should help a lot with landing a new role, especially if you're targeting smaller companies. I did find that recruiters for small startups were very aware of how difficult it could be to convince folks from larger tech companies to join them, so I think if you're aiming for a role at a smaller firm, it might be easier than you think - I think due to a lot of folks in our industry (and especially in the Bay) chasing TC, if you aim at somewhere with less funding and therefore lower compensation, it might be easier to get your foot in the door.

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Papapa_555@reddit

seems a lot of companies are getting more and more toxic since covid.

I took a 3mo break a year ago for similar reasons.

In my case it took longer than expected to find the next job (3mo and a lot of applications). Just be ready

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MinimumArmadillo2394@reddit

3 months is childsplay. Many people, including myself, are sitting at over 6 months. We generally aren't sub-par candidates either.

For me, I'm just getting ghosted every single round. Of the 5 companies I've interviewed for in the last 3 weeks, I've been ghosted by 4....

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Papapa_555@reddit

this year the situation is worse i think. Normally after summer and until EOY there's a stronger push to hire. Hope you will find something great soon bro

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Codex_Dev@reddit

There are stories on reddit of seniors spending years looking for jobs.

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Internal_Forever_76@reddit

just curious, how many YOE did you have when you did the break?

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Papapa_555@reddit

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Ok_Horse_7563@reddit

If you were on your game you’d already have a kid in the pipeline and be prepping for paternity leave.

I’m about to start my 6 months paternity leave and the team culture was what finally made me pull the trigger.

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tikhonjelvis@reddit

I've taken off ≈2 years in my ≈10 year career so far, and it has not had any negative impacts that I've seen. I've had no problems getting interviews, and just moved into a new staff-level role I'm legitimately excited about.

One of my friends took a ≈3.5-year break, also in a ≈10-year career. Earlier this year he had no problems getting interviews at top trading firms and landed some great offers.

I suppose having some career gaps may have gotten me filtered out at resume screens, but almost definitely not anywhere I actually care about. Once I've gotten to actually talking with recruiters or hiring managers, they rarely come up at all, and I've had no problems just saying "I wanted to take a break" and not elaborating further.

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somesing23@reddit

How do you sustain a 3-5 year break

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tikhonjelvis@reddit

Make a good amount of money and don't spend too much?

I don't know exactly how much my friend was making or spending, but, pulling some Bay Area numbers, you can make $300k for a few years and keep your expenses down to $3–4k/month, and then it's not hard to save up enough for several years off.

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somesing23@reddit

At most I could manage a 3-6 month sabbatical but I’d be running pretty thin and then losing whatever emergency/house payment I could have. A year is just crazy to me

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tikhonjelvis@reddit

Yeah, buying a house vs renting makes a big difference. One of the justifications I gave myself for buying a house was that having real expenses would push me to keep on working rather than just stewing for months/years if I couldn't find something really good.

(A few years later, I have mixed feelings about whether that was a good idea :P)

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Internal_Forever_76@reddit

u/Interesting-Grade-70 please update us if/when you do this sabbatical, I'd love to hear how your experience went.

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Interesting-Grade-70@reddit (OP)

Will do!

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animodoc@reddit

In a similar position with ~8 years of experience at senior/lead level. Layoffs hit in June and so I've decided to take a sabbatical to reorient and focus my career, explore new tech, travel, and do a couple side projects.

The timing isn't perfect, but I'm expecting end of November - end of January to be dead for interviewing, so unless I reach out directly to my network, realistically it will probably take a couple months to get hired again.

The last time I took a small break, every interviewer was relatively more interested in what I did over the break than the FAANG experience I had, and everyone (including recruiters) were positive about it. I think as long as you aren't just wasting away you'll be fine. Have fun.

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Interesting-Grade-70@reddit (OP)

That seems to be theme in the responses. I’m truly considering this next month

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flame_and_void@reddit

I'm coming off a 4 month break and just accepted an offer after 2 months search.

Hard to know how it would have played out counterfactually. All my early applications were rejected; maybe some rejections were influenced by the break? But once I made it through screening and was talking to a real person, I didn't _see_ any negative reactions.

It helps to have a very simple description of why you left (and maybe what you did during the break) that's not too negative and aligns with the role you're applying to. I added a two-sentence spiel at the end of my introductions, casting the decision to leave as realizing I wanted , and mentioning that I traveled for a few months and was refreshed and excited by .

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Interesting-Grade-70@reddit (OP)

Thank you!

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dragonfly_towel@reddit

I was in your position and did this a few years back, I had 8 years experience and was at senior level. Was so burnt out and just decided to quit and take time out and figure it all out. I took about 6 months before looking for a job. During that time I did tinker with side projects but only if i felt like it / wanted to.

It took about 2 months to find a job. During interviews I was open about it. I brought up my side projects I worked on. I was genuinely surprised in the positive response - quite a few interviewers said they can relate and respected my decision etc. I got a job at roughly the same level as before with about the same pay

For me it was worth it. Being away from the daily grind and doing fun things and focusing on mental health was great. I don’t know if I would do it today with the job market is personally but YMMV on that front (I’m in UK) . Anyways best of luck whatever you decide to do !

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Interesting-Grade-70@reddit (OP)

That’s great insight! Thank you!

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Bubbly-Concept1143@reddit

A few years ago the job market was significantly better than it is now. I had multiple FAANG offers a few years back and now I can’t even get interviews at those same companies with a few more YoE at a FAANG and referrals.

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dryiceboy@reddit

Wife and I wanted to have kids and work stress was taking a toll on my health so I took a 1 year break and flew back to my home country in Southeast Asia.

Now have a kid and joined a less stressful L2 Application Support role with a Consulting firm.

Life is good.

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whdeboer@reddit

I’ve taken several 3-6 month sabbaticals throughout my 25+ year career.

I always come back refreshed. I’d spend the first month doing nothing to do with software. Then I’d slowly start looking for the next job opportunity.

The one time I didn’t do that, resulted in me losing all momentum and I found it incredibly hard to get going again.

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knittedharicot@reddit

If you want to spend some of your sabbatical reigniting the joy you have for programming alongside other curious developers, I'd highly recommend checking out the Recurse Center (recurse.com). I did a stint there a few years ago and loved it - it totally changed the way I thought about programming and helped me find a ton of joy and fun in it. Happy to answer any questions if anyone has any, it was truly the most transformative time in my programming journey and it's totally free to attend. I've made some lifelong friends from my time there and really can't recommend it enough.

The only income for the center is from recruitment so it's in their interest to find you a job ASAP. They've found me 2 jobs since I attended and I'm much more junior than most people on this thread.

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zica-do-reddit@reddit

I'm on my fourth "sabbatical" in a row. I don't think it affects your employment prospects. The market is trash in general right now, but it may pick up again eventually.

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golemwhoa@reddit

Whats your employment history look like if you don't mind me asking?

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zica-do-reddit@reddit

Five jobs in the last 25 years, shortest tenure three years, longest nine, plus my last job that only lasted four months. Gaps in between: ten, three and four months; now unemployed, probably for the next two years or so.

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Any-Conclusion3816@reddit

niceeee!

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Megatherion666@reddit

California mandates 12 week FMLA allowed. It is easy to get. Go to therapist and say you are too stressed and have hard time sleeping. California disability insurance should be easy to get so that will cover some of your salary. And if you still have stocks, those likely will continue to vest. Easy 3 month off without hassle. Although it does not protect from layoffsx

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Coldmode@reddit

I was let go at the end of April and I’m starting a new role next week (Staff Eng at a small company), but I started applying to jobs immediately and I have worked for the VP at the company I was hired into. I’d expect to spend at least 3 months on the job hunt, maybe more, so factor that into your sabbatical plans.

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