Summer Vacation

http://xichekolas.blogspot.com/2007/05/summer-vacation.html

by Xichekolas • 19 years ago

25 20 19 years ago

xichekolas.blogspot.com

Xichekolas2• 19 years ago

Sorry to shamelessly link to my own blog, but I wrote this to motivate myself a bit, and thought maybe someone else would find it motivational. I'm about to quit my job for a few months of living off savings, and it's a bit scary for me.

staunch3• 19 years ago

Really great writeup, thanks for sharing. I, for one, certainly don't mind people submitting their own stuff.

This is a great topic for people who are still working for someone else. One issue I've had is that I'm basically incapable of treating anything like a "day job". I want work really hard and pour passion into anything I do. When I have a day job I tend to give my best energy to it, draining me from my own projects.

Goladus• 19 years ago

That's a terrific blog entry. I've argued with my parents before about summer jobs in College. I think I'd have performed a lot better during the fall semester if I'd been able to take the summer vacations as free time, rather than spending 8 hours a day working in an office.

I'd recommend internships, if you can get one, even if it means spending a lot of time working. But grunt jobs suck and part of me really regrets the amount of time and energy it wasted during my college summers.

leisuresuit• 19 years ago

I think the corporate world is designed to eliminate any desire of employees to work on their own ideas. Work takes up a lot more of your time and energy than you imagine. Even if you only work 40 hours a week.

In reality you get up, spend 30 minutes getting ready, another hour eating and commuting, more like 9-10 hours a work, another 30min or an hour getting home. After this whole ordeal you don't have any desire to even THINK about anything except relaxing.

On the weekends you're trying hard to find something to do that gives your life some kind of meaning besides the job you have.. something that doesn't include sitting in front of a computer.

The only way you can really work on something of your own is to quit your job and live off your savings. And still it's up for debate how much one person, without any investment can achieve working by themselves. You might be able to make a simple website.. But you won't be able to pay to promote it.

staunch3• 19 years ago

I believe this even consciously occurs to many employers. It's part of the reason why very few companies would be okay with you working 4 x 10hr hour weeks vs 5 x 8hr. Even 4 x 12hr wouldn't make them feel secure.

I suppose it's jealousy and greed. And this exists in almost every culture (from what I know) -- I hope things eventually change. Even Google is guilty of this form of "Evil".

nostrademons4• 19 years ago

[deleted, dupe. Oops]

nostrademons4• 19 years ago

Actually, Google does give employees time to work on their own ideas. It's just that they own anything that comes out of that time. Arguable this is just as evil, so your point stands.

I think the solution may be to think of your job as buying you time. Set a baseline salary that'll let you live a simple life with adequate health & safety. For a single guy, that's about $20K/year (= grad student wages); for a married guy with a couple kids, about $40K. If that seems low, remember that 50% of America lives on that.

Then take the difference between your actual salary and your cost of living, and think of it as time. For example, if you graduate with a $60K/year job, set aside 2/3 of your salary as savings, and every hour you work is buying you 2 hours of freedom. When you have enough time saved up to accomplish what you want, quit and "spend" it.

For example, I'm currently saving about 2 hours of time for every hour I work. I'm looking to quit after slightly more than 2 years at my job (that'll be another 6 months or so), at which point I'll have 4-5 years saved up.

I met an innkeeper in Alaska who followed this strategy. He and his wife decided when they got out of college that they'd live like grad students. They worked in the computer field. After 15 years, they each quit their jobs, bought a sailboat, and sailed around the world with their son, stopping at every port they came into. They finally settled in Seward, Alaska (pop. 3000), bought an old building, and fixed it up as an inn.

timg• 19 years ago

"""So, if you are a student, don't get that summer job just to fill the summer."""

A huge regret of mine.

danw• 19 years ago

Lovely idea but I'm not so keen on surviving by running up debt.

yubrew• 19 years ago

you have a good point, it's much better to be working from passion than working for money. but when you're young, it's more about gaining experience. so the real question is "what should i do to gain the most relevant experience to prepare me for the future?"

summer jobs are a place where you get paid to learn. not only do you pick up technical skills, but you learn an assortment of soft skills (e.g. managing people, communicating, success metrics, company culture, etc). if working on your own projects will yield more relevant experience than at any summer job, then go out on your own.

in the end, summer vacation is long enough to learn a ridiculous amount, but short enough so that if you don't like it, you can grind through it.

lucraft• 19 years ago

Very 'graham-esque' ... Enjoyed it and logged in for the first time in ages to vote it up.

Xichekolas2• 19 years ago

Thanks... it's probably so 'graham-esque' because I have been rereading his essays lately for mental fortification.

edgeztv• 19 years ago

I agree with the stuff about summer jobs, as I had a few totally useless ones in college (2000-2004).

However I had no idea what else I could be doing. I didn't realize that you could make a decent web application and attract users, for instance. The problem was that I didn't have any friends or mentors to guide me in the right direction.

To the people who are working on their startups full time now - how much money are you spending in living expenses per month?

far33d2• 19 years ago

I've worked some kind of job at all times since I was 16. Painting houses, cashier at a grocery store, retail stores, lab consultant, summer research, internships, and now job job job. No long breaks. Just work.

I spent my teens and college years thinking the kids who traveled all summer were idiots. That they weren't contributing to society. Now I'm 27 and wishing I had taken a break.. Done something because I wanted to, not because it was "what you did". I thought that being a "year behind" would be disastrous for my career. Well guess what.. 1 year is nothing when you have to work for 50 more.

If you are young and able to just LIVE... do it. If living is working on your own startup, do it. If it's building a working replica of a PDP machine out of legos, do it. Just get out there. There's plenty of time for work.

Tichy• 19 years ago

With 27 you are still young - why don't you take that break now?

far33d2• 19 years ago

Planning on it. Just thought I'd toss some advice out for the whippersnappers out there :)

eli• 19 years ago

$2000 covers your expenses for two months?! Man, I wish it were that easy for me

nostrademons4• 19 years ago

Am I the only one who liked my summer jobs? I've had one all but two summers, since my junior year of high school. They were (grr, I wish news.YC had Markdown...):

1999: Did a website for a local town newspaper

2000: Worked for an all-teenage venture funded dot-com (yeah, it was that easy to come by funding during the bubble).

2001: InstallShield scripting for said dot-com's parent company. (2000/2001 bookended a "gap year" between high school and college, so I was working there all year, with various projects.)

2002: Worked for a contract programming shop.

2003: Summer off - spent it learning Lisp and Dylan, attempting the ICFP programming contest (didn't finish), starting an Eclipse plugin for Dylan (didn't finish), and designing the database schema for FictionAlley.org (eventually did finish, but it wasn't till 2005).

2004: Worked for a financial software startup that eventually became my full-time employer.

2005: Summer off. Spent it finishing up FictionAlley.org. Well, that and going on a cruise.

If I had to rank the years from best to worst, it would probably be 2000, 2001, 1999, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2005. Two of the three worst were the years that I had no job, while all of the best involved a job of some sorts.

I suspect it's because when I had an internship, I spent the summer learning new technologies, which is exactly the same thing I would've been doing without an internship. However, with the internship, I a.) got paid b.) usually completed a project or 3, and c.) had people around me. When I was working on my own stuff, none of those were a given.

Summer Vacation

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