Ask HN: How difficult will resuming a SWE career be after a sabbatical?

4 points by justchad 162 days ago | 2 comments

I am at a crossroads, and I'm thinking about taking some extended time off for a sabbatical for like a year or so. I want to know if that will hurt my chances of resuming a career as a software engineer since things are changing so rapidly with AI. For context, I am a Founding Engineer of a successful startup. I have been an engineer for 15 years and plan to continue writing software while on sabbatical but obviously not as much as I currently do day to day. Do you think I will have a hard time returning to the field should I choose to do so?

Nextgrid 162 days ago |

AI is moving so fast even people doing it full time can't always keep up... which is not a big deal because very little of this "AI" effort actually makes any money.

Let them burn their money figuring out what works and what doesn't, and then when you come back you can easily pick up the stuff that works without being distracted by what doesn't.

If you look back at the Cambrian explosion of frontend JS complexity, do you feel like you gained anything from being there, versus just jumping in now and focusing on the few technologies that stabilized? The same is gonna happen with AI.

justchad 162 days ago | |

That’s a great point about the frontend complexity. Picking it up now is more difficult overall but at least most of the complexity has been decided on and “stabilized” as much as possible.