25-year-old quits job at major technology company to travel and cure burnout

The following essay has been edited for length and clarity.

I come from a large family. Both my parents are Indian immigrants.

When I was younger and saw my parents going through the same thing, I learned that a job can give you the stability you need to pursue your other passions.

During my sophomore year at Temple University, I had the opportunity to intern at my company.

I juggled work with a full-time student workload in a demanding degree program. I graduated in December 2019 and was able to receive a full-time job offer.

My workload was piling up in an industry that was not as stable as I thought

I joined in 2020. A few months later, the big attrition happened. I saw many of my teammates quit, transfer, and move on.

I went from being a recent graduate looking to gain as much experience as possible to being a helper helping to manage this increasing workload – with fewer people.

I was constantly being given really demanding projects. It seemed like if I couldn't deliver, there was no one else. Everyone else was overloaded and there were no new hires at the time.

At the end of 2022, the company announced layoffs.

At that time, many companies started announcing layoffs – all the big ones, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, all of them.

For someone who went into this field because of job security, it seemed like, “OK, it's not as safe as I thought.” I talked to a friend who worked at a tech company. She told me, “If they fire me, that's fine. I'll just take my savings and travel to Asia until I figure out what's next for me.”

I thought, “Oh my God, you can do that? You can just decide to take a year off?”

I have budgeted $15,000 for my vacation year in Asia

Later that year, I took ten days off and traveled to South Korea.

When I returned from that trip and saw the impending layoffs and was also pretty burned out from working for this high-tech company for five years straight, I started putting my plans into action.

I'm getting ready to take an adult gap year in September. It's taken about a year to plan. I wanted to be sure of my decision. I wanted to make sure I had enough savings. I've budgeted $15,000 for the year.

It helped me that I move to Asia. With the currency exchange and everything, it is makes more sense to me than if I were to take a year off and travel around Europe or even the USA.

I would like to spend time in India and get back in touch with my culture.

Working so far away in the US, I haven't been able to visit them since I was a child. It's really exciting for me that I might be able to spend months there.

I want to spend time developing a good health routine for myself.

I also want to spend some time improving my skills – technology is moving so fast that I have to try to keep up as much as possible. I also want to spend time simple things like reading books and meeting new people.

I also want to maintain my mental health.

I know it's not healthy for me to continue like this long term. I'm definitely pretty scared to go to work.

I know I'm taking a risk, but I come first

My parents are confused by the idea. They never thought something like this was possible.

My mother told me about the FIRE movement. She said, “Why don't you work for the next 10, 20, 30 years and then just retire early and you'll never have to work again?”

But for me, there is so much uncertainty. Your plan to continue working could simply be ruined by a layoff.

The pandemic has shown me and many of my colleagues that the future is not really promising.

There is a rejection of hustle culture. What is the point of showing so much loyalty? We definitely know that no job will give us loyalty.

I'm definitely taking a step back in my career. I've built up so much influence over time at this company. If I keep working at this pace, I'd have another big promotion in two years.

My big fear is that when I come back, I am ready to take a job and there will be none available for me.

But I firmly believe that taking a break makes me a better employee.

I will return with more knowledge and experience than is required for the job.