Taking a sabbatical
Why I requested two months of unpaid leave from my job
It’s an extreme privilege to get to work for Indeed, the largest hiring and job matching platform in the world. I used Indeed to find a job when I moved to Austin in 2016, and I always wondered what it’d be like to work in the downtown office, which serves as a prominent part of the Austin skyline. Now in 2024, I find myself leading feature development on Indeed’s Android app, which has been downloaded over 100 million times as the #1 free business app on Google Play. The services that Indeed provides not only lower unemployment in the economy, but they also have a transformative impact on the lives of many jobseekers, and I’m honored to think that code I wrote may have in some way contributed to helping people get jobs.
It may seem ironic, then, that I would request a sabbatical from this job precisely because I want to rethink my own relationship with work. Although I enjoy software engineering, I also spend a lot of mental energy keeping track of codebases and staying on top of technical trends. During Covid lockdowns, this provided a much-needed sense of structure in an otherwise chaotic time, and I poured myself into the job, earning two promotions over two years. Now, however, I find myself reevaluating some of my priorities. This has also been influenced by books I have read — particularly The Pathless Path (Paul Millerd), The Sovereign Individual (James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg), and Smart People Should Build Things (Andrew Yang) — that challenge conventional work / career narratives. I’ve come to realize that many of our societal expectations about work have not been updated for the 21st century, let alone the remote-first, AI-influenced world of 2024.
Fortunately, I have amazingly generous colleagues who are supporting my decision, as well as an employer that is allowing me to take off 60 days without any other changes to my employment contract. During this time I plan to travel (including a 9-day trip to Japan), spend time with friends, play music, read, write, and make progress on some other side projects. Still, the main purpose of my sabbatical is simply to connect with parts of myself outside of a work-related identity, and to spend extended time away from my job. After all, schools close in the summer, and bears hibernate in the winter. Why should we not take off a few months in the corporate world, too?
My leave begins on April 1st and lasts through the end of May. If you want to contact me during this time, feel free to email me at cartertrobinson@gmail.com. Although I’m not sure exactly where I will go or how I will fill my days, I do know one thing for sure: it will be a grand adventure.
See you on the other side.
Curious to hear about these learnings on the other side!