Taking a Career Break

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Honestly if a women not so hard. Perfectly understandable. I know two C level women in DC area who took off a few years when kids were younger. The senior men doing hiring respect it.

Kinda gross. But at same time senior women will hold it against you.

I assume those C level women had a special hook (most do anyways, many dumb men advance same way)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Honestly if a women not so hard. Perfectly understandable. I know two C level women in DC area who took off a few years when kids were younger. The senior men doing hiring respect it.

Kinda gross. But at same time senior women will hold it against you.

I assume those C level women had a special hook (most do anyways, many dumb men advance same way)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP,

I am mid 40s and i just left my job at the end of August for a career break. I was also just very drained and needed a break. I posted on here about it too

It was a risk but to me my health and well-being needed to be prioritized. You only get one life and I didn't want to keep living it as it was.

I did a lot of reading about career breaks before going off. Everything I read points to it not being seen as a negative and that it is becoming more and more common. Many fields have built in sabbaticals and this is just a self imposed one.

What seemed important was to have a plan and to be productive during the career break with some tangible goals and to not be off for two long. My plan is to be off Sept-Dec so I will start job hunting in probably mid late October. I have three or four things I want to accomplish while off. So far - two weeks in and I already feel much better!

[/quo

Not the OP, but can you please come back and report after you’ve returned to work? I’d love to hear about the lasting effects of having taken a break, positive and negative.

I will for sure. I have these occasional brief moments of panic about what I have done but 99% of the time it still feels like the right decision. Time will tell!

Am I reading this right? You quit your job for a 4 month break? Why not 3 month FMLA?

[Anonymous]

I would take FMLA.

What happens if your partner feels the same burnout at some point?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would take FMLA.

What happens if your partner feels the same burnout at some point?

Your funny. Men don’t get this option

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would take FMLA.

What happens if your partner feels the same burnout at some point?

Your funny. Men don’t get this option

Burnout is a real thing for men, as much as some women on this board don't want to believe it.

In any event our answer to burnout for both of us was for me, arranging with my work for an unpaid sabbatical of a quarter, and for my DH when it was his time, he found another job but arranged to start it two months after he quit. I imagine we can do something like this again in a few years if we schedule it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would take a FMLA break if possible. Honestly, taking time off when you are older is a bad idea. I'm 50 and had been out of work for a year with a business degree. Trying to get a job has been the most difficult year ever especially in trying to find a role approx to my last. I had to take a lower level job just to get my foot back in the door.

Don't quit your job. Take a vacation or leave of absence.

Only quit if you are fine with never working a real job again. At your age, discrimination is rampant.

Don’t be so dramatic. As boomers retire, GenX will have a bounty of job options

I think that is wishful thinking. Millennials are there, waiting, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly if a women not so hard. Perfectly understandable. I know two C level women in DC area who took off a few years when kids were younger. The senior men doing hiring respect it.

Kinda gross. But at same time senior women will hold it against you.

I assume those C level women had a special hook (most do anyways, many dumb men advance same way)

I worked with Sally Kercheck who was CFO of Citi, Marianne Lake who was CFO of Chase. They had kids.

I like former CFO Leman she retired at 35 as CFO Lehman brothers a few months before market crash to be a full time mom.

Follow Sally Kercheck on LinkedIn great advice for moms with careers.

[Anonymous]

Take FMLA before you quit.

[Anonymous]

I feel like you need to power through. You have a stable government job that will provide healthcare for your family and likely keep your kids from taking out student loans. You came from a working class family and I’m sure you can realize how much better off you have it. Don’t give this up.

Instead make changes in your daily life to help:

- can you shorten your commute? Telework more?

- get weekly massages or go to yoga (cheaper than not earning a paycheck!)

- take all of the vacation you can. Take some Fridays off to help you prepare for the weekend and spend the time with your kids

- Cleaning service assuming you don’t have it

- meal service (again, cheaper than not earning a paycheck)


The bad news I have for you is that life is hard with kids and aging parents. Quitting your job may be the most visible and easiest thing to do, but it very well will not make you happier. Again, having kids and aging parents is hard. Quitting your job could even make things worse as then you will have financial constraints and other stressors. Don’t quit your job until you’ve tried other things first

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would take FMLA.

What happens if your partner feels the same burnout at some point?

Your funny. Men don’t get this option

Burnout is a real thing for men, as much as some women on this board don't want to believe it.

In any event our answer to burnout for both of us was for me, arranging with my work for an unpaid sabbatical of a quarter, and for my DH when it was his time, he found another job but arranged to start it two months after he quit. I imagine we can do something like this again in a few years if we schedule it.

I don’t disagree that men don’t burnout.

But your own example shows that men can’t just quit. Your DH took just 2 months months off and only after securing his next job.

That totally different from quitting and not working for 4-6 months or more.

OP, can you line up another Fed job and start in several months?

[Anonymous]

Thanks everyone who responded. I’m going to give it some more thought and do some more planning. A few other things because some have mentioned them. My partner is supportive and has taken two sabbaticals over the years as well and done some other things for personal and career growth through which I was the support. Not that we are a tit for tat couple, but it’s not the case that I expect to be supported and eating bons bons while partner works a grind. Also kids college is in pretty good shape. It’s extremely important to me that we can pay for 4 years of wherever they want to go so that has been the priority since I got pregnant. Any extra went there as did modest inheritance. I would not even consider this if it meant we couldn’t pay their college.
Finally in terms of never working “a real career” again, I’m not sure that’s realistic given my skills and the fact that I’m not particularly hung up on titles and C-suite stuff. I’d consider lots of things to be real careers - not just partner or executive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly if a women not so hard. Perfectly understandable. I know two C level women in DC area who took off a few years when kids were younger. The senior men doing hiring respect it.

Kinda gross. But at same time senior women will hold it against you.

I assume those C level women had a special hook (most do anyways, many dumb men advance same way)

I worked with Sally Kercheck who was CFO of Citi, Marianne Lake who was CFO of Chase. They had kids.

I like former CFO Leman she retired at 35 as CFO Lehman brothers a few months before market crash to be a full time mom.

Follow Sally Kercheck on LinkedIn great advice for moms with careers.

Marianne Lake is quite impressive and has seemed to leverage the opportunity she got as the redemption choice after the London whale scandal into an amazing rise in prominence.

But she never took a break, really. She is 49 and in line for Dimons job, and had her first kid at 42.

She has never married, only had kids 7 years ago... so I’m guessing her breaks were on the order of a FMLA 3 month leave...

‘Lake had her three children through a surrogate starting at the age of 42 after she decided that, even without a partner, she wanted to be a parent. She said she realized after she became CFO that her story could inspire other career-driven women at the bank and she tells it frequently. One junior colleague described Lake’s parenting decision as “fearless.”’

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks everyone who responded. I’m going to give it some more thought and do some more planning. A few other things because some have mentioned them. My partner is supportive and has taken two sabbaticals over the years as well and done some other things for personal and career growth through which I was the support. Not that we are a tit for tat couple, but it’s not the case that I expect to be supported and eating bons bons while partner works a grind. Also kids college is in pretty good shape. It’s extremely important to me that we can pay for 4 years of wherever they want to go so that has been the priority since I got pregnant. Any extra went there as did modest inheritance. I would not even consider this if it meant we couldn’t pay their college.
Finally in terms of never working “a real career” again, I’m not sure that’s realistic given my skills and the fact that I’m not particularly hung up on titles and C-suite stuff. I’d consider lots of things to be real careers - not just partner or executive.

PP here. By real career I mean non retail, not in education. Office work will be off the table except as admin.

If you are ok with that, go for it. But professional careers are rampant with ageism.

How did your DH manage his sabbatical??? That could be a good model??

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the clarification. I certainly consider teaching a real career and a critically important one that’s vastly underappreciated. So I think you and I are probably on very different pages.