> But unlike the author, I came back to the workforce. I don’t know what’s the end game for the author, but I kind of feel torn here.
His timing wasn't great. The tech job market is pretty dismal right now and will likely be dismal for a while. Unless we get back to a hot tech job market like circa 2020-2022 it's not going to be easy to find a gig after being out for 2 years.
In July 2001 I quit my tech job of 8 years so I could take some time to de-stress and work on projects thinking I could just jump back into a job 6 months later. Of course, that timing was really bad. Since there weren't any tech jobs available, in the Fall of 2002 I decided to go back to school and get a masters. We had a few months in 2003 where I made just enough money to get by by going to the Goodwill outlet store and buying books that could be sold online for a profit - Goodwill got wise to that arbitrage and started their own online store which kind of put an end to that. Had a few contract jobs in there that lasted anywhere from 4 to 6 months, even had a summer internship (at age 40! That interview was interesting), but it wasn't until 2006 that I found something permanent again. Fortunately we had paid off our house back in 1999 otherwise it would've been even scarier.
His timing wasn't great. The tech job market is pretty dismal right now and will likely be dismal for a while. Unless we get back to a hot tech job market like circa 2020-2022 it's not going to be easy to find a gig after being out for 2 years.