I quit my job a year ago and here is what I learned so far

last june i decided to quit my job as a senior software engineer at microsoft to set aside some time for personal development side projects and travel so after one year of joblessness here are the things that i've learned hello everyone my name is utsab i'm a software engineer based in seattle washington and this channel is all about helping you excel in your software engineering career so if you're into that please consider subscribing as usual this video has timestamps so feel free to jump to sections that interest you and also any related videos or reference materials will be linked in the description below and one more thing before we get started i know that you guys love giveaways and you guys know that i love giving away things so i've got one for you in this video so yunzi sent me this mechanical keyboard to try it out and i've been using it for a month and it's pretty decent in a world where mechanical keyboards can cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars this is a pretty budget friendly alternative it's got the usual stuff swappable keys rgb usbc and it works as expected this one in particular has brown switches so you won't end up disturbing anybody else while you're typing around as well so if you want to win a keyboard similar to this please stay till the end of the video where i'll give you more information on how you can do that all right let's get started so my decision to take a break was made before the global pandemic hit so travel was a huge part of it but because of the pandemic obviously i couldn't really travel so i was thinking to myself i'm probably going to chill out play video games watch movies for at least the first few months after i quit my job but surprisingly within the first maybe week i was already having an itch to start working on something um anything you know uh and i had just started my youtube channel then so i just decided to focus more on that and get really serious about it and as a result i ended up working even longer hours than when i was actually working full-time so it turns out that working for me isn't a requirement from a job or anything like that but it's actually a mindset that i have i always want to work towards something i always want to be progressing towards some goals so staying idle is never a comfortable situation for me so during this break i did a lot of different things things related to this channel like videography video editing color grading and things like that but because i love software engineering i also read a lot of material from engineering blogs and books and resources about the current state of distributed systems but outside of engineering i was also learning the piano drums music production and in general i was also trying to keep up with reading one book every other week or so and those were on all sorts of topics not just related to engineering or music or video production and just random topics once you remove that requirement of having to progress because of a certain reason for example if i'm working full-time as a software engineer i want to continually upgrade my skills in engineering right but once you don't have a job you really don't have that hard requirement to have to improve on engineering i suddenly had the freedom to learn whatever i really wanted to and that was really a mind-opening situation where i was almost like a kid in a candy store where i was like i'm gonna learn piano i'm gonna learn music production i'm going to learn this i'm going to learn that so it was such a eye-opening situation where it was surprising to me that the moment you take away a hard requirement about having to learn something you are suddenly way more excited and you find it way more fulfilling to learn all sorts of different things and that's something that i love to carry forward even when i start working full-time is to never really stop learning things just because they're outside of what you're immediately doing [Music] so one of the first thing that happened when i quit my job was i got a influx of messages either from you guys or my friends and family and most of them were pretty surprised on why i would do such a thing and some people said that oh maybe you were burnt out i don't think i was i loved my job i love my team it was just to take a break to do different things and like i said in the previous points i tried doing a lot of different things but to explain that to anybody is kind of a tricky situation so everybody kept asking why i would do such a thing or if i already have another job or am i doing youtube full-time and things like that where none of those were true but one thing i picked up really early on was that everybody tends to make a very quantitative analysis on the risk involved in something like quitting a job right what i mean by quantitative analysis is for example if you're working at a company and you have invested stocks you'd have to leave that so what's the cost of that if you quit for a year for example you don't get salary for a year which means you don't probably save anything or invest anything so what's the cost of that so you see where i'm going is everything is sort of evaluated in terms of what it costs you uh primarily in terms of finances and which is good i mean you need to do that quantitative analysis because being financially responsible is an important thing but what i realized that nobody talks about is the qualitative analysis of what do you gain in terms of personal development what do you gain in terms of fulfillment enrichment happiness your mental health and things like that right like those things don't have a monetary value to them and everyone i spoke to always looked in terms of risk management financially right again great thing to look forward to but what i realized especially i can tell that after one year of doing all sorts of things and learning all sorts of things is that there's much more to it than just a monetary number that how much it costs you or how much money you lose right some things can't be priced and i think an experience like that or just buying yourself time it's like gifting yourself here you go all 24 hours back to you do whatever you want to do with this enjoy right as long as you're doing this in a financially responsible situation that is amazing and i think that's the gift sort of what i gave to myself i'm really grateful to that and the qualitative side to that for me is invaluable and cannot be summed up by a quantitative analysis of how much money i lost the next thing that i found surprising was the moment you quit your day job that's your full-time job even if you're spending just eight hours a day that's like 33 of your life that you spend at your work right and regardless of how much flexibility your work has how awesome the work life balance is you do have a culture you work at microsoft microsoft has a culture you work at facebook they have a different culture you work at google they have a different culture and any other company you may work at right like so regardless of how much freedom and flexibility you may have towards your day-to-day activity in terms of working you do become part of the overarching culture of that company right but when you don't have a job you are your culture there is no culture to drive you there is no structure to kind of guide you towards what you should be doing everything is up to you right um so for me initially that was a little bit overwhelming because i think i started thinking about i need to do this and this and this and this and there's so many things to do i wanted to do everything but without a structure you kind of start doing everything and realize that there's not enough time to do it or you don't know how to measure your progress or prioritize things so i have to kind of step back and think about okay how do i like working what's my style of working do i like working up early do i like waking up late how do i want to measure my own success because there is no reviews there is no bonus there is no salary increases right like so you have to decide what this means to you financially how you measure your own progress how you want to evaluate whether you have done something right or wrong what is the risk threshold of experimenting with something yeah yes it's fun and you're learning a lot of things but there needs to be some structure that you need to set towards yourself and it initially was almost like a feeling of you wanted to run but the floor beneath you was taken out so you kept falling down you know but once you figure it out it almost became like a path to self-discovery where first time truly i think i thought about how it really like working what's my style what's my culture without there being any influence from anybody else and that was amazing once i figured that out i think i really enjoyed it and i had a system set up and i became more productive and more efficient and again going forward now that i know myself so well how i truly function and how i am at my best i can definitely use this experience when i do join some company and have to become part of their culture so that's pretty cool and um something that you guys can think about even if it's just during your vacation or doing a side project forget about everything forget about influences that you already have from your company and try to figure out how you truly want to work and that was amazing while working by yourself and finding your own structure and culture has been awesome and in terms of self-discovery i'm really happy about it and i feel like i've learned more about myself i have realized that i miss working with people um i am generally a very social person i like collaborating with people i like discussions i like back and forth even my youtube channel as you can see i try to respond to every single comment whether it's good or bad it's okay people have opinions and that's fair you know but i still like talking to everyone i respect everyone and i so it's pretty clear that i love human interaction but when you don't have a job when you're doing something like youtube or just spending time learning on your own like i had very limited interactions with people of course my wife was here my dog was here but outside of that i really didn't hang out with anybody else in terms of working there's something about you know going to the white board and kind of hashing things out or something about even arguments where you don't agree with something and you have to explain someone and convince them or they end up convincing you and even if you're working on side projects you have to think about like 10 different perspectives because there is no diverse perspective when you're working alone right i definitely miss that and one of the things that i concluded out of this one your experience is there is absolutely no replacement for human interaction so the next thing i learned during this year and that was a little bit surprising to me as well is about finances i realized that i really didn't need as much money i thought i would to survive day to day and obviously i do want to acknowledge that just me being able to sit here and talk about how i took a year off and it was a great learning experience comes from me working for 15 or so years and saving a lot of money and making good financial decisions that gives me the financial freedom and the privilege to do something like this and i absolutely understand that not everyone has the capability to do something like that right but that being said i've always been pretty lean with my finances but this year when i didn't have a paycheck at all my goal was to not take anything out from my savings not sell any of my investment and see if i can survive just doing random things like youtube and mentorships and things like that so what i was making was like really nothing right like so i had to go even leaner and i realized that a lot of things that i thought i needed were things that i just wanted you know and even the things that i wanted i really had to ask myself to justify do i really need this right a lot of other things like deck gadgets and subscriptions and things like that that i thought is normal to have like i cancelled all of them and i really didn't miss them at all you know like you i'm i'm a software engineer i'm in tech so i have to have this new gadget like do you like i don't know maybe not you know like do you need the mechanical keyboard i don't know you know like so those were the things that once you have a certain restriction on how much you make you suddenly realize that you really don't need the things that you needed and one of the other great things that came out of this realization is to start a foundation based on my youtube channel where all the ad money and all the sponsorship money that i get will get rerouted to that foundation and eventually i want to start donating all of that to charity and i've already started doing that this year a lot of my youtube income has been donated for kovid relief around the u.s around the world recently in india and things like that so that's like being the big realization here is i don't need a lot to survive and be happy experiences are more important than purely finances so if i do have a surplus in some reasonable amount i can help others not only that but also in terms of how you view your work right and i know a lot of you guys here that watch the channel are also really excited about someday working for a big tech company or a fang company or whatever that is and a big decision that influences that dream of sorts is compensation right big tech has high compensation and all that and and there may be a valid reason to dream of compensation you know you may come from a very poor financial background like i did i grew up in one of the poorest countries in the world you know so i understand that value or you may have a lot of debt or educational loans and all that so that's a fair point but i do want to recommend that do put your passion towards working on the project or the team or the company before compensation because it's a lot easier to be happy and fulfilled working on something you love with slightly less compensation like i've realized instead of working on something that you really aren't passionate about while making a lot of money so that's that's my advice based on my experience so yeah that's that's been the past year uh it's a huge learning experience and i'm glad i took time off obviously i'm not endorsing that anybody that's thinking of quitting should quit their job please don't do it and if you do want to make sure you do a quantitative and qualitative analysis of why you want to leave or take a break be financially responsible and make sure you account everything because everyone's circumstances are different but this was my experience and i hope you learned something out of it or at least found the experience pretty interesting um and for me it was definitely enjoyable i learned a lot but part of me also is eager to start working now because i feel refreshed and recharged so that's that so now that we're done with that let's talk about the giveaway so to win this mechanical keyboard all you have to do is subscribe to this channel first like this video and make a comment about anything maybe tell me whether this decision of taking a year off was cool or stupid or what you thought about it would you do it and in the comment make sure you put hashtag engineering with itself towards the end so i can filter your comments and put you in the giveaway list third thing follow me on instagram at engineering itself and on the first post that you find there put a comment any comment is fine and make sure you put hashtag engineering without in that comment as well and then i will randomly select a winner based on the hashtags and the comments and the subscriptions um and i will announce the winner within 30 days on youtube and on my instagram and that's that it's pretty straightforward and that's it for today if you found this video useful hit the like button comment like i said before subscribe to the channel for more videos like this and while you're here check some of these videos out that you may find useful and i'll see you around cheers you

Channel: Engineering with Utsav

Views: 62,581

Rating: 4.9306278 out of 5

Keywords: quit your job, should i quit my job, should you quit your job, quit my job, i quit my job, passive income, quitting my job, quitting your job, why i quit my job for youtube, lessons about life, i quit my job during pandemic, quit your job motivation, how to quit your job, software engineering, software engineer, microsoft, engineeringwithutsav, i quit my job without a plan, quit my job for youtube, quitting my job for youtube, utsavized, software developer, coding, quit

Id: WYhFc6Ee2fo

Length: 16min 51sec (1011 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2021