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Achieving Escape Velocity Without Too Much Suffering

Ken Mayer
February 26, 2018
47

Achieving Escape Velocity Without Too Much Suffering

I financed a 2-year sabbatical out of my own pocket, didn't go broke, leveraged it into 6 years (living in Mexico, Hawaii and the Philippines) completely out of the tech sector and then came back, pretty much where I left off. I highly recommend the adventure.

Presented February 26th 2018 at http://womenlevelup.com/past-meetups.html

Ken Mayer

February 26, 2018
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Transcript

  1. 1

  2. fern (“far”) + weh (“pain”) Literally "farsickness" or "longing for

    far-off places" wanderlust “fernweh” https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Fernweh When I first saw this as the name for a boat (owned by a nice German fellow), I of course mispronounced it. But ever since, I’ve always been drawn to the image of being far-sick, like home-sick, but that deep sorrowful longing to be out on the sea.
  3. Sooo, back in the late 90s I had a bit

    of an epiphany: My father had just been forcibly retired and was suffering a pretty crippling bout of depression about his identity and self-worth. You see, for most of his life, he really really loved his job, and when he couldn’t do it anymore, he was lost. Closer to home my previous employer had pretty much thrown me under the bus. It was then that I finally learned that no matter how collegial an organization is, they are not the same as friends. And I was getting kicked out of my rental in Los Gatos. Because it was 1997 and the owner could bump the rent 50% year on year. Fortunately? I was working for a startup, 60-80 hours per week, as the myth had taught us. I was getting pretty fried. Back then, Apple, HP and others had “sabbaticals” for their long-time employees: Paid time off to do anything you want. I really needed something like that, but I couldn’t wait 10 years. I realized that if I didn’t commit to do it, myself, I’d never get out of town.
  4. So, we decided to kill a few birds with one

    largish stone. We bought a boat, moved in and started making plans.
  5. I decided that no matter what, when my current vesting

    matured, we would take off for Mexico. My girlfriend asked me what will we do after the trip is over? I confidently said, “The work will be there when we get back.”
  6. ca. 1997 PowerBook Boom repairs during rainy season Our bed

    Space heater aDSL Modem “devops” when it was still “sys_adm” We settled into one of the local marinas. Worked that job in Santa Clara Repaired shit that broke And tried to keep warm in the winter And finally, in early 2001, we set sail, went out under the Golden Gate bridge, turned left, and headed for warm waters
  7. I became a SCUBA instructor and got my captain’s license.

    All before my 40th birthday. Okay, 2nd anniversary of my 40th birthday, but I was already on Aloha Standard Time. Pretty cool, huh?
  8. You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

    Is this a “Once In A Lifetime” opportunity? I don’t have to make sense, do I? Thank you David Byrne
  9. 2

  10. It’s not rocket science • “SMART” goals •Specific •Measurable •Achievable

    •Relevant •Time Limited “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” President Kennedy, May 25, 1961 The “canonical” SMART goal There, we’ve now covered the obligatory management content.
  11. Leave San Francisco with the “Class of 2000” Baja Ha-Ha,

    returning home 18 months later with zero debt from the trip. Here was our plan, more or less. Now that we had a plan, we needed to pay for our wanderings
  12. Budget* Monthly Annual Food, Drink, etc. Fuel Boat Maintenance Home

    “Leave” Entertainment Medical Cat Food $300 $3,600 * circa 2001 dollars So we made a “budget” — for some friends it was literally a little yellow envelope with cash in it for each month. We broke it down into some pretty broad categories. Remember to budget for some round trips to visit home while you’re out and about! Now we had to fill the “cruising kitty” over the next 3 1/2 years. Even https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Jones had a line item in his budget for cats. https://www.usni.org/news-and-features/cats-and-the-sea-services
  13. Filling the kitty • Enforced savings — monthly deposits into

    a sequestered savings account which are used to purchase… • CDs or other cash-equivalent instruments that provide better returns, maturing on a regular basis, that can be sold by… • An agent in the US to handle financial transactions and… • At American Express offices, they used to cash US checks for gold card holders, so a gold card does have privileges We didn’t want for much. Maybe skipped a few fancy dinners every month. Brown bagged lunches to work, that sort of thing. 7,200 / 36 = $200/month In Mexico, bribes were? are still part of the culture. They call it “La Mordidita” or little bite. When confronted with an official, the dialog would go something like “Is this a big problem (Franklins) or little problem (Jacksons), señor?” We never had to bribe an official, ever, but not everyone was so lucky.
  14. While you were out • Move as much as you

    can to paperless delivery • Get a post office box, start using it, now • Find a trusted friend who will check your box while you’re gone • You still have to file your taxes • What’s your retirement funds doing while you’re gone? • Holidays will still come at the same time each year XP: Test out your systems live in “production” before you are too remote to adjust them. This is all pretty old school these days…
  15. Maybe You Can Have It All • If a sabbatical

    is too much (or not enough) • Working remotely • Nomadic lifestyle • Foreign assignments • Getting paid to do shit you’d do for free anyway Things really have changed! When I was working for Freegate, a small-office / home-office router MANUFACTURER, my boss demanded that I commute to work every day. Alameda to Santa Clara. Yeah, I quit that job. Heh, this really is Keynote’s stock photo. I have no idea who these people are, but they look like they’re on some savanna somewhere. Or the midwest?
  16. Remote • Dial-up modems, PPP tunnels, long distance charges •

    Weird video MacGyvers (Xbox Gold anyone?) • Symmetric unlimited streaming • Slack • SoCoCo • Sketch • Screenhero • Dropbox • geekbot.io • #remotejob omg — soooo much better now look at all these great tools (okay, I think Slack has damaged Screenhero…) You can even time shift your standups. Which seems contradictory, but when your team spans the globe, you gotta make it work.
  17. Remote Teams, Yay! • A different organizational culture, yes. •

    You don’t get to pocket all of the money your saving on office space • Humans have evolved to interact with faces • Use multiple communication channels at once to increase bandwidth • Team “on-sites” • Spend money on tools - They will always benefit Managers, take note… Tools, like levers extend your reach iPads on trains
  18. Going full nomadic 2003 Early edge 2018 LTE and more

    You can be miles from towers and still get reasonable speeds. Special hardware available to boost your signal. Families, too!
  19. Not Just For Younglings • @jmccartie Senior Manager • Technical

    Support at Heroku/ Salesforce • Runs the team from the roof of his RV (in nice weather, of course) • With his spouse and 3 kids • Homeschooling FTW! • +2 years and counting
  20. Foreign Assignments • Opening new offices (management or senior devs)

    • Language skills • Essential team member • Remember those “SMART” goals? You don’t have to quit your job It turns out that becoming a manager actually hurt my chances of getting a foreign assignment!
  21. 3

  22. Experience is what you get when you don't get what

    you want • Our transmission broke and it took six months to get it repaired • Hurricanes, yes plural • Broke up with gf in Zihuatanejo, solo sailor for a year • Did not have a lot of cash for re- entry • 2003 The tech economy was still recovering & I couldn’t get hired • That’s why I got into SCUBA and tourist industry No one wanted to hire a scruffy cruiser dude with no permanent address.
  23. Then baby. After we got married, we were faced with

    the sobering reality that I could no longer support my family as a boat captain and scuba instructor. No one could. So I dusted off my tech resume and managed to scrape together some tech jobs in Honolulu. And then…
  24. It’s 2010, baby number 2 is on the way, Hawai’i

    tech economy still struggling, so we went looking for a more target rich environment and landed a job in San Francisco
  25. 4

  26. Do You Like To Learn Stuff? • Diesel mechanics •

    Electrical systems • Epoxy fabriaction • Sailmaking • Plumbing, including the crappy kind • Fishing • Cooking (at sea) • Amateur radio • Weather forecasting • Navigation • Languages • First aid & what to do where there is no doctor • Standing watches • Passage making Our project was more ambitious than most. Our survival depended on it
  27. Develop transferable / analogous skills I ran a business. I

    managed a crew. Nobody died. It also made for good stories during the interview.
  28. Keep Your Skills Current • When I left, I was

    writing C, TCL, Perl & BASH • I taught myself Java and the rudiments of XP • And then I ended up in a Ruby shop at University of Hawai’i Sometimes government jobs are better. Go figure.
  29. –No one, anymore “You may have one career for your

    entire life.” There is no law that says you do the same thing for your entire life. And with life expectancy getting longer, it seems fool hardy to think anyone can. Consider a life of “Serial Careers” Even less dislocating now with MOOCs and certification / degree programs from big league universities.
  30. Make Your Own Luck • Be ready when opportunities knock

    • Yes, you can take risks • You’re more qualified than you think • What’s the worst that can happen? True story: We’re all sitting on the beach at Zihuatanejo and one of fellow ex-pats walks up, all bummed out because his entire division back in California was just laid off. Finally we said, “Look, your worst case scenario is that you have to spend more time here on the beach, drinking beer, swimming in the ocean and playing volleyball.” — “Oh, yeah, when you put it that way…”
  31. 5

  32. Learn new things to keep your brain healthy • Far

    away from your comfort zone! • Sketch while standing on your head • New languages — not just Elixir or Haskell • Managers—Do you look for candidates with plastic minds?
  33. Diversity Makes You Stronger • Are you aware of your

    cultural biases? • Reduces the effects “idealogical inbreeding” • Functional fixation what’s that web site thingy?
  34. What excites you? • Part of my regular one-on-one questions

    • “How can I as your manager help you do exciting stuff?” • Create a safe place to take risks. What’s the worst that can happen? Nobody dies. • Make it a science experiment!