Laid off? The one thing you absolutely need to do on the first day

You're in IT, right? So chances are you've been laid off at least once from some crappy company and it's going to happen again. Here is my one piece of advice to you. The single most important thing to do as soon as you make it back to your house with that box full of stuff:

Book a flight

Seriously. Do it now, before the initial shock wears off and that logical side of your brain starts coming up with lame excuses. You will never have a better chance to get out and see the world than right now. You have a pile of saving and a severance package. You've got 6 months to a year before your skills start getting rusty. There is absolutely no reason to start looking for work immediately, and every reason to take that round-the-world trip you've always dreamed about. Right. Now.

Trust me, your career will be just fine.

Where to go

This is the easiest question to answer: Bangkok. Seriously, the mere fact that you had to ask the question indicates that you're probably not a seasoned traveler and therefore should be going to Thailand first. I know you always wanted to do Europe, but it's crazy expensive and frankly, it's just not relaxed enough for you right now. You're going to need some serious chilling to recover from a layoff. Southeast Asia has that in Spades.

Make your way to Khao San Road, find a room, grab a Beer Chang and talk to a few other travelers. Your trip will plan itself from there.

Where to go if it's May

Ok, one modification to the above. Thailand is thoroughly uninhabitable for a few months between May and July. In that case, you're going to Africa. Book a flight to Cape Town instead. Follow this itinerary up through Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania. Everybody there speaks English and you can get a room for $0.75. You'll do fine.

How long to go for

You're going to want to stay gone for 6-9 months. Less than that and it you'll be kicking yourself for not leaving enough time, and you'll be rushing through entire countries just to keep up with your itinerary. I know that this seems silly now, but somewhere along the way somebody will ask how long you've been in Vietnam for and you'll answer "Only one month." Timescales work differently on the road.

In my experience (did I mention that I take about 9 months vacation a year and spend most of that traveling in the developing world?), I tend to start missing work after about 6 months away. By 9 months, I'm pretty much ready to commit to a real job in a real office just so that I can start using my brain again. Talking to other software guys on the road, it seems that this is pretty common. You're going to want to come back eventually, so be sure to keep a few good contacts back home.

Regardless of how long you plan to be gone, try to book your flight one-way. It will give you unlimited flexibility with your travel plans and let you pick your return date later when you know what you actually want to do. As a last resort, pick the return date furthest in the future, since it's a lot easier to move it forward than to push it back.

How much will it cost?

I budget about $1,000 a month when I'm traveling in Southeast Asia, Central America, Africa or the Middle East. I seldom go through that much if I'm sticking to ground transport, but over the course of a year if you consider flights into the calculations, $1,000 a month is about right. Stay away from the developed world at all costs though, or you'll quickly triple that figure!

How do I get another job when I get back?

The nice thing about a 6 month timeframe is that it gives all of your ex-coworkers time to entrench themselves in other hopeless software companies. Email them and notice how everything around them seems to be on fire. They need you to start tomorrow. Line up a good offer based on one of their recommendations and book a flight home.

Three Lame Excuses and why they're not valid:

But I don't have any money saved...

You can't possibly be serious. Are you saying that you've been working in IT for all these years and haven't put away a lousy ten grand??? Shame on you. Get a book on life skills and open a bank account fer cryin' out loud.

But nobody will hire me after six months away...

Not true. Nobody will hire you if you're bad at what you do and have terrible interviewing skills. Those things won't change over the course of six months, but you might possibly wind up more relaxed (and with some good stories to tell) and that's actually a benefit when it comes to interviewing.

Regardless of what you may have heard, skilled developers are very hard to find. If you fit that category, there's very little that you can do to poison your resume. Certainly, heading off on your once-in-a-lifetime trip won't leave you unemployable.

But I'm married with a family and a house...

Ok, you win. You're screwed, but that's the life you chose for yourself so you're going to have to live it. It's worth noting, however, that most Europeans wouldn't consider that a reason not to travel. Right this second, there is a German couple pushing a stroller down a remote beach in Thailand, and they're not going home for another month. What's your excuse again?

Why you're not actually going to do it

When you get right down to it, you'll probably find a way to talk yourself out of taking that dream trip. You'll come up with some pretty believable excuses, but really it will come down to the fact that you're scared.

That's cool. Travel is pretty scary when you look at it from the outside. But here's the thing. It stops being scary the moment your feet hit the pavement on Khao San Road in Bangkok. You're going to get blasted by 100 degree heat, power-wafted by smells of the most amazing street food one minute and an open sewer the next, assaulted with music from a thousand bars, and crammed into a tiny room overlooking it all with a fan that doesn't work. And you won't be able to wipe the silly grin off your face.

Book the flight today, because every day you delay it is one more day wasted on the couch, and one more day to come up with lame excuses for why you shouldn't go.

It is all good here. Get your ass on a plane.

The West Coast Mobile Office

Writing software is a lot like writing anything else. I think that's why so many computer programmers are unhappy working at companies that expect to see them typing away furiously for 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week. With any creative endeavor, inspiration tends to happen in bursts. In programming, these bursts tend to take the form of the 18 hour caffeine-fuelled marathon sessions that come to mind when you think of Internet startups. One of the (very few) things that those companies got right in the late 90s was to recognize this work pattern and find ways to accommodate it. (Unfortunately, most companies accommodated it by setting up pinball machines right in the middle of the dev space, thus wiping away any potential productivity gains in a sea of noise).

Anyway, back to the point at hand, the key to keeping up productivity as a developer is to find ways to foster these inspired bursts of creativity. With this in mind, we packed up the truck and left rainy, dismal Portland behind for a while. 20 hours south, we set up shop in Bishop, one of the most inspiring spots that the US has to offer. High alpine wilderness, tons of amazing rock climbing and Bouldering, pleasant secluded camping, and, amazingly, good EVDO coverage. Everything a climber/geek could want!

Free from the distractions of the city, we'd pull out the laptops in the morning, sipping espresso and knocking out new functionality until well after lunch. Thus creatively spent, we'd pull out the rock boots and head up the hill in search of Boulder problems on the amazing granite that Bishop is famous for.

What a week. What a place. we'll be back.

Two Weeks Vacation is only a Recommendation, not a Rule

How much vacation time did you take last year? If you're like most workers in the States, it was probably less than 3 weeks. That's all your company will give you, right?

Wrong.

3 weeks is the amount of PAID vacation your employer will compensate you for. The actual amount you take has nothing to do with that number. In practice, the amount of vacation time you can take is directly related to your value to the company. And let me give you a little hint: You are a lot more valuable to your employer than they are to you.

I stumbled across this idea early in my career, and didn't even realize it. I was about 3 years out of school, working as an environmental engineer at a big consulting firm. It was the mid-90's, at the height of the downsizing era. Morale was low and people were leaving the company fast.

One day, I was looking at a little backpack I owned and it occurred to me that I could probably fit enough in that pack to live on for 3 months if I wanted to. Hmm… I hear the climbing in Southern France is pretty good. Maybe I'll look into a flight…

Two days later, ticket in hand, I strolled into the office of my department head. I caught the flash of exasperation on his face before he greeted me (he was fielding about one resignation a week at this point, so he probably expected the worst). "Don't worry," I said. "I'll be coming back in August."

That was it. No begging, pleading or anything. Just a bit of shuffling to make sure my plate was clean before heading out, and that was that. Life at the company didn't skip a beat, and 3 months later I picked up where I left off just like I would have after a week in Cancun.

At first, I figured that this must have been a special case. The company was in tough shape, and I was in a unique position to take advantage. Turns out though, that I kept finding myself in this position of advantage time and again over the years. So much so, that it finally dawned on me just how valuable a good employee really is to an organization.

Cut to 3 years later, and I'm on a small, tight programming team for a little dot-com startup. I've been there for almost a year, and it's time for a bit of R&R in Central America. 6 weeks off should just about do it. So I sit down with the boss, and start listening to the old "yeah… we're kind of in crunch mode right now… I'm not sure we can spare you for even 3 weeks, let alone Six…", so I just cut it short:

"Well, I'd really hoped I would be able to come back when I was done. I really like this company, and it's too bad to hear that I'll have to be leaving…"

And that was that. The tone of the meeting turned on a dime, and the next day I had a 4-week leave of absence approved and tacked on to my 2 week vacation request.

So here's the one thing you need to take away from this:

You are more valuable to your employer than they are to you.

It is nearly impossible to hire a good developer. Talk to anybody that's ever had to do any hiring in this industry and they'll tell you that there are simply no good candidates out there. It will take at least 6 months effort to hire a developer that can find his arse with both hands. If you are already in the door and delivering code, you can be assured that your company does not want to lose you. Sure, they'll do their best to make it sound like they don't care about you. They might even utilize the industry standard "Layoffs Are Coming!!! Panic NOW!!!" motivational techniques. But believe me, if push comes to shove, they'll find a way to keep you.

Tell them you're planning to take 2 months off. Don't ask. Tell them. Make it clear that you're going to go regardless of whether there's a job waiting when you get back. They'll accommodate you. Trust me.

A few Caveats to the above:

• You're not going to get paid for those 2 months off. You'll get the first 2 weeks or whatever paid for, but from there on out it's just a leave of absence. You'll need to save up a pile of cash ahead of time. If you've dug yourself so far into debt that you can't float along a measly 2 months without pay, I guess you're out of luck.

• This only works once every couple years. Don't get into the habit of storming into the boss's office every 3 months demanding another month off. You'll soon find yourself with all the free time you need.

• This only works if you are actually good at what you do. Take a quick self assessment first: Can you code your way out of a sack? Honestly? Cool, go for it then.

• This only works if you are prepared for the possibility that your employer will call your bluff. You may very well end up without a job as a result of doing this. If the prospect of having to look for work is that scary to you, then you should probably just sit tight and book that 5 night package holiday to The Bahamas. But then, if the idea of unemployment is really that scary, it's likely that you were fibbing a bit on that self assessment above. Jobs are plentiful for the truly skilled.