T a s d I q L a y m a n

THE DISADVANTAGES OF CAREER BREAK
Nowadays, people tend to care more about their developments -both personal 
and professional- and by doing so they make some changes on their surroundings.
People who have been working for a long time, suddenly feel stagnant and need 
to get our of their office to do something else. They start to travel to the places they 
have been looking forward to go, to study something more or even something different 
than what field they have been working on, or simply to do their part in helping others 
with charity events, for an example, while helping themselves satisfy their need to be 
nicer and or to feel better. To be able to do these activities, some of them need to take 
career break or sabbatical. Although it sounds good, there are some disadvantages of 
taking a career break, e. g. the risk of losing the job, the inability to perform better and 
no paycheck during the career break.
In this period of recession, there are a lot of people trying to get a (better) job, to 
make more money. And by taking the career break, they put themselves at the risk of 
losing their job for good. It makes sense that they can get the feeling of being stagnant 
and bored with the current job, but they do not have to take a year long career break. 
Everything can be balanced, work on the weekdays and play on the weekends.
They could go with some friends to the disco for fun, or take weekend course to 
improve the knowledge. Or even better, do a weekend getaway to Paris or somewhere 
close depends on their location. All these fun activities do not cost them their job. When 
they take a career break and are sure that they could keep their job or could find another

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job in the future easily, there is an expectation to perform better than before. Some 
people fail to deliver this certain expectation either because they can’t get to focus on 
their work after all the fun times or they just could not get any better in performance.
This could lead to a problem with the company which demand a better 
performance after their career break. You should only consider to take the career break 
if you know that you are not at the peak of your performance yet and by taking the 
career break you could expand your horizon, develop new skills and gain experiences 
that your company would like you to deliver. There are companies who let their 
valuable employees take a paid career break, but the case is rare and limited to the high 
level manager like CEO or certain genius the company does not want to lose.
If you are just a regular employee, means company does not want to bother to 
spend big money just to keep you happy working for them, you will not get any 
paycheck during your career break. Therefore, before considering a career break, ask 
yourself whether you are ready to lose your job or not; can you give the company a 
better performance after your career break; can you afford to not get any paycheck 
during your career break?