I have a 7 year gap on my resume where my mental health was in the toilet. I have two yrs experience since resuming. Do people care? I have 2 yrs experience before the gap. Do I have 4 years experience or would most people only count the after? Trying to figure out where my TC should be is a pain. Especially as I work at a teeny startup as the first employee, i have no idea what % of share in the company I should consider reasonable. Currently at 80 base and 1%
Too large of a gap. You have 2 years.
Tech changes a lot in 7 years. So you are effectively starting over. Accept you are at two and focus on growing from there.
Four years. The two you had before the gap are still experience. And since you’ve been working two since I wouldn’t see it as a real issue. The most important point is that YOE is largely all an arbitrary number for the purposes of job descriptions.
Wrong
it depends a lot on the startup. i’ve been offered 0.5 % as a first employee and the same year got 2.5% from a better starup as a 5’th. 19yoe
Yoe is not the way to measure your comp. look at what level of responsibility and impact you can make.
This. I know some engineers with 1 yoe, that are way better and more impactful than some with 10 years of "experience"
I mean make me CTO and ill have an impact. Just not sure it's the good kind.
You could have 1 yoe repeated for 15 years. It's your skill, attitude, and what you bring to the table that should matter. That's how I look at candidates.
You have 4 YOE. Before somebody replies with “WRONG” hear me out... If you didn’t take the gap years, you would have 11 years of experience. Do people with 11 years of experience not count the early years because technology has changed so much? No, they count it because they likely still grew their skill set and soft skills during that time. Also, when you learn something once it’s much easier to brush up than it is to learn for the first time. Luckily, jobs usually ask for 3+ or 5+ years of experience and you definitely don’t have 5 so I say go for the mid level position. Good luck!
I generally question the gap specially because I want to know whether people still have the drive to succeed at the job. Many time people lose interest because of a gap and then don't do well at job. Of course I am not trying to generalize and I have found people to be even more motivated after gaps.
Fill the gap with a fake job. Say you were self employed as a consultant. Nobody can prove you weren't. . Make up a believable story and practice it forward and backward until you believe it yourself. Put up a web site for your "services" if you want. Never mention anything about mental health issues or you'll never get hired.
Easy to look up when a website was created though
You have 2 yoe then. Yes, a 7 year gap would be concerning
Wrong
From the paycheck grabber on the other post?