I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

aalin23 1 day ago 29 commentsRead Article on leblancfg.com

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Discussion (29 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

_spoke_•about 1 hour ago

Is anyone else bothered that this was run through an LLM before publication? The tone is a distraction for me.

foltik•about 1 hour ago

yes

All the superficial filler leaves a linkedin flavored taste in my mouth. I’d prefer to hear the author’s own voice and thoughts without noise injected to give the illusion of polish.

bee_rider•5 minutes ago

I thought it was actually quite funny, but I read it as a sarcastic parody of that writing style. I mean there’s no way:

> This is the founder story: what I built, why I chose it, and what a month of hardware taught me. The engineering writeup will come later, once I've talked to someone who actually understands IP strategy.

is for real, right?

blitzar•about 1 hour ago

zeristor•35 minutes ago

Lovely idea, always nice to put something together and scratch that itch.

What you need is a small weight or something that rises up a pole depending on how hard you hit it, a great visualisation.

You could even have a bell at the top, so if this small weight hits it with enough voom it could making a resounding ding sound, so life affirming.

Perhaps you could charge a 'apenny a go, and give a prize for those that can do it. Saying Roll up Roll up to passers by in a local fair.

"High Striker": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_striker

ramon156•about 1 hour ago

Cool idea, just wondering why you wouldn't travel during a sabbatical.

> a paid month off

that's not a sabbatical anyway, is it? i thought this was 6-12 months, not one?

https://intensity.systems/ is currently unstyled.

Post also has some LLM sniffs, so I'm unsure how much of the content is true.

wdrw•about 1 hour ago

At least in North America (and the author seems to be from Canada), having a company give you any sabbatical at all is pretty rare, and 6+ months is pure fantasy:) And not everyone likes travel, the post actually explains his reasoning pretty well.

0xfaded•about 1 hour ago

I work in the US and every year I take 17 days off over the July period which works out (with another company holiday) to be 4 continuous weeks. The first year I did it I told my manager "I'm going to take three weeks off, but what do you think about four?". I got my three weeks and made myself indispensable enough to get the four the next year.

This stuff can be negotiable if asked for and planned correctly. It won't be offered.

The Danes do it best, they basically shut down the country for 3 months every summer and have an unspoken agreement that nothing will get done.

lagniappe•39 minutes ago

>The Danes do it best, they basically shut down the country for 3 months every summer and have an unspoken agreement that nothing will get done.

Is there a skeleton crew to run grocery and fuel?

MisterTea•about 1 hour ago

> and 6+ months is pure fantasy:)

I've seen this before. Had a vendor become helpless after their only engineer took a 6 month sabbatical. Had to cancel orders and switch vendors because they stated "Until the engineer returns, we can not quote a delivery time." Imagine being that company...

MisterTea•about 1 hour ago

> Cool idea, just wondering why you wouldn't travel during a sabbatical.

That is really none of your business and sounds judgemental. How about we talk about the pollution you contribute when needlessly traveling for ego boosting?

lagniappe•41 minutes ago

>After five years at Shopify, employees get a paid month off to do whatever the hell they want. I took mine in April 2026.

Bleak.. Only a month after five years.

billbrown•15 minutes ago

Have you met shovelglove?

https://shovelglove.com

liangyunwuxu•20 minutes ago

You remind me of a saying: Boring things are actually interesting.

1970-01-01•about 2 hours ago

I could see this becoming a tiebreaker or ranking device for lumberjack competitions.

Pay08•about 2 hours ago

Charpy would like a word.

engineer_22•about 2 hours ago

I'm 13 years into my career and I haven't taken more than 5 days off in a row. That's usually a family reunion.

I think 4-8 weeks to recharge and reset would be helpful. What's the research say?

FinnKuhn•15 minutes ago

Minimum vacation days here in Germany are 20 with many companies offering 30 so the idea that you can't take of at least a couple of weeks for a vacation is just crazy to me.

How do you travel and see the world like that?

AntiUSAbah•18 minutes ago

Wow thats depressing.

I went to japan and took 14 days. I went to Iran and took 14 days. I went to canada and took 4 weeks. I went to Mexico and took 3 weeks.

Don't you want to do things with your life? Experience them properly?

ilikecakeandpie•about 1 hour ago

I'm almost 17 years in and there's been a few times where I had more than 10 days off in a row, and I recently had a four week sabbatical. Anecdotally, it was great and reminded me that retirement has always been the goal.

AntiUSAbah•17 minutes ago

A sabbatical is half a year or a year in germany. NO one would ever say this nonsense of 'four week sabbatical'.

world2vec•about 1 hour ago

I take 3 weeks in a row every summer, couldn't live without it.

markus_zhang•about 1 hour ago

Wish I could do that too. But sabbatical is usually reserved for the elite engineers in elite firms.

T0Bi•about 1 hour ago

Or Europeans (:

ramon156•about 1 hour ago

Work culture is so weird. What do you mean, it's reserved for the elites?

In my country you get to build your holiday days, so I could totally take a month off if I don't take any other days off this year. Hell, we even have a website to perfectly time it here so you get the most bang-for-your-days. lmao.

I will never comprehend this Silicon Valley mindset. You can also be a 10x engineer while drinking a martini in the balkans.

ilikecakeandpie•about 1 hour ago

Lives don't exist in vacuums. If I could uproot my close friends and family and we all moved to the same place then I would, but that's not possible. I'm sure it's the same for a lot of people

average_r_user•about 1 hour ago

"After five years at Shopify, employees get a paid month off to do whatever the hell they want. I took mine in April 2026. Thanks Tobi!"

porkphish•about 2 hours ago

Now I have Peter Gabriel in my head.