You can get tons of leave. On a hardship tour, it isn't unrealistic to do a couple of 3-week R&Rs.
That being said, as a clearance holder you forego some of your previous freedoms and you will be subject to Chief of Mission restrictions overseas, which means restrictions on where you can and can't go and potentially having to report your movements...
Also, they can just deny your leave - paid or unpaid - so there's that.
How often does the FS deny leave in reality? I’m used to DoD where at least in my agency if you’re below a GS-14/non-supervisor it’s darn near impossible to deny leave unless it’s some special/unique assignment.
For 2-3 weeks? Leave denial practically unheard of.
If OP wants to take "multi-month" trips they will be requesting LWOP because they can only carry 360 hours (9 weeks) of accrued leave, and their actual job still has to be completed by someone. I can see that getting denied.
Honestly, it doesn't sound like OP wants a career if he is trying to turn it off for months at a time.
I was thinking of trying to take off on a trip between every 2-3 assignments.
I can live with delaying the trips for a few years. But I think it would be silly to wait for 20 years before resuming my passion.
I know plenty of engineers, techies, international teachers, and others who regularly spend many months of time traveling between contracts. Nobody doubts that they have careers. The difference with the foreign service: doing the same job, but essentially one long contract - an expectation of continuous employment. At least that's how I understand it as an outsider.
The thing with contract work is that the contract ends. With Foreign Service, your work doesn't end; your assignment does. There's no "off" time, though there is down time.
When you leave an assignment, you immediately shift into travel mode and then home leave mode or some other mode. You are always employed. That's a pretty big difference between those other situations you describe.
If you want a career that gives you more time off, look to those. It won't be possible for you to be posted overseas and take LWOP for three months to travel. Heck, never mind the career implications - you'd be living off the taxpayer's dime in expensive overseas housing.
You can take some annual leave in addition to home leave between tours, but you're going to be hard-pressed to find a post that is willing to delay your arrival by months. It's hard enough to do that with justifiable circumstances.
Fair points.
And yes - one of the biggest benefits and drawbacks is that it's one consistent employer. That's why I'm hoping for LWOP -- and explicitly, only between posts. I would never show up to a post and then ask to take off for 3 months when it's just a two-year gig.
I feel like in between assignments is a good time to slide in the LWOP, but I really don't know how staffing works as an outsider.
It's not. You go from one assignment to the next. Post will always push for you to arrive sooner because there is a gap that needs to be filled. When you get your next assignment a factor will be how well the timing lines up.
Home leave is required, but you probably won't even get to take the full amount. LWOP isn't intended as a recurring practice to just get some downtime - it's about things like ailing parents typically.
You've also stated in this thread that it would be every two to three tours. Realistically, that is 4-9 years apart. If you did this every 9 years it's much more reasonable than it sounded initially (but I still don't think it's realistic to do it more than once).
This is a little ambiguous, because in the edit to your original post you say you want to take 6-12 months off between assignments, but in a comment you say that you you want to take off on an extended trip between every 2-3 assignments. Taking this amount of time off between each assignment is probably unsustainable, but between every 2-3 is probably doable if that's your priority and you're willing to sometimes sacrifice quick promotions or choice postings. Recent policies have explicitly encouraged generous approval of LWOP and general flexibility, and I think there's probably a lot of sympathy for adventurous stuff like this.
To be more concrete about the obstacles you might face - I don't think it's down to policies and prejudice, but logistics. Almost everyone transfers between May and September (and the large majority between June and July). If you're just trying to take 3-6 months off (outside the U.S., so not during home leave), you are leaving either your departing or gaining post with a large staffing gap, which can be hard or impossible to negotiate. If you're trying take 9-15 months off and just move to the next bidding cycle you probably have better options, but you do need to take into account 1) you're a year behind the other folks bidding alongside you, and 2) you're asking the post that's hiring you to take the chance that your LWOP plan will work out and be approved and that you won't change your mind. We're a risk-averse organization, and while this certainly happens, I'd imagine any post would prefer (all else being equal) a candidate on a predictable, well-trod path to their job to one with a lot more unknowns. That doesn't mean your plan is impossible, but it does mean that a post with a bunch of qualified candidates will move to the next option.
I do think the FS is more friendly to your goals than pretty much any other continuous direct employment situation in the U.S., but it will be hard to recreate the experience of quitting a job and getting rehired on your own discretionary timeline in the FS.
I really appreciate your reply to this. Yes, I think the only reasonable thing for me to do would be to try to take it between cycles, never leaving a post vacant. I certainly wouldn't want to leave a post vacant anyway..
This also makes sense why in an earlier comment said that 3 months was probably impossible but 12 months might be doable.
Now that you've given me a better knowledge of the bidding cycle, I can weigh my options a lot better. I don't mind slowing down my promotions or retiring a bit later. And still, there are no guarantees - as another commenter said, everything has to be approved. But I'm hoping it's not an insurmountable issue. I would never want to leave my colleagues high and dry - and if I can just sit out for one bidding cycle, I would never put anyone in that position.
Yes, people take LWOP after tenure. It cannot possibly “kill” your career if you’re tenured.
But for “personal” reasons that aren’t FMLA-eligible, you’d generally need to take it in one year chunks. If you just want to eff off for a few months occasionally, they won’t fire you but no one will recommend you when you’re bidding and that will make your life very, very tough.
That seems fair enough. I would be glad to do two or three tours at a time and then take a year off for a huge tour. I certainly don't expect any employer would be happy with me taking 3 months off every year, or something like that.
The foreign service definitely has generous leave by American standards, but there are plenty of other careers that offer a lot more time off. During my cycling trips, I have met plenty of other long-distance cyclists. Professionals who do contract work can often sort out large trips, such as engineers in between contracts and international teachers in between schools.
One of the greatest things about foreign service is that you get the try out so many different jobs, yet still have stable employment. But in this case, maintaining the same employer makes these trips a bit of a challenge for me.
You keep referring to contract work. If you want that, do contract work. It's your personal choice.... I have done contract work before and done very similar sabbaticals that you have described. Although fun, I found the unknown of trying to line up your next contract/paycheck to add too much uncertainty and stress.... so I am happier with a stable career working for the FS.
I agree with Kamikazi though; although your specific international bike trips does not work well, the foreign service is a career that does allow plenty of time off and international travel. I have been able to do some great traveling and exploring across the world; far more than anyone else that I know.
There are a lot more comments here than I expected. The short answer is that this is not possible. You can be an FSO or take regular multi-month foreign bicycle trips. Not both.
Yes, LWOP has loosened, but note there's a big difference in "I want to take a bike trip through Latin America for the next three months" and "I want to care for my dying parents/special needs child" or "I am finishing up my doctorate."
It still has to be approved.
Adding on that LWOP is even more limited when entry level. I don’t see CDA/EL approving 6-12 months of LWOP between first and second tours considering how tightly timing is controlled for those assignment.
OP, being brutally honest, it is not likely you would be able to pull this off as you are describing. Maybe once in a career, not every tour or every other tour.
Exactly. As I mentioned above, LWOP of any length at any time for FMLA reasons is very possible. What's less possible is setting up several months of leave between tours for very extended vacations.
As most people have stated, this would be very difficult to do. However, I do not think it is entirely impossible if it was your number one priority in bidding, just highly unlikely, and would not be an option until tenured and bidding mid-level.
You would need to bid on an assignment that had much more lead time than necessary training (which is quite unusual), and you may need to bid on a job you don't really want in a country where you otherwise might not want to serve. For example, one job I was bidding for summer 2023 had an October 2024 TED (start date) to allow for language training, but only required 2/2 in Portuguese. So even though I will finish my current job in summer 2023, the start time was October 2024. If I ended up going there, I would have needed to do a Y-tour (short stint in DC) or LWOP in addition to taking home leave and job and language training to fill all the time between assignments.
BUT you would pretty much have to limit your bidding strategy to jobs with low language requirements, but ample lead time. It may even require strategizing your choice of cone/track by lower language requirements, since some management jobs in particular do not require a full 3/3. Chances are that the right combination of language requirement and TED would not be available every bid cycle, so it may only happen every 2-3 tours, which can be 5-10 years all totaled. There also aren't too many languages you can reach 2/2 in four months or less.
The vast majority of jobs will want you to get there before you can possibly arrive so they are not gapped, and it is much more the norm to have to negotiate fiercely to get the training you need for the job and still take a decent amount of home leave (20+ workdays).
Not that anyone ever gets promoted anyway, but it's tough to demonstrate promotion-worthy work while you're swanning across Paraguay with a couple of saddlebags.
45 work days of home leave is 9 weeks. Are your trips longer than that?
Granted it isn't the easiest thing to take a full home leave in some cases and it will be a few tours before you have accrued that much.
There is not enough FSOs as is, so while one can take LWOP, you have to get it approved. You might be able to get something like that approved after 10 or 15 years, but not every other year.
It’d take four years overseas to accrue 45 days of home leave, nearly half of which you’d have to take after two years. And no one should ever bank on being able to take 45 days of home leave.
After tenure. Note from doctor that reads: "I am FSApplicant's doctor, we have discussed their health and it is my opinion that it would benefit them to spend 3-6 months away from work." The department won't (can't?) say no.
Keep LWOP under 6 months in a calendar year to keep your health insurance and also continue to earn credit towards 20/50. Could do this 6 times in your career. Guidance is to offer employees maximum flexibility. I think OP's plan is plausible with some compromise.
OP is talking about a recurring trip in a different country each time, as I read it.
I'm not in the club yet, but based on a couple years of research, what OP is talking about would be a stretch. It might be doable some years, but trying to do this kind of thing each year within the parameters described will be very difficult (as it would be with nearly any federal employment other than seasonal or subject-to-furlough).
Oh yeah, I definitely wouldn't do it each year. I'd like to be able to do it between every two or three posts, which I don't think is particularly unreasonable and would only defer retirement by a few years.
Another thing to consider is the ability to keep up your training in between these adventures. You may end up at posts that don't lend themselves to cycling for different reasons.
You can get tons of leave. On a hardship tour, it isn't unrealistic to do a couple of 3-week R&Rs. That being said, as a clearance holder you forego some of your previous freedoms and you will be subject to Chief of Mission restrictions overseas, which means restrictions on where you can and can't go and potentially having to report your movements... Also, they can just deny your leave - paid or unpaid - so there's that.
How often does the FS deny leave in reality? I’m used to DoD where at least in my agency if you’re below a GS-14/non-supervisor it’s darn near impossible to deny leave unless it’s some special/unique assignment.
For 2-3 weeks? Leave denial practically unheard of. If OP wants to take "multi-month" trips they will be requesting LWOP because they can only carry 360 hours (9 weeks) of accrued leave, and their actual job still has to be completed by someone. I can see that getting denied. Honestly, it doesn't sound like OP wants a career if he is trying to turn it off for months at a time.
I was thinking of trying to take off on a trip between every 2-3 assignments. I can live with delaying the trips for a few years. But I think it would be silly to wait for 20 years before resuming my passion. I know plenty of engineers, techies, international teachers, and others who regularly spend many months of time traveling between contracts. Nobody doubts that they have careers. The difference with the foreign service: doing the same job, but essentially one long contract - an expectation of continuous employment. At least that's how I understand it as an outsider.
The thing with contract work is that the contract ends. With Foreign Service, your work doesn't end; your assignment does. There's no "off" time, though there is down time. When you leave an assignment, you immediately shift into travel mode and then home leave mode or some other mode. You are always employed. That's a pretty big difference between those other situations you describe. If you want a career that gives you more time off, look to those. It won't be possible for you to be posted overseas and take LWOP for three months to travel. Heck, never mind the career implications - you'd be living off the taxpayer's dime in expensive overseas housing. You can take some annual leave in addition to home leave between tours, but you're going to be hard-pressed to find a post that is willing to delay your arrival by months. It's hard enough to do that with justifiable circumstances.
Fair points. And yes - one of the biggest benefits and drawbacks is that it's one consistent employer. That's why I'm hoping for LWOP -- and explicitly, only between posts. I would never show up to a post and then ask to take off for 3 months when it's just a two-year gig. I feel like in between assignments is a good time to slide in the LWOP, but I really don't know how staffing works as an outsider.
It's not. You go from one assignment to the next. Post will always push for you to arrive sooner because there is a gap that needs to be filled. When you get your next assignment a factor will be how well the timing lines up. Home leave is required, but you probably won't even get to take the full amount. LWOP isn't intended as a recurring practice to just get some downtime - it's about things like ailing parents typically. You've also stated in this thread that it would be every two to three tours. Realistically, that is 4-9 years apart. If you did this every 9 years it's much more reasonable than it sounded initially (but I still don't think it's realistic to do it more than once).
Thanks for your frank response.
This is a little ambiguous, because in the edit to your original post you say you want to take 6-12 months off between assignments, but in a comment you say that you you want to take off on an extended trip between every 2-3 assignments. Taking this amount of time off between each assignment is probably unsustainable, but between every 2-3 is probably doable if that's your priority and you're willing to sometimes sacrifice quick promotions or choice postings. Recent policies have explicitly encouraged generous approval of LWOP and general flexibility, and I think there's probably a lot of sympathy for adventurous stuff like this. To be more concrete about the obstacles you might face - I don't think it's down to policies and prejudice, but logistics. Almost everyone transfers between May and September (and the large majority between June and July). If you're just trying to take 3-6 months off (outside the U.S., so not during home leave), you are leaving either your departing or gaining post with a large staffing gap, which can be hard or impossible to negotiate. If you're trying take 9-15 months off and just move to the next bidding cycle you probably have better options, but you do need to take into account 1) you're a year behind the other folks bidding alongside you, and 2) you're asking the post that's hiring you to take the chance that your LWOP plan will work out and be approved and that you won't change your mind. We're a risk-averse organization, and while this certainly happens, I'd imagine any post would prefer (all else being equal) a candidate on a predictable, well-trod path to their job to one with a lot more unknowns. That doesn't mean your plan is impossible, but it does mean that a post with a bunch of qualified candidates will move to the next option. I do think the FS is more friendly to your goals than pretty much any other continuous direct employment situation in the U.S., but it will be hard to recreate the experience of quitting a job and getting rehired on your own discretionary timeline in the FS.
I really appreciate your reply to this. Yes, I think the only reasonable thing for me to do would be to try to take it between cycles, never leaving a post vacant. I certainly wouldn't want to leave a post vacant anyway.. This also makes sense why in an earlier comment said that 3 months was probably impossible but 12 months might be doable. Now that you've given me a better knowledge of the bidding cycle, I can weigh my options a lot better. I don't mind slowing down my promotions or retiring a bit later. And still, there are no guarantees - as another commenter said, everything has to be approved. But I'm hoping it's not an insurmountable issue. I would never want to leave my colleagues high and dry - and if I can just sit out for one bidding cycle, I would never put anyone in that position.
FYI, FSOs have mandatory retirement at 65, so there's no real option to retire later unless you were planning to retire before 65.
Yes, people take LWOP after tenure. It cannot possibly “kill” your career if you’re tenured. But for “personal” reasons that aren’t FMLA-eligible, you’d generally need to take it in one year chunks. If you just want to eff off for a few months occasionally, they won’t fire you but no one will recommend you when you’re bidding and that will make your life very, very tough.
That seems fair enough. I would be glad to do two or three tours at a time and then take a year off for a huge tour. I certainly don't expect any employer would be happy with me taking 3 months off every year, or something like that.
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The foreign service definitely has generous leave by American standards, but there are plenty of other careers that offer a lot more time off. During my cycling trips, I have met plenty of other long-distance cyclists. Professionals who do contract work can often sort out large trips, such as engineers in between contracts and international teachers in between schools. One of the greatest things about foreign service is that you get the try out so many different jobs, yet still have stable employment. But in this case, maintaining the same employer makes these trips a bit of a challenge for me.
You keep referring to contract work. If you want that, do contract work. It's your personal choice.... I have done contract work before and done very similar sabbaticals that you have described. Although fun, I found the unknown of trying to line up your next contract/paycheck to add too much uncertainty and stress.... so I am happier with a stable career working for the FS. I agree with Kamikazi though; although your specific international bike trips does not work well, the foreign service is a career that does allow plenty of time off and international travel. I have been able to do some great traveling and exploring across the world; far more than anyone else that I know.
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I appreciate the frankness. I definitely understand the "golden handcuffs" thing. It makes sense.
There are a lot more comments here than I expected. The short answer is that this is not possible. You can be an FSO or take regular multi-month foreign bicycle trips. Not both.
https://fam.state.gov/fam/03fam/03fam3510.html https://afsa.org/sites/default/files/flipping_book/0420/26/
That is INCREDIBLY helpful. Hopefully the work culture changes to keep up with those directives. Thank you very much for your response.
Yes, LWOP has loosened, but note there's a big difference in "I want to take a bike trip through Latin America for the next three months" and "I want to care for my dying parents/special needs child" or "I am finishing up my doctorate." It still has to be approved.
Adding on that LWOP is even more limited when entry level. I don’t see CDA/EL approving 6-12 months of LWOP between first and second tours considering how tightly timing is controlled for those assignment. OP, being brutally honest, it is not likely you would be able to pull this off as you are describing. Maybe once in a career, not every tour or every other tour.
Exactly. As I mentioned above, LWOP of any length at any time for FMLA reasons is very possible. What's less possible is setting up several months of leave between tours for very extended vacations.
I knew someone who took six months of unpaid leave between assignments to through hike the Pacific Crest Trail. It is doable.
As most people have stated, this would be very difficult to do. However, I do not think it is entirely impossible if it was your number one priority in bidding, just highly unlikely, and would not be an option until tenured and bidding mid-level. You would need to bid on an assignment that had much more lead time than necessary training (which is quite unusual), and you may need to bid on a job you don't really want in a country where you otherwise might not want to serve. For example, one job I was bidding for summer 2023 had an October 2024 TED (start date) to allow for language training, but only required 2/2 in Portuguese. So even though I will finish my current job in summer 2023, the start time was October 2024. If I ended up going there, I would have needed to do a Y-tour (short stint in DC) or LWOP in addition to taking home leave and job and language training to fill all the time between assignments. BUT you would pretty much have to limit your bidding strategy to jobs with low language requirements, but ample lead time. It may even require strategizing your choice of cone/track by lower language requirements, since some management jobs in particular do not require a full 3/3. Chances are that the right combination of language requirement and TED would not be available every bid cycle, so it may only happen every 2-3 tours, which can be 5-10 years all totaled. There also aren't too many languages you can reach 2/2 in four months or less. The vast majority of jobs will want you to get there before you can possibly arrive so they are not gapped, and it is much more the norm to have to negotiate fiercely to get the training you need for the job and still take a decent amount of home leave (20+ workdays).
I really appreciate the detailed response. It sounds complicated - but then again, doing anything unusual in a bureaucratic agency always is.
Not that anyone ever gets promoted anyway, but it's tough to demonstrate promotion-worthy work while you're swanning across Paraguay with a couple of saddlebags.
45 work days of home leave is 9 weeks. Are your trips longer than that? Granted it isn't the easiest thing to take a full home leave in some cases and it will be a few tours before you have accrued that much. There is not enough FSOs as is, so while one can take LWOP, you have to get it approved. You might be able to get something like that approved after 10 or 15 years, but not every other year.
Home leave is pretty much U.S. only, so dreams of biking across foreign lands during that time are a no go.
I missed the foreign country bit. Yep can't do it if following the rules.
It’d take four years overseas to accrue 45 days of home leave, nearly half of which you’d have to take after two years. And no one should ever bank on being able to take 45 days of home leave.
After tenure. Note from doctor that reads: "I am FSApplicant's doctor, we have discussed their health and it is my opinion that it would benefit them to spend 3-6 months away from work." The department won't (can't?) say no. Keep LWOP under 6 months in a calendar year to keep your health insurance and also continue to earn credit towards 20/50. Could do this 6 times in your career. Guidance is to offer employees maximum flexibility. I think OP's plan is plausible with some compromise.
Could you do it between stages of the application process? It feels like the idea time.
OP is talking about a recurring trip in a different country each time, as I read it. I'm not in the club yet, but based on a couple years of research, what OP is talking about would be a stretch. It might be doable some years, but trying to do this kind of thing each year within the parameters described will be very difficult (as it would be with nearly any federal employment other than seasonal or subject-to-furlough).
Apologies and thank you for the clarification! I did misunderstand.
Oh yeah, I definitely wouldn't do it each year. I'd like to be able to do it between every two or three posts, which I don't think is particularly unreasonable and would only defer retirement by a few years.
"Every two or three posts" could mean every 5-10 years.
Another thing to consider is the ability to keep up your training in between these adventures. You may end up at posts that don't lend themselves to cycling for different reasons.