1: Yes. Has happened 3 times in my career, most recently this past May.
2: Minimally. I was asked for the reason for my departure, and I was transparent as I could be, indicating what I knew and the circumstances. People were curious about it, but then again, its not relevant to finding new work. I will say that I found that multiple potential employers concluded successful interviews with unrelated programming tests. It felt like a set of coffin problems[1], that older folks like me, not trained in CS, but writing code for 40+ years, would not do well on.
This is a huge red flag. I actually had someone tell me that I 'needed to know how to program' to do the job I'd applied for, even though I have a public documented history of programming and software development/engineering, have developed and shipped code for decades, for research, products, patches, ...
That impacted search a bit.
3: There's not much of a stigma these days. Your self worth is not tied up in your job. Your value isn't either. You can take time to decompress, retool, think, train, research.
Put another way, if an employer thinks its a problem, you might want to steer clear of that employer. Bring the conversation quickly to a close, amicably, so you don't waste time and create bad feelings.
On jobs in general, employers generally are their to please and profit their owners. Understanding all their actions in terms of this (HR is there to protect the employer, etc.) can help you separate your sense of self worth from the position or company.
2: Minimally. I was asked for the reason for my departure, and I was transparent as I could be, indicating what I knew and the circumstances. People were curious about it, but then again, its not relevant to finding new work. I will say that I found that multiple potential employers concluded successful interviews with unrelated programming tests. It felt like a set of coffin problems[1], that older folks like me, not trained in CS, but writing code for 40+ years, would not do well on.
This is a huge red flag. I actually had someone tell me that I 'needed to know how to program' to do the job I'd applied for, even though I have a public documented history of programming and software development/engineering, have developed and shipped code for decades, for research, products, patches, ...
That impacted search a bit.
3: There's not much of a stigma these days. Your self worth is not tied up in your job. Your value isn't either. You can take time to decompress, retool, think, train, research.
Put another way, if an employer thinks its a problem, you might want to steer clear of that employer. Bring the conversation quickly to a close, amicably, so you don't waste time and create bad feelings.
On jobs in general, employers generally are their to please and profit their owners. Understanding all their actions in terms of this (HR is there to protect the employer, etc.) can help you separate your sense of self worth from the position or company.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/gxpoyo/soviet_coffin_...