caspercrf

I was recently laid off and have been considering a career change. I'm 46 and have been in software testing/QA for 20+ years with a BSEE degree. I'm getting burned out on doing the same thing for so long and a friend of a friend was telling me about his job as an Insurance Risk Engineer. It sounds interesting, basically assessing risk of a commercial business for coverage. I think it would be a good fit coming from software QA/Testing where I look for vulnerabilities in code. Does anyone have any insight into the job field? I'm not sure if it's just a fancy name for insurance salesman or if it's more technical then that.

Those that got laid off in the past couple of months and were able to find a new position, was it a step up or down relative to your last job? I've been out of work since November and the only interviews I've been getting are for positions that pay less, and/or contract work. I wasn't making a large salary at my last job, just about the average market rate. Just wondering how others are doing.

I was driving home today and I noticed a couple of businesses that always seem to be open and have been around for a while, it made me wonder how they stay in business. Some might be passion projects, but I'm amazed how other businesses come and go, but these stay open. Makes me wonder if niche businesses really are where to focus.

- Lamp Shade store - Light bulb store - Harpsicle store - Christmas ornament store open year-round - Small used book store(not rare or exotic books) - Baseball card store - Travel Agency in the back of a random strip mall

I met my wife about 12 years ago and at the time, we were making about the same salary ~$70k. Over the years both our salaries went up about the same until we both got to the $100k mark. About 5 years ago her career has really accelerated and her total comp is 2.5x what I'm making. On top of her salary, she hit the startup lotto and had a large cash buyout.

We had a hard time dealing with this at first, I was jealous and a little bitter, and she was worried that I was taking advantage of the situation. In the end, we decided that the buyout money would go to retirement and not be touched. As for out salary, we decided that we would both spend as if we both made my salary, and anything above that, she would put in a rainy day fund for home improvements or traveling etc. This arrangement kind of worked until it came time to use that rainy day funds and she started feeling that we were spending her money.

I've heard of this situation with Lawyers/Doctors where one spouse supported the other while they went to school, but once they started to practice, the income spread was huge. How have FANG engineers or anyone else with a big income disparity learned to deal with the situation?

How do you deal with large missed opportunities? Recently this has been eating me up. I have been dwelling on a couple of missed financial opportunities which would have been life-changing for me. I just can't seem to get over it, the ‘what ifs?’ keep me up at night. I’ve Googled and read advice about how to deal with this and the one upside is that I've identified the opportunity once, the next time I should be able to capitalize on it. This still doesn't help much :-/

Yesterday I was driving and had Google maps directions on audio. For the first time, one instruction said: "In 300 feet, make a right at the In and Out Burger." It's the first time I heard a business name in the directions. The interesting thing is that this was making a right onto a freeway, and on the corner was the back of a large strip mall. There could have been 4-5 other business names it could have said.

Has anyone else noticed this before?

I'm down in San Diego and the few tech meetups that I used to go to have basically dried up and haven't posted a meetup in over a year. Is this happening in other areas as well?

I have one line that says I have 8 apps published with over 500k combined downloads, would it be tacky to include that they have made $1x,xxx amount in revenue? The revenue is not super impressive number, but it's not insignificant either. Should I save that info for an interview and only if they ask?