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shivverMy husband got laid off this week.
Technically, he's still employed until May 1st (so that we maintain health insurance through the end of May), but he's largely out of tasks. He's got a few things left to do, because he wasn't only a manager but also kind of an admin as well, maintaining some of the tools that the COO had set up, so he's going to be helping taking some of those down.
The company isn't actually closing yet. They had two projects left - one larger, more stable project and one smaller, about-to-fold-up-any-day-now project, and he was project manager on both of them. Well, you know what happened: the client with the larger, more stable project, suddenly folded, being unable to get another round of funding. So, of the three devs contracted to that client, two were let go and one got transferred to the smaller project, just so that the one dev already working on that project had some backup. With the larger project gone, they couldn't afford to keep my husband on, so he was let go as well.
Though of course it's a major life change and things are a bit uncertain, neither of us are upset, because we'd been expecting this for a while, at least seven months since I was laid off last year. We'd always expected that as an engineering manager, and the least experienced engineering manager on the management team, he'd be laid off first in every round, but he never was, probably because his role was so diversified: his job was being an engineering manager, but he was a QA manager by resume, and also did project management and release management, and he also did admin stuff for the COO, making him pretty indispensable. It would have been a nightmare extracting him out of multiple projects and trying to fill those gaps with someone else. As it is, he was the last engineering manager left, because all the others were just engineering managers which the company easily replaced with him.
Take that as a lesson in diversifying your skillset.
For now, he's going to take time away from working, perhaps a few months, and then we'll both start looking for a job. But in the meantime, we're assessing whether or not we can actually just retire now. Early indications say "yes". We're DINKs (double income, no kids), and at least for me, personally, I'm not expected to live for another twenty-five years, based on family medical history, so what we have saved up covers that pretty easily. We're not so sure about him, though, because both his mother's and father's families tend toward long life, living into their 90s and 100s (except his dad specifically, who died of cancer in his 70s). Anyway, so we're going to find a retirement advisor to assess our situation.
The one big question is health insurance. We've always been employed and so have received insurance by the company, so we have no idea how to get health insurance or how much it's going to cost. However, I just found out that Laurie, the wife of my band director Daniel, is well-versed in insurance and ACA, and she's offered to help me with it, so we're going to take advantage of that. Hopefully it won't be a nightmare.
Anyway, so things are not bad, despite sounding so. I'm expecting some day-to-day adjustments, as I've been really enjoying getting the weekdays to myself, to work on the house and do whatever I want, and that's going to change, as my husband really likes to schedule what he does AND he wants to do things together. I'm going to have to set some boundaries.
Technically, he's still employed until May 1st (so that we maintain health insurance through the end of May), but he's largely out of tasks. He's got a few things left to do, because he wasn't only a manager but also kind of an admin as well, maintaining some of the tools that the COO had set up, so he's going to be helping taking some of those down.
The company isn't actually closing yet. They had two projects left - one larger, more stable project and one smaller, about-to-fold-up-any-day-now project, and he was project manager on both of them. Well, you know what happened: the client with the larger, more stable project, suddenly folded, being unable to get another round of funding. So, of the three devs contracted to that client, two were let go and one got transferred to the smaller project, just so that the one dev already working on that project had some backup. With the larger project gone, they couldn't afford to keep my husband on, so he was let go as well.
Though of course it's a major life change and things are a bit uncertain, neither of us are upset, because we'd been expecting this for a while, at least seven months since I was laid off last year. We'd always expected that as an engineering manager, and the least experienced engineering manager on the management team, he'd be laid off first in every round, but he never was, probably because his role was so diversified: his job was being an engineering manager, but he was a QA manager by resume, and also did project management and release management, and he also did admin stuff for the COO, making him pretty indispensable. It would have been a nightmare extracting him out of multiple projects and trying to fill those gaps with someone else. As it is, he was the last engineering manager left, because all the others were just engineering managers which the company easily replaced with him.
Take that as a lesson in diversifying your skillset.
For now, he's going to take time away from working, perhaps a few months, and then we'll both start looking for a job. But in the meantime, we're assessing whether or not we can actually just retire now. Early indications say "yes". We're DINKs (double income, no kids), and at least for me, personally, I'm not expected to live for another twenty-five years, based on family medical history, so what we have saved up covers that pretty easily. We're not so sure about him, though, because both his mother's and father's families tend toward long life, living into their 90s and 100s (except his dad specifically, who died of cancer in his 70s). Anyway, so we're going to find a retirement advisor to assess our situation.
The one big question is health insurance. We've always been employed and so have received insurance by the company, so we have no idea how to get health insurance or how much it's going to cost. However, I just found out that Laurie, the wife of my band director Daniel, is well-versed in insurance and ACA, and she's offered to help me with it, so we're going to take advantage of that. Hopefully it won't be a nightmare.
Anyway, so things are not bad, despite sounding so. I'm expecting some day-to-day adjustments, as I've been really enjoying getting the weekdays to myself, to work on the house and do whatever I want, and that's going to change, as my husband really likes to schedule what he does AND he wants to do things together. I'm going to have to set some boundaries.
