u/wanton007

Got laid off after 7.5 years mid June along with few others due to some company restructuring.

Been doing QA for the last 20+ years with a heavy focus on feature (manual testing - UI and API) on SaaS, Enterprise on prem and even desktop software. Last 10+ years though have been SaaS products.

Most of those times, the QA teams were small and automation wasn't a priority up until maybe the last 1 or so?

The mantra for the team was, feature testing to make sure our customers don't have a bad experience. Automation would be secondary so recently. There were existing automated tests from before so refactoring and creating new tests wasn't so bad given I had examples to use.

When we started a new project, we decided to go with Playwright / Python and it was pretty good. I'm still no expert on the Python side but the Playwright docs are pretty good. When Github Copilot and Claude Code were cleared for enterprise use, I was able to crank out tests with the tooling which felt good but also, realized that's where the learning stopped.

Being the lone QA on a team probably doesn't help that.

In any event, I'm panicked. Anxiety is setting in with the job market the way it is. I feel like I'm experienced in all the wrong areas now. It seems most postings are all about automation mixed with "some" manual testing, exploratory testing, test case design, planning etc.

Ageism is creeping in for me, I worry about my family and haven't had an appetite since I got laid off. I'm losing weight, continued of lack of sleep and can't stop doom scrolling the job boards seeing that I'm not qualified anymore. Everyone that I worked with reached out and said that I was great, totally improved the quality and provided confidence that we could deploy everyday. Some said I outgrew the QA role on the team and don't understand how this could happen. There's also no more QA on that team.

Sadly, management didn't see it that way.

I was working remotely and resigned to the fact I would go back into an office locally, except there's only a handful left in this city.

I feel alone, trying to put on a brave face for my family but suffering here in silence. I'm frightened I won't be able to provide for my family since I'm the primary income earner.

I'm not even sure what the point of this post is, other than to get this out of my head and hope to lesson my anxiety.

I'll probably hunt fast travel boards. Hopefully someone updates a map with all the locations!

I'm also looking into getting my first 3D printer so I have no idea what I want.

I was originally impressed and only looking at Bambu because the community seemed huge but would like to get some non Bambu fan boy perspectives.

Some thing I'd like to print:

1. household knick-nacks that my wife will come up with
2. Daughter has seen videos on youtube to print Pokemon TCG related things (card holders, sleeve holders, ETB cases). She's also seen anime Katana's, Cyberpunk stuff and just random toys for a 14 year old.
3. Me - same sort of stuff as my daughter but F1 Lego stuff, star wars, desk organizer stuff.

Those same youtube videos my daughter watched, especially Katana's etc requires a lot of post processing.

I was originally looking at the Bambu P1S with the AMS but didn't realize that the tool changing and amount of waste is a lot for multi-colored prints and multi-color is something I'd definitely want.

So of course I see an ad for Snapmaker U1 that markets as. less waste, quicker etc.

Add to the mix that I've not used anything, I see prints on makerworld that look great and I'd love to print, but how does that work?

Can I just pull those prints from makerworld, load them up in the Snapmaker Slicer, set the colors I want for said pieces? Is that how it would work?

I also want to avoid post processing work on the bigger items like Katana's and such so I'd probably just end up needing to buy spools of filament that closely match the colour of the end thing I wanted to print?

I guess...would the Snapmaker U1 be good for a newbie? I know some recommendations would be to start with a low cost machine, see how it goes and then upgrade later. Makes sense but then I'd have to sell that one at the time etc...was hoping to get ahead of that trial and find what you need process.

Sorry for the long initial post here and I'm not even sure I have a framed articulate question?