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There was a good suggestion in the comments - tie the ratings to the tip. For example, one star is no tip, two stars is 5% tip, three is 10%, four is 15% and five is 20% or more. People are more likely to be honest with the ratings when money is involved.
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Or, just make a program that converts tips to stars.
No reason to get complicated.
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Yes, that’s a good idea. Who needs to rate drivers when tipping is already used to provide feedback.
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I remember some stuffy old actuary giving me classic boomer advice when I told him I wanted to work on much cooler interesting shit. And that I was bored af. He said, “you’re not supposed to love work. A job is a job and you save things you love for hobbies outside work.”
In my head, I thought, fuck this idiot. I kept dreaming, left the career and eventually worked on a moon rover for nasa, attended my dream tech school, and now I’m collaborating with Grammy winners in my dream music program.
If you want life to be an adventure, this career is not for you. And people will treat you like an outsider when you share that you are dreaming of a much bigger life.
I felt tricked into this career. You do these incredibly hard exams because you’re a type A and have sonething to prove to the world and you think your work is going to be just as exciting and challenging. Then you find out your life is spreadsheets and and stuff you mastered years ago. Fuckkkk that shit
Also there was a whole hype wave where I was picking my career. “Actuary is the #1 career!” said US news and all the major news outlets. I thought, well, I want to prove I can be #1 at something. Surely if they make it this challenging to be credentialed you’ll be doing elite work. Nahhhhhh. Rug pull
On the flip side, if a healthy retirement and always having money are your jam, what I’m doing is not for you.
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All of that really depends on your personality type.
Are you a “generalist” or are you a “specialist” when it comes to learning & career?
I am a generalist and I simply do not last very long in a job that does the same things over and over again (think valuation work). Was completely soul-crushing for me.
But thats kind of “what” you have to figure out. What “role” would maximise your skills and abilities, and thus make you happier. I think most people agree that in Actuarial the ratio of effort to compensation is pretty good for most roles.
I could probably work at an insuretech start up over here and make 2x what I do now but with crazy hours (70hrs/week). That sort of job just doesn’t interest me anymore even if it may be technical challenging (and thus somewhat rewarding).
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Challenging doesn’t always have to translate to more hours. I think my job would challenge the lot of y’all and I got time for naps 
.
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That’s a shame. I don’t know that I’d describe that I “love work”, but I find it interesting and wouldn’t choose to do something else for money. I’d also say there are many days when I feel motivated to get out of bed because of stuff going on at work. So I find work interesting and motivating and enjoy doing it.
Yeah, probably the most common reason to get into actuarial is the clear progression provided by exams. And getting into actuarial because of exams has to be one of the worst reasons. I joined despite the exams, it was my biggest fear that they’d keep me from otherwise being successful in the career.
I’m not sure Insurtech would really be that technically challenging. I certainly agree it’d be a hell of a lot of hours though.
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Combining AI with pricing sounds pretty challenging.
Thats kind of what they are sinking a lot of funding into now.
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Yeah, we’re doing similar kinds of things on the insurer side. I imagine theirs is the same but without any internal data. Most of insurtech work in practice is metoo filings because they seem hell-bent on invading the personal lines market until, shocker, the regulators still exist and they’re stuck using the same rating variables as everyone else.
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While there is some unfortunate drudgery in most jobs, a lot of what I do isn’t too far off from the weird research / number-crunching / figure out how to make something work kind of tasks that have captured my interest recreationally since I was a child.
I’m in a position where I could retire if I wanted to. But heck, I’m getting paid (and most of my health insurance paid for) doing sorta-kinda the same stuff I’d probably do recreationally. Might as well keep going.
Ride that money train into billionaire city
You did it the right way. That’s an exceptional level of understanding what’s important so early in your career.
Aka Find the thing you enjoy doing for you first
I think I was trying to impress my family and prove I could achieve cool difficult things. You know it wasn’t until I was an associate my dad was like, you know you really made it! A late pat on the back is better than none at all
In some ways I was lucky in that I didn’t know what an actuary was until after college, so it was during my first job out of college when I started thinking about what I wanted to do long term and eventually landed on actuarial after talking with a couple actuaries to get a sense for the career.
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Yep this is pretty much it. Which is why insuretechs have really failed to make up any significant ground on better capitalized traditional carriers. In fact, I suspect most of them (insuretechs) will not survive the next financial crisis (could be happening right now)
They are unable to truly differentiate themselves from the pack. Metromile seemed like they were on to something by pricing per mile, but other insurers simply allowed their customers to plug in dongles to track their mileage.
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I’m sure I’ve already posted to this thread but I’d like to reintegrate that while I am happy in life, working as an actuary is boring as fuuuuck
If waiting tables paid just as well I’d happily go back to doing that
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That’s a shame. I genuinely don’t think I’d do something else even if it paid equivalently to actuarial… except maybe take random college courses based on my curiosity in the subject, but I doubt anyone will ever pay me to do that…
Laurier (a local university) provides free undergrad tuition after age 60, and UWaterloo does the same after age 65. Not quite paid, but…how many free degrees can I get after I get that old? At least one I’m thinking.
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