Many of the world's best engineers don't have a Github / OSS contributions / Stack overflow / etc. They're still quite hireable. It is highly likely you are a

Many of the world's best engineers don't have a Github / OSS contributions / Stack overflow / etc. They're still quite hireable. It is highly likely you are also hireable, even without a portfolio that you can conveniently point to, although that would be an asset. Do not cash out your retirement account. [Edit: Generic personal finance advice for everyone: Unless your children will starve in the snow otherwise, it is never a good time to cash out your retirement account. It will be very tempting to tap it to pay for your wedding, your first home, a medical emergency, your kids' college, etc etc, but if you do this, you will not have it at retirement. This is far and away the largest risk associated with self-directed retirement accounts.] It is not required to buy coffee for people with the ability to hire engineers. Coffee is cheap and jobs are plentiful in the current environment.