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Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession
618 points by neoxone on May 24, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 551 comments
I’ve been job hunting and I was going to get interviewed on Friday for a SWE role at a small startup and today I received an email from the PM canceling the interview and letting me know the company has decided to stop the recruitment process for all roles due to the markets situation. She also attached a tweet about a YC email to all their founders, here’s the link: https://twitter.com/refsrc/status/1527238287471292417. I checked the company webpage and in fact they have closed all the open positions, there were like 6.

From all the rejections I’ve got so far this is the first time the reason is markets turmoil / recession threat. To be honest is my first time job hunting since I graduated in 2019.

Screen shots: https://t.co/wSx5IR44nK

Will be this the situation for most tech companies or just start ups? I know the unprofitable over valuated ones will most likely get rekt first but I wanna know if during recessions recruiting slows down even for big profitable companies.

What companies or roles will be more resilient?

And how as a SWE / tech industry professional, specially the ones starting their careers like me, can prepare?

I hope some experienced people in the industry can give some hope and advice. Is demoralizing to find out I spent 4 years in school just to get into a really harsh job market. First pandemic, then recession? F...




> I hope some experienced people in the industry can give some hope and advice. Is demoralizing to find out I spent 4 years in school just to get into a really harsh job market. First pandemic, then recession? F...

Overall, I'd say relax a bit. You're still in a good situation. Recessions are hard for many, but software engineers were among the best off during the last one and I expect will be this time also.

> I wanna know if during recessions recruiting slows down even for big profitable companies.

I remember Google's recruiting slowed down in ~2008. [edit: 2009? Maybe not right at the start of the recession.] [1] So sometimes yes. On the bright side, it's rare for profitable large tech companies to lay off software engineers, so if you get in, you're pretty safe.

Even at startups, I don't expect a universal freeze. I asked an external recruiter (that is, someone who recruits for a variety of startups) a couple days ago about the present situation. She told me some companies she works with have done hiring freezes, others are still desperate to hire. There are opportunities. I'm not a good enough business person to give you solid general advice about which startups will be most resilient, though.

If you are good enough and/or persistent enough, my feeling is there will be a place for you in tech. (Even if, for example, you freeze up during coding interviews. Some companies do these, others don't. There's enough variety that you can still be okay if you don't have your sights set on a particular company.)

If you are not, there's almost certainly still a place for you as a software engineer in a stable, non-tech company or government position. Non-tech typically isn't as lucrative, but you can be comfortable. My feeling is many of these places have a tremendous need for just basic automation. Arguably more so during a recession, although they may not all realize this.

I started my career not long before the last recession. I didn't have any real existing savings to lose. Then I was earning far in excess of my needs and investing much of the rest in index funds (e.g. VTI) when stock prices were low. The recession ended and stock prices soared. I feel scummy saying this about many people's suffering, but the recession worked out well for me.

[1] Personally I think this was a mistake. They could have hired a lot of great people during this time. "Be bold when others are fearful." They had solid financial footing for hiring, and if nothing else, they could have put a fair number of folks on efficiency projects that would have more than paid their way in machine costs.


> Overall, I'd say relax a bit. You're still in a good situation. Recessions are hard for many, but software engineers were among the best off during the last one and I expect will be this time also.

The demand for software engineers was driven partly by zombie app and saas companies all competing for "top talent", dependent entirely on free cash but without sustainable business models.

On top of that, the "demand" narrative led to an influx of new software engineers that will mature over the next 1-3 years.

These two factors I believe put our industry at risk if there's a recession.


At risk? We’ll just stop having overinflated salaries. The current situation is insane for employers:

- Employees are not willing to put a little extra (paid extra, I mean - and we’re at the 35hrs week here),

- Not willing to study afterwork to improve their career,

- Not willing to work on legacy products where we pay them 40% more.

- In the first 2 years, I can pay someone 35 -> 50 -> +10k bonus, and they’ll leave for a job at 65 going 75 with a tech stack that ticks all boxes.

- You can teach them React + SpringBoot + Kubernetes, and they’ll still leave because company XYZ does AWS + Neo4j + AI… while still not fixing spelling mistakes in the UI and still in the habit of downloading and entire DB tables and filter them in the Java side, and seeing no problem asking for a microservices architecture.

This developer market is batshit crazy and isn’t tight enough to make people want to serve the needs of customers. “Do something hard and get a house in exchange” isn’t a persuasive argument today, they’ll get rich anyway. Instead, they serve their resume, which I perfectly respect and understand, it needs to be done too, but at one point, it’s a disconnect between customers, employers and developers.

A crisis is unfortunate but I can’t wait for it.


Where are you located that you have a 35h week while enjoying such great benefits like employer investing in your training?

I'd like to move there.

In my EU country the working hours are 38.5 which isn't as good as 35h, but it isn't that bad, but no employer hires you to invest in your training. Every company wants only seniors, preferably for junior wages, and scream there's a shortage while offering no WFH because "management doesn't believe in WFH" and "the culture of working in the office is better".


I'm in UK, working at a video games studio and while we work 37.5h a week indeed all training is done during work hours, we hire people from junior and bring them up to senior/expert levels, with our average seniority being something stupid like 12 years+(longest one atm is 29 years). And yes, we only have to be in the office 1 day a week, personally I work 4 days from home 1 from the office, but it's up to everyone how they want to do it.


Probably France


that does look like french salary ranges for juniors


I am also interested in the geography here, especially wrt to the currency/units in "35 -> 50 -> +10k"

Are those numbers maybe denominated in Kuwaiti or Bahraini dinars? Or in some country-specific unspoken convenience unit such as tens-of-thousands of Japanese yen, or hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese Dong, or something like that?


I think your reply sort of proves his point, if 38.5 -> 35 hour workweek is enough to move, well, employers are not getting the best deal.


> - Employees are not willing to put a little extra (and we’re at the 35hrs week here),

> - Not willing to study afterwork to improve their career,

Some of your points make sense but these two…


Indeed, they should study at work.


Heresy!


Home time is personal time. Here I deal with family, chores and self-connection. If you want me to learn stuff and be better and my job you will have to give me time, company time, for that. We are not machine.

In France it is mandatory for the company to give time for training. Thanks unions.

https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/id/LEGISCTA000006189881...


> We are not machine.

Counterpoint: if you want to stay relevant in technology and be above regular level, you gotta have the passion for it and that implies doing your homework.

Look at it from another perspective. If you want to play a guitar in a band for money, you don’t require the band to give you “time to learn”. You learn on your own time.

If you don’t want to learn, you become irrelevant and get replaced.


You think doctors/nurses do homework? They go to paid courses/conferences all the time to stay up-to-date on the latest medical techniques. Hospitals have entire teaching departments for that kinda stuff. Why should it be different for engineers?


My late father was a physician and he absolutely stayed up late doing homework. He'd study for hours before an usual case.

I remember as a kid helping him swap out the latest updates to these massive binders of the latest and greatest info in medicine, which were expensive subscriptions he paid for. They'd send sections of text and instructions on what pages to remove and replace with the update so you'd always have the most current information.

Now we have web-based solutions that do the same thing, and they're often not free, either.


Pretty difficult to do guerilla surgeries. Those are regulated jobs and you need to study/finish education to have a license.

Also, let us distinguish “engineers” and say, I’m not picking a fight, “java spring boot developer with 2 years of experience”.


I work closely with a doctor who does indeed do a lot of homework.


I thought we're already over with the "every minute of your life is monetizable" mindset ?


I am. But I also learn stuff I can apply on my job. I find it nothing out of order. I’m doing this job for 22 years.


I think there are are 2 situations here:

- I like [thing I do at my job] and I don't mind doing it outside of working hours. An incidental side benefit of this is I learn skills that enhance my career.

- A company I work for or am interviewing at is unhappy I don't like doing [thing I do there] outside of working hours, and either will fire me or not hire me unless I change.

The difference is "do companies use this as a metric", and I think it's pretty clear they shouldn't. If they do, they run into all kinds of other biases, mostly that you select out people who have family obligations (you're a parent, your partner also works, you have a sick family member, etc.).

Further, it creates a race to the bottom dynamic where a super important part of your life--your career--asks more and more from the other parts of your life. You shouldn't be able to get ahead of other people in your career by telling your kid to figure out algebra on their own, and if you can, people who advance in their careers (who will have more power in the workplace and thus society) will be the kinds of people who either had the resources to otherwise meet their other obligations (hire a tutor, nurse, etc.), or the kinds of people who didn't care about shirking them.

That's why maintaining this line is so important. It avoids an incentive structure that would empower the already privileged or the irresponsible.


then i would consider it working hours, so the premise here seems to reduce to how much overtime i'm willing to spend.


Then you also don't have any problem if better candidate appears and challenges your position, right?


How is that related? That can already happen if a company decide to have this approach. See also companies that have PIP targets.

Presumably companies have a good idea of employees' skill sets when they hire them, or they terminate the contract by the end of the probation period, so they can also plan for this necessary learning.


> How is that related?

It’s related in the sense that if your set of skills becomes irrelevant, you get replaced. Want to keep your job then learn the things reqiured to keep your job.

Say you’re a truck driver. You have your license to drive a truck and every year you need to do your vision test to keep your license. If one day you have to buy glasses, well, tough luck - they come out of your pocket. Otherwise you can’t drive and your employer cannot put you on a truck.

Here, your skills are your glasses.


Where the hell are you working where someone can come in and challenge you for your job?

I’ve been working for over 30 years and this has literally never happened.


Where do you work exactly and what do you do for a living?

Because new hires vying for more influence in the office has been a staple of the modern workplace and organizational politics for a long time now.


Of course there are always people who are trying to one-up or push ahead up the career-advancement ladder... but I've never ever seen a better candidate appear and challenge someone's position directly. If someone started a new job and starting calling someone out for not doing their job as well, they'd be fired pretty quickly. That's just outright hostile behavior.

Granted I've always worked outside of the valley, I guess FAANG positions can be more hostile.


Indeed, I was being sarcastic.


thanks unions for the millions of unemployed people too


What's wrong with those two? I'm genuinely interested, software engineers are overpaid as is with benefits that nearly every other industry can only dream about and you're upset about not being able to put extra 5 hours of time a week to improve your skills related to something that's your career?

And we wonder why quality of everything is awful and why people are unreliable and entitled.


> software engineers are overpaid as is with benefits that nearly every other industry can only dream about

Then why do companies keep on paying these salaries? Besides, that doesn’t really apply outside of unicorns and SV. I’ve been doing this for a while and have never had catered lunches or dry cleaning etc provided by my employers.

Also, what are you comparing to? Professional athletes or traders are overpaid compared to SE. if you compare to burger flippers then it doesn’t make sense either.

Accountants are paid quite well for instance. Their employers pay for their time and expenses when they go to a seminar and keep their skills up to date. Why should it be any different for SE?


It's easy: if you want your employee to do something, all you have to do is pay them for their time.

Not willing to? Then I guess it's not important to you.


It takes two to tango. If you want to get paid, become someone who's useful.

This attitude where employees sit like bags of potatoes waiting for knowledge to permeate their brains via osmosis is awful.


You’re missing the point. It’s that companies shouldn’t expect employees to improve themselves for the companies benefit on their own time. Not that employees shouldn’t improve themselves for their own benefit on their own time if they want to. Ergo if companies expect employees to work specifically to get better at their jobs they should provide resources and training in work time as its part of the job itself.


well after education usually salary can be upgraded, so it’s a benefit for employee. if employee does not educate himself, he may stay the same level with no salary bumps. sucks for both parties I guess?


> This attitude where employees sit like bags of potatoes waiting for knowledge to permeate their brains via osmosis is awful.

I think you misunderstand. A person who is getting paid is already useful. That is why they were hired. By studying you want them to be more useful and that is an extra demand over their contract.


But if things changes and you no longer need their services then should you just fire them? Telling the employee that they can keep their job if they update their skills is a nice thing to do, it is much better than just firing them without giving them a chance.


If you need more services than you initially contracted for, then you give them time to learn. Why is this so hard to understand?


If you no longer need the services that you initially contracted for, then you fire them since there is nothing left for them to do. How is that so hard to understand? There is nothing saying that you need to keep people around when you no longer have any need of their services, not even any moral reasons.


You're paying your employee because they are suitable at this moment. Expecting someone to study in their free time is nonsense. If you want that you either need to pay for it or allow study time during the work time.


I want to provide service to clients that we're paid for. I want staff to actually know what they claim they know. I want to deliver so we can all get paid and go home and do whatever else interests us.

That's what I want.

But I'm the proxy between staff, clients and government. So when I stay up late every night in order to reconcile all the warring parties, the comment I get is "pay more if you want to get more".

Or I could not deal with entitled underskilled staff, right? That's also a viable option? Why beg people to sharpen their craft if they don't want to? I might be old fashioned and I might take pride in what I do because I want to do it to the best of my abilities. I might have wrongly assumed that the rest of fellow programmers are similar to that, but it seems not.


I doubt highly skilled modern workers would want to work for someone with the attitude expressed. Those people have options and working for a company that has a one-sided old-fashioned attitude that refuses to train them for the companies chosen development stack would be foolish.


Are you involved in the hiring process? It sounds like you're hiring juniors when you want intermediate/seniors

Juniors are cheaper but you have to factor in training costs if you want them trained lol


This reads as "My work-life balance sucks, but rather than fight for improvement, I'm going to complain about how others have it so good."

You sound like you live to work rather than work to live. It's a sad way to live your life. Years from now, you'll be on your death bed wishing you allowed yourself to relax a bit and have more fun.


It sounds like you're not getting paid enough for the late hours you work.


You can probably find a job where you’re not staying up late every night. What are you doing that’s worth sacrificing your health for?


exactly, you are paying for current skills. If employer is fine with current skills, and employee wants a better salary, which would require new skills, who should make effort?


Overpaid? https://www.harveynash.co.uk/jobs


>software engineers are overpaid as is with benefits that nearly every other industry can only dream about

Maybe in some parts of America. Even highly paid developers generally do work that not many people outside of the industry can't do (though I encourage everyone I know to try programming).

In my mind software developers and other tech workers are one of the driving forces of human development, though not quite so much as those working on the forefront of technology (ie proper engineering/research and development). The industry I hold in the highest regard is the medical industry; doctors are just amazing and I appreciate what they do and their importance (fair warning that this is a non-American/public healthcare perspective).


The salaries are only high in the US though, but the recession is global.


> the first 2 years, I can pay someone 35 -> 50 -> +10k bonus

You pay them such terrible wages and you’re surprised they leave? You can make $35k at in-n-out shilling beef on a bun.


Maybe they're in an European country where that would be a good wage.


In most EU countries that is not a good wage


It may not be, but it's pretty standard what juniors usually make in lots of parts in Europe if you exclude fang, big tech and high rolling unicorns.


Depends on your definition of good. 50k+ is above average (almost?) everywhere and is more than twice the EU average.


I think a lot of HN devs, even in Europe, live in a high earners bubble, especially if they have seniority at a good company in a hot market, and loose perspective of what the average wages really are.


The median wage in the US is like $35k, but that does not mean $70k is a high dev salary..


That apples to oranges comparison is hardly relevant in this context.

For better or worse, Europe has much less income inequality than in the US, so European dev wages are a lot closer to the median wages, than in the US where devs make several times over the national median wage.

If you remove the big tech hubs like London, Amsterdam, Berlin, etc. then median European dev wages plummet, coming to party with the rest of the white collar jobs.


As far as I understand, “not a good wage” and “a high dev salary” are not the opposite of each other.


35k is above the average salary in most EU countries.


In France it's pretty good.


What a terrible person, doesn't have access to infinite money and can't afford to overpay underskilled staff.


Perhaps their business model is not good?

Acting like companies deserve underpaid labor (let's not even get into the combination of that with an expectation of fealty + coming to the office every day to avoid managers being lonely) gets us to situations where people out of college with shitty negotiation skills end up losing 5 years of their life in miserable situations.

Unless you are a business owner, having everyone be paid reasonably is a net win, but it's also the right thing to do, and shows a minimum of respect to people doing work.


If you can’t pay competitively for competent people, then complain that nobody wants to work for you, I think the real problem is that your business is unviable since you can’t cover the costs to operate it


Those are 20% above market rate in France, probably 40% above when you don’t have an engineer’s degree.

The blanket “YOU PAY THEM TOO LITTLE” and its brother “EVEN AT THE BEGINNING OF MY CAREER I NEVER STUDY AT HOME AND I JUST DO WHAT MY EMPLOYER TELLS ME ON A WRITTEN SHEET OF PAPER WITH DEFINITIVE SIGN OFF” mentality needs to go.

You choose:

- Want to work in a factory? €1200 net per month,

- Job that requires that you come with a skillset? €2400 pm.

- Job where you build an unknown product with lots of leeway, innovation, networking and entrepreneurship? 5400€ to 20k€ per month. 20k€ is President Macron’s salary, so it’s not so low.

I’ll give my 200k€ dividends to whoever accepts to perform the odd tasks like maintain the jQuery app AND clean the bathrooms AND notice when they need cleaning AND launch a new product when it needs launching AND close one down and find suitable ways out for customers.

“How do you expect them to work for you if you make them clean the toilets!” well that’s why I’m getting the bonus. To anyone willing to bend for the toilets when needed, there is a job available here.


Don't read what's written the way it suits you in order to come out as a better person, also commenting on someone's business with literally 0 facts means only that you're posting from an image you created in which you're good and me - evil.

Competent people are worth every penny and then some. We're all talking about incompetent ones who throw a huge shadow over the competent ones.

I think you're aware of that but you still posted what you posted. Thank you for the compassion and understanding. Guilty before trial, that's the way we do it, right? :)


I agree competent people are worth every penny. Why are you not paying enough to get them?

The salaries you listed are half what they'd be in Ireland and something like a quarter - maybe less - of what they'd be in California.


> Why are you not paying enough to get them?

Because they’re not competent?

I pay my senior 30% above what he asked, he still doesn’t want to test all edge cases and lets slip many things because he wants us to hire a tester.

Actually competent people are paid surprisingly little, because then they struggle to increase their wage.


I don't think this is true... I've worked with excellent engineers and aside from a couple at the very, very beginning of their career (~2009/2010 no less when the economy was terrible) they were very well paid.


Those wages are atrocious. Perhaps you do not have a viable business model.

Keep in mind that your competition is not just France. Plenty of people (myself included) took note of the terrible wages in Europe and decided that maybe those American companies with 6 figure remote jobs aren't so bad after all.


Can confirm. Went from £55k to $165k by going remote in the US


Lol from this post I can tell you're an employer that nobody will ever want to work for no matter the salary you're paying. The economic situation and developers are not the issue, you are.


My student loan payments will probably be around $1200 a month after I graduate and a studio apartment in my pretty small city is $900 without utilities. I could probably survive on a $35k salary but I'd have to switch to income based repayment on my loans which would suck because I'd like to eventually be able to buy a house


That's one of the big differences: the only thing a normal person in France, Germany or the rest of western Europe* could do that involves a 1200/month repayment is buy property (or an absolutely ridiculous car). A lot of the younger employees I work with got paid while doing their bachelor's degrees because they did dual degree programs, where they're employed by a big industrial company and alternate terms having internships within the company and taking courses at the university the company partners with.

* I say "western Europe" because I know that university fees in the UK are higher, and this is the region I currently know enough to say this about, but I imagine university fees are similarly low in eastern and southern Europe.


The only way you'd be paying back £1200 a month on student loans (plan 2) in the UK is if you were earning £180,180/year or more. And at that income, it's probably not the student loans giving you trouble.


> involves a 1200/month repayment is buy property

Rent?


Rent’s definitely an expense, but isn’t a loan.


Although some valid points and I understand the frustration, this has some major Uncle Tom vibes.


I would say salaries are massively under-inflated


so ungrateful these devs...


> Employees are not willing to put a little extra (paid extra, I mean - and we’re at the 35hrs week here),

Currently working in a company that's short staffed but there's a seemingly endless amount of work.

Things might be so charitable in many companies out there for all I care, but that's definitely not the situation everywhere.

Then again, at least in my current company things are nowhere near as bad as 996, but please don't ignore such problems either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

One might also bring up the fact that people in "outsourcing" countries also don't have such nice WLB.

> Not willing to study afterwork to improve their career,

Most of the stuff i've learnt (Docker/OCI, Swarm/Kubernetes/Nomad, CI/CD concepts, monitoring, different architectures and new languages) all were in my free time, because the tech stacks at work were somewhat dated and would pigeonhole me into maintenance roles and similar enterprise messes.

Then again, one can and should make the point: doctors don't practice their craft over the weekends, why should software engineers? Do cashiers have to do unpaid work after hours? Do teachers? And if yes, is that okay? Shouldn't your work be compensated, instead of cutting into your free time?

> Not willing to work on legacy products where we pay them 40% more.

Currently the oldest project that I'm working on is like 8 years old and it's a mess. Recently tried modernizing it, would recommend that NOBODY ever try to do that, since I learnt almost no new skills at the expense of massive amounts of stress and struggling with problem after problem, just to keep this old monolith alive.

40% might seem nice at a glance, but what about the alternative costs of not learning new and relevant technologies and thus getting passed up for new work opportunities? What about suffering daily due to needing to waste your time with some dated mess, since most old code is unwieldy to work with at best and horrible at worst?

> In the first 2 years, I can pay someone 35 -> 50 -> +10k bonus, and they’ll leave for a job at 65 going 75 with a tech stack that ticks all boxes.

That is largely how the industry is and I doubt that I can blame people for wanting to maximize their own earning potential, especially in the current financial climate.

Of course, once again this doesn't really match up with my own circumstances, given that owning a home might take about 10 more years of saving money for me, given that I'm not as well paid as all these other developers.

> You can teach them React + SpringBoot + Kubernetes, and they’ll still leave because company XYZ does AWS + Neo4j + AI… while still not fixing spelling mistakes in the UI and still in the habit of downloading and entire DB tables and filter them in the Java side, and seeing no problem asking for a microservices architecture.

With this, I can mostly agree. If things like spelling don't matter to people, obviously they aren't going to pay attention to them.

But overall, I still find your points to be too focused on a particular environment. Developers everywhere doesn't have it quite as good to begin with, no matter how much of an echo chamber HN can sometimes be.

Then again, last i checked, a Google employee would bring in around ~20x more profits for their company than I would (with some oversimplified back-of-the-napkin maths): https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings


Do you feel better now ?


There are risks, yes, but fundamentally we are still an industry that has a lot of upside, vs many others. In a recession many businesses will contract, but it's a rare large tech company that will do more than pause some forms of spending. Even when you hear that hiring is paused at the big tech companies, they will usually still be backfilling departures, and they won't be doing significant layoffs. The exceptions are companies with large service-based businesses that may or not qualify as tech companies based on your definition.


>The exceptions are companies with large service-based businesses that may or not qualify as tech companies based on your definition.

Like Amazon and Netflix? And if companies are spending less for online ads, that can hit Google and Facebook, too.


I work at one of those two ad-supported businesses, and would be very surprised if there are large scale layoffs.

And yes, as one of the responders noted, I meant the services companies. An IBM might do a large layoff, but I generally wouldn't put that in the same category as Amazon or Netflix. I've worked through three economic cycles now (at least I think we're seeing the end of the third) and while they haven't been great for everyone in the industry, we've been better off than most others. For instance, just to pick on one profession, I know way more lawyers who've become software engineers than vice versa.


I think they were referring to companies like Accenture, IBM, or PwC. The "Professional Services" industry employs a ton of software developers and is fairly pro-cyclical.


And all companies that focus on selling to other startups. Like Brex. They were the first to pop during the dot com bust.


>The demand for software engineers was driven partly by zombie app and saas companies all competing for "top talent", dependent entirely on free cash but without sustainable business models.

Now that the cash is drying up, Startups which didn't solve any real problem couldn't bruteforce their growth anymore. Perhaps this is good for the entire ecosystem.


There we go. This is the comment I was going to make, but you've done the idea justice.


Software will be fine for people who are in an unknown top X% of developers out there. Depending on how bad this is that might be the top 80%, it might be the top 1%.

The industry is so crazy now because of the last recession. Investors didn't know where to put their money after the real estate collapse and they decided to pour it all into funding startups hoping, at all costs, to catch the next Facebook.

We're starting to see that maybe even Facebook isn't really the next Facebook.

Additionally we never really solved the root of the last crisis: exploding credit/debt.

It's impossible to know how this will all really play out this time (who would have guessed that the pandemic would be immediately followed by a stock boom). However my advice would be to focus on adaptability. Don't chase a dead dream too long. If tech never comes back to the insane period we're in now, I think there will be a lot of former developers that suffer a long time before they realize this.


Most people in 2010 would’ve taken a $500B or even $300B market cap FB as a major tech company right now without any expectation of getting too much bigger than that ever. $300B, $400B, $500B are still top 25, 15, and 10 in the world today.


Cumulative inflation from 2010 to 2022 was 33%. Cumulative inflation over the preceding 12 years (1998-2022) was 34%.

Just because this year’s inflation was high, there’s nothing extraordinary about overall inflation in the post-GFC period.


But would’ve they predicted the that value of those 300B US dollars would be worth so much less?

Many tech companies during COVID gained legitimate value, just like many housing markets, but most the increase in their US dollar price was simply the value of the dollar being less.


> But would’ve they predicted the that value of those 300B US dollars would be worth so much less?

I hope so. It has been the consistent course of action of the federal US government for many, many decades to provide a backstop for broad market asset prices at the expense of the purchasing power of the dollar.

All parties in positions of power benefit from increase in asset prices. The politicians, the business owners, the land owners, the 401K owners, the taxpayers (via defined benefit pension tax liabilities).


I’d think so. Whether they realize it or not. Since inflation for the US isn’t a crazy situation without precedent. 2021, 2022 have been a lot more for inflation, but this century has overall been something that is not unexpected.

Looking at how big FB is vs other companies makes a metric like inflation not as important as all companies and thus all investments are affected by inflation.

So, still, any of the example market caps for FB today would’ve been gladly accepted by almost every one in 2010, regardless of the specific percentage of inflation that has happened. FB would still be a top 25 company in market cap at $300B. Top 20 if looking at US only.


>but most the increase in their US dollar price was simply the value of the dollar being less

And in general, the value of a currency is less because there are more money being invented out from thin air. By central banks printing money, through the fractional reserve system, crypto and stable coins...


> On the bright side, it's rare for profitable large tech companies to lay off software engineers, so if you get in, you're pretty safe.

Many profitable tech companies have small scale, approximately annual layoffs, even in a strong economy. That said, I agree in general.


Ahh, maybe you're right for other big tech companies. It was rare at Google. The only cases I remember involved "remote offices" (i.e. not Mountain View). In a couple cases, they closed whole offices (Atlanta) and folks had to relocate or leave. Similarly, sometimes offices gave up whole projects ("defragging"), so folks had to find a new project or leave.

(btw, it would have been easier to meet diversity goals if they'd kept the Atlanta office open, but that's a whole other thread.)


I've been in the industry for 27 years now. People who entered the tech job market after 2015 are in for a rude awakening IMO. Especially those whose experience is primarily FAANG-MULA and similar. This market very much reminds me of 1997-2000 and 2001-2003 was UGLY.


Launched my career in early 2000. I was taking a bunch of short term contracts to build up experience.

Six months of multiple recruiters every day calling. One day the calls stopped. 3 years before I could get a tech job.

Chilled at RadioShack during that time with other engineers who had way more experience than I did, but couldn't find work.


You just have to ask. "Was the business plan was to keep getting VC money or crypto money for the next 5 years before being profitable." If the answer is yes, you should expect huge layoffs or bankruptcy in most cases.


I managed to work as a contractor during 2003, after that the market became better. I guess that's the tendency - employment opportunities are going to be kind of short lived.

If you didn't manage to get into a job that is business critical, then I wouldn't count on a steady job. they like to get rid of the workforce in layoff rounds. For me that was very depressing, in the end i was laid off in another of these layoff rounds.

But still there is demand for getting stuff done, and places will be more inclined to hire people specifically for a set of tasks, on a contract basis.

I still hope it is not going to get that bad; I didn't have a wife and three kids to feed back then, also I was some twenty years younger. In any event: my advice would be to keep your savings and refrain from taking up any new loans...


I remember Google's recruiting slowed down in ~2008. [edit: 2009? Maybe not right at the start of the recession.] [1] So sometimes yes. On the bright side, it's rare for profitable large tech companies to lay off software engineers, so if you get in, you're pretty safe.

I don't think Google has seen the impact of a recession yet. It was 4 years old in the dot.com era, and insulated from the effects of the recession by a steady stream of VC money. It was 11 years old in 2008, 5 years out of its IPO, and growing insanely fast on the back of an internet boom where every business was struggling to understand how to utilize online advertising to get the best possible results. Businesses believed that online ads would protect them from the 2008 collapse, so Google were in a position to grow despite the downturn.

The same is not true now. If there's a serious long term recession it's very likely to impact companies with advertising derived revenue far more than it has in the past. In Google's case it'll probably mean little more than repatriating the cash reserves it has offshore and spending them to weather the storm. We all know that some of the higher ups will want to use it as an excuse to 'trim some fat' because that's what higher ups do though. No one will be safe.

The same is probably not true of other companies that are less cash-rich though. There's no reason to assume that tech will be fine this time because tech was fine last time.


> It was 4 years old in the dot.com era, and insulated from the effects of the recession by a steady stream of VC money

Google received its last funding round 1999, after that they were profitable every single year. Modern start-ups aren't anything like Google back then. Google survived the dotcom bust since they made money, if they depended on VC funding they would have gone bust then as well.


> Then I was earning far in excess of my needs and investing much of the rest in index funds (e.g. VTI) when stock prices were low. The recession ended and stock prices soared. I feel scummy saying this about many people's suffering, but the recession worked out well for me.

Don't feel too bad about it. You were using what resources you had to give yourself a more stable future. If you still feel bad, use the more-stable future you've made to help others in some way.

Anyone with the money to invest and a long-term view can invest in a dip and come out strong. Buy when there's blood in the streets, etc. I doubled an investment's value (XOP, an oil index) because I bought when oil was in crisis a few years back, and sold for nearly 2x when the war in Ukraine kicked prices up. Technically war profiteering, but it's not like I planned it that way.

If a recession comes during a student loan pause, I'll be putting that would-be loan payment into the market if I don't need it to survive. If my car is paid off by then, even better, as I'll have more available funds to contribute to my portfolio.


At the time, it's very hard for Google to predict how bad things could be. Ads business tends to get hit very hard when the overall market is in a bad shape, no matter how great the search engine is.


Google was profitable and dominant by 2009. I wouldn’t go near a startup that wasn’t profitable and hoping for another round of funding in this environment if I had any alternative.


Their honesty should be applauded. Imagine they hired you and then had to fire you in 6 months. Keep in touch with the PM if you liked them and see how they perform in the next 12 months.


I agree 100%. I feel sorry for OP of course, but this is highly commendable, even if the threat of major recession turns out to be overestimated. This employer is acting in a fashion that shows high levels of social responsibility and moral value. Hats off.


I agree. In a previous recession I had an offer rescinded over a weekend. I’m glad they did because most likely as they had to reduce headcount during the recession Id have been on the chopping block --my then employer having been conservative in hiring didn't have to cut as much. also sometimes in times of expansion some hires are "luxury hires", nice to haves, but not must haves and can be the first to go.

Usually it’s recent hires and people who’ve been there a long stretch who get cut first, of course with lots of exceptions.


> Usually it’s recent hires and people who’ve been there a long stretch who get cut first, of course with lots of exceptions.

This was a bit confusing to me.

Are you saying in your experience that it is both the most senior and most junior employees (in terms of company tenure) that get laid off?


I entered the job market during the 2008 recession. I definitely experienced the "hired... and..now you're laid off" ~ as the saying goes "when times get tough, last to hire = first to fire". As for laying off senior folks -- I've seen this too; I've seen people who are senior by virtue of just having been there the longest (20+ years) and have had the most pay raises... but don't necessarily contribute as much value as someone who's been there 10 years and costs less. If you're senior and your boss knows* that you're contributing more value add than is reflected by your paycheck -- you won't be let go.

* This is one reason why you should be sure to convey your wins to your boss; when you have 1-on-1 conversations, be sure to highlight obstacles that you've overcome. You don't have to brag, but it's okay to be realistic - humble, but proud.


> that you're contributing more value add than is reflected by your paycheck -- you won't be let go

That's a very optimistic take. What usually happens is that there's an obvious bottom line improvement to laying off a few very senior people, but the impact isn't so obvious, so from the business's perspective it looks like a win.

I remember the cognitive dissonance of being an employer's rep at a job fair in 2010 and telling everyone who came up to our booth that I could take resumes, but we weren't hiring! At least I got a free lunch out of it.

Businesses don't always do what makes sense from the outside.


This exception wise might be the case but, the cost to performance is probably just less for some senior folks compared to up and coming new people. For instance if i have 10+ year employee who has received 3% cost of living raises + additional performance raises they likely have a cost/performance ratio worse than the A player with 5 years experience who wants to move up. I can promote them for a bump in salary and have someone who hasn't accumulated as much cost overtime with a similar performance. I reduced capacity, improved moral for an A player and cut cost in one decision. There would also be minimal impact moral wise to the remaining organization by hiring within. That's just my take though and I am no authority in the topic.


Why do people think oldtimers at companies get paid better than new hires?

That is the case for traditional companies, but not for tech. I worked for one company (most of the time as a manager) for almost 27 years, and never made as much as new hires at most tech companies. My company got an insane bargain with me, and my whole team, and they knew it.

I don't think that cost is the reason that companies like firing older folks.


HR only understands years of service sometimes. I've seen business analysts doing entry level work with nearly no responsibilities and making ~$140k. It's insane. No matter how much the rest of the company complains, those people are safe until layoffs come.


Some people just barely do their work but are kept on because they are good for the team/team spirit. I've seen a lot of those people getting axed in 2008.


You are totally right, I really appreciated their honesty. As mc32 stated, if I was hired, in case of recession as a recent hire I would one of the first ones to go. The PM asked me if I would like to get contacted in the future to continue with the process in case things get better, to which I replied yes. I'll keep an eye on them.


How is that a good thing? You can earn good money in 6 months. One time I took a 2-week web development job to stand in for someone who left for a holiday while a project was overdue. It was an interesting experience. I wish the economy was more like this; more unpredictable and more focused on deliverables than hours worked.


> I wish the economy was more like this; more unpredictable and more focused on deliverables than hours worked.

That would be fine for single people or couples without children and enough savings to relocate or live on whilst job hunting, but absolutely devastating for everyone else.

As if there weren’t enough uncertainty already…


As someone who has a dependent spouse and child, I disagree. You can't cancel the laws of nature. Everyone must participate in the free market on equal terms. When the system makes it artificially easier for one set of people, it artificially makes it harder for a different set of people behind the scenes. If someone can't handle the risk of sustaining themselves and their family in the real world, they shouldn't have children. But of course we need a fair monetary system in order to make it feasible.

I can speak from experience that in our pyramid scheme economy propped up by big government and big bank money printing it's extremely difficult to support a child if you're not part of the 'inside crowd' who has access to the easy money (cheap loans, investments and subsidies). It doesn't have to be that way though. But to expect total safety is immoral because it relies on some kind of financial scheme operating behind the scenes. You can't create any real value in this world without taking a risk. If you're not taking any risks, you're not creating any value. Nobody owes it to you to support your children; especially if it means that they themselves can't afford to support their own children by participating in the free market.


Most people would rather spend a little bit longer looking to avoid a job reset. First, the job market could be worse in 6 months. Secondly, any extra work that you put into onboard and ingratiate yourself with colleagues is wasted


In 6 months?? I can remember situations in the past where people were hired and then fired 2 weeks later because a contract was lost. Mostly in aerospace/defense industry.


The startup I was in in the first bust (2001) hired/relocated people 2 weeks before laying everyone off.


In 2001 I had a friend get a job and then get fired with severance before his start date!


That sounds amazing. How do I get in on that ride? :)


Find a company that thinks it's doing well, tell them you can start in three weeks, and then pray for failure?


Unfortunately whenever we test intercessory prayer we find that it doesn't work.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16569567/


Yep. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (when I was in college) I worked for a company that did a round of layoffs and they let one of their new AS400 engineers go on their first day of work. Totally unprofessional.


[flagged]


What's with all the astroturfing for that website?

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...


Definitely looks very suspect.


Isn’t that pretty great? Get paid for 6 months of relatively light ramp up time and then a few months worth of severance for some time off once fired?


> Isn’t that pretty great? Get paid for 6 months of relatively light ramp up time and then a few months worth of severance for some time off once fired?

Not great at all.

For anyone reading your resume in the future, it's impossible to know if you were let go due to no fault of your own, or if you were let go for cause after a probationary period expired.

I personally don't hold a single short job against people, but the reality is that having a 6-month job followed by a couple months off on your resume will have a negative impact when some hiring managers read your resume.

It's also 6 months (+ time off) that you can't accomplish much of anything because you were ramping up and then had the rug pulled out from under you. Having a 6-12 month setback in your career isn't a huge deal when you've been working for 20 years, but it can be a huge setback for juniors.


> For anyone reading your resume in the future, it's impossible to know

Just write why on your resume? The dates will check out or not.


Unfortunately, most of the fired-for-cause people also claim that they were just laid off, hence the uncertainty.


Honestly, the sort of hiring managers who rely on heuristics like that might not be the best ones to work for.

Even juniors can structure their resumes as a narrative. Mine has a brief "felt stagnant and decided to try #vanlife for a year" section.

People like a story. The trick is to avoid automated hiring funnels.


Really? Especially in a market like this, I would have assumed more hiring managers would understand.

What do you think about new grads having to switch not long after because of bad work environment, bait-and-switch, etc? I hope such a negative outlook is not that prevalent.


> Really? Especially in a market like this, I would have assumed more hiring managers would understand.

Depends entirely on the job and company.

If someone is hiring average developers for average or below-average pay at a no-name company that gets 1 organic resume submission per week, they're going to overlook it and bring the person in.

If someone is hiring top developers at a hot tech company with high pay that attracts 1000s of impeccable resume submissions per week, they can't interview everyone. They might only screen 10% of resumes because that's all they can handle. At this level, competition is so fierce and the applicants are so strong that you have to look for any reason to drop someone from that 10% who get through. Having a short job followed by a resume gap could be enough of a signal to get you bumped in favor of any number of perfect resumes.

Adjust expectations accordingly for companies between the two extremes.

> What do you think about new grads having to switch not long after because of bad work environment, bait-and-switch, etc? I hope such a negative outlook is not that prevalent.

I think everybody gets a mulligan and I personally wouldn't hold it against a junior. A single data point isn't a trend.

However, I would still question the candidate thoroughly about it. Unfortunately, there are many people who leave otherwise decent jobs because their expectations are too far detached from reality. When someone's definition of a "bad work environment" is being expected to participate in code review (true story), the problem wasn't with their employer. Some basic questioning can usually get to the bottom of this, but it's more common than you might expect.


I've stayed at crappy companies for a couple of years to avoid this on resume.

With how racist and sexist many companies are now, it's getting harder to find a safe one to hire into where I can just do my job and not get involved in political stuff.


> For anyone reading your resume in the future

Then don't list it.


Sounds like an egoist perspective, which is fine if that's your ideology.

I think most people would see this as a loss for the small firm (note that the firms size matters). The cost of an employee is pretty high for small shops and salary is just one of the line items that come with OP's employment. Additionally, severance is rarely offered in positions less than 1 yr, even then it's optional.


No thanks. Spending 6 months getting ramped up and finally productive only to be let go and have to start the search all over again sounds like my nightmare.


Wait, you take it easy for six months when onboarding? That’s an interesting strategy but can’t say I’d recommend it to a junior to mid-level engineer.


>Isn’t that pretty great? Get paid for 6 months of relatively light ramp up time and then a few months worth of severance for some time off once fired?

Nah that'll torch your resume for years. Unless you're a total rockstar otherwise, I'd be terrified to explain a 6 month stint.


You only need to worry if you have a series of very short stints, especially if there's any gap between them.

But one six month stint is fine, especially if you can explain it away with something pithy about how the economy tanked and the company shed a significant percentage of its workforce.


Depends honestly. If you have a collective experience that affected the industry it’s easy to explain. It’s more of a red flag if it’s a constant even during good times IMO


As a one-off, during a rocky economic time? Not really. And I say that as someone who has mostly (except during dot-com) long employment times.


Then don't put it on your resume!


> Is demoralizing to find out I spent 4 years in school just to get into a really harsh job market.

I know it doesn't make your experience any better, but this is *not* a harsh job market. Yes, some companies are pulling back/slowing down/pausing hiring, but there are still far more software jobs available than people to fill them.

> What companies or roles will be more resilient?

Those that are or can quickly become profitable. Most startups are NOT profitable because they chase growth at all costs. This may change as cheap and easy money dries up.

> And how as a SWE / tech industry professional, specially the ones starting their careers like me, can prepare?

Don't do anything different. You had one company pull out on you. That happens all the time for a multitude of reasons. Don't be discouraged. Apply for jobs at a range of companies, from start-ups to profitable SaaS companies to companies outside the typical "tech" wheelhouse.


> Don't do anything different. You had one company pull out on you. That happens all the time for a multitude of reasons. Don't be discouraged. Apply for jobs at a range of companies, from start-ups to profitable SaaS companies to companies outside the typical "tech" wheelhouse.

This, I think OP is reading too much into a single rejection. Maybe they're right, maybe not, who knows. Individual companies do wacky things all the time. Startups in particular tend to be more volatile and may be risk-adverse depending on where they are in funding cycles. Try looking for jobs with larger stable companies with reliable revenue streams. I work at one and we've been actively hiring the entire time.


2001 was a harsh job market. 2008 was a harsh job market.

I think 2022 is still a better job market than most of the past decade.


So far. We are early in the cycle. Hiring freezes and layoffs are just starting.

If this keeps on for multiple years (like the dot com bust) then it will get very painful.


> but there are still far more software jobs available than people to fill them

As a contractor I was pulled out the second thing started to turn ugly when covid came in. At that time, they were a lot more people looking for work than job offers. Agencies I was in contact confirmed every position they had got filled with > 100 resume received for each in the span of a few days.


This. Basically unless you know good people who can’t find work, not just having a harder time changing jobs to make more, you are not in a hard market.


I dropped out of school in 1999, and got laid off in 2001 at the start of that recession. I couldn't get a job in 2001 or 2002, so I went back to school and got scholarships to live off of, and graduated in 2003. Recession was still ongoing but I got lucky and had a friend from the first job help me get a job, but other than that, I wasn't getting a lot of interviews.

I had friends who were getting hired and then laid off just a few weeks later. One guy lucked out and got hired and fired with severance before his start date.

Job searching during a recession isn't fun. Going back to school with scholarships, if you can get them, is a good stopgap. You'll get money to live as well as extra education to make a stronger application when the recession ends.

Otherwise, work your network. Find friends who were lucky enough to get jobs and ask for referrals. Work on open source projects and try to make friends with the senior people on the project, who might like your work and get you a job.


>had a friend from the first job help me get a job

This is the part of the story that OP needs to key in on.

OP: Network. Network Network Network. I've been at 2 FAANG in 7 years. I don't write code. I make good money. Friends got me jobs both times.

Do whatever you have to do to make friends with people in the industry where you want to work. Go to the bars they hang out in. Go to meet-ups. Go to lectures open to the public. Network on HN.


This can be hit and miss so needs some persistence. For me, not living in SF or even the USA, there is not really a tech culture to the point where the Pizza delivery person wants to talk about Monads (a story I read somewhere...).

However if you are not in a tech city, and don't want to move to one, then online is great. Here is what you can do.

1. Find stuff on Show HN or HN (or Reddit etc.) generally that you are super excited about. Genuinely. For example with me: I probably should be excited about self driving cars, but I am actually way more excited about that self-hosted wiki in a single HTML file, for example.

2. See how to connect to the people. You could send a cold email, but it is a bit sucky and desperate. It is better if you "do" something fun online with them. Maybe help them on the Github, submit or review PRs, join the chat server and talk, build something and let them know about it, use it for free (maybe using their thing, or complementary) etc. This should be effortless because remember you are super excited.

3. That's it. Be a human, see where it goes. You may or may not find out about jobs. You might get bored. But doing 1 and 2 enough a great job or opportunity will be found out.

This is more like: build and connect with people for their coolness, and let the occasional job opportunity present itself. You still need to do interviews, and come across like a good worker and will add a lot of value and all that jazz. But this is about finding stuff that may not even be advertised. And also most advertised jobs are a bit shit. So it acts as a filter.


> However if you are not in a tech city, and don't want to move to one, then online is great. Here is what you can do.

I live 40 miles north of Wichita Kansas USA. There's no tech - there's no city even.

Here's what I did: I got to know a recruiter in Wichita. Turns out she's a rock star - one of the leaders in the region at recruting tech. Met a guy on an flight from Atlanta to Wichita. We got together and talked geek a few times. The three of us started a Meetup in Wichita where we talk geek every other month or so. We generally get 15-50 folks depending on the time of year and topic. Last meeting I got two off handed job offers (I'm not looking). I've gotten a previous position the same way.

Tech is everywhere. The typical attendee to our Meetup is a developer or analyst at a regional bank, an airplane manufacturer, or farm credit agency. Nothing fancy, but great jobs for this area.

I'm not a very social person, but I do like to talk geek. There are lots of folks like me everywhere. Folks want to learn. Get together and teach each other.


You wouldn't happen to live in Stubbville where the people train leaves from?

But seriously, that's awesome what you did. You did the hard work so those other 20 people could benefit.


>This is more like: build and connect with people for their coolness, and let the occasional job opportunity present itself.

This is an excellent summary. I'll add: people like helping people. They like getting people jobs, they like seeing other people succeed, and they like mentoring people, even casually. Use that to your advantage, and don't forget to lend a hand to the next person on your way up the ladder.


All but one of the jobs I've had in my 4+ decades of mucking with computers have been through networking. (Even the gig I had as a dishwasher in high school was a referral through a friend).

That one job that I got at a generic Silly Valley job fair? It was the place where I learned the term "Train Wreck".

Network, network, network. Oh yeah.


It’s hard to say if your experience is isolated to a single job. No?


Unclear what you're asking. Generally I've stayed 5-8 years at any one company (the most so far was 11). My time at a few startups were far shorter than that, for pretty guessable reasons.


Unfortunately this will be a 3-sigma recession. Once every 100 year type of thing. The last one lasted 10 years followed by a major world war.

If you want to look at what happened to advanced economies that got a taste of credit bubbles Japan is a very good example. 40 years later and still have not reached their ATH.

So if that dot com bubble lasted 2 years, this recession will last a lot longer.

In addition the door is closing on entry level junior SWE positions other than FANG. Many businesses do not want fresh grads or bootcamp coders. The tools have gotten so good that they have automated/replaced much of the grunt work. So it is down to experience.

Generation Z is utterly screwed and its sad because they live in the product of the world created by our generation and the previous.

We are witnessing the beginning of the end of small governments. The only path to stability is no longer the markets but a large government that struggles with growing wealth gap, aging population, healthcare.

As in the past, 3-sigma recession was always followed by a global armed conflict. George Soros talk at Davos confirmed this.


And yet everything will return to normal in 8 months time


You are grossly misunderstanding the situation if you actually believe this to be the case.


The market is emotion driven. With rising stock everyone touts they won't sell during the hard times, but when the hard times hit everyone sings the tune of gloom. We literally have zero idea what the market will bring.


Nobody really knows what will happen, but we are at an inflection point. It is very hard to believe that the market will reach new highs in 8 months.


The good thing though is that history is basically meaningless as far as predicting any of this.

The bright side to all this is there isn't much hope to get out of this besides software.

Life doesn't have a low volatility, constant upward drift towards personal nirvana. This is going to be a big bump in the road but things will get better on the other side. We eventually cleared and went way beyond the dot com bubble and we will go way beyond the past 15 years at some point in the future.


Why is that unfortunate? You stand to make millions if you’re correct and willing to put your money where your mouth is.


Some people just don't like risk. Lets say that you believe there is a 25% chance that this is the big one where the American centered world order comes to an end, it will happen sooner or later but this could be it. How much would you be willing to bet on that? The average returns are great, but if you miss it by 5 or 10 years now you lost all of that. That is if the paper you got afterwards have any meaning, a big enough bust will make it hard to cash out any gains.


Do yourself a favor though and don’t get any student loans. You’ll be setting yourself up for a future of pain.


Contrarian advice: This is the best time to take on student loans. We are entering a structural shift in how our global economy fueled by a credit bubble post 08.

It is going to be much much worse than 2008 and 2000, combined.

They are not going to be able to collect student loans for a very long time.


Well, about half a year ago would have been the perfect time to get a loan, before rates went up.


In Sweden the interest on student loans is about as low as it can get. It is pretty much the most favorable loan possible, even in a recession.


That’s really bad advice unless you’re going into a field where you can’t possibly ever pay it back.

My sister wouldn’t be a pharmacist without student loans and she is about as far from living in pain as someone can get.


>That’s really bad advice unless you’re going into a field where you can’t possibly ever pay it back.

This is really bad advice if a degree doesn't increase your salary enough to offset the cost.

>My sister wouldn’t be a pharmacist without student loans

She would if the degree didn't cost out of pocket in the first place.


This is your advice for the first person on my mom’s side of the family to graduate from college, “don’t follow your dreams because education should be free”?

That’s how they keep the dirty okies who moved to California during the dust bowl (aka my grandparents) as second class citizens. My parents sacrificed a lot to send her to college. I mean, a lot.


Just to give you my own experience right now, I literally just accepted a new job yesterday after job hunting for 3-ish weeks. I had multiple job interviews, even more job interview requests.

I don't say this to brag, so I apologize if it comes off that way. I just wanted to give you what could be a cancelling-out anecdata point to your own experience. I wouldn't let it get you down too much. Keep hunting and keep applying, I doubt the recession will get to a point where NOBODY is hiring :)

If you need another job board resource, try out "Hired.com". Here's a referral link from me for it (full disclosure I benefit from you using this!):

[link redacted]

I found it to be an extremely effective tool for finding interviews, or I wouldn't recommend it.

I wish you all the luck possible on your hunt; Sometimes it's just that -- luck. Just keep perservering and don't be too proud to ask for help from anyone and everyone!


You're right. We've only hit "not as good as it has been of late" phase. Also a lot of newer people have probably never experienced a bad job market, so even this is concerning.

It can get a lot worse. We'll see what happens, but there's good reason for people to be concerned about this happening. I think it's fine for people to be asking for advice on how to approach here.


Totally agree with you on that account, I don't fault OP for asking this at all! Just wanted to put my 2¢ in here too. I hope OP gets plenty of luck and assistance with their search!

It's gonna be rough for a bit, but it's like with the market. If you think it's bad right now, just zoom out a bit. Even with things slumping a bit, we're still in a pretty good job market in our industry.


Got my last job thanks to Hired. It was my first time using it, and I had a good experience. I'd use it again.

Main benefit of Hired is I could set my target salary ahead of time and the people contacting me knew and agreed to what I was looking for, instead of having to dig it out of the interview process elsewhere, and I still had about 10 companies reach out to me through there.

In comparison, pretty much every recruiter that contacted me on LinkedIn were giving me ranges at least 20% lower.


Went to sign up on your and sibling (to mine) comment's recommendation; I'm pretty sure this is not compliant:

> You agree to receive subsequent email and third-party communications, which you may opt out of, or unsubscribe from, at any time.

(On trying to proceed without ticking:)

> You must opt in to proceed


@dang If you wouldn't mind helping a guy out, I need to remove this link from my post but I cannot edit the post anymore. I don't believe I was supposed to post the link on HN like this and I need to prevent others from clicking it please...

TO ANYONE ELSE: Please don't click that link anymore!


Sending an email to <hn@ycombinator.com> will give much better odds of dang or another mod noticing this in time.


thanks! done.


I didn't even notice the link until you told me not to click it, and then you bet I noticed it!


I'm not surprised (unfortunately, and I am truly sorry for this).

Don't look to the 2008 recession for an idea of how things may go. Look to the 2000 (Tech Bubble Burst) recession. In that one, the bottom dropped out of the tech market. Web designers were especially hard hit.

I have family that works for Intel, and they say that Intel tends to actually increase hiring in bear markets. I suspect that's because they are getting bargains, and preparing for the inevitable upswing, so they will be in a position to jump on the up elevator when things turn around.

I guess it depends on the company. Companies that are running on fumes (highly leveraged) are likely to have a tough time. Companies with conservative approaches may do better.


Biggest difference between now at 2000 is companies have real customers and revenue. 2000 was a completely different beast and conditions that set that off aren't anywhere close. Doesn't mean it can't get bad but 2000 is not the place to look for a playbook.


Two more key differences:

- In 2000, people were talking about the future being about outsourcing engineering work to lower cost-of-living countries. To some extent that's happened, but companies also see tech as integral to their survival and have realized that their core engineering teams need to be in the same time-zone. - In 2000, tech was for tech companies. Now, every large bank has a huge technology team. Every company in logistics has a large tech team. Every retailer needs good engineers. In 2000, there were a few niche websites online. Now, a strong online presence is essential even for stores like Home Depot.

There's no question that the market was overheated, but it's too early to call doom here. The NASDAQ is still up about 50% from where it was 3 years ago, before COVID, even after the recent drop. That's a 14% yearly average return... still a crazy amount. At it's peak, it was up over 100% from May 24, 2019... a level that just wasn't sustainable.


This is true. The biggest issue imho is people expecting their comp to be unimpacted. A company like DoorDash or Uber has a ton of revenue, for sure, Uber just loses a ton every quarter. They won’t go out of business but they may drop another 90+% in value from here.


Some companies can certainly justify their frothy valuations, and a bunch certainly don't. Many of these companies need the capital infusions to stay afloat, and I can see a bunch folding as capital market risk tolerances start to contract.


I think what's looming feels worse than 2000. 2000 was just a hype bubble of the previous 2-3 years that burst. That actually worked out great for me, as my company just offered unpaid-but-full-benefits sabbaticals.

This feels like the debt bubble that was launched by Reaganomics is now imploding, we're reeling back into the 70s stagflation with lame-duck / impeached leaders, increasing inner-city violence, race riots, cold war. Except this time we will already have trillions in deficit and won't be able to pull any Reaganomics tricks to get out of it.


Is there strong evidence yet that this is a 2010-bubble-pop vs a 2020-bubble-pop? The last few years were particularly nuts in a lot of speculative markets. Big difference between back to normal or even a bit slowed from 2019 and a huge downturn, but I'm not seeing indicators yet that things are gonna fall off a cliff. People are still spending a lot of money and demand for a lot of things is still high - that might not continue, but I don't know what people are basing the "worst in a century!!" type reactions off.

Edit: the worst case certainly might come true, but people are pattern matching on like n=1 scenarios here. That's why people have been predicting collapse as long as I've been alive... but the more people are prone to jump to conclusions and panic immediately, the more it might be self-fulfilling.


Haha yeah I think I've probably predicted collapse annually since like 2010. So either you can safely ignore me, or we're due for a 12x apocalypse.


> People are still spending a lot of money and demand for a lot of things is still high

Yes, that is how you create a gigantic crash. Look at this graph, click 25 years, does this look to go in the right direction? The US economy is shifting more and more towards consumption of imported goods instead of producing things itself, this isn't sustainable. You see how the 2008 crash got the curve back and track, a similar thing should happen this time around as well.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/balance-of-trade


I mean, the crash, by definition, is when the demand stops, yeah? "A crash is coming because currently demand is still high" is a bit incomplete as far as theories go. That graph matches my original point about the last two years being very different from 2010-2020 - but it doesn't tell me anything about where to expect things to "correct" to or whether or not such a correction would be good or bad - a lot of people would love to see a US spending shift back to spend on services/experiences rather than manufactured goods. If you look at the 2000 dot com bubble, for instance, that line didn't move as much as in the 2008 crash. Does that tell us that tech valuations popping doesn't affect other things as much as other crashes might? I don't know - but I don't believe you can know for sure either on knowing what'll happen next. We've been defying predictions for years!

Is that crazy luck, or is it that the predictions are extrapolating from small samples against an ever-changing background and so basically just throwing darts? Everything is unprecedented, both good and bad, at this point in human history.


Yeah, it could play out differently. But it could also play out to be the largest crash in American history. We don't know, so don't bet anything important on it not being a crash.

Worst case the graph tells the story of the rest of the world shifting their industries to be less dependent on the American one, ending American dominance, that is how this would lead to the biggest crash in American history. Best case USA just slowly starts to shift back to producing things internally and creating new goods others wants to import and things stabilize.

We will see what happens, but it is very rare for curves to shift without huge consequences.


You're looking an a macro economic indicator that only politicians seem to care about, Most other countries don't even bother to measure it.

Trade deficit is just as much an indicator for foreign sentiment to hold US cash, as it is to import non-US made stuff.

All that indicator says is that consumer behavior changes during a recession.

You can argue the same thing with private debt.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/private-debt-to-g...

https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2017/KleinBoudreaux...


I don't know about your experience, but 2008 was devastating to people just starting out in their careers. So far, the current economic situation feels mild in comparison.


Just before ‘08 fuel prices sharply rose because OPEC was fucking around.

Currently, fuel prices sharply rose because Russia is fucking around which is also causing food prices to rise due to fertilizers and a lot of grain not able to make it to market.

I can tell you from the last time when people couldn’t afford to buy gas to get to work and they were interviewing truckers on national news programs on how they will have to park their trucks if fuel prices go any higher things are definitely heading in the wrong direction.

Add in inflationary pressures eating away at peoples’ reserve savings (those lucky enough not to be living paycheck to paycheck) and things are probably not as mild as they seem if you have some cushy job sitting behind a computer screen — just saying to put it in perspective not trying to insult anyone, the “view from the trenches” is vastly different IMHO.


> for an idea of how things may go. Look to the 2000 (Tech Bubble Burst) recession.

Agree. In aftermath of the .com implosion it took about 4 years for hiring to come back to a more normal pace. It was a good time to go back to school to do a Masters degree.

> I have family that works for Intel, and they say that Intel tends to actually increase hiring in bear markets.

Having worked for Intel and knowing folks still there, it's very much a mixed bag. I hear there are areas where headcount is frozen. But there are other areas where Gelsinger is investing heavily that are very eager to hire - in this case that doesn't have much to do with a looming recession (or not), it's that they find themselves behind in a lot of areas and they're spending to try to catch up.


>It was a good time to go back to school to do a Masters degree.

Why? You mean because people couldn't find a job so they went back to school instead?


Yes, exactly. That's is what I did. I did pick up some contract work while doing my Masters back then, but the pickings were pretty sparse in my non-silicon valley area. Usually 3 to 6 month contracts with breaks between which allowed me to focus on the schooling. There were a couple of years there in the early 2000s where I only worked about 3 months. I was fortunate to have savings built up during the booming 90s to enable me to get by during bad times in the early 2000s.


> Look to the 2000 (Tech Bubble Burst) recession. In that one, the bottom dropped out of the tech market. Web designers were especially hard hit.

I wonder if it's gonna be mobile app designers/devs this time round?


Might be. I don't particularly care, for myself (I'm done with the rat race), but there's a whole ton of folks that have the job description that may have a hard time of it.

It seems that a lot of software, these days, is "full stack" (SaaS) stuff. The app is really just the frontend. If the frontends get clobbered, the backends are just behind. Basic "food chain" stuff.

UPDATED TO ADD:

I took a peek at your HN profile, and it sounds like you have a background after my own heart (monkeying with hardware).

That's a fairly serious skillset, and not for the faint of heart. I'd say that you may have a better chance than many.


How about mobile game devs?


First against the wall i'm afraid.


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