4 ms·
Early in my career, right after the first dot-com bust, there was a large downsizing of practically the entire staff; it wasn't a big place but I want to say at
by mr_tristan 7y ago
Early in my career, right after the first dot-com bust, there was a large downsizing of practically the entire staff; it wasn't a big place but I want to say at least half of the company was let go.
I was young, moved into a friend's place and paid cheap rent for about 6 months and collected unemployment. Then ended up getting hired back right before the startup was acquired.
- spenrose 7y agoVery similar experience; after unemployment I took a job with a sociopath for six months, then went back to school for C.S. (I had a humanities B.A.). Lessons: 1. Human toll of layoffs can be extremely high (up to and including death) and hard to see. 2. Many coders are much more re-hirable than most non-coders, but many aren't. 3. In resilient labor markets such as modern SaaS and app coding, there is an experience<->hirability S-curve. Going from 0 to 1 year of saleable experience depends on the employer, from 1 to 3 years power shifts slowly towards labor, and after that you are in control. (These statements obviously don't apply to all software labor markets.) 4. Many coders get stuck in bad labor niches, many are really lousy at the sub-skill of getting a job, many don't realize how salable their skills are, and many can't tell which of those possibilities applies to them.
- redisman 7y agoI'd just like to add a caveat to point #3 that it is based on the last 10 years of low unemployment and high growth in the tech sector. Things probably will change one day. Who knows in a few years you might be competing for a "bad" mid-level position with 50 ex Googlers for half the pay.
- spenrose 7y agoCompletely agree. Just think that day is far off for some programming labor markets in which HN readers sell their skills.