7 ms·

Layoffs Are Coming

nkozyra 7y ago
What other result could come from the global economy basically crawling to a halt for - best case scenario - a month or two? Not to be glib but I think most people understand this.
- umvi 7y ago
  Sometimes I wonder if the harm reduced by "flattening the curve" is greater than the harm introduced by flattening the global economy...
  - nkozyra 7y ago
    I get the sentiment, but consider: the economy will recover. Some people exposed to corona virus will not.
    - zamadatix 7y ago
      Unfortunately it's not clear cut as there is a real human cost to each.
    - tromp 7y ago
      The whole versus the parts. The human species will recover. Some companies will not.
      - sn9 7y ago
        A company can come back from the dead. Humans cannot.
  - cortesoft 7y ago
    We have ways as a society to make sure an economic downturn doesn't kill anyone. We can't say the same thing about an unchecked pandemic.
    - blaser-waffle 7y ago
      Not in the US, but yeah -- societies have safety nets for economic downturns. This also assumes the rest of the world is mostly functioning. A global pandemic that breaks everything everywhere is a different story. If your house burns down but your neighbors are fine, it's easy to get them to help to pitch in rebuild a little. If everyone's houses are torched then you're on your own...
  - asveikau 7y ago
    Is that to say it's better to be dead than unemployed? Not meaning to be glib nor overly dramatic. But I thought the whole point is that flattening the curve eases load on hospitals meaning they turn away fewer people, and thus more of them survive. So the question you are asking is: how much is preventable loss of life worth?
    - zulgan 7y ago
      death will follow either way, like 2008 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/25/financial-crisis-caused-500000-extra-cancer-death-according-to-l/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/25/financial-crisis... https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f5239 https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f5239 https://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehaiken/2014/06/12/more-than-10000-suicides-tied-to-economic-crisis-study-says/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehaiken/2014/06/12/more-t... damned if we do, damned if we don't
    - hervature 7y ago
      There have been studies showing that unemployment directly increases mortality here is just one [0]. [0] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448606/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448606/
      - asveikau 7y ago
        That's interesting, sad, and makes intuitive sense. But I'm not sure we can take it back and say "we need to allow more people to die from coronavirus so that fewer die from unemployment". Ideally we would want to minimize both.
        nitrogen 7y ago
        One day when we have the benefit of hindsight someone will do an analysis on the quality-adjusted life years gained and lost by the different responses to this.
  - ummonk 7y ago
    The alternative is letting it widely infect the population leading to 5%+ of symptomatic cases dying (which could be as much as 2% of the overall population) and people being unable to get critical medical attention for any ailments while this is happening. You don't think the economy would shut down in the scenario, if only from upper-middle-class and up individuals quitting their jobs and bunkering down to save their own skins?
    - grey-area 7y ago
      Flattening the curve is not an alternative to letting it widely infect the population, it is just managing the rate of infection slightly. The same number end up infected.
      - ummonk 7y ago
        That is correct, which is why flattening the curve (as the UK intends to do) is not the optimal response - the optimal response is to contain the virus and prevent it from spreading to most of the population, as South Korea, China, Taiwan, and Singapore have all done. And as Italy is belatedly in the process of accomplishing.
        grey-area 7y ago
        Italy is way too late for that. Also I think you’re a little early declaring victory for China etc.
        mytailorisrich 7y ago
        The UK is giving contradictory signals. Trying to get herd immunity by winter is not flattening the curve to a level remotely manageable.
  - CraigJPerry 7y ago
    That’s exactly the controversy in the UK government’s off-piste response to this scenario. If it pays off, Britain will win handsomely out of this. That’s one hell of a massive “if”.
  - youareostriches 7y ago
    In the case of the former, it's the virus that kills people. If deaths occurred by way of the latter, it would be only because the wealthy ruling class refused to pay their fair share (via the subversion of our democracy) to support basic necessities of food, shelter, and health care.
  - yongjik 7y ago
    Italy has 24,747 reported cases and 60 million people. That's 0.04% of Italy's population. If we conservatively(?) assume that there are x10 actual patients, then it's still 0.4%. If, without intervention, 40% of all people may contact coronavirus, then each country is going to be hit x100 worse than where Italy stands now. I doubt there would be a "global economy" to speak of after that. Flattening the curve is our only hope.
Avalaxy 7y ago
This timing is really unfortunate. I work as a freelance software engineer and my assignment ended a month ago. I've been looking for a new assignment, but it looks like nobody is hiring right now. I'm preparing for burning through all my saving because I don't see it change easily in the next months :(
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Same here. I was about to start a new job abroad two weeks from now, but now my country's borders are locked and I can't fly out (not that I'd want to if I could, in this situation). I'm hoping I can renegotiate for remote, but if that fails, I'll be burning through savings too.
  - dorchadas 7y ago
    I'm kinda feeling this too. I've been accepted into a masters in quantitative finance abroad, and was looking forward to starting in September. Now, not so sure what's going to happen, especially if we're heading into recession and other issues...
- 76543210 7y ago
  Same but due to bad sales. Mine is postponed until people go back to work. Hopefully 9 months of mortgage is enough to survive this.
ajross 7y ago
FWIW: corporate layoffs are going to lag somewhat. For PR reasons, no one wants to be seen as dumping folks during a crisis. And for accounting reasons, the need to balance the sheets generally lags by a quarter (that is, virtually no employer is "agile" with its layoffs). The more immediate job losses are in the service sector, and that is happening already.
- cortesoft 7y ago
  And in the service sector, job loss isn't so clear cut... people will just have hours reduced a ton, in some ways being a defacto lay-off.
- dirtydroog 7y ago
  European airlines are already announcing layoffs.
- phpnode 7y ago
  airlines are already dumping staff, and that's the tip of the iceberg.
  - greenyoda 7y ago
    Also, probably, other travel-related businesses, such as the hotel industry.
whb07 7y ago
This.... is not what’s going to happen. Much less for a skilled worker in this forum. Glad to know this fella is a dev and not an Econ quack.
- xxpor 7y ago
  I misread the URL and thought this was for jacobin, and not jacobian
76543210 7y ago
Ancedote time. My job was ending due to bad sales, my next job is on hold until people return to work. Our daycare said they are charging us money but we can't come (they said this week only... But this is after we complained). The only business but really affected? My wife's company who treats people 1 on 1. But who knows even that might be slowed down from paranoid customers.
DocG 7y ago
I am not sure if I'm lucky or unlucky - I recently, meaning 15 days ago quit my job. It was a decision prepared well in advance. I'm glad because I am mentally prepared to not work for quite a while with okayish amount of savings. I'm sad because this means all my own business plans, that I prepared my savings for, are on hold. Im still not sure is it better to go through resection with no work but with savings or just work through it.
- H8crilA 7y ago
  I think it's much better to enter a recession while employed. For starters: not everyone is fired, obviously. If you're not fired then you can just keep going on as usual. It's not easy to find a job in a contracting economy.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
mydpy 7y ago
If anything, I think tech is protected from the effects of the coming recession. Our industry is one of the best poised to maintain business as usual. That said, the impact of the economic effects is coming.
- H8crilA 7y ago
  Are you kidding me? Tech is so ridiculously inflated, just look at how many stupid "tech" startups were created recently. This will deleverage now. Not even the "big guys" are so super safe - a lot of VC money is recycled back into "tech" via AWS bills and online ads. The only worse business right now is probably oil, especially fracking. Those guys are doomed.
  - 2019-nCoV 7y ago
    The cruise ship industry would like a word with you.
    - H8crilA 7y ago
      There's a few more small sectors like this. But I was thinking of the "official" s&p sectors: https://www.tradingview.com/markets/indices/quotes-snp/ https://www.tradingview.com/markets/indices/quotes-snp/
  - rvz 7y ago
    Depends on which "big guys" you are on about. Likely, it's those who have recently IPO'd on VC money and depend on lots of moving parts and huge costs like cloud costs, logistics, travel and are also in specific domains which are waiting to be sherlocked by a FAAMNG company. The best of all: It is those "tech" startups who generate little revenue and no profit, but take in VC money into their series D,E,F and G+ for years. Ultimately, it comes to no surprise that layoffs from such startups would happen at this time since my so called "machine learning crystal ball" predicted this [0] anyway whilst ignoring other earlier vacuous predictions. FAAMNG and other profitable companies will survive this. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21926473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21926473
bitforger 7y ago
Anyone in academia have takes on the potential effects on graduate students (PhDs / post-docs)? What happens if a lab loses funding?
- cozzyd 7y ago
  Government funding for research should be largely unaffected. Also most grants are long-term. On the other hand, fewer people will probably go into industry in the near-term which leads to more competition for grad school / postdocs.
alexandercrohde 7y ago
Linkbait. Offers no evidence. I see no reason why the vast majority of software companies would be affected at all by this (Github, google, amazon, etc). I especially foresee this being a huge benefit to biotech.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- sibeliuss 7y ago
  Uh, sorry to break it to you, but Github, Google and Amazon are not the vast majority of software companies.
  - alexandercrohde 7y ago
    The burden isn't on me to list every company that won't be affected by this. The burden is on the person making claim to provide evidence for their claim.
- Stratoscope 7y ago
  On the contrary, this article has a lot of useful advice for anyone in uncertain times. Predictions of who may or may not be affected are not the interesting part. Any of us may be affected by events beyond our control, and the article has plenty of tips that may be helpful for anyone.
mkchoi212 7y ago
I feel like in the domain of Software companies, this only applies to very traditional, conservative companies. Most startups and “liberal” companies will be fine having their employees WFH. In a month or so, they could even be pleasantly surprised about how worker productivity went up due to the benefits of WFH.
- almost_usual 7y ago
  How are they fine if they don’t have customers anymore?
  - mkchoi212 7y ago
    Of course the number of customers will wane. However, the economy is not something that can easily be halted. For example, businesses really on other businesses to function. This means that B2B products won’t be as severely impacted when compared to the local cafe.
rolleiflex 7y ago
> It’s looking increasingly likely that the COVID-19 pandemic will cause a recession. I’m neither an epidemiologist nor an economist Financial markets have stability issues when the situation is calm in the short term, but it’s unknown what’s going to happen six months from now. The situation is reversed today, we’re all going through some bad mess due to our states being unprepared for this, but it’s mid to high chance this will have settled one way or another in six months. What we had last week was a shock that came not from the financial system itself but from public health. We might have to adjust our lives to this and that might have financial implications, but there’s nothing fundamentally different in terms of financial markets between the week before and the last week. Recessions or down cycles are normal, and that might happen - and that is finances just charting the rest of the world at large. But the 2008 crisis was a result of something going haywire in the financial system itself, which is something that is more prone to create much bigger shocks than external events. We might have a mild recession, yes. But it’s unlikely it’s going to be like 2008, since this crisis is fundamentally external.
- elliekelly 7y ago
  > but there’s nothing fundamentally different in terms of finances between the week before and the last week This is not true for many households. People with young schoolchildren, people who work for tips or in the service industry, people who can't work remotely but are forced to stay home. There are many people whose finances have fundamentally changed in the last week.
  - rolleiflex 7y ago
    Apologies, I meant ‘financial markets’, not personal finances. I’m correcting it now. (Not a native English speaker, sorry)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
vsareto 7y ago
I'd like to warn everyone to not quit, even if you have deep savings or think a layoff is coming. Do reasonable things to stay, where reasonable depends on your support network and savings. Even 2-3 extra months is significant cash for most of you. Not having a job during a recession is scary (even to me with no kids, no spouse, no dependents). Tech might be better off in some respects, but it also means it will be much harder to get a job in an emergency as those will be filled by many others.
mntmoss 7y ago
Note that this one is not a crash imposed by market forces overextending themselves(the usual dynamic of recession), so much as a reset button suddenly pushed. An economy under quarantine is not just a depressed economy, it's a different economy, as demonstrated by the abrupt mass adoption of WFH and sudden political will for sick leave. The game took a time-out and the rules changed. When we resume business as usual, it won't move the clock backwards. So there is a silver lining in that opportunities going forward will change, but that still means "no opportunities" in the near term while everyone sorts out what to make of it.
rdegges 7y ago
Another important thing to consider: reduce liabilities ASAP. I'm writing an article on this currently, but I see way too many friends and co-workers who have over-leveraged themselves: large mortgages, car loans, student loans, etc. In good times it is a good idea to reduce leverage (pay down your debts) so you have less monthly burn. If you are in a highly leveraged position right now, here's my advice: get a 6 month (or 1 year) emergency fund in place ASAP, pay off any debt using the debt snowball method (smallest debts first) to free up cash flow, and DON'T TAKE ON ANY MORE LOANS! The difference between having a monthly burn rate of 3k (with no debt) and 8k (with debt) is massive and will dramatically impact your life: anxiety, stress, emergency fund, etc. Now's the time to derisk yourself as much as possible.
- tistoon 7y ago
  I am in the process of buying a condo apartment (Canada) (each year real estate was usually a 6% increase in value). I sent the signed approval friday, but they refused it because my PDF was sign electronically. I was about to re-send it Monday.. What is your opinion? Thank you!
  - matthewaveryusa 7y ago
    Save the paper trail, talk to a lawyer
  - Hydraulix989 7y ago
    Real estate in NYC is already dipping 30%, you could have definitely timed this one a bit better, but if you are in it for the long-haul, then you’re fine.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  > debt snowball method Dave Ramsey's "Snowball" method is nice for the hodunk folks who don't get finance, but really you should be paying off the highest interest rate first, since that will cost you the most. Snowball is good from a psychological and (kind of) from an administrative sense, but it's mostly to help people take control of their financial situation, not make the most cost-effective long term choices.
shams93 7y ago
I just got laid off but there is a lot of defacto legalization of discrimination. Anyone who isn't in the majority like women and people of color are going to be hit extremely hard in this new round of layoffs that began last week. For those who remain you'll be asked to do "shared sacrifice" and either take pay cuts do even more unpaid overtime or both.
dgudkov 7y ago
For a recession to start something fundamental has to change irreversibly. E.g. cornerstone companies implode. A class of securities evaporates. What does the virus pandemic change irreversibly?
- greenyoda 7y ago
  > For a recession to start something fundamental has to change irreversibly. It seems like you're thinking of the last recession (2008), which included the collapse of major financial firms like Lehman. But most recessions are much less catastrophic. A recession just means a slowdown in the economy, usually defined as "two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth".[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession#Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession#Definition
sys_64738 7y ago
This won't be any regular lay off. Bars and restaurants are all shutting. Retail stores can't stay open. 60% of the workforce may be out of work in 3 months time. This might be an economic collapse.
- H8crilA 7y ago
  Let's not overreact either. A sensible thing to do is to issue an executive order that protects employment during this time, freezes all kinds of credit payments, freezes rent payments. Perhaps the Treasury should guarantee payrolls, too.
  - sys_64738 7y ago
    You can do the maths: 19m work in retail 13m work in restaurants Add in the logistics businesses to support all these.
    - H8crilA 7y ago
      My point is this is most likely temporary (on the order of weeks). Guarantee people's financial/employment safety (the measures I've listed), keep them in their homes, back to business when this blows over. This is exactly the kind of stuff governments are supposed to do.
      - sys_64738 7y ago
        But is it just "weeks". We've no evidence nor precedent to know how long this lock down will last. The problem being that without any vaccine (and mass generation of vaccine and distribution to the population), the virus will continue spreading when those "weeks" are up.
        H8crilA 7y ago
        That's a whole other scenario which will have bigger consequences than just a recession.

What other result could come from the global economy basically crawling to a halt for - best case scenario - a month or two? Not to be glib but I think most people understand this.

umvi 7y ago
Sometimes I wonder if the harm reduced by "flattening the curve" is greater than the harm introduced by flattening the global economy...
- nkozyra 7y ago
  I get the sentiment, but consider: the economy will recover. Some people exposed to corona virus will not.
  - zamadatix 7y ago
    Unfortunately it's not clear cut as there is a real human cost to each.
  - tromp 7y ago
    The whole versus the parts. The human species will recover. Some companies will not.
    - sn9 7y ago
      A company can come back from the dead. Humans cannot.
- cortesoft 7y ago
  We have ways as a society to make sure an economic downturn doesn't kill anyone. We can't say the same thing about an unchecked pandemic.
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    Not in the US, but yeah -- societies have safety nets for economic downturns. This also assumes the rest of the world is mostly functioning. A global pandemic that breaks everything everywhere is a different story. If your house burns down but your neighbors are fine, it's easy to get them to help to pitch in rebuild a little. If everyone's houses are torched then you're on your own...
- asveikau 7y ago
  Is that to say it's better to be dead than unemployed? Not meaning to be glib nor overly dramatic. But I thought the whole point is that flattening the curve eases load on hospitals meaning they turn away fewer people, and thus more of them survive. So the question you are asking is: how much is preventable loss of life worth?
  - zulgan 7y ago
    death will follow either way, like 2008 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/25/financial-crisis-caused-500000-extra-cancer-death-according-to-l/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/25/financial-crisis... https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f5239 https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f5239 https://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehaiken/2014/06/12/more-than-10000-suicides-tied-to-economic-crisis-study-says/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehaiken/2014/06/12/more-t... damned if we do, damned if we don't
  - hervature 7y ago
    There have been studies showing that unemployment directly increases mortality here is just one [0]. [0] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448606/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448606/
    - asveikau 7y ago
      That's interesting, sad, and makes intuitive sense. But I'm not sure we can take it back and say "we need to allow more people to die from coronavirus so that fewer die from unemployment". Ideally we would want to minimize both.
      - nitrogen 7y ago
        One day when we have the benefit of hindsight someone will do an analysis on the quality-adjusted life years gained and lost by the different responses to this.
- ummonk 7y ago
  The alternative is letting it widely infect the population leading to 5%+ of symptomatic cases dying (which could be as much as 2% of the overall population) and people being unable to get critical medical attention for any ailments while this is happening. You don't think the economy would shut down in the scenario, if only from upper-middle-class and up individuals quitting their jobs and bunkering down to save their own skins?
  - grey-area 7y ago
    Flattening the curve is not an alternative to letting it widely infect the population, it is just managing the rate of infection slightly. The same number end up infected.
    - ummonk 7y ago
      That is correct, which is why flattening the curve (as the UK intends to do) is not the optimal response - the optimal response is to contain the virus and prevent it from spreading to most of the population, as South Korea, China, Taiwan, and Singapore have all done. And as Italy is belatedly in the process of accomplishing.
      - grey-area 7y ago
        Italy is way too late for that. Also I think you’re a little early declaring victory for China etc.
      - mytailorisrich 7y ago
        The UK is giving contradictory signals. Trying to get herd immunity by winter is not flattening the curve to a level remotely manageable.
- CraigJPerry 7y ago
  That’s exactly the controversy in the UK government’s off-piste response to this scenario. If it pays off, Britain will win handsomely out of this. That’s one hell of a massive “if”.
- youareostriches 7y ago
  In the case of the former, it's the virus that kills people. If deaths occurred by way of the latter, it would be only because the wealthy ruling class refused to pay their fair share (via the subversion of our democracy) to support basic necessities of food, shelter, and health care.
- yongjik 7y ago
  Italy has 24,747 reported cases and 60 million people. That's 0.04% of Italy's population. If we conservatively(?) assume that there are x10 actual patients, then it's still 0.4%. If, without intervention, 40% of all people may contact coronavirus, then each country is going to be hit x100 worse than where Italy stands now. I doubt there would be a "global economy" to speak of after that. Flattening the curve is our only hope.

Avalaxy 7y ago

This timing is really unfortunate. I work as a freelance software engineer and my assignment ended a month ago. I've been looking for a new assignment, but it looks like nobody is hiring right now. I'm preparing for burning through all my saving because I don't see it change easily in the next months :(

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Same here. I was about to start a new job abroad two weeks from now, but now my country's borders are locked and I can't fly out (not that I'd want to if I could, in this situation). I'm hoping I can renegotiate for remote, but if that fails, I'll be burning through savings too.
- dorchadas 7y ago
  I'm kinda feeling this too. I've been accepted into a masters in quantitative finance abroad, and was looking forward to starting in September. Now, not so sure what's going to happen, especially if we're heading into recession and other issues...
76543210 7y ago
Same but due to bad sales. Mine is postponed until people go back to work. Hopefully 9 months of mortgage is enough to survive this.

ajross 7y ago

FWIW: corporate layoffs are going to lag somewhat. For PR reasons, no one wants to be seen as dumping folks during a crisis. And for accounting reasons, the need to balance the sheets generally lags by a quarter (that is, virtually no employer is "agile" with its layoffs). The more immediate job losses are in the service sector, and that is happening already.

cortesoft 7y ago
And in the service sector, job loss isn't so clear cut... people will just have hours reduced a ton, in some ways being a defacto lay-off.
dirtydroog 7y ago
European airlines are already announcing layoffs.
phpnode 7y ago
airlines are already dumping staff, and that's the tip of the iceberg.
- greenyoda 7y ago
  Also, probably, other travel-related businesses, such as the hotel industry.

whb07 7y ago

This.... is not what’s going to happen. Much less for a skilled worker in this forum. Glad to know this fella is a dev and not an Econ quack.

xxpor 7y ago
I misread the URL and thought this was for jacobin, and not jacobian

76543210 7y ago

Ancedote time. My job was ending due to bad sales, my next job is on hold until people return to work. Our daycare said they are charging us money but we can't come (they said this week only... But this is after we complained). The only business but really affected? My wife's company who treats people 1 on 1. But who knows even that might be slowed down from paranoid customers.

DocG 7y ago

I am not sure if I'm lucky or unlucky - I recently, meaning 15 days ago quit my job. It was a decision prepared well in advance. I'm glad because I am mentally prepared to not work for quite a while with okayish amount of savings. I'm sad because this means all my own business plans, that I prepared my savings for, are on hold. Im still not sure is it better to go through resection with no work but with savings or just work through it.

H8crilA 7y ago
I think it's much better to enter a recession while employed. For starters: not everyone is fired, obviously. If you're not fired then you can just keep going on as usual. It's not easy to find a job in a contracting economy.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

mydpy 7y ago

If anything, I think tech is protected from the effects of the coming recession. Our industry is one of the best poised to maintain business as usual. That said, the impact of the economic effects is coming.

H8crilA 7y ago
Are you kidding me? Tech is so ridiculously inflated, just look at how many stupid "tech" startups were created recently. This will deleverage now. Not even the "big guys" are so super safe - a lot of VC money is recycled back into "tech" via AWS bills and online ads. The only worse business right now is probably oil, especially fracking. Those guys are doomed.
- 2019-nCoV 7y ago
  The cruise ship industry would like a word with you.
  - H8crilA 7y ago
    There's a few more small sectors like this. But I was thinking of the "official" s&p sectors: https://www.tradingview.com/markets/indices/quotes-snp/ https://www.tradingview.com/markets/indices/quotes-snp/
- rvz 7y ago
  Depends on which "big guys" you are on about. Likely, it's those who have recently IPO'd on VC money and depend on lots of moving parts and huge costs like cloud costs, logistics, travel and are also in specific domains which are waiting to be sherlocked by a FAAMNG company. The best of all: It is those "tech" startups who generate little revenue and no profit, but take in VC money into their series D,E,F and G+ for years. Ultimately, it comes to no surprise that layoffs from such startups would happen at this time since my so called "machine learning crystal ball" predicted this [0] anyway whilst ignoring other earlier vacuous predictions. FAAMNG and other profitable companies will survive this. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21926473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21926473

bitforger 7y ago

Anyone in academia have takes on the potential effects on graduate students (PhDs / post-docs)? What happens if a lab loses funding?

cozzyd 7y ago
Government funding for research should be largely unaffected. Also most grants are long-term. On the other hand, fewer people will probably go into industry in the near-term which leads to more competition for grad school / postdocs.

alexandercrohde 7y ago

Linkbait. Offers no evidence. I see no reason why the vast majority of software companies would be affected at all by this (Github, google, amazon, etc). I especially foresee this being a huge benefit to biotech.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sibeliuss 7y ago
Uh, sorry to break it to you, but Github, Google and Amazon are not the vast majority of software companies.
- alexandercrohde 7y ago
  The burden isn't on me to list every company that won't be affected by this. The burden is on the person making claim to provide evidence for their claim.
Stratoscope 7y ago
On the contrary, this article has a lot of useful advice for anyone in uncertain times. Predictions of who may or may not be affected are not the interesting part. Any of us may be affected by events beyond our control, and the article has plenty of tips that may be helpful for anyone.

mkchoi212 7y ago

I feel like in the domain of Software companies, this only applies to very traditional, conservative companies. Most startups and “liberal” companies will be fine having their employees WFH. In a month or so, they could even be pleasantly surprised about how worker productivity went up due to the benefits of WFH.

almost_usual 7y ago
How are they fine if they don’t have customers anymore?
- mkchoi212 7y ago
  Of course the number of customers will wane. However, the economy is not something that can easily be halted. For example, businesses really on other businesses to function. This means that B2B products won’t be as severely impacted when compared to the local cafe.

rolleiflex 7y ago

> It’s looking increasingly likely that the COVID-19 pandemic will cause a recession. I’m neither an epidemiologist nor an economist Financial markets have stability issues when the situation is calm in the short term, but it’s unknown what’s going to happen six months from now. The situation is reversed today, we’re all going through some bad mess due to our states being unprepared for this, but it’s mid to high chance this will have settled one way or another in six months. What we had last week was a shock that came not from the financial system itself but from public health. We might have to adjust our lives to this and that might have financial implications, but there’s nothing fundamentally different in terms of financial markets between the week before and the last week. Recessions or down cycles are normal, and that might happen - and that is finances just charting the rest of the world at large. But the 2008 crisis was a result of something going haywire in the financial system itself, which is something that is more prone to create much bigger shocks than external events. We might have a mild recession, yes. But it’s unlikely it’s going to be like 2008, since this crisis is fundamentally external.

elliekelly 7y ago
> but there’s nothing fundamentally different in terms of finances between the week before and the last week This is not true for many households. People with young schoolchildren, people who work for tips or in the service industry, people who can't work remotely but are forced to stay home. There are many people whose finances have fundamentally changed in the last week.
- rolleiflex 7y ago
  Apologies, I meant ‘financial markets’, not personal finances. I’m correcting it now. (Not a native English speaker, sorry)

deleted 7y ago

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vsareto 7y ago

I'd like to warn everyone to not quit, even if you have deep savings or think a layoff is coming. Do reasonable things to stay, where reasonable depends on your support network and savings. Even 2-3 extra months is significant cash for most of you. Not having a job during a recession is scary (even to me with no kids, no spouse, no dependents). Tech might be better off in some respects, but it also means it will be much harder to get a job in an emergency as those will be filled by many others.

mntmoss 7y ago

Note that this one is not a crash imposed by market forces overextending themselves(the usual dynamic of recession), so much as a reset button suddenly pushed. An economy under quarantine is not just a depressed economy, it's a different economy, as demonstrated by the abrupt mass adoption of WFH and sudden political will for sick leave. The game took a time-out and the rules changed. When we resume business as usual, it won't move the clock backwards. So there is a silver lining in that opportunities going forward will change, but that still means "no opportunities" in the near term while everyone sorts out what to make of it.

rdegges 7y ago

Another important thing to consider: reduce liabilities ASAP. I'm writing an article on this currently, but I see way too many friends and co-workers who have over-leveraged themselves: large mortgages, car loans, student loans, etc. In good times it is a good idea to reduce leverage (pay down your debts) so you have less monthly burn. If you are in a highly leveraged position right now, here's my advice: get a 6 month (or 1 year) emergency fund in place ASAP, pay off any debt using the debt snowball method (smallest debts first) to free up cash flow, and DON'T TAKE ON ANY MORE LOANS! The difference between having a monthly burn rate of 3k (with no debt) and 8k (with debt) is massive and will dramatically impact your life: anxiety, stress, emergency fund, etc. Now's the time to derisk yourself as much as possible.

tistoon 7y ago
I am in the process of buying a condo apartment (Canada) (each year real estate was usually a 6% increase in value). I sent the signed approval friday, but they refused it because my PDF was sign electronically. I was about to re-send it Monday.. What is your opinion? Thank you!
- matthewaveryusa 7y ago
  Save the paper trail, talk to a lawyer
- Hydraulix989 7y ago
  Real estate in NYC is already dipping 30%, you could have definitely timed this one a bit better, but if you are in it for the long-haul, then you’re fine.
blaser-waffle 7y ago
> debt snowball method Dave Ramsey's "Snowball" method is nice for the hodunk folks who don't get finance, but really you should be paying off the highest interest rate first, since that will cost you the most. Snowball is good from a psychological and (kind of) from an administrative sense, but it's mostly to help people take control of their financial situation, not make the most cost-effective long term choices.

shams93 7y ago

I just got laid off but there is a lot of defacto legalization of discrimination. Anyone who isn't in the majority like women and people of color are going to be hit extremely hard in this new round of layoffs that began last week. For those who remain you'll be asked to do "shared sacrifice" and either take pay cuts do even more unpaid overtime or both.

dgudkov 7y ago

For a recession to start something fundamental has to change irreversibly. E.g. cornerstone companies implode. A class of securities evaporates. What does the virus pandemic change irreversibly?

greenyoda 7y ago
> For a recession to start something fundamental has to change irreversibly. It seems like you're thinking of the last recession (2008), which included the collapse of major financial firms like Lehman. But most recessions are much less catastrophic. A recession just means a slowdown in the economy, usually defined as "two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth".[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession#Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession#Definition

sys_64738 7y ago

This won't be any regular lay off. Bars and restaurants are all shutting. Retail stores can't stay open. 60% of the workforce may be out of work in 3 months time. This might be an economic collapse.

H8crilA 7y ago
Let's not overreact either. A sensible thing to do is to issue an executive order that protects employment during this time, freezes all kinds of credit payments, freezes rent payments. Perhaps the Treasury should guarantee payrolls, too.
- sys_64738 7y ago
  You can do the maths: 19m work in retail 13m work in restaurants Add in the logistics businesses to support all these.
  - H8crilA 7y ago
    My point is this is most likely temporary (on the order of weeks). Guarantee people's financial/employment safety (the measures I've listed), keep them in their homes, back to business when this blows over. This is exactly the kind of stuff governments are supposed to do.
    - sys_64738 7y ago
      But is it just "weeks". We've no evidence nor precedent to know how long this lock down will last. The problem being that without any vaccine (and mass generation of vaccine and distribution to the population), the virus will continue spreading when those "weeks" are up.
      - H8crilA 7y ago
        That's a whole other scenario which will have bigger consequences than just a recession.