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Ask HN: What skills will be useful during an upcoming recession/depression?
My economic knowledge is limited but it seems like the effects of the global domino triggered by conoravirus will echo for many years to come. As a generalist who never had an issue finding a job so far, I'm afraid that in this new reality my software/management skills won't be of any use in 6 months.
What skills would be valuable to develop now to adapt as quick as possible to the new state of things?
- roschdal 7y agoAgriculture, hunting, fishing, carpentry and masonry.
- psfollow 7y agoEinstein: "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
- mirekrusin 7y agoIs there a war coming?
- rolph 7y agowhen i was young there was this bully that screwed with everyone, one day someone put him down to the ground and several of his repeat victims fell upon him like animals, when he was down and vulnerable. the kid ended up in the hospital. A tactical position requires caution when vulnerable. old festering wounds and international quarrels can quickly be escalated in a situation like this. It is a feasible scenario that someone of less than level head thinking will: see opportunity >take advantage >achieve an objective.
- mirekrusin 7y ago...and programming and dozens of other things.
- enumjorge 7y agoThe implication here being that the virus will disrupt society in such a way that people will need to hunt for their own food or hire people who will do it for them?
- rolph 7y agodevelop a flare for barter and trade. learn how to provide the things people actually need. general construction trades and adhoc engineering. farming. hunting fishing. veternary skills surgical skills midwivery dentistry. localized /offgrid/on site power generation. production of fuel from raw materials.
- ryanianian 7y agoAdding to this: learn the basics of ham radio. Not only is the theory fun if you're the math/science type, it's also a lifeline service if cellphone or satellite communications are down. You can learn enough in a weekend to get an amateur license and buy $20 radios that will let you talk across the state or further.
- rolph 7y agoand right away find a local repeater and get accepted into an operators net, thats going to be crucial... there should be some rep among operators to avoid bad apples that would try to take or make advantage with black comms
- minhazm423 7y agoAny good resources?
- rolph 7y agothere are prepper sites, and if you look in the "shadows" you may find a lot of specialized literature that aught to be free for humanity. the prepper culture is really something elso tho, there is a local group that is just about the one group that i want to have as far away from me as possible. have a look around here for example that ought to be a good starting point: https://www.reddit.com/r/prepping/ https://www.reddit.com/r/prepping/
- nsmog767 7y agoKnowing multiple languages, to maximize your options.
- joshgel 7y agoAs a grandchild of a holocaust survivor, this was told to me repeatedly.
- selimthegrim 7y agoGreg Fenves, the president of UT Austin tells the story of his dad who sneaked out of Buchenwald and was recognized at a factory using prisoners for slave labor by an SS guard who knew him from the camp. Upon being asked what he was doing there (being too young for normal labor selection) he on the fly responded that that Buchenwald had thought the factory would need an interpreter
- Noumenon72 7y agoLike by learning Spanish in addition to English, you can flee to Mexico if the UK isn't taking immigrants?
- sideway 7y agoYou mean natural languages, not programming ones, right?
- nsmog767 7y agoha, I just revealed my status as a non-engineer. Yes, languages. I am trying to improve my Spanish during quarantine downtime.
- rolph 7y agoi think both would be usefull espescially when its time to rebuild. if you know old programing language and are able to port ancient applications and data structures to a recent language and platform you will be valuable for the rebuilding.
- 7y ago
- war1025 7y agoCommunication never hurts. Being able to distill ideas down to their actionable core and spot miscommunication before it derails things is useful in any context.
- rolph 7y agoham radio operators builders, radio/comms engineers
- LifeLiverTransp 7y agoMy assumption is, that if this goes on, something new will be born- hypotheticals, basically distributed startups, that are companys with potential, when and if the quarantine ends, as they could take over already disrupted buisnesses. The problem is how to evaluate a hypothetical? After all, there evaluation is purely based on knowledge, they by definition should not share... I can not answer that.
- airstrike 7y agoBeing a doctor is always valuable, though I'm not sure it's that easy to retrain into one... More importantly, knowing how to live frugally is valuable in and of itself, assuming we do end up with a once-in-a-century-type depression. Not impossible, according to some (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22655670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22655670) but then forecasting is very difficult, especially when it involves the future.
- ako 7y agoFreelance general practitioners are massively being laid off (contracts terminated, no new opportunities) at the moment in the Netherlands. Almost no one is allowed to come to a gp office, anything that is not urgent is postponed...
- magic_beans 7y agoBeing a doctor involves at least 4 years, plus an extra 3-4 for residency — and that's assuming you have met the pre-med requirements. There are several other health care options that are much quicker to learn. Such as nursing, physician's assisting, lab work. Etc.
- angarg12 7y agoWork from home effectively.
- ohiovr 7y agoIf you can learn how to repair things there will always be need of that in a siege. Returning value from utter losses will be of great need. edit For a couple simple examples consider the bic lighter. The strikers are made well enough it is possible to refill them and reuse them several times. Here is a video I made on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fnnDu-_hso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fnnDu-_hso possibly not the best video but it just shows it isn't very hard. What about a ventilator that needs a part? Not hard for someone who knows a lot about 3d printing.
- joering2 7y agoStrongly advise against making any parts of equipment for healthcare or even more - device that sustains life. If it breaks, it will be very simple for government to find you liable. That's also - sadly - reason why these ventilators are so darn expensive, so that they go thru lots of scrutiny and testing.
- Wistar 7y agoPlus skyhigh product liability premiums.
- brunojppb 7y agowhile we see some industries taking a hit during this crises, we also see many others soaring with the rise of distributed and remote work. Software products targeting this field will get even more relevant and jobs will likely flourish. That is why I believe having software/management skills are still relevant in the short/long-term.
- analog31 7y agoMath and physics carried me through two recessions so far. I never got rich, but also never poor.
- jmeister 7y agoAdd CS to Math and Physics, and you’ll go through the next one very rich
- kbbr 7y agoCould you expand on that? In which fields would you work with these skills to earn good money?
- jmeister 7y agoWill add more in a bit, but mainly data scientist in Big Tech and Finance. At the right firms/teams your salary will grow much faster than linear in time
- minhazm423 7y agoDoable without a degree? Any god resources or pointers? Thanks in advance
- analog31 7y agoOddly enough I kinda bet on the wrong side of that, long ago. I graduated from high school in 1982. I had learned to program, and my mom was teaching intro CS at a nearby community college. She actually thought that math was too easy to spend 4 years in college learning it, and her students were getting jobs after a year of training in her course. So I majored in math, and added physics because the added course requirements for double major were minimal. Meanwhile, I continued to learn programming and electronics on my own. A second issue (note the time period) was that I saw what the CS students were learning, and I also had a summer internship in a computer facility, and I formed the impression that over the long haul, a programming job would be rather dull. The people who were doing things with computers that seemed "cool" to me, were in the math and physics departments. That included the use of microcomputers rather than mainframes. I've certainly done a lot of programming throughout my career, but have not been employed as a programmer per se. Most physicists program, because it's our most efficient and flexible problem solving tool. I could probably claim to be a "data scientist" right now, if push came to shove, but am in fact working through some training on that and machine learning, to fill in gaps and make me conversant in the terminology. It could propel my next career move, or at least serve as a bit of career insurance.
- chvid 7y agoKnowing Chinese ...
- sideway 7y agoWould you mind elaborating?
- chvid 7y agoIt is still too early to tell but what if the corona virus pandemic ends up hurting the us and Europe much more than China? Pushing the shift towards Asia/China into overdrive.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoNot useful since so many Chinese are bilingual already; in China if you know English that might just get you a few more RMB per hour, in the USA you might get a couple of more dollars per hour. Besides, I have a feeling that China is going to get the coming recession much worse than the USA, making interactions (eg via tourism) a bit more turbulent for the next few years.
- hk__2 7y agoChinese is not a bridge language like English is.
- gonational 7y agoI think the most important skill is learning how to gain access to zero-interest loans from the Federal Reserve. This skill allows you to lend to your buddies who can purchase distressed businesses and properties for pennies on the dollar, which gives you and them the opportunity to make billions in profits while everybody else is suffering. I’m still trying to learn how to do this; if anybody has any information about what’s required, please reply.
- techlearnings 7y agoLol. +1
- 1123581321 7y agoYou should be looking at borrowing from a bank. The Fed does not lend to individuals.
- criddell 7y agoSo step one is "found a bank"?
- mraudiobook_com 7y agoCheaper to buy used. I was looking a few years ago and found a small credit union for sale for $150k.
- LoveMortuus 7y agoYou know what would be interesting? A Y Combinator or Hacker News bank. That would be interesting, but in reality probably extremely hard to realise... Still a fun and interesting idea to occupy your mind in this times of solitude.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoIt is incredibly hard to get a banking license. Easier to buy an existing bank. Banking regulators are also biased as to the type of banks they want to support, making it difficult to stand up a narrow bank. Consider finding opportunities to extract value from the existing banking system to achieve similar end goals. Maybe the Fed will lend to you if you can provide collateral they typically wouldn’t consider high enough quality? (Google “primary dealer lending facility”)
- saddington 7y agothe #1 thing is how to build community online... effectively, relationships. this is actually harder to do for a lot of folks... especially the millions who are now forced to do it. im training a few folks a week: http://yen.camp http://yen.camp
- isoskeles 7y agoTo add, self-promotion is also a very useful skill in these times.
- crispinb 7y agoThis is a little narrower - but I'd be interested in suggestions for open source software useful for local online communities. People in my area use Facebook. Except that many (like me) just won't sign up for a FB account, and even those that do around here mostly loathe it. I'd like to set something up but as this has just occurred to me I'm vague on specifics as yet. At a minimum I'd like easy-to-use community forums. Discourse is obviously a possibility.
- mirekrusin 7y agoAim to be an expert in your field = what you love to do and you'll be fine. High performing people are unaffected during crisis.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- inglor 7y agoI'm a "high performer", a core collaborator in a big open source project and a library maintainer of a few libraries with 10M+ weekly downloads on NPM. I have a BSc in CS and lots of "good" industry experience in strong start ups for long-ish ( 5 year ) durations. I'm definitely going to be impacted by this recession. I was impacted by the 2008 recession and I was impacted by the dot-com bubble. A lot of friends went to do enterprise Java at banks, jobs without glamour and other things to pay the bills. There are a lot of things I get away with right now that I won't be able to get away with anymore. Also don't forget that "high performers" are more expensive and a lot of times "mid performers" do a good-enough job, so high performers had to compromise for mid-performer salaries during recessions. Obviously start-ups closing and less funding all around also changes the supply-demand balance in the short term. It's likely to induce job changes and closures for at least some of us.
- atwebb 7y ago>A lot of friends went to do enterprise Java at banks Perhaps I'm projecting but I think that cloud skills will be the enterprise Java/.Net of this recession. There is a trough of skills and a pretty clear line, it reminds me of desktop apps to web apps around 2008 as well.
- ken 7y agoMy field doesn't really exist right now. The highest performing people I know are just as unemployed as the schmucks like me.
- tmountain 7y agoCooking from basic ingredients. Growing a basic seasonal garden. Finding ways to be happy with less and appreciate the simple pleasures in life. Placing value on human relationships more than material things. The art of conversation. Enjoying simple/affordable/accessible hobbies.
- pen2l 7y agoAll of these things seem learnable with available resources except the art of conversation, something that I actually need a lot of work on. And recommendations on how I can improve on this?
- glouwbug 7y agoMore emotion, less logic. People like to feel good. They don't necessarily want to learn something new. Crack jokes, banter, wear a smile, but don't be a clown. Best way is to surround yourself by people who do the same. Do not feel discouraged when they "throw a knife" (take the piss) your way, as it's a test of your conversational and mental frame. Agree and amplify, and laughs will be had. Then again, don't surround yourself with bullies. A true friend stabs from the front to test and grow your mental frame, while enemies stab from the back to undermine your frame. Point is, have fun. Don't be a walking talking wikipedia page of logical facts.
- pen2l 7y ago> Point is, have fun. Don't be a walking talking wikipedia page of logical facts. This is sort of what I am. I think it started long ago maybe when I felt as if this is one way I can provide value: to give you facts. I'm aware that this is a problem, in that by doing this I'm not really engaged in a back-and-forth conversation -- I've been aware of this for some time, it's just that it's hard to transition away from this. I don't know how to do this, because this is who I am now, and changing who I am, that’s a deep change to make, it is hard, and I don’t know how I can do this.
- 4b11b4 7y ago
- DethNinja 7y agoHonestly, I don’t believe we will see a huge depression unless there is war. People are still available for work and all the equipment used for producing value is in good conditions. So long as government provides fiscal stimulus, depression shouldn’t happen. In case it happens though, you are better of farming stuff like potatoes and chicken than developing software until government steps in with fiscal stimulus, though it will require some existing capital.
- maxander 7y agoIn many cases, people aren't available; they're sheltering at home, social distancing. Even for those who can work remotely, the disruption to routine is going to reduce productivity. And worse, many assets are going to be destroyed- for instance, restaurants that go under while distancing is taking place are just going to be gone, and while the brute equipment can be reused later, the "organizational capital" (the habits and knowledge of how to run that particular business in that particular context most effectively) vanishes. Various governmental interventions (stimulus, rent freezes, etc) can ameliorate this, but I'm not confident (and the financial sector isn't confident, I think) that the government is presently competent enough to get too much mileage out of implementing these; stimulus needs to be done correctly and promptly to have much effect. If you're in (or your customers are in) an industry that can hunker down and "weather the downturn," the eventual return to normal will be priced in and you'll likely be fine. If you're in (or ditto) an industry that will suffer attrition, the uncertainty will be priced in and you're liable to suffer. Give some thought as to where you stand.
- fxtentacle 7y agoRestaurants won't have to go away if you freeze the rent and pay the previous employees a replacement income. In other words, providing a stimulus package paid to the right people can prevent it.
- glouwbug 7y agoWe may be okay if COVID is our only real threat. Self isolation won't be impeded, and hospitals will not over saturate. If anything disturbs self isolation, like a massive earthquake, drought, Australian like fires, or like you say a war, there is no chance of a quick rebounding economy. That being said, as an aside, imagine slipping into a 3 month coma from a heavy Christmas 2019 party and waking up to eight other people on ventilators in your room. Imagine finding out Kobie Bryant died, that the USA assassinated a top Iranian military figure, and that the world economy dropped 35% in 1 month. You'd think there was a war.
- DrNuke 7y agoThe care industry at local level is poised to do well and get funded more than in the recent past in order to protect the vulnerable part of the population from the disease and avoid further waves. They will need generalists and computer-savvy operators to smoothen their peaks for sure.
- dpflan 7y ago> “...I'm afraid that in this new reality my software/management skills won't be of any use in 6 months.” I’m curious: What do you mean by this?
- sideway 7y agoI've been following many threads on Reddit (and one on HN) about people getting fired already. As there is no indication this trend will be reversed any time soon, I get the feeling that a) lots of industries have already been hit hard and b) things may get progressively worse in the following months. It worries me that, as a huge percentage of the web runs on ads, if lots of industries get into trouble, the ad space will inevitably suffer as well. The cascading effect of that will most probably affect in a very obvious way every company I've worked for, layoffs will oversaturated the market and my current skillset will be insufficient to give me any competitive advantage.
- bdcravens 7y agoThere will be a lot of layoffs. The question is, what kind of jobs are they? Are these experienced developers with multiple languages and platforms under their belt, or one-trick ponies that came from a bootcamp? You're right - ad-driven web properties won't do well. There is tons of code written every day that does actual revenue-generating work, however. It's not sexy work, it's not VC-funded work, and that's okay. During the dot-com bust I had no problems with work. My longest contract was for a hospital, writing software to help nurses schedule and track patient visits. This was tangible work, with a tangible benefit. It wasn't a nebulous business model.
- heavyset_go 7y ago> Are these experienced developers with multiple languages and platforms under their belt, or one-trick ponies that came from a bootcamp? During the last recession, many of those that were let go were the "expensive" experienced developers that could command higher salaries than new hires. I know several experienced developers that lost their jobs last week.
- madhadron 7y agoPeople are acting as though we're going back to a pre-industrial economy with this. It's not true. The power isn't going out. The water will continue to come out of the tap. So my suggestion short term is: learn to cook if you don't know how to. Not fancy, haute cuisine, but how to take whatever's in the pantry and make something tasty out of it. Learn how to grow some produce in small spaces, even if it's just herbs. Learn how to not spend money. How to reduce your energy and water usage. How to do basic repairs and projects yourself. What you have to buy in a time of logistical disruption is time. If you can increase the time you can be without income from a month to four months or from six months to two years, that is a remarkable difference in your resilience.
- rolph 7y agothere is disproportionality in the works. senior positions that require many years of experience for entrancy due to the nature of the job may suddenly go vacant with noone to fill them. when older people, {people who understand how to retool and operate a VLSI plant for example, people who are ATCs or surgeons} die and there is only a pool of young inexperience to draw from we will have to make do without some of these things, change laws to allow reduced qualifications, and or accept things like nuclear accidents as a learning curve until we have experienced people ,[after the replacements make time in]
- ethbro 7y ago> change laws to allow reduced qualifications Wouldn't be the worst side effect. Nice to occasionally snap things back, then more restrictions can be put in place again if warranted.
- spookybones 7y agoI'm am really trying to determine whether or not this will be the next great depression.
- pbourke 7y agoYes, but perhaps not in the way that you might think. There were a number of structural factors that led to the great depression: gold standard currency and restrictive monetary policy at the Fed, overly restrictive tariff laws, simultaneous drought that destroyed a lot of farmland, rampant financial fraud, lack of deposit insurance at banks causing numerous bank runs and failures. Basically all of the above is different now. The modern Fed is organized around preventing the monetary mistakes made during the depression. We are on purely fiat currency now, not the volatile gold standard. Food security is hugely increased, and restrictive tariffs have not impacted the ag industry of Canada and Mexico, which are key supports of the US's food supply chain. We have the FDIC for deposit insurance and increased post-Great Recession capital controls on systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs). We have also learned from the Roosevelt interventions of the 1930's that it requires both a strong monetary and fiscal policy to address a systemic shock to the economy. So it might take some time for stimulus to arrive, but it should be incoming. Finally, we have the internet. Not to oversell it, but it's a significant asset that can ensure a degree of continuity of supplies, services and employment in an event such as this. Yes - it's not perfect and many necessary jobs can not be done over the internet. But it's better than the alternative. So, my feeling is that we are heading into the most significant non-wartime economic event since the great depression, but if cards are played properly we should be able to mitigate the terrible effects to a much better degree than was possible in the 1930's.
- rjohnk 7y agoHonestly, right now during the pandemic, medical courier. How do you think tests get to labs?
- FiberBundle 7y agoI'd recommend learning about markets and economics. My suspicion is that states will continue to implement all steps necessary to contain the virus over the next 18 months and bail out all businesses and consumers in order to keep the productivity of the economy close to the level prior to the outbreak. Depending on how difficult it will be to contain the virus, this might require funds on an unprecedented scale in modern times. It's difficult to predict how eager investors will be to finance these deficits. Obviously something like a hyperinflation scenario is completely out of the question for a developed state like the US and there will likely be more deflationary pressure over the next few years, but at some point states will have to deleverage and I'm inclined to say that they will probably do this using higher inflation rates, in which case you can probably profit a lot from knowing about markets and economics.
- profchaos69 7y agoDo you have any advice on where to read up on this sort of thing? I’ve always been interested but never acted upon it. Now seems like a good time to understand more about how our world actually works in terms of the economy
- FiberBundle 7y agoTake a look at the Economics & Finance videos on Khan Academy [1]. I have only watched some of them, but those I watched were good. You could read some standard macroeconomics textbooks, but I'd advise against doing that, since they are expensive and unnecessarily formalized using elementary math, which doesn't really add anything to the material itself. There's however a good book on monetary economics by Mishkin called Economics of Money, Banking and Financial Markets, which is really good, but the Khan Academy videos on banking mostly cover the same material. Personally I've learned a lot from reading economic history. Some books I can recommend are: Eichengreen - Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System Frieden - Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century Soros - Alchemy of Finance (skip the first couple of chapters on his reflexivity theory, but the 'diary' chapters are a gold mine) Ferguson - The Ascent of Money (probably a good book to start, the others might be harder to completely grasp for a beginner) Some other good book I can recommend (not history books) are: The Secrets of Economic Indicators: Hidden Clues to Future Economic Trends and Investment Opportunities by Baumohl Inside the House of Money by Drobny (mostly about global macro trading, but you would learn a lot about economics along the way, would only recommend this after having built up some basic knowledge though) Most importantly you should start reading the Economist, which has really high quality economics and finance articles, but is released only weekly and offers a good trade off with regards to time commitment and knowledge about what's going on in the world. Note that you will probably need to know some basics in order to understand everything, but you can look up things along the way. Economics really isn't hard to learn if you have a technical background. [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy/playlists?view=50&sort=dd&shelf_id=11https://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy/playlists?view=50&sort=dd&shelf_id=11 https://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy/playlists?view=50&s...
- BurningFrog 7y agoMy thought is that this virus will have passed through the world, one way or another, in 4-8 months. After that, the world reverts back to what it was doing. My point is that this is no underlying weakness in the global economy. It's more like a slow moving natural disaster. I'll admit I don't feel super confident that this is how things work. Happy to be corrected!
- mraudiobook_com 7y agoHow do things go back to the way they were with twice the amount of money in the system and half the small businesses gone?
- realtalk_sp 7y ago> My point is that this is no underlying weakness in the global economy. Unfortunately, this is not at all true. There is a tremendous amount of debt in the system and we are on the precipice of a credit crisis that could wipe out a significant chunk of the global economy.
- BurningFrog 7y agoPerhaps. But it sounds like that's independent of the virus? I only meant that the virus event doesn't add any fundamental flaw.
- cyphar 7y agoIt doesn't "add a flaw", but instead it triggers the instability that exists because of the existing flaws. If large amounts of people stop being able to keep their heads above water (which is happening because of CoVID-related layoffs and reduced business) then their accumulated debt can crush them. Very few people in the US can survive in such poor economic conditions for "4-8 months" -- more than 60% of Americans can't cover a $1000 emergency[1]! This is why many people are arguing for (and some countries have instituted) debt and rent cancellation for this period of time. That helps avoid tipping the scale and crushing a large portion of the population under the mountains of debt they already have. The US is also quite unique (in the worst possible way) in the massive amounts of medical and student loan debt that folks are saddled with. [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/most-americans-dont-have-the-savings-to-cover-a-1000-emergency.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/most-americans-dont-have-the...
- hourislate 7y agoThere was a thread on 4chan covering possible jobs during the Apocalypse. Scavenging, Mushroom picker, Hunter, Under Ground Bunker Specialist, Medic, Combat/Army specialist, Tinkerer, etc.
- 1121redblackgo 7y agoMental self-care and acceptance of negative experiences. Working out in small areas/body weight exercises. Cooking on a budget. Getting out of your own head and own problems and into thinking about other people, is also immensely psychologically healthy.
- Trasmatta 7y ago> Getting out of your own head and own problems and into thinking about other people, is also immensely psychologically healthy. Hmm, anyone have any tips about what to do if this actually just overwhelms and depresses you? I can deal emotionally with my own problems fairly well. But when I start thinking about the wide spread suffering among both the people I know and care about as well as the world at large,I get immediately overwhelmed and start to shut down.
- deesep 7y ago"The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own . . .” —EPICTETUS Stoicism helped me get out of my own head.
- marban 7y agohttps://dailystoic.com https://dailystoic.com
- 1121redblackgo 7y agoA simple exercise is to watch a movie and try to let the judgement pass as you simply try to imagine what the character is thinking about. Sometimes we do this effortlessly but sometimes judgement creeps in and we start thinking 'I would never do that' 'how could they possibly think that, I would never think that' etc.
- ericsoderstrom 7y ago> the effects of the global domino triggered by conoravirus will echo for many years to come. Why? As far as I know there's no underlying systemic financial reason for a depression or recession. The virus sucks. Some companies will no doubt have a bad quarter or two. But viruses pass, and this one will too. > I'm afraid that in this new reality my software/management skills won't be of any use in 6 months. That seems hyperbolic.
- tayo42 7y agoI think 6 months of lock downs or stay at home would show a lot of companies are not prepared to not have income. Businesses going out of business aren't coming back, along with the jobs they provided.
- ericsoderstrom 7y agoSure. But if there was a need for the goods and services those companies provided before, then there will be a need for those goods and services again. I don't think enduring financial collapse logically follows from even an extended quarantine.
- tayo42 7y agoI don't think that is necessarily true. Something like gamestop won't come back, individuals who put everything into a small business might not recover and try again. A lot is happening at one time.
- agumonkey 7y agoturning stress and chaos into patient and focus (and using this time to do whatever is beneficial)
- teddyvangogh 7y agomaking masks. Calling All People Who Sew And Make: You Can Help Make Masks For 2020 Healthcare Worker PPE Shortage "In settings where facemasks are not available, HCP might use homemade masks (e.g., bandana, scarf) for care of patients with COVID-19 as a last resort." https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2020/03/20/calling-all-people-who-sew-and-make-you-can-help-solve-2020-n95-type-mask-shortage/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2020/03/20/calling-all-...
- arthurderoey 7y agoCyber security?
- sigmaprimus 7y agoLearn to make a budget and stick to it. People who follow and understand the expression "Waste not want not." and act accordingly will be in a much better position. Start with going over your latest bank or credit card statement and really think about where your money has gone and where it should be going. "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!"
- downerending 7y agoSpeaking as an also-generalist, I think it's actually a good place to be. My whole career has been pretty much "Here's something you've never seen before, an we need it fixed.". People who can do that will always be in demand. Beyond that, consider the Epicurean Tetrapharmakos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrapharmakos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrapharmakos especially point three. If you think about it, what you truly need to survive is easier had than you might think.
- arthurderoey 7y agoCyber security maybe? I don't think that companies will seize needing sales roles? I know that Launch School is doing a webinar about this topic the coming days, titled: 'How to Navigate a Recession for Software Engineers' I am not affiliated with them, but here is the webinar link: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xarP2qpeRdKTfD-qikbX4A https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xarP2qpeRdKTfD-qikbX4A
- awinter-py 7y agoif the GPS goes out of business because people aren't leaving the house, you'll need to navigate dense urban areas without assistance
- gwbas1c 7y ago> I'm afraid that in this new reality my software/management skills won't be of any use in 6 months. First skill: Patience Second skill: Adaptability Third skill: Resilience. Software will always be needed. You just might need to work a "beer money" job for a little while.
- nickriebe 7y agoor learn how to make your own beer
- gwbas1c 7y agoIt's only cheaper to make your own if you drink a lot and get it perfect the first time around. Otherwise, you waste a lot of money while you learn, or end up only saving a few pennies a bottle but wasting your time. That's why the people who get into brewing do it because they enjoy it, not for the money! (The last time I made beer I forgot about it and found the barrel a few months later!)
- rmcpherson 7y agoAll true although it’s a great hobby for being stuck in the house and likely safer than buying beer currently.
- danbmil99 7y agoI can say that my apparently unusual innate ability to get slack and zoom video and screen sharing to work has been in great demand for the last few weeks.
- coffeefirst 7y agoIt's a recession, not an apocalypse. These are kind of old news: 1. Budgeting. Know exactly where your money goes and what dials you can turn. 2. It's less about skills than products and services. So it becomes a better time to be a Costco or a cobbler (which helps people save money) than to be a Tesla (which helps people spend money). For software, my suspicion is infinite monthly SaaS subscriptions will come under more scrutiny. And it might be a bad time to run a money-bleeding self-driving car startup. But that's my only firm guess at this point.
- smdz 7y agoLearn to learn. And then practice learning. Our brains have very high capacity to learn, adapt and forget quite a lot - just believe that you can, and you will. All you need is focused effort. You only need to prove that belief once to yourself. I know this sounds philosophical, but it works. Becoming an expert in an area is quite another thing. For that you need to evaluate the benefits. > new state of things Nobody can predict the new state of things. We can make an educated guess. And my guess is that software skills will be useful for many decades to come. You may have to get better to stay ahead of the competition and that might be more work. The economic impact of the lockdowns has already started hurting small businesses as contracts are being cancelled/paused. They can only take 2 more months of beating, but to clear economic uncertainty we all have to be back to normal working within next 15 days- that is simply not possible. So get ready for small biz to cut/die first followed by the bigger ones. > will echo for many years to come I think the worst is yet to show up, the next two months will show where we stand as a world on the pandemic. Right now we only see virus as a health issue, but the virus effect is also shaking up the geopolitical state of the world and questioning global trade and policies. We will probably come out of it quicker than before. The economic effects will be huge, but not necessarily bad for every country.
- igotsideas 7y agoLike this a lot. Anything that has helped you learn how to learn?
- smdz 7y agoI heard that from one of the senior professors 18 years back, and that stuck in my mind. I was doing that even before that but then had the formal phrase "Learn to learn". What has helped? - It was definitely not books about the topic and I had very limited access to internet or videos. I do not know the answer, but I will try to explain my scenario. There are some things you can replicate and some you cannot. Something changed in me when I was 17 years old and that motivated me to learn a lot. Before that I was an average kid who thought studies are pointless burden. In a way, I was right because it was directionless but wrong because I was not getting educated in any other way either. Unfortunately, I was a college freshman by then and with worst grades of my life prior to that. Parents and relatives looked down on me as a failure and my parents gave up on me. So here I was a new person, highly motivated to learn and catch up learning from the lost years and also had a high degree of freedom to think and learn whatever I wanted to. So few things - I had freedom, no pressures, I knew that I didn't know, self-motivated, no fear of failure, open-mindedness but still questioning everything, and no-ego. Few beliefs set in quickly: 1. Human brain can learn anything. And I meant learning, not memorization - I hated memorizing. I also believed that if I can do it, anybody can. 2. Knowledge is universally accessible (as if it is in a higher dimension on a shared hard-drive) and if we focus just enough on what we want to achieve, our brains will tune to it. I know how crazy the second one sounds. I may have a wrong perception but it was my own (not induced by someone or a book or some movie). It works for me whatever the underlying neurological reason might be. Today, internet does the same thing - making knowledge universally accessible Then, it was a top down approach starting with what I want to do or what problem I want to solve. Did not matter whether the effort would pay back or whether it was any useful to me. I just needed to have some interest in that subject. For one instance, it was music, I impulsively bought a musical keyboard. I was foolish to think that because I was good at a computer keyboard, I will be naturally good at the musical one too. I had lot of time after work and I wanted to stay away from programming all day (because programming is my hobby too). Then I selected one of the keyboard's built-in composition, Beethoven's Fur Elise in tutorial mode. The keyboard would tell me which keys to play. I hate memorization, so the first thing I did was to listen and hit the right key. I was basically exploring and feeling the keyboard like a toddler does with things. And then I would practice the song again and again and again for many hours a day (at least 3-4 hours). I would end up optimizing my finger movements when I used to get stuck. Then sometimes I would try to fit the tunes of some songs on the keyboard. Few months later a musician friend of a friend came in my room to see the keyboard. When I played Beethoven's Fur Elise, he was amazed at how well I moved the hand and the fingers. He was astonished to know that I had zero formal training. How did I learn that? Trial and error and focused effort. I came to know then that what I was doing is called "ear training". He shared more information about books, videos and musical languages. I gathered more resources to learn about those things, got good at playing complex musicals. But then gradually I stopped playing the keyboard - may be because it started to feel like work or may be because something else interested me more. I'm not discounting the value of formal education. It saves you lots of time and prevents lots of mistakes. I also dig deeper into the history of concepts, because it makes me understand and remember it. A college friend accidentally taught me that. For example when I was reading about pharmacology and drugs - I wondered why they name the drugs like they do. Exploring deeper is like falling down the seemingly infinite rabbit hole - but that is what keeps learning fun for me, even if I get off track for a while. On the cons, every week I spend hours learning things that have no immediate benefit or use or any visible long term benefit. But most of the times, sometimes after many years, it turns out to be helpful in ways I could not have imagined.
- Waterluvian 7y agoI'm learning how to refinish my decks. Needs some rotten wood replaced. A massive clean. A repaint. And a whole bunch of gross looking misaligned cuts replaced too. I'll then re-do the wiring for the staircase lights and outlet. I like this project because it isn't blocking anything (like if I took the kitchen out). And when it's all done, this will be the summer I made our back decks beautiful rather than the summer we were stuck inside feeling anxious.
- FahadUddin92 7y agoThere always are a few skills that help during recession. When recession comes, people want to switch to cheaper ways of doing things. So find a way to making stuff less expensive always helps.
- spacegod 7y agoTax accounting
- pxue 7y agoMy father lost his job in the 2008 recession at an engineering firm. He started his own consultancy. Dozen or so years later he's pulling in mid 6 figures by himself working 40-60h a month at home. Do the same. Have skills, learn to sell them.
- sys_64738 7y agoHow to grow vegetables and fruit in the garden.
- superasn 7y agoI still think there is plenty of demand for web developers. If you have time on your hands and know some basic programming then might I suggest learning some web technologies. Even if you can't land a job quickly you can make some income being an indie hacker too (though you may need to learn at least a few marketing skills and SEO)
- badrabbit 7y agoIf this is the same level as '08 I don't think much will change in your sector. The demand will still be there,just a lot less of it. If your employer is not in tech either you lose a job or you don't see a pay increase for a while. If your employer is in tech then there are plenty of non-tech places all over that are starving for your talent which will do well in a recession.
- fxtentacle 7y agoPeople skills & Frustration tolerance 1-2% of society are always on the verge of depression, as that is just how gauss distributions work. But chances are, it'll soon be 10%. Google therapeutic shopping and you know that people are willing to spend a lot of money to feel better. So if you can handle hearing the whining of depressed people without it dragging you down too much, offer to do free video chat with lonely people now. Your goal isn't to change their situation in any way, but by telling you about it and feeling heard, you can help them change their feelings about their situation. So you mostly just listen, reveal related facts about yourself, and ask caring questions. Once the crisis is over, your newfound ability to stay cheerful in the presence of adversity and your ability to get along well with different kinds of people will be a very valuable asset for romance and work. Add cooking and laundry and those 4 traits are what I believe most HN readers will be lacking in comparison to the normal population.
- elmarschraml 7y agoSkills are tactics. Dealing with a recession is about strategy. Most importantly: this is a time to focus on reducing risks, rather than maximizing profit. This is a crappy time to start a startup or being a freelancer. Keep your job, build your skills, save money, and start in a few years. Think about your job's security: Pay attention to your employers annual/quarterly reports. Which industries does your employer sell to? Travel, restaurants, hotel, retail, small businesses will be the worst hit, with little money to spend. This is also a bad time to change jobs - depending on your local laws, it probably is much, much easier to lay off someone who just started. Maybe broaden your skillls. In good times, it is more profitable to be a specialist - e.g. much better to be THE leading expert on scaling wordpress, rather than an all-purpose linux admin. In bad times, when jobs are scarce, being less of a specialist increaes the number of jobs you are suitable for. Save money, lower your burn-rate, extend your runway - usually meant for start-ups, but this goes for your personal finances just as well Become familiar with laws and benefits from the government for unemployment, lay-offs etc - if you should happen to find yourself unemployed, know what you have to do, how much assistance you can expect. That being said: If you have a high risk-tolerance, and can afford to, now is also a great time to start a business or to invest, simply because nobody else is, so there is much less competition for everything.
- polishdude20 7y agoI work for a university as a teacher. What do you think the economic implications might be for a university in the coming months? I can see less new people enrolling next semester, current students refusing to pay the same tuition if it's going to continue being all online etc.
- Nuzzerino 7y agoI work for a company where universities are pretty much 100% of our customers, so I'm curious about this also.
- mtnGoat 7y agoi think as folks have less money and the good times of the last market boom are over, they will more deeply consider the value add that high priced universities may or may not actually add to their life over the long run. I think a correction in university pricing is long over due.
- tmaly 7y agoLearning what to cook to stretch your food supply. Learning not to waste food.
- GRANDUNO 7y agoI believe that we should always be on the move to adapt to changing environment and foster multi-skilling. I am actually in the same frame of mind!
- adultSwim 7y agoCarpentry