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The issue is you don't have perspective. I lived through the Japan crash, which is the biggest crash in my lifetime, as well as the early 80s government layoff
by foobiekr 4y ago
The issue is you don't have perspective.
I lived through the Japan crash, which is the biggest crash in my lifetime, as well as the early 80s government layoffs (where my dad really thought he would be unemployed), 1992 (when I thought I would lose my job), the dotcom (where I knew good people who were out of work for a year or more), and 2008.
So far this is exceptionally mild. There are not mass layoffs - there are layoffs and hiring freezes, but nothing like 2001 - and there are not people taking pay cuts or worried that if they have to leave their job they will need to take one. We are far, far from 2008 and even farther from 2001.
I have tried to explain what the dotcom was like to young people and the usual response has been: "What is the big deal? I would just find a new job and probably get a pay bump as well."
I am not saying this to pick on young people in technology but rather to help illustrate how far from reality they are when they talk about how unfortunate they've been graduating into tech in the aftermath of 2008. 2008 was barely a blip on the tech scene. A real down market is something most of them have never experienced and not one that they are internalizing. There has been a ton of "we graduated into the worst job market ever!" propaganda pointed at millennials who have internalized it. It isn't true unless you were in finance or real estate.
- tylerfontaine 4y ago> There has been a ton of "we graduated into the worst job market ever!" propaganda pointed at millennials who have internalized it. It isn't true unless you were in finance or real estate. It was true for a lot of us who weren’t in tech at the time. I graduated in December 2008. I was unemployed for a year, eventually finding a job as a bank teller. I applied for literally hundreds of jobs from waiting tables to retail to grant writing to substitute teaching. I was either “too qualified” because I had a degree or I was “too inexperienced” because a lot of folks who had recently retired were going back to work because they just became upside down on their house. When you’re freshly graduated and broke, a year is a long time. Worst ever of all time? Nah. But it was pretty traumatizing.
- babyshake 4y agoIt is admittedly very difficult to imagine a world where suddenly there would be no job opportunities for software engineers. It's a lot easier to imagine the inverse, where there are no job opportunities except for software developers.
- pcthrowaway 4y agoI think software engineering would be among the most useless possible skills in a post-nuclear society. Other than that I tend to agree.
- foobiekr 4y agoWe used to joke that the biggest company in the valley in 2002 was "For Lease." They were so big it seemed like their signs were everywhere.