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When the DotCom bubble burst, and after 2009, traffic in the Bay Area cleared up. Commuting time got cut by half. Homes in many neighborhoods, apart from the ve

When the DotCom bubble burst, and after 2009, traffic in the Bay Area cleared up. Commuting time got cut by half. Homes in many neighborhoods, apart from the very best school districts, became attainable. This has yet to happen. Unemployment is still quite low. The music is just starting.

starkd 4y ago
Is unemployment still really low? Job growth was less than it was originaly reported. By a lot. From 1M to just 10K. https://nypost.com/2022/12/22/biden-administration-overstated-q2-job-growth-by-1-million-philadelphia-fed/ https://nypost.com/2022/12/22/biden-administration-overstate...
- laidoffamazon 4y ago
  The fact that this Philadelphia FRED link keeps getting passed along indicates the people passing it along don't really understand it. What exactly is the unemployment rate if it's not ~3.7%?
  - prottog 4y ago
    The labor force participation rate, for one, still hasn't recovered to pre-pandemic levels, and has been dropping every single month since August.
    - laidoffamazon 4y ago
      Retirements are up. It's not a conspiracy, it's the population pyramid.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
The dominant narrative among investors and funds, at least in my domain (web3, tech investing) has been that "Fed will pivot soon, and the party will start anew". As long as that narrative remains strong, nobody will dump everything. New investment might stall, but no panic in the ranks. The real panic will set when the pivot does not happen. Or if it does happen and inflation comes roaring back, leading to a longer and deeper rate hike.
- jotorTheOlord 4y ago
  Let’s hope the inflation comes back and deeper rate hikes destroy SaaS. It’s rent seeking. The internet does not need landlords. Technology is great, discovery is great; politically correct economic traditions of enabling a minority that can email 20-30 minutes a day and fuck off to the beach with their friends was a huge problem. The rest of society will not tolerate austerity for them and privilege for prince and princess billionaire heirs as generational churn reshapes political power. Our statistical tools are curious indeed but the wrong tools for management of living, breathing, beings, and humans have a long history of belief in false prophets that we barely just consciously began moving away from (Vint, Gates, Jobs; they did not invent computing or even transmitting coded signals as electrons through a medium). It’s a hard sell our leaders steeped in a less tolerant, post war shell shocked, Cold War paranoid era, huffing leaded gas fumes, are of “the right stuff” to still dictate our agency.
- birdymcbird 4y ago
  “Soon” is mid 2024 at the earliest. The start ups haven’t really even begun to trim fat. Big tech like amazon, meta, google will increase attrition targets in addition to actual layoffs. I could turn out to be wrong but id bet there’s many more waves of cascading pain before before things turn other way. Turning other way doesnt mean we immediately go back to excess hiring, empire building, lack of focus, free uber rides and oat milk lattes. will be long while before market turns in favor of employees.
  - fosk 4y ago
    Contrarian signal, for the sake of having a conversation: - I think we will experience a massive deflationary bust. The inflation narrative is over, it’s all about a potential recession now. - By Summer 2023 we will experience YoY deflation and the Fed will cut then, or even sooner in anticipation to that. - We may see hikes pausing as soon as February, and cuts starting in the summer as a result of rapid disinflation (which may turn into deflation). Deflation is a lot worse than inflation. - We find out that the bulk of inflation was indeed caused by supply chain bottlenecks. As China fully re-opens, those will be resolved. - Russia’s war with Ukraine will end (Putin is now agreeing to potentially think about negotiations). Oil prices will ease
oldgradstudent 4y ago
> When the DotCom bubble burst, and after 2009, traffic in the Bay Area cleared up. Commuting time got cut by half. Homes in many neighborhoods, apart from the very best school districts, became attainable. It was the same in 2001, BTW.
- auggierose 4y ago
  DotCom bubble == 2001
  - oldgradstudent 4y ago
    Hmm, how did I miss that?
    - Kye 4y ago
      I think those of us who lived through the 90s and 00s have a hard time counterdiscombobulating all the stuff that went down. People who experienced the 60s and 70s probably have similar difficulty.
      - chestervonwinch 4y ago
        > counterdiscombobulating what a discombobulating way to say "clarifying" :)
        Kye 4y ago
        I'm trying to summon a return to 19th century magazine per-word rates.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        The worst downturns tend to be at least somewhat sector dependent. There has been at least one aerospace downturn when PhDs were driving cabs in Seattle. In the dot-com crash, a lot of people in software especially left the industry and many never really got their careers back on track or recovered financially. On the other hand in 2008/9, there was belt tightening in the software industry but overall the impact didn't end up being all that great. Remains to be seen if this period will be the former or latter. Of course, individuals can still be very affected even if the overall impact isn't huge.
ralph84 4y ago
Agreed. I was here through both of those periods and the bottom wasn't in until the prevailing mood in the Bay Area was that tech was over, or at least the Bay Area's dominance of tech was over. We're nowhere near that level of despair yet.
- fatnoah 4y ago
  >We're nowhere near that level of despair yet. Agree. Early 2000's was a nonstop litany of entire companies going under because they didn't make any money. IMHO, a fair comparison would be to look at the same companies now. Many funded, growth at all cost companies are laying people off, but we're not quite to everything (outside of crypto) going under like we were back then. Looking at big tech as the barometer doesn't make much sense to me since the dominant companies are still making massive profits, but they're just slightly less massive and/or growing less quickly. That's not an end of the world scenario like early 2000's or 2008 felt like.

starkd 4y ago

Is unemployment still really low? Job growth was less than it was originaly reported. By a lot. From 1M to just 10K. https://nypost.com/2022/12/22/biden-administration-overstated-q2-job-growth-by-1-million-philadelphia-fed/ https://nypost.com/2022/12/22/biden-administration-overstate...

laidoffamazon 4y ago
The fact that this Philadelphia FRED link keeps getting passed along indicates the people passing it along don't really understand it. What exactly is the unemployment rate if it's not ~3.7%?
- prottog 4y ago
  The labor force participation rate, for one, still hasn't recovered to pre-pandemic levels, and has been dropping every single month since August.
  - laidoffamazon 4y ago
    Retirements are up. It's not a conspiracy, it's the population pyramid.

spaceman_2020 4y ago

The dominant narrative among investors and funds, at least in my domain (web3, tech investing) has been that "Fed will pivot soon, and the party will start anew". As long as that narrative remains strong, nobody will dump everything. New investment might stall, but no panic in the ranks. The real panic will set when the pivot does not happen. Or if it does happen and inflation comes roaring back, leading to a longer and deeper rate hike.

jotorTheOlord 4y ago
Let’s hope the inflation comes back and deeper rate hikes destroy SaaS. It’s rent seeking. The internet does not need landlords. Technology is great, discovery is great; politically correct economic traditions of enabling a minority that can email 20-30 minutes a day and fuck off to the beach with their friends was a huge problem. The rest of society will not tolerate austerity for them and privilege for prince and princess billionaire heirs as generational churn reshapes political power. Our statistical tools are curious indeed but the wrong tools for management of living, breathing, beings, and humans have a long history of belief in false prophets that we barely just consciously began moving away from (Vint, Gates, Jobs; they did not invent computing or even transmitting coded signals as electrons through a medium). It’s a hard sell our leaders steeped in a less tolerant, post war shell shocked, Cold War paranoid era, huffing leaded gas fumes, are of “the right stuff” to still dictate our agency.
birdymcbird 4y ago
“Soon” is mid 2024 at the earliest. The start ups haven’t really even begun to trim fat. Big tech like amazon, meta, google will increase attrition targets in addition to actual layoffs. I could turn out to be wrong but id bet there’s many more waves of cascading pain before before things turn other way. Turning other way doesnt mean we immediately go back to excess hiring, empire building, lack of focus, free uber rides and oat milk lattes. will be long while before market turns in favor of employees.
- fosk 4y ago
  Contrarian signal, for the sake of having a conversation: - I think we will experience a massive deflationary bust. The inflation narrative is over, it’s all about a potential recession now. - By Summer 2023 we will experience YoY deflation and the Fed will cut then, or even sooner in anticipation to that. - We may see hikes pausing as soon as February, and cuts starting in the summer as a result of rapid disinflation (which may turn into deflation). Deflation is a lot worse than inflation. - We find out that the bulk of inflation was indeed caused by supply chain bottlenecks. As China fully re-opens, those will be resolved. - Russia’s war with Ukraine will end (Putin is now agreeing to potentially think about negotiations). Oil prices will ease

oldgradstudent 4y ago

> When the DotCom bubble burst, and after 2009, traffic in the Bay Area cleared up. Commuting time got cut by half. Homes in many neighborhoods, apart from the very best school districts, became attainable. It was the same in 2001, BTW.

auggierose 4y ago
DotCom bubble == 2001
- oldgradstudent 4y ago
  Hmm, how did I miss that?
  - Kye 4y ago
    I think those of us who lived through the 90s and 00s have a hard time counterdiscombobulating all the stuff that went down. People who experienced the 60s and 70s probably have similar difficulty.
    - chestervonwinch 4y ago
      > counterdiscombobulating what a discombobulating way to say "clarifying" :)
      - Kye 4y ago
        I'm trying to summon a return to 19th century magazine per-word rates.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      The worst downturns tend to be at least somewhat sector dependent. There has been at least one aerospace downturn when PhDs were driving cabs in Seattle. In the dot-com crash, a lot of people in software especially left the industry and many never really got their careers back on track or recovered financially. On the other hand in 2008/9, there was belt tightening in the software industry but overall the impact didn't end up being all that great. Remains to be seen if this period will be the former or latter. Of course, individuals can still be very affected even if the overall impact isn't huge.

ralph84 4y ago

Agreed. I was here through both of those periods and the bottom wasn't in until the prevailing mood in the Bay Area was that tech was over, or at least the Bay Area's dominance of tech was over. We're nowhere near that level of despair yet.

fatnoah 4y ago
>We're nowhere near that level of despair yet. Agree. Early 2000's was a nonstop litany of entire companies going under because they didn't make any money. IMHO, a fair comparison would be to look at the same companies now. Many funded, growth at all cost companies are laying people off, but we're not quite to everything (outside of crypto) going under like we were back then. Looking at big tech as the barometer doesn't make much sense to me since the dominant companies are still making massive profits, but they're just slightly less massive and/or growing less quickly. That's not an end of the world scenario like early 2000's or 2008 felt like.