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Which young people have never seen recession? Early 2020 there was a covid recession 2007/2008 there was a severe "recession" (depression)

TecoAndJix 4y ago
Compared to 2001 & 2008, the 2020 recession was a blip on the radar. I graduated high school in 2009. My entire adult life to this point has been in a prosperous economy. COVID felt "different" (it was a pandemic, 100 year event kind of thing) to now. These layoffs have me worried for my family and what it could mean for our future.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  2009 was not a prosperous economy. The economy was quite bad until late 2011. You started off your adult life in a pretty bad recession. Maybe college insulated you from that. 2020 was shorter than 2001 - but MUCH worse. 2001 wasn't very bad unless you worked in tech in The Bay or invested your life savings in Internet meme stocks.
- lamontcg 4y ago
  It really is amusing to see how much HN thinks that times are tough right now and the talk of the current economic conditions as a recession. It seems like the majority of HN weren't graduated from college in 2008 yet or else they've somehow managed to forget what that was like or just weren't paying enough attention. And the ones that just found it hard to get a job out of college probably weren't watching the stock market closely and don't seem to remember how bad things got after the Bush administration let Lehman collapse and when we nearly "broke the buck" and Congress had to act to prevent a total financial collapse. We have 3.5% unemployment right now, not 6% and rising 0.4% every month. At the same time nobody seems to be paying attention to how rapidly the Fed raised rates this time compared to the build-up to 2006-2008, and while everyone talks about low rates for over a decade caused malinvestment nobody seems to be doing the very obvious math of what is going to happen when higher rates destroy it all.
alephnerd 4y ago
Because HN is basically filled with Boomers at this point, maybe most commentators don't realize that there are different segments of young people. Those who were in the Class of 2020 and above got FUCKED big time hiring wise. Those who were in the Class of 2008-2011 got FUCKED big time hiring wise. Everyone who started their career between 2012-2019 (like me) have had an amazing ride. We could jump companies at the drop of a hat and 1.5x-2x our TC, stocks were constantly rallying, and it is this group that started to enter middle management and/or build startups with YC. And it is this group that has never experienced a real recession. PS. What is happenning in tech right now is nowhere near a recession. I've seen the stress my parents had during the Dot Com Bust and 2008. What's happening right now is nowhere near that bad.
- ghaff 4y ago
  And hopefully it won't get anywhere near dot bomb levels for tech. I was very lucky to find a new (lower paying) position during that era and the company I joined subsequently barely got through some of the aftermath. But I knew a lot of people from technology companies who basically got out of the industry and, for at least some of them, their careers/finances never really recovered.
  - alephnerd 4y ago
    Amen to that! At least talking to people who went through 2001 and 2008, it looks like there are more opportunities across the board now. If you got laid off from $randomYCStartup as a SWE or SRE, you can still land a decent paying IC role at one of the 100s of upper market companies that exist. BoA, Honeywell, Target, etc are still hiring SWEs and paying decent salaries, as are the hundreds of upper market B2B tech companies (eg. Okta, Meraki, Oracle, etc). It may not seem sexy like working at Google or Meta, but it ain't a bad living either. Sadly, a lot of my peers have this sense of hubris that anything less than FAANG or a late stage startup spending tens of millions of dollars in PR is career suicide, which is honestly stupid in an industry as skill oriented as ours
  - xtracto 4y ago
    I graduated from Software Engineering in 2001. Doing a 3 year postgrad degree was one of the best options work-wise at that dark time. We are not that deep, for now, at this time.

TecoAndJix 4y ago

Compared to 2001 & 2008, the 2020 recession was a blip on the radar. I graduated high school in 2009. My entire adult life to this point has been in a prosperous economy. COVID felt "different" (it was a pandemic, 100 year event kind of thing) to now. These layoffs have me worried for my family and what it could mean for our future.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
2009 was not a prosperous economy. The economy was quite bad until late 2011. You started off your adult life in a pretty bad recession. Maybe college insulated you from that. 2020 was shorter than 2001 - but MUCH worse. 2001 wasn't very bad unless you worked in tech in The Bay or invested your life savings in Internet meme stocks.
lamontcg 4y ago
It really is amusing to see how much HN thinks that times are tough right now and the talk of the current economic conditions as a recession. It seems like the majority of HN weren't graduated from college in 2008 yet or else they've somehow managed to forget what that was like or just weren't paying enough attention. And the ones that just found it hard to get a job out of college probably weren't watching the stock market closely and don't seem to remember how bad things got after the Bush administration let Lehman collapse and when we nearly "broke the buck" and Congress had to act to prevent a total financial collapse. We have 3.5% unemployment right now, not 6% and rising 0.4% every month. At the same time nobody seems to be paying attention to how rapidly the Fed raised rates this time compared to the build-up to 2006-2008, and while everyone talks about low rates for over a decade caused malinvestment nobody seems to be doing the very obvious math of what is going to happen when higher rates destroy it all.

alephnerd 4y ago

Because HN is basically filled with Boomers at this point, maybe most commentators don't realize that there are different segments of young people. Those who were in the Class of 2020 and above got FUCKED big time hiring wise. Those who were in the Class of 2008-2011 got FUCKED big time hiring wise. Everyone who started their career between 2012-2019 (like me) have had an amazing ride. We could jump companies at the drop of a hat and 1.5x-2x our TC, stocks were constantly rallying, and it is this group that started to enter middle management and/or build startups with YC. And it is this group that has never experienced a real recession. PS. What is happenning in tech right now is nowhere near a recession. I've seen the stress my parents had during the Dot Com Bust and 2008. What's happening right now is nowhere near that bad.

ghaff 4y ago
And hopefully it won't get anywhere near dot bomb levels for tech. I was very lucky to find a new (lower paying) position during that era and the company I joined subsequently barely got through some of the aftermath. But I knew a lot of people from technology companies who basically got out of the industry and, for at least some of them, their careers/finances never really recovered.
- alephnerd 4y ago
  Amen to that! At least talking to people who went through 2001 and 2008, it looks like there are more opportunities across the board now. If you got laid off from $randomYCStartup as a SWE or SRE, you can still land a decent paying IC role at one of the 100s of upper market companies that exist. BoA, Honeywell, Target, etc are still hiring SWEs and paying decent salaries, as are the hundreds of upper market B2B tech companies (eg. Okta, Meraki, Oracle, etc). It may not seem sexy like working at Google or Meta, but it ain't a bad living either. Sadly, a lot of my peers have this sense of hubris that anything less than FAANG or a late stage startup spending tens of millions of dollars in PR is career suicide, which is honestly stupid in an industry as skill oriented as ours
- xtracto 4y ago
  I graduated from Software Engineering in 2001. Doing a 3 year postgrad degree was one of the best options work-wise at that dark time. We are not that deep, for now, at this time.