Looking a relatively recent history, 2001 was a huge it to the IT industry where a lot of people went into other occupations and a lot of CS grads never got an

Looking a relatively recent history, 2001 was a huge it to the IT industry where a lot of people went into other occupations and a lot of CS grads never got an IT job out if college, leading to the hollowing out of the mid-tier developer roles in the 2000s. In the 2008 timeframe, there was a rough patch where a lot of folks couldn't find work, but things seemed to bounce back to normal pretty quickly in the IT space while the rest of the country toughed it out. In both cases, people that might not have normally done a startup got together and started new companies, whether bootstrap or funded, some of which might be household names today. This time around, the situation feels a little different. As one poster commented, there are still plenty of startups absorbing the newly available people, who will be grateful to have the opportunity. There will also be normal shuffling of changing careers and moving. However, what is different is that the culture and tooling from the recent pandemic make it easier for remote work. Silicon Valley might be getting hit hard, but that doesn't mean the rest of the country is feeling the same effects. There will be parts of the country (world) that bounce back faster than others, making it less painless for people to get back up-to-speed. Also, in the US, we have more of a safety net that might or might not be available, depending on the political climate - though it looks positive because of recent history and precedent for relief around the pandemic. Finally, considering that a lot of analysts (yeah, they're all over the place) are saying any recession would be short-lived or we might even just have a soft landing (again, understanding there's nothing soft about people losing work), there might be a whole lot less impact this time around compared to the past.