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The U.S. economy shrugged off the tech bust
- bobbyphyllis 3y ago[dead]
- coryjavier877 3y ago[dead]
- Susananthony 3y ago[flagged]
- superduty 3y agoThe “tech bust” is just warming up.
- strangesmells02 3y agowhy do you say this? not disagreeing just curious why you're thinking that?
- throwaway5959 3y ago“what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence” - Hitchens
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- monero-xmr 3y agoEvery tech company of appreciable size and bureaucracy is carried by 20% of employees, while the other 80% are some level of checked out / coasting. Every quarter that interest rates remain high, more of that 80% is identified and excised. Yes the lazies do some amount of work, but usually the 20% of high performers can automate the terminated people’s jobs enough to carry that load as well. My advice is to not rest on your laurels. If you are concerned you could be seen in the 80% of lazies, maybe put some extra effort in, work some late nights and weekends, at least as performance reviews come up. Life isn’t fair. Sometimes you need to work a real 40 hour week, even in tech.
- gnicholas 3y agoSounds like most government offices I’ve worked in. Except you can’t fire bureaucrats, no matter how lazy they are.
- monero-xmr 3y agoThe government is a special case. In terms of private sector work, tech companies were able to carry a huge number of barnacles, not just in “what does this person even do?” orgs like DEI and HR but also in engineering and product. This was because of zero-percent interest rates, never ending labor shortages of tech workers, and a growth story that somehow made sense if you squinted. I think only AI still can portray that level of cognitive dissonance with future promises of unlimited growth. For the rest, Musk showed how bloated tech companies can get rid of 70% of staff and operate even better than before. Private equity is licking its lips and big tech is trying to fend off the barbarians at the gate. We shall see…
- qwytw 3y ago> operate even better than before Right... Except the interest on the debt Musk offloaded to Twitter during his acquisition is enough to fund 1000-2000 employees so he didn't really have a choice. I guess the operating better than before part is debatable, since the most idiotic decisions like the rebranding are not that related.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> tech companies were able to carry a huge number of barnacles [...] in engineering and product. This was because of [...] never ending labor shortages of tech workers Everything else aside, that part...doesn't make even a little sense. Labor shortages of tech workers, if they existed, would make it impossible, not more possible, to "carry a huge number of barnacles" in engineering and product. > Musk showed how bloated tech companies can get rid of 70% of staff and operate even better than before. Well, except for the "operate even better than before" part, which Musk has done nothing whatsoever to show.
- tekla 3y agoIt seems pretty clear alot of Tech is completely irrelevant to the rest of the US economy.
- I_Am_Nous 3y agoYep, if it wasn't clear before it is now. Meta's bloated bubble losing some air is only going to "hurt" Meta, it's not like they are a steel company providing rails for westward expansion or livestock for feeding America. Just like crypto it makes for a tempting hold when stock prices keep rising, but unlike many crypto hodlers investors aren't in love with the contents of their wallet and will dump anything at the first sign of trouble or need for some weekend money. The sooner we can realize material companies are still the most important the faster we stop making Mark Zuckerberg and the like wildly rich.
- owlstuffing 3y ago> Meta's bloated bubble losing some air is only going to "hurt" Meta Yeah. Thousands of people without a paycheck can’t possibly have an impact on the economy.
- plantwallshoe 3y agoCorrect, thousands of people without a paycheck won’t have a noticeable impact on an economy with 100,000,000+ workers
- yoav 3y agoThis. Also their pay check before being laid off likely gave them many years of cushion to survive the layoff and get another job, maybe outside of tech, maybe found a company and hire their friends that were laid off with them
- owlstuffing 3y agoAs if this isn’t a precursor to a much greater and extremely delayed tech layoff bonanza.
- scrlk 3y ago"This time it's different."
- ummonk 3y agoPretty sure if total employment, revenues, and profits for the tech industry will still be up from 2019. The recent tech “recession” is just a correction for the bubble that had happened during Covid WFH.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- owlstuffing 3y agoWhat’s new? If you haven’t noticed The Economy shrugs off everything now.
- throwaway5959 3y agoTell that to the product managers, software engineers, and recruiters that are still unemployed in some cases for a year now.
- wbl 3y agoA booming economy doesn't mean all sectors boom. Creative destruction baby!
- tekla 3y agoIt's what happens when most of the economy relies on making money to operate versus burning VC cash and/or borrowed money
- DiggyJohnson 3y agoI feel like if you’re competent but you’ve been unemployed for a year now it’s because you’re unwilling to compromise. Firms are still hiring.
- wegfawefgawefg 3y agoNo im genuinely having a difficult time getting any responses at all. I've had three interviews since march. Method of application doesnt seem to matter, LinkedIn or Company Site, etc. I am not entry level. I have seven years of professional programming experience. Ive written raytracers, a handful of scheme interpreters, autograd and ml frameworks, hardware test frameworks, lots of CRUD stuff professionally. Im language agnostic at this point, can do cpp, rust, python, julia, common lisp. Im an expert in Deep Reinforcement Learning, implemented AC, A2C, TD3, DQ, DDQ... APE-X, Distributed Batch PPO, have read over a hundred ml papers. heres my linked in. https://www.linkedin.com/in/gibsonmartin https://www.linkedin.com/in/gibsonmartin No responses. instant rejection from 99% of applications. interviews go well but i get ghosted. Unemployed since last october
- FreakLegion 3y agoThe advice from others is fine, but I think you're struggling because you only made it a year, 7 months, 11 months, and 7 months in your last four roles. Wherever you land next, you need to knuckle down and show some staying power or it's only going to get harder.
- peepeepoopoo46 3y ago[flagged]
- ganeshkrishnan 3y agoThis is a classic case of mixing up the "Economy" with the "stock market". The stock market and SPX is doing great for the last 5 days (and for nefarious reasons, I should add). The economy can NOT be doing good. Interest rate is sucking up all liquidity, fed is in QT phase and China is dumping treasuries. Japan will soon start dumping US treasuries as well as soon as it drops YCC. fyi, US GDP only sky rocketed from "Durable goods" which mostly includes arms sent to Ukraine and Israel. Canada always mirrors US GDP and for one of the few times in history its GDP shrank (because they didnt supply arms). I dont want to get too political in this climate but we are rolling down a hill and Noah is like "we doing good. Look we so fast!"
- xhrpost 3y ago> and for nefarious reasons Could you elaborate?
- ganeshkrishnan 3y agoit's killing the shorts and the put holders. The stock market will rise for the next few weeks or possibly months before dumping and going lower close to 4k (or maybe even lower!) I wouldnt trust articles like this built on euphoria of one week's news. There are still deep structural issues that needs to be resolved.
- dkrich 3y agoShort covering rallies have kicked off many’s a sustained bull market. There’s never one reason for a rally.
- laidoffamazon 3y agoCalm yourself, friend. Interest rates are about what they were during the dot com bubble, they're not extremely high (and for the record, they were extremely high when the Apple 1984 ad was made). Both the stock market is doing fine and the rest of the economy is doing fine by basically any measure you want. I think this is motivated reasoning on your part. There's no reason to want the US to fail (not that it ever will).
- Racing0461 3y ago300k baby boombers retire each month, if the number of jobs added is 250k (which is around where its been), its a net 50k loss. In addition, the gdp/stock price doesn't reflect the average life for the random guy on the streets.
- mikeyouse 3y agoThere are around 25 million more people working now than were working in 2010.. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1aXE4 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1aXE4 The low unemployment rate is actually just because there are a ton of people working and not some other convoluted rationale.
- laidoffamazon 3y agoPrime age labor force participation is the highest since ~2000 today too.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoLabor force participation rate is a superior metric. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART https://www.kansascityfed.org/research/economic-bulletin/lower-labor-force-participation-rates-and-slower-population-growth-pose-challenges-for-employers/ https://www.kansascityfed.org/research/economic-bulletin/low... https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2023/august/how-far-is-labor-force-participation-from-its-trend/ https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economi...
- mikeyouse 3y agoI don't disagree in general - but I was responding to the specific claim that more people were retiring than were finding new jobs, so the low unemployment rate was 'artificial' in some way.
- roenxi 3y agoThe economy is capable of shrugging off almost anything. People don't sit around wallowing in their sorrows unless there are strong incentives to do so. The conversation often treats a crisis like some sort of storm that blows in unexpectedly. They aren't. An economic crisis is people being forced to realise that an obviously wasteful activity can't go on any longer and the resources have to be reallocated to something useful. If there is the will to let obvious failures go broke and cease activities any shock is short, sharp and highly transitory. The problem is 2008-style responses where productive money starts being rerouted to propping up incompetent and wasteful institutions.
- hindsightbias 3y agoI’m at the point that I think 80% of HN did not live through dot-com.
- zamadatix 3y agoOnly 20% here over 40 and working in a role feeling the pinch at the time? Not actually that crazy of a guess I suppose, personally I would have swagged 30% which really isn't that far off in terms of absolute numbers anyways.
- ralphgloria189 3y ago[dead]
- DEREKSUSUAN 3y ago[dead]
- GreMacLeod 3y ago[dead]
- HowardGeraldine 3y ago[dead]
- Arnold07 3y ago[dead]
- lindseyconcerns 3y ago[dead]
- eugenedolores 3y ago[dead]
- ElizabethMorgan 3y ago[dead]