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Comment by throwaway5752 | Hacker News Reader

Everyone paying attention the pattern of layoffs? Ebay, Mozilla, DigitalOcean, 23andMe, Intel...

Pay down your credit card debt and make sure you have at least 6 months of expenses in the bank, if you're young and haven't been through this before.

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None of these are likely the result of systemic factors. If anything, there being layoffs at some firms without it impacting general employment levels is a sign of a healthy and balanced economy.

There are weird indicators of recession in segments of the economy already. But new monetary policy is containing the problems so far.

Predicting recessions is a losers game though. In that the large majority of predictions are wrong but eventually a recession happens. Most people's predictions are based on bad analyses.

Is the intuition on credit card debt just that unemployment can jeopardize your ability to make payments?

payments, and ability to even get a job if your score takes a hit... a lot of companies do credit checks before hiring :/

Yep, depends on the state though. Can also affect your insurance rates too such as car insurance, not sure if other types of insurance use it as an indicator but wouldn't surprise me.

add to that risk the predatory nature of credit card debt,

the interest is already super high, they can increase that further after a late payment, plus it stays on your record for 6 years

Yes, just reduce your debt, particularly discretionary high interest ones like credit cards.

Well, other people's unemployment may also reduce your salary prospects, stop career progression and make switching jobs much harder.

That said, you shouldn't ever carry any credit card debt anyway.

You're going to have to prove there's a pattern here. Unless the pattern is companies that haven't maintained their status in their respective industries.

> Pay down your credit card debt and make sure you have at least 6 months of expenses in the bank, if you're young and haven't been through this before.

If you think you're about to get sacked, the last thing to do is pay down debt regardless of the interest rate.

If you're about to get sacked, I'd recommend opening a home equity line of credit. You can live off this while you plot your next move.

People's heads are in the clouds again, ala 1999 and 2008. You can't believe people are delivering anything more than hopes and dreams unless you lay eyes on said product. Most these startups sell hype and vaporware, but people get starry-eyed over them and turn into Phil "Take My Money" Fry. Cynicism isn't a bad thing when it comes to money.

Papyrus is closing 200+ retail stores, Express is closing retail stores...the retail apocalypse growing every day too.

Nothing new there. The retail apocalypse has been going on for years.

Always wise. Also a good idea to remember that there are a large number of software jobs outside of big name tech.

Also, there have been a few rather defensive sounding VC posts on HN lately. Usually it's all Techbro Tony Robbins platitudinal stuff, but it's been getting darker these days. Did you see the one with Paul Graham lashing out at "haters" or whatever? Yikes. Gives a sense things aren't going that well, and they want to justify their decisions.

Moreover, I'm getting less recruiter spam on LinkedIn, but to be fair half of that was just WeWork.

I was thinking the same thing... the housing market will probably crash soon... bitcoin to the moon? just kidding.

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