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Comment by Rebles | Hacker News Reader

At the beginning of the year, I decided it was time to find a new job after 10 years with my employer. I spent February doing interview prep and conducting interviews. Back then, the COVID-19 was mostly limited to China, markets and governments weren't terribly concerned about COVID-19.

I accept a job offer, put in my two weeks notice, and my last day at was last Friday. Hardly anyone was seriously concerned about COVID-19 when I gave notice. A week later, business travel was suspended and WFH policies implemented. My last day, schools were closing, and the economy tanked. This week, we're sheltering in place.

I gave myself 3 weeks in between the old and the new job, you know for relaxation and travel. Instead, I'm sequestered to my house for 3 weeks.

Everyday, the news got worse and worse and continues to get worse and worse. Now, I'm in between jobs, and am a little worried my new employer will revoke my job offer. To add insult to injury, one reason I didn't leave my previous job was job security. But in February, there wasn't any sign of an economic downturn. Everyone was enjoying the bull market.

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I have been laid off just before 2015 and I haven't found any stable work since then. I have been under-employed for a long while before the outbreak, and I don't even know what new change-ups in job hunting I should be doing now.

For a long time, many people have said that my years of experience make me valuable so that I should have gotten offers very quickly, but the reality hasn't shown that. Heck, even the founder of the startup company has told me, when I asked for his reference, that he was "very confused" that I haven't found any work for so long. And that was only a year in.

He unfortunately can't give me work anymore as he's tied up with his business. He did consider me for a follow-up freelance job before, but that was more due to a technicality that they needed a US developer for a particular job.

After being evaluated on mock interviews, turns out I'm in the peculiar situation where I am too underqualified for my years. But at least I have some experience working remote that should make me more appealing to employers.

I just can't call it impostor syndrome anymore if I consistently fail at getting full-time offers even when the economic climate was good.

My algorithm:

1) Decide which software engineering related role you want to work on (e.g. web frontends)

2) Enumerate the top skills that are relevant to that role by visiting job postings in companies you would like to work for. e.g.: React.

3) Enumerate the subset of those skills that you have. Those are your strenghts. Work in acquiring the skills you do not yet have. Those are your weaknesses (for now).

4) Visit Linkedin profiles for random employed people in such roles in various companies you would like to work for. Compare that to your own Linkedin profile.

5) In your profile, emphasize your strengths, deemphasize your weaknesses, while working on them in your spare time. And most importantly, list your skills using the skills feature. Recruiters use that to find people.

Personally I think you should leave out all mentions to "looking for a job" and such. That is a red flag. You do not want to tell recruiters that your skills are in low demand.

Also try to keep your job descriptions consistent and relevant to your target role. Rather than "role 1/role 2/role 3", just pick the most favorable/relevant description for role and stick with that.

It usually takes me 1 month to find a job.

This is great advice! In modern tech there is nonsuch thing as "my resume" only "the version of my resume i drafted to apply to a particular position". The fullstack developer is still wanted, engineering manager just want them to be fullstack in the exact stack their team is using.

“Under qualified for your years” is ageist bullshit. You’re either a capable L3,4,5,etc. Any coupling of those achievement brackets to age ranges (which cannot be completely detached from experience level) is discrimination.

> is ageist bullshit

True. As if they expect every 80 year olds to be nobel laureates. The thing is those with power to hire are hardly smart people, they just happen to have the power to hire, by chance.

I'm not concluding that it's simply ageism, because this is feedback I'm getting from mock interviews, not real ones. Professionals tend to be more honest and open about how you interview if it's just for practice.

However the fact that you are using numbered levels instead of broader decscriptors like "junior" and "senior" means that we are thinking on different wavelengths. I guess you're talking Google-ese because it is harder to know what is "L3" without context.

I have obtained various kinds of feedback and working on some of my weaknesses, but "underqualified" and "repeating the same basic experience many times" are the most common themes.

It also depends on the level the GP is applying to. Is GP willing to take a L4 position although applied to be a L5? Of course usually that will come with comp expectations too.

Pretty sure it means "years of work" and not age.

That’s the plausible deniability part of it.

Don't take this the wrong way (I'm trying to help, might fail but intentions are good) but it seems to me that the real reason you are having a hard time finding a "job" is because you have a history of leaving jobs after a short tenure.

I wrote "job" because working as a salaried employee is not the only way to make a living, or have a successful career. Consider that the freelance/contractor career you're currently having is 1) a career and 2) might be a better fit for you. Furthermore, some contractors I know make a lot more money than most of my salaried friends. The tradeoff being, of course, that you have no guarantees wrt to steadiness of your income (protip: salaried jobs come with no guarantees either, you could be out the next day, any day) and sometimes you have to chase down projects and deal with bad customers.

Sorry if something came out wrong, English isn't my first language.

> it seems to me that the real reason you are having a hard time finding a "job" is because you have a history of leaving jobs after a short tenure.

Brevity is to be expected in contract jobs. But I don't know if you are purposely trying to discourage me from finding salaried work which is my main goal.

I actually don't like freelancing at all, I prefer lower risk than freelance, and it is not paying me well anyways. No exact numbers but I made under 5 figures last year. Not really great for a US freelancer. I only do this to make some ends meet while I'm searching for a FT job.

You seem to have skipped the first part where I said I was just trying to help.

I wish you all the best in finding work as quickly as possible, sir.

I glanced over your LinkedIn profile, to me it looks like you need to add more 'modern' tech skills to your profile. It sucks, but the industry moves to new tech quickly and unless you are an enterprise Java developer, your skills get pretty much outdated in few years and you need to catch up at a fast pace.

I would learn (or highlight it if you already know) React.js and Node.js immediately, along with Postgres and MongoDB. That should get a good boost to the resume.

If you are going full stack, you would definitely need to put in AWS, especially micro services and serverless experience along with golang if possible. You can also learn Python if you want to try your hands on Machine learning as well, but I would recommend just focussing on React and Node.js as they are low hanging fruits and there are good enough openings for those two alone..

I have been in your shoes before and I know it could be overwhelming but you can do it.

https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap

I have "hobby" experience in React, Vue and Node if that counts. My resume contains a Github link plus one open source contribution on a React-based project. I just don't put them in my LinkedIn profile because it would be confusing to say "I know XYZ" in a professional profile but cannot list XYZ for something I did at work.

I think I've seen that roadmap diagram before and I notice that in every place I've worked/contracted at, their skills needs usually stop short after the "Version control" part. They don't do packages, modules and I am left in the dark about the deployment process. And I don't know if that lack of transparency of SDLC is done to me on purpose since for a long time I've been a contract dev hired to do some specific thing.

However, not everyone is privileged enough to go through the "standard techie" experience. Some of us never even heard about Leetcode until long after graduation, some of us only have experience in companies that don't believe in concepts like testing and good security.

Looks like the ideal places for me are somewhere that bridges the gap between the haves and the have-nots. A place that still has legacy work to be done but also is up to speed with newer things in other aspects. Does working at traditional F500 companies cut it?

You can put hobby experience in LinkedIn summary. Also you can make a real world project like for e.g. Covid019 tracker in React and can post it even as a professional experience.

Can confirm this too.

Adding Salesforce, Docker, AWS, PostgreSQL, mySQL, MS SQL and stuff like that sometimes get scraped as keywords.

Sincere question:

Does anyone else think it's crazy that you need to know: React, node, Mongo, AWS, the Python machine learning stack, golang, a bunch of databases, microservice patterns, serverless infrastructure, Docker...to get a job in the tech industry?

Who are the people that actually know all this stuff?

People <say> they know :-) Many hardly can write "Hello, World!".

It is crazy. I'm kind of one of those people.

Between my last two roles, familiarity and/or proficiency with the following technologies was required: React/Redux/JS/TS, Node/NPM, PostgreSQL, AWS (specifically Redis, ElasticSearch, Cloudwatch, CodePipeline, Lambda, S3, SQS, and RDS), Kotlin/Java/Spring/Maven/Gradle, C#/ASP.NET/MVC, Python, etc.

As well as testing frameworks / unit testing technologies like Selenium, JMeter, Postman/Chai, and Junit/Nunit/Pytest.

All of this hit me like a brick in the face over a 3 year period. I am NOT a master of any of them, but was definitely expected to be able to readily work with them. At times, it felt like I was supporting 5-6 different roles.

These were two startups with <100 people, so maybe that's why.

It sounds like you've gotten enough positive feedback to know you're not an imposter. Sounds like it's your interview skills or first impression?

If I consistently fail interviews then it's reasonable for me to conclude that I really could be an imposter. But I have gotten interviews from many places small and big, including some FAANGs and Bay Area companies.

If it's just first impressions then I could be like a decent TV show but with a bad pilot. Seems like I might be an "acquired taste" kind of professional.

This is immensely forward but if you would like any help with your resume or interviewing I would be more than happy to help. I am no recruiting expert I believe I have some skill that may be useful. I've changed jobs every 18 months (by choice) for the past 6-7 years or so and I've interviewed with about 10x that many companies. No pressure, just wanting to help out.

Not sure if this will help you, but just putting it out there: Getting a job via a referral will boost your chances by quite a bit.

I am not sure what your core skills are, but in my case if I want to go work for a bank, via referral I get an immediate response (and even one other bank intercepts the referral).

Without a referral I don't even get a response.

I try to use referrals whenever I can. A few years ago got one which lead to two on-site interviews. Lately though people have been giving me the cold shoulder on LinkedIn or email, understandably they are tired of being pestered about jobs.

I don't socialize often to begin with but I always separate people into "family or friend" or "professional" buckets, never mixing the two.

The company I work for is looking for software engineers in the LA or Chicago areas, email me if you want more details :). Our product isn’t the most glamorous, but we take work/life balance really seriously.

I live in Chicago, and will email you soon.

I hate to say this but working for startups really warps everyone's sense of level and career progression. Startup management cares to retain talent and they often give out titles (Senior, Director, VP) like confetti. If you really want to know where you are, the old-school behemoths (e.g. IBM, Lockheed etc) tend to have better (and more rigid) levels.

I quit my job in mid January because of burnout, left London for a couple of weeks and came back this Sunday.

I’m looking for remote roles exclusively. Now I’m not sure if the timing is perfect or just plain terrible:)

Also, I stopped reading the news. I just don’t think refreshing Twitter every 10 min whilst self isolating can be good to your mental health.

Depending upon what you're looking for we might be able to help. ML company in London that's open to fully remote people.

(email in profile)

Email field in profile isn’t publicly visible, you’ll have to add it to the about box

It doesn't seem to be (or did you have to take it out because you were inundated? :p)

Second times the charm. It's there now.

Working from remote is probably the only way for at least weeks if not months.

And yes, don't check the news too often. The real world doesn't move as fast as the refresh button.

I need to stop reading the news too, I’m in pretty deep now...

Hold together, baby, hold together.

Me too.. Read this morning where Italy wil move to in 8 days.. Yeah shouldnt have read that...

I need to quit reading news...

I think every time is remote right now, and could be for months. I'm hoping that by then everyone will be more open to keeping roles remote

Regarding Tw: as with all social media, it very much depends who you follow.

Start interviewing again. Seriously. Worst case scenario your new job works out. That's pretty good downside.

This is solid advice. If I'm afraid of losing my future job, then, better start looking now! Thanks!

Also, side note, if you already signed paperwork with the new employer, press as hard as you think you can get away with, as soon and frequently as you can.

Squeaky wheel gets the grease. Sometimes, there's nothing they can do (hiring freeze from the C-level); but other times, they need to turn 10 hires into 3. Those 3 typically end up being the ones who push for it.

Would definitely push on both fronts. Good luck!

It's a good idea to hedge your bets, but at my company (>50k people) we now have a hiring freeze so anybody that already got an offer is lucky to have just squeezed in. If you can get in touch with your hiring manager perhaps you could talk to them about it directly?

A lot of companies have stopped travel, interview, vendor visits.

Some companies are doing interviews fully remotely right now.

If it makes you feel better, I quite a cushy job and joined a startup a month ago. You're not the only one with bad timing :)

Same position here. Thankfully starting at a FAANG, so less likely to see layoffs than smaller more vulnerable companies. Scheduled to start on 3/30

I left work due to burnout and wanted to try my hand at doing something creative - creating a new product.

Had some time set aside for travel before I started, but then this all happened.

Could not have picked a less convenient time to try and travel and make money off SaaS / AppStore.

I remain optimistic and am expecting to learn so much more than I would have in the more comfortable market we are now leaving behind.

To health and family first though.

Actually, it's especially good timing to be starting a business during a financial crisis. I know, I've lived through 1987, 1993, 1998, 2002, 2008 and now c-19.

During these times when people are getting RIF'd (Reduction in Force), they're understandably panicked, nervous, in shock, etc. Most employees are not thinking of what service or product they can cobble together and bring to market, but how to swiftly rejoin the job market.

This leads to a shortage of new startups spinning up as well, because the economy has gone to the dumpster. Good times, bull markets and strong economies make everyone feel more confident. Who wants to gamble when the world is going to hades in a handbasket? Not a lot of people.

Then there's the cost factor. My experience during past financial implosions, demand for everything plummets. I get the idea we're living in more of a robber-baron era than even just 5 years ago, but still, you'll be able to negotiate everything from office rents to infrastructure, salaries of new hires, hotels and airfares for business travel.

Obviously, I am going to throw my hat into this ring for these very reasons. Good luck and good day!

Similar situation. DM if you want to explore a collaboration.

Could you check-in with the new company? I'm in a similar situation and checked-in with mine, and they said they were happy to onboard me remotely, no problem.

Yeah. I've checked in. They're planning on shipping my laptop to me on my start date. Everything is fine–for now. But things have changed so dramatically day by day, it's hard to know where we'll be in 2 and a half weeks. I worry when I see the markets dropping 7% every other day. I read stories how non-tech industries are cancelling job offers during this time. I think my future employer is well insulated, being a tech company. We'll see!

Ask your old employer if your role is still available. Plans change, and if you left on good terms, they might be amiable to your return if you need that option.

If my new employer bails, I might consider this. But I would probably try to find a new new job before then. Also, my boss wanted me to confirm 3 times what my last day would be, because, once he put it in the system, his hands were tied. I guess the LDO (Last day of office) process is pretty streamlined to tie up all the loose ends: halting pay checks, revoking unvested RSUs, stopping medical benefits, revoking user entitlements, etc.

Not a lawyer, but I wonder if you couldn't sue if they withdraw the offer. Seems like a case of detrimental reliance or promissory estoppel. Again, not a lawyer and surely depends on which jurisdiction you're in.

Also, you could post on HN if they do withdraw the offer during this outbreak, so other people would know they suck.

>> Also, you could post on HN if they do withdraw the offer during this outbreak, so other people would know they suck.

So every company that lays off an employee "sucks"? I guess you're welcome to stay and work for free, but if they don't have money to pay you what are they supposed to do?

I agree this situation is terrible for the OP, but I don't think we need to name and shame every company that makes a prudent decision as the world moves in a abad direction...

GP said that in reference to rescinding a job offer after notice given, new job accepted, and old job left, not a 'layoff' exactly.

Personally, I think employment in the US should look more like it does in Europe. People rely on work to survive, and shouldn’t be fireable easily, and unemployment should cover at least 75% of your previous salary.

I am in Europe; here it is common to have a probation period. After this period it is less easy to fire someone, but during the period they can do pretty much anything. So if you happen to be switching jobs right in the middle of an economic crisis there is not much security. In addition, in my country you get your salary covered up to 80% if you pay for extra unemployment insurance. I was stupid and did not sign up for this earlier - and you have to be a member for 12 months to get the benefit. If you do not have unemployment insurance or have not been a member for 12 months, you get <900 USD per month (where I live this is not enough to make rent).

Many tech jobs start with a 3 month "fire at will" period. They might just give the OP one day and then fire.

I hope it works out though.

And in most US states that never changes. You can generally be fired without cause all the time.

I've got a 4 year record of bi annual performance reviews where I've gotten 120% of the available performance based bonus, but I dont have tenure or anything. If my boss decides he hates my shoes and fires me, Im gone.

In a weird way, getting 120% of the available bonus works against you, in terms of demonstrating you're an excellent worker. Clearly, there's more "available" than the stated amount, which demonstrates the whole thing is a fiction to make people feel good. I mean, in the real world, 100% is the maximum of any thing, then there are made-up phrases like "giving 110%" or "8 days a week" or "120% of the available bonus." And of course, if you got 120%, who's to say your co-worker didn't get 150%?

Not trying to bust your balls, but it's kind of weird you felt it was necessary to randomly humblebrag about your performance bonuses.

To be fair, I dont think it's a humblebrag. If they worked at the same company as all of us, it might make sense to call it a humblebrag but, there are enough people around here in much better positions than those that get bonuses like these for it to make sense to brag about. That is, I (and probably most people on yc) would feel embarrassed talking about my best accolades when there are people on here that were able to retire by 30, work with Freeman Dyson, or found some successful company.

I think they just used themselves as an example to provide the support that their argument wasn't coming from someone who values doing the bare minimum (which I've seen argued on yc a few times).

It's not a humblebrag in terms of dollars. The idea being conveyed is that he (she?) should be unfire-able due to excellent performance (that's the brag), but that at-will employment negates the unfire-ability. I'm expressing doubt that 120% bonus is actually evidence he's such a great employee.

I think you may be missing how the bonus system works at many companies. 100% is defined as the maximum contractual bonus for consistently excellent performance but there is a separate discretionary maximum for exceptional cases beyond the contracted bonus. This discretionary bonus cap is often on the order of 50% higher than the contractual bonus cap. It is for when the maximum bonus is insufficient to reflect individual performance. A 120% bonus typically denotes a discretionary bonus beyond the contracted maximum, which almost always implies you are doing amazing work beyond the scope of your role.

Details vary by company of course but the tiny percentage of people who earned >100% bonuses at companies I've worked at were exceptional performers.

If the cap is an extra 50%, why did this guy only get 20% extra? In fact, he had 8 chances to get the actual max, and failed every time.

That's not the point. The point is performance reviews are poorly correlated with actual job performance, they aren't designed to measure job performance.

Would you hire someone knowing nothing other than they got 120% bonus at their previous job?

Yeah, once I got on the management side I learned the whole "oh you got 100% of the bonus but our numbers feel off so the bonus pool is only 75% funded so you only get 75%". It's all made up and we have to balance a dozen situations and someone is always going to get screwed. To be honest I usually give bigger bonuses to the people who are already underpaid, which is what I suspect may have happened to GP.

It's also why VP and above bonuses are written into our employment contracts -- we know better.

Also yeah, definition of "weird flex but ok".

They have shipped out the laptop I think you're in good shape. Seems like they might pay you for some down time since the can't set you up right away but you're probably be paid for all.

I was in the process of a job search while working at a foundering startup back in December. Interview processes were paused over the holidays and scheduled to resume in early January. Jan. 2, first day back at the old job, I was laid off. Had my final interview at another startup the following week and got an offer. Started end of January. We're all WFH for at least 2 weeks, and it's beginning to look like much longer than that. We've got connections to the retail sector, so I do wonder about that, but we have seen at least a short-term uptick in activity, presumably due to hoarding. Fingers crossed we all make it through this.

Sorry to hear. I'm in a similar situation. I left Microsoft and moved to a new country a few months ago without having a job lined up specifically because I wanted time off for burnout and to learn development (my background is in QA and Program Management). I'll stay the course for self-teaching development but I may need to expedite the job hunt in lieu of the recession. We can commiserate together :)

> But in February, there wasn't any sign of an economic downturn. Everyone was enjoying the bull market.

First: I’m super sorry about what you’re going through and I hope things work out with your new employer.

Second: I worry that “nobody could have known” will be the narrative. A very large portion of my circles was aware that COVID was about to explode and that the prevention measures would either drastically slow the economy or not be taken and the impact would be worse. Super uncontroversial. And like, I’m just a guy.

On an individual level, that excuse is unfortunate, but the individual level doesn’t matter much (except for the individual, of course). On an institutional and a governance level, we’re likely to excuse the failures of our leaders because we ourselves weren’t paying attention.

>Second: I worry that “nobody could have known” will be the narrative. A very large portion of my circles was aware that COVID was about to explode and that the prevention measures would either drastically slow the economy or not be taken and the impact would be worse. Super uncontroversial. And like, I’m just a guy.

Big same. I'm just another software engineer, albeit one with a taste for international news and a few China-focused specialists & one or two PRCs citizens that I follow on Twitter.

This was predictable in early-mid Jan. Once the pics and discussion of the overloaded Wuhan hospitals and the measures the PRC had to take hit the English language world, it was pretty bloody obvious. The news had hit the popular English language papers by Jan 27[1], although I was reading about it somewhat earlier - Jan 12 at the latest[2]. A timeline can be found in [3]. Anyway, by Feb 1, institutions with a specialty in disease control should have been going full bore to address the incoming wave.

Our public health officials, the officials they advise, and other health institutions should be held up to scrutiny and not covered with glory dust just because they had to act by the pace of events.

[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7933719/Incredible-... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/11/china-mystery-... [3] https://www.who.int/csr/don/12-january-2020-novel-coronaviru...

> A very large portion of my circles was aware that COVID was about to explode (...)

Your circles seem to be the exception then. There are a lot of factors that affect personal perception of such matters, like proximity to inflicted areas, professional background (ex: medical), experiencing similar events in the past, etc.

In hindsight it seems obvious that the world wasn't paying attention. But it took until February for western countries to realize the epidemic was already out of control, and the markets reacted.

> prevention measures would either drastically slow the economy or not be taken and the impact would be worse

Anyone that knew this last month without a doubt could've made tons of money shorting positions in the stock market.

He's probably talking about the rationalist community, and people did.

https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1233174331133284353

I assure you I am not talking about the aggressive curve-fitting community. Just...normal people. Nobody famous, not even any Chinese nationals. Just...fairly normal, if tech-worker-y, Americans and Europeans.

By and large, both the general public and organizations were caught by surprise. If most people knew, the stocks would have tanked in January, not these past few days.

Which brings an interesting question: how many of all the people you know who knew, yourself included, put their skin in the game and are now rich from the options they bought in January? If it is not many, I would argue it is better to say people suspected or feared, not that they knew.

It's a real big stretch from "certain enough to take personal precautions" to "is a stock head and wants to throw down puts". You get that normal people don't really give a damn about the stock market, yeah? Put a gun to my head and I can't tell you how a put works and I don't really care--I'm too busy buying a house.

I did, however, rebalance almost entirely out of stocks three weeks ago and while I am not "now rich", my portfolio is doing a hell of a lot better than most folks'.

+1 to this. I'd been worrying since mid-late January, and aggressively telling people since early February that this was going to be bad... but even a week ago, tons of people that I talked to were thinking that this was such an overreaction and would blow over. Just couldn't believe it, even after seeing how it went in Italy, a majority of people said the US would never have that problem.

I didn't even know that a "put" on the stock market was a thing until last week, and am not particularly interested in figuring out how to do that... But I did back out of buying a car because I thought I'd be better off to have the cash when this gets bad, and here we are now in this thread... Maybe next time (hopefully there isn't one) I'll figure out more of what a "put" actually is and how to get one

Out of curiosity, do you have any plan when and why to go back in stocks? I'm currently 20% stocks (ETFs really), 5% bonds, 75% cash. I only plan to continue buying stocks and bonds every month, as usual (so, DCA).

https://www.capitalgroup.com/individual/planning/investing-f...

50% tends to be near enough the bottom for these kinds of things that that's when I'll rebalance my retirement fund. I'm going to keep my brokerage out longer as I have shorter-term needs for that money.

I pretty much agree with you on this, my wife is a Doctor so I got to overhear a lot of calls where the CDC and the local Doctors/Hospitals and none of them saw this as obviously exploding into a pandemic. Rather they made decisions as it progressed.

That being said, I did take what I felt was a risk at the time and shorted Royal Caribbean and Carnival Cruise lines which payed off, but I was not certain that at the time it would (if I was I would have risked a whole lot more), I went off a hunch once I started seeing them close the ports to cruise ships. I am now buying those stocks because I think their hit from CORVID-19 is priced in, but we will see. It's all a guessing game on good hunches. Hardly anybody saw it exploding (short of the doctors on the ground in Wuhan) and everyone was hoping that it was going to be contained in China just like SARS was.

The reality is, Doctors and the CDC do not make decisions on news reports they make them on papers and data from people on the ground. That data was actively being suppressed to some extent by China until it was too late. Sure there where rouge Chinese doctors in the media warning us (and they where right), but that is a thin straw to base policy on. Once the true data was out and the CDC could base guideline on it, it was already too late.

Also to note I am sorry and pray for those of you that are affected by this.

A lot of this seems to be "I told you so". And yet, I have a hard time believing anybody could have foreseen an almost complete shutdown of the global economy over this. A lot of the "we saw that coming" can be boiled down to "it will be bad".

But even if you saw it coming, how does this help now? Right, it doesn't.

That someone's circles saw it coming doesn't help. Wht you can do now helps. Unfortunately a lot of these folks are lacking in that department IMHO.

SARS1 didn't have this effect. MERS didn't have this effect. And a number of other recent viruses didn't either.

But every time there were people "predicting" the worst. This time they were coindentially correct. Not because they "knew", but because chance.

Trump announced the China travel ban on Jan 31 - effective Feb 2nd - which was over 6 weeks ago. Even then he was called names and the "it's just the flu" mantra started. Huge segments of the world saw what was coming and started moving, most didn't move far enough fast enough.

Ref: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/31/21117403/trump-coronaviru...

Trump had no backup plan for when, not if, a case went undetected in the US. He didn't start stockpiling masks and ventilators until much later.

I agree. He didn't move far enough fast enough. The public's awareness and preparation was slowed by the media (NYT, WaPo, MSNBC, others) screaming "it's just the flu!" until just a couple weeks ago so most weren't prepared. :(

My comment was in response to people not realizing this was a thing a month ago.

I think it was other news organizations than the ones you listed that were the primary culprits in screaming "it's just the flu"

Read https://twitter.com/balajis starting early February and documented many of the posts. He was one of the earliest to call out their BS and anti-scientific agenda.

And then the House tried to remove Trump's travel ban: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/12/house-committee-vot...

You can play politics or you can look at reality.

https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/fcdckgt368/econTabReport.pdf

page 9 Do you think the coronavirus epidemic is a national emergency? yes, democrats 81%; no, republicans 53%

page 18 Which cable news network do you watch the most? Democrats, 42% CNN, 48% MSNBC; Republicans, 89% Fox News

Trump himself has been downplaying it this whole time. https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/trumps-statements-about-th...

That Politico article is about the travel ban involving Muslim countries, not China or any Asian country. Do you read your own sources?

Look at the date of the article very closely and realize that it covered all travel bans as noted in the subhead:

"The legislation would void all of Trump's executive actions establishing travel restrictions."

My "circles" (which include a friend married to a Médecins Sans Frontières doctor who had been in Wuhan last October) knew that COVID-19 was possibly a serious concern, but also "knew" that it could have wound up as another SARS (not that SARS wasn't terrible, but it was also very localized in terms of overall impact).

I don't think we should excuse the many failures of our leaders, but I also don't think the now-obvious economic impact of this crisis was that clearcut even a month ago.

>I don't think we should excuse the many failures of our leaders, but I also don't think the now-obvious economic impact of this crisis was that clearcut even a month ago.

Good way of looking at it.

Maybe you should have told every single government in the world, because none predicted that it would have this huge of an impact. SARS1 pretty much stayed in China, MERS pretty much stayed in the Middle East. It was only when a country like Italy was caught by surprise that governments started to consider very far reaching measures.

Depending on the country and an observer’s cynicism, I think the majority of nations understood early on that it was already far too late to significantly dampen the impact of such a deadly and infectious virus.

The United States government was thoroughly informed of this risk via Operation Dark Winter but never geared up for it - perhaps this is best managed by states once the infection crosses the border, but preparations on those levels weren’t completed either.

It’s not possible to predict the future, so I disagree with your stance that it was obvious a virus could cause an economic downturn like this. It comes across as victim blaming to me.

If we had not taken prevention measures, the economic impact would be worse? I'm very skeptical of this. Keeps in mind that the disease has a 2-4% mortality rate among hospitalized patients, and the real rate is very likely to go down, not up, since most sick people do not immediately go to the hospital and there is an unknown-but-surmised-be-very-large population of infected people with mild symptoms.

There is a real chance that our lockdown will kill more people through stress-induced heart attacks, suicides, and general fallout from food and income insecurity than the virus would have.

My only takeaway from all of this is that our hospital system is really, really bad at handling any kind of temporary spike in disease or death. And I'm upset with our governor for panicking and putting the entire service industry out of a job, which may actually cause harm to them in great numbers beyond a probably sub-1% chance of dying from a flu-like illness.

2% to 4% is the number of hospitalized people that die IF they get care.

If the health system is overrun, and there are zero ICU beds or ventilators available, that number will go up quickly. THAT is the problem we are trying to avoid.

The numbers matter here. Go up by how much?

Look at the difference between Italy's death rate and South Korea's.

2-4% is huge for a novel highly infectious disease. Our healthcare system is not prepared for that at all, without aggressive measures that's potential for hundreds of thousands if not millions of deaths in the US.

Fully agreed - but I'm wondering why the solution has been less bars, not more temporary hospitals, ala China.

Temporary hospitals are being set up, but we simply don't have the capacity to build life–saving machines fast enough to handle the no-social distancing scenario. Neither did China, really.

Having live television feeds of people dying in the streets (like in Wuhan) would absolutely crater the economy and cause massive social unrest.

Free market knew of this possibility, but pocketed the profits for shareholders instead of making investments to prepare. And the government didn't intervene. This is a culture problem. We weren't listening.

SARS experienced countries made very different decisions, over the past few months, and since 2003.

Tough spot... best of luck to you. Hopefully that job still comes through.

Same boat. Don't panic. From my end, I'm due to start a new gig on monday and everyone at my new client/employer currently has out of office replies when I email them about the procedure for the first day....

Which is brilliant... :/

Fortunately they're rather a hitech company so I hope we can just work remotely.

Still have to go and collect laptop and rsa certs and such though...

I was doing drone control software (RPi based) for a startup that ran out of funding last November. They told me that they were going to keep looking for investors/funding and if they got money they'd call me back to work immediately. And there were some promising signs in December/January that they might get some funding. So, since I liked them, they liked me, and the gig was fun I figured I'd put off looking for other work until later in the Spring just to see if they get the funding. Welp, now I really doubt they're going to get that funding.

Name of startup? This sounds fun.

It was fun. But it pretty much doesn't exist in any economically viable way at this point.

I am in a similar boat. Resigned just before this hit. I am still working out my notice at my current job and my new employer assures me everything is fine, but I still feel like I picked the craziest possible time to finally move after eight years at one company! Oh well, fingers crossed for both of us.

Dejavu. I'm in exactly the same situation.

Best of luck to you; we should remember to sync up in a few months to see how things went.

I was in a similar situation. My new employer revoked my job offer on the day I was supposed to start.

I'm in the exact same situation.

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