Comment by PheonixPharts | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PheonixPharts | Hacker News Reader

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Software will be fine for people who are in an unknown top X% of developers out there. Depending on how bad this is that might be the top 80%, it might be the top 1%.

The industry is so crazy now because of the last recession. Investors didn't know where to put their money after the real estate collapse and they decided to pour it all into funding startups hoping, at all costs, to catch the next Facebook.

We're starting to see that maybe even Facebook isn't really the next Facebook.

Additionally we never really solved the root of the last crisis: exploding credit/debt.

It's impossible to know how this will all really play out this time (who would have guessed that the pandemic would be immediately followed by a stock boom). However my advice would be to focus on adaptability. Don't chase a dead dream too long. If tech never comes back to the insane period we're in now, I think there will be a lot of former developers that suffer a long time before they realize this.

Most people in 2010 would’ve taken a $500B or even $300B market cap FB as a major tech company right now without any expectation of getting too much bigger than that ever. $300B, $400B, $500B are still top 25, 15, and 10 in the world today.

But would’ve they predicted the that value of those 300B US dollars would be worth so much less?

Many tech companies during COVID gained legitimate value, just like many housing markets, but most the increase in their US dollar price was simply the value of the dollar being less.

>but most the increase in their US dollar price was simply the value of the dollar being less

And in general, the value of a currency is less because there are more money being invented out from thin air. By central banks printing money, through the fractional reserve system, crypto and stable coins...

> But would’ve they predicted the that value of those 300B US dollars would be worth so much less?

I hope so. It has been the consistent course of action of the federal US government for many, many decades to provide a backstop for broad market asset prices at the expense of the purchasing power of the dollar.

All parties in positions of power benefit from increase in asset prices. The politicians, the business owners, the land owners, the 401K owners, the taxpayers (via defined benefit pension tax liabilities).

I’d think so. Whether they realize it or not. Since inflation for the US isn’t a crazy situation without precedent. 2021, 2022 have been a lot more for inflation, but this century has overall been something that is not unexpected.

Looking at how big FB is vs other companies makes a metric like inflation not as important as all companies and thus all investments are affected by inflation.

So, still, any of the example market caps for FB today would’ve been gladly accepted by almost every one in 2010, regardless of the specific percentage of inflation that has happened. FB would still be a top 25 company in market cap at $300B. Top 20 if looking at US only.

Cumulative inflation from 2010 to 2022 was 33%. Cumulative inflation over the preceding 12 years (1998-2022) was 34%.

Just because this year’s inflation was high, there’s nothing extraordinary about overall inflation in the post-GFC period.

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