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Comment by 01100011 | Hacker News Reader

China is falling into recession. Europe is falling into recession. A Federal Reserve governor(Kashkari) is now expressing doubt that inflation can be reined in without triggering a recession. Stonks have recovered from the initial drop, but that is a familiar pattern in many previous stock bubbles before the market really plummets.

Think really hard about switching jobs now. If you do, have liquid reserves to fall back on(cash or cash equivalents, T-Bills, not stocks), and pick a company with good cash flow.

I understand folks who have ridden out the last two recessions and will tell you you'll be fine, and you probably will be, but don't be hasty right now. A lot of big companies are going to be under growth pressures in the next few quarters and one easy way to cut expenses is to fire people.

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> China is falling into recession. Europe is falling into recession. A Federal Reserve governor(Kashkari) is now expressing doubt that inflation can be reined in without triggering a recession. Stonks have recovered from the initial drop, but that is a familiar pattern in many previous stock bubbles before the market really plummets.

You (nor anyone else) can forecast neither recessions nor 'stock bubbles'.

Otherwise they'd have already made a fortune in the financial markets.

Of course, a recession is always possible.

That theory doesn’t apply as strongly to recessions as it does financial markets.

Recessions just aren’t well defined, and you’re not going to know for sure if you’re in one/were in one until months or even years after it started because you need to collect a whole lot of data on the economy. But you do start getting early signs. It doesn’t have to come all at once in a huge market crash. That is actually pretty rare. It’s totally possible for an economy to slowly wither and then falter.

Both China and Europe are in trouble. Europe’s energy shock could be painful, but it has the potential to be short lived. China’s property market looks like a real mess, and could have huge political consequences that extend beyond its borders.

> That theory doesn’t apply as strongly to recessions as it does financial markets.

You seem to suggest that financial markets are decoupled from the economy?

To be precise: my thesis is that you can not forecast recessions better than the market consensus. And not just in stocks:

For example, If you can forecast that industrial activity will be slowing, you can make a lot of money in commodities futures markets.

If you can forecast an increase in defaults, you can make a lot of money trading credit-default-swaps.

Slightly less finance-y: if it was easy to forecast recessions, wouldn't you expect to see that reflected in business inventories?

In general, if forecasting a recession was easy enough that you and me can do it, you'd expect businesses in general to anticipate the coming recession, and that anticipation would look exactly like a recession. Thus making the forecast a now-cast.

I know this isn’t quite what you’re meaning, but it sounds like you’re saying “don’t quit so they can fire you instead.”

If you're in a country with any kind of decent labour rights, getting let go is 100% better than quitting.

If you quit you don't get EI, you don't get any kind of payoff from the company, and it looks worse than "I was let go due to company downsizing" when interviewing.

So get fired for not commuting to work then.

If you want to qualify for unemployment (in the US), don't get fired. Losing your job through your own fault usually disqualifies you from collecting.

Smaller companies will let you go and say you shouldn't get unemployment insurance, but if you appeal they won't bother to contest, so you can collect anyway. This works especially well if the company's HQ are in a different state than were you work, but it also depends which state you reside. It's not solely about so-called "at will", though.

Getting fired is not the same as being laid off. If they fire you for insubordination (which is what not reporting for mandatory office attendance would be) or bad performance, they don't have to pay you anything. If you're laid off, most companies would give you at least a few months of pay in compensation.

Not showing up to the office when required could be a fireable offense (not quite insubordination but along the same lines).

I knew a guy at Apple that was given 60 days to find a new job or move to LA or be terminated. He found a job in another team just as his 60 days was running out.

I'm in France which is quite decent for labor rights, but the only time I have been let go, I had to wait 6 months before getting any money because a bunch of judges and lawyers had to fight to decide who would get money and how much.

It's good in theory, but in practice you can't count on that money, and you must find another job ASAP to feed your family.

I found a better job and I will quit because it's way faster for me to get out of my current company's mess.

All things being equal, you are much less likely to be laid off from an employer you have been with, where you have a track record than at a place where you’re the new person and still need to be trained / onboarded

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