I think those of us who lived through the 90s and 00s have a hard time counterdiscombobulating all the stuff that went down. People who experienced the 60s and 70s probably have similar difficulty.
In the dot-com crash, a lot of people in software especially left the industry and many never really got their careers back on track or recovered financially. On the other hand in 2008/9, there was belt tightening in the software industry but overall the impact didn't end up being all that great. Remains to be seen if this period will be the former or latter. Of course, individuals can still be very affected even if the overall impact isn't huge.
what a discombobulating way to say "clarifying" :)