Why this tech recession will be different than 2001-2003 | Hacker News Reader

Why this tech recession will be different than 2001-2003

blogs.forrester.com

Why tech will survive: Tech actually makes things. Finance, no.

This is just a cheap shot at an unpopular target. But finance has real value. Do you want a loan? Finance. Invest in stocks, or real estate? Finance. Complete a merger? Finance. Have your check clear? Finance.

Some finance companies just play poker with their assets, and the industry has been cartelized and corrupted by government interference and perverse incentives, but most financial service firms provide real value to their customers. That is why they will endure.

Detroit makes things, but that doesn't mean the American auto industry is going to survive.

Detroit doesn't make the right things for right now. This does not mean the need for automobiles disappears. Same with IT. The landscape will change but it will not become a desolate void; at least that's the import of the article.

I agree Detroit has taken a huge hit, but I'm not sure it's going to die.

While I agree, let's forget it's about making things that people pay you money for, not just making things in general.

I agree. This was really finance's big bubble, inflated by nothing but hype. There was no production in that field, nothing more than an elaborate, unethical shell game / pyramid scheme.

The MBA folks had their brief moment (cheating) in the sun. Now it's time to get back to fundamentals. Tech can lead that.

Regardless of what anyone says, always keep the infamous tulip mania story in mind. It keeps happening over and over again:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

Another reason this one might be different: tech led the "recession" of 2001-2003, whereas housing and banking are leading this current recession.

I don't think that the general economy did technically go into recession in 2001 (partly because a housing-bubble fueled consumer binge delayed the reckoning and probably made it much worse). But high tech went through a brutal correction. For a couple of years, it was crickets chirping out there.

So I think that tech took its lumps the way the general economy probably should have. And it worked. We got rid of a lot of crappy products, companies, and (sorry to be so blunt) a lot of crappy people who really had no business in high tech. While those crickets were chirping, a lot of very motivated entrepreneurs put down the groundwork for the next wave of excellent high tech companies.

I will agree that things got a bit bubblicious toward the end of 2007 in high tech... but in the end, I just don't think high tech has the same kind of delayed reckoning that banking and real estate are facing. Perhaps 2001-2003 should have been a nuclear winter for those industries as well - then they would have gone through the same soul searching, reckoning, culling, and rebuilding that tech had to do.

Yeah, tech will take a hit - there's no way it'll completely avoid the credit crisis. But this time, we're on the peripheries, and we've already taken a lot of our lumps..

crap. Forrester is always wrong.

Although it will be different. 2001-2003 was a tech bubble, dumb tech "companies" died. The pop was in the context of a relatively strong economy. This time we have a strong tech industry, but a crashing economy. Dumb tech will die, but so will some quality companies that would have done well in a hospitable economic environment. Most tech companies produce real goods with real benefits (no more dog food by mail companies out there), but when people and companies start worrying about just getting to next month a lot of tech products will get filed into want not need.

I'd like to see tech focus on making things with things that make things. As advanced as robotics appears to be, it still feels like it has a lot of untapped potential.

Sorry, this is a major pet peeve of mine: it should be "different from".

I won't downmod you, but you should be aware that that contention is pure grammar Nazi mythology:

From http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=351

"There is a tangled history here, summarized in the MWDEU entry for different from, than, to. The conclusion (p. 343):

"… all three expressions have been in standard use since the 16th and 17th centuries and all three continue to be in standard use. [though different to is specifically British]"

Each of the three can be defended on semantic grounds, and on the grounds of the practice of good writers. From MWDEU, p. 342:

"From the 18th century the OED lists Addison with different from, Fielding with different to, and Goldsmith with different than."

Fowler "stoutly defends different to", but some British style guides object to it passionately, which is where Buckroyd probably got his notion that it's non-standard. In the face of the facts, I'd hope that different to is not marked as an error in exams like the GCSE — but I suspect that it is, in a sad victory for usage mythology."

I stand corrected. It still sounds wrong to my ear, though.

that's what i keep telling people. tech will feel the ripple from the collapse of other systems, and will fall a bit, but tech is robust today and we're at the cusp of BIG advances (cloud, high efficiency solar, fuel-cell, nano, gene therapy, etc).

when industry and financial stabilizes we'll be poised to re-form the economy with tech breakthroughs.

i just hope gas prices don't go back up. i am loving 2 buck gas.

I want to believe that, and 75% of me actually does, but the cynic in me translated your comment to the famous last words "this time it's different."

it's exactly because it's different that we're going to prevail

cmon simma down nyaa

give your inner cynic some delicious salt-water taffy

Your comment reminds me of people at the turn of the century saying something like: We're at the cusp of BIG advances - very fast steam trains, Zeppelins that can transport a hundred people...

My point is that what we think is the next big this rarely is. Nobody saw social networking coming in 1999 etc.

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