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Comment by elzbardico | Hacker News Reader

Being laid off and re-hired later is common in blue-collar professions, and that's the way we are moving to in the long term. Be frugal, save money, because the future doesn't look very bright.

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Yeah, I was unemployed for four months this year due to layoffs. It was unpleasant, obviously, but I am extremely glad that I have been really vigilant about saving money for the last few years. It sucks not having an income, but it sucks less if you have a nice, healthy savings to draw from. It moves the problem away from the "how will I eat or afford rent?" territory, and more towards the "I guess I'll buy that thing next year" territory.

That is very interesting, and I suppose it speaks to the historical amnesia among IT specialists, since I believe the majority of us don’t really see ourselves as belonging to the working class.

Car mechanics and manufacturers used to feel this way.

If the majority of your income comes from labor, as opposed to interest on capital, you are working class. The non-working class likes more divisions between the working class, so works to perpetuate this misunderstanding.

Maybe the above poster was referencing the startup founders and early employees on HN, who could be considered to not be working class, depending on their ownership stake and success of their company.

There are only 2 classes, the worker class, and the ownership class that doesn't really have to work (e.g. could stop working tomorrow and be fine until retirement/death)

> Be frugal, save money

Whether or not the future looks bright, this is sound advice for everyone. As an immigrant to the US, one of my biggest culture shocks was how little the average American saves, and how little it's emphasized in the culture. Perhaps it speaks to how much faith the public has in government-provided social programs, despite the popular notion that the US does very little for its poor and elderly. (Are things different in Western Europe?)

From what I've read, it actually appears to be somewhat generational; apparently Gen-Z has, broadly speaking, actually picked up some good habits and seems to be saving money at a higher rate than previous generations. [1]

Of course, speaking about people in terms of generations is not something I really enjoy doing (especially since it does seem like millennials get a disproportionate level of hate on that front), but I think in the case of Gen-Z a lot of it has to do with the fact that a lot of them grew up right around the 2008 financial crash and realized how important saving money is.

[1] https://www.rocketmortgage.com/learn/gen-z-financial-goals-2...

Companies continue to want to pretend like software development is a factory assembly line. Weird how those sprint commitments never get hit in the same way as “we want X cars to roll off the line this month.” It must be the workers. /s

Maybe they can standardize this crap through more abstractions like React using the new AI available LLMs. So that now you pull a 3GB of code to compile just a "Hello World" website.

First to market, get the market share before the competition, and focus on efficiency in V2.

Put out 3 ideas in the time it takes another company to put out 1, and optimize the ideas that gain traction.

But there is some truth here that the car factories are not trying to change/reinvent their tools every 6 months.

Save money when the fed can print it all away?

I am not a financial advisor, but I think most financial advisors would not recommend you save all your money in cash, in no small part because of potential inflation.

I think the typical rule is to save N months of bills [1] in cash (or something cash-adjacent like a CD or T-Bill), and the rest in an index fund/ETF from something like Vanguard of Fidelity or something like that. This allows you to somewhat "outsource" the problems of inflation to corporations.

[1] the size of N probably depends on the person and cost of living and all that fun stuff, but I think it's usually 6.

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