Ask HN: Are you negatively affected by the recent economic stagnation? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are you negatively affected by the recent economic stagnation?

9 pointsadinhitlore24 comments

or is just me? looks like jobs or personal real estate sales are failing me hard...if i was younger (now late 30s) i would've considered a fake firefighter stripper path, for now i'd persist on this cursed route.

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I have been out of work for roughly two years, though I should note that, for religious reasons, I have limited my search to positions involving Rust. Toward the end of last year, however, it seemed that the situation was beginning to improve: new job postings appeared that looked credible, and by the start of this year I had two interviews (both initiated by companies themselves). In one case, I advanced to the later stages of the process and was close to receiving an offer. So I was hopeful things will turn around.

I think, now, given what's happening in the Gulf, you can firmly assume that the recovery will fully stop; if not worse. It's safer to assume that this will not resolve any time soon. I am from near the region, and I know a few friends who had to go back to the country because their jobs/workplace was affected. So that's one job market that's now bust.

Interest rates will remain high, if not go higher. Life will get significantly more expensive with $100+ oil. This will be a global pain, unfortunately.

I am curious - what does choosing only Rust have to do with religion? Or am I taking your statement to literally?

Not the OP, but I interpreted "religious" as something like a strong, unyielding preference. As in "I wear my helmet religiously when cycling."

That’s what I thought too but didn’t want to make any assumptions. In that case it’s honestly stupid to not having income come in for two years because of a preference for a certain language.

When I’m out of job - which has only happened for a grand total of 5 weeks in 30 years including 3x where I was laid off or PIPed (Amazon 2023) - my first priority was to get any job to stop the bleeding and keep interviewing if it wasn’t what I wanted. Luckily, only once did I have to take a stop gap job/contract (2011)

See the Epistle of James (James 5:3)

"And their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire."

Now you've got me curious about what the Bible has to say about crustaceans, and if anyone's already created a religion around Rust [the programming language].

How have you survived for 2 years without a job?

all comes down to accumulated savings and personal burn rate. Much easier for some people than others to budget for, but generally "software developer" isn't one of the more difficult positions to earn the right to be picky...

So it isn’t difficult to earn the right to be picky. But yet here you are unemployed for two years and burning through savings because of fealty toward a language…

I'm not the OP, and fealty to a language isn't why I was picky. But the reality is many software developers have substantial savings from a combination of well above average wages and non-extravagant tastes, and career paths which aren't based upon tenure, so they can always say "and others are busy accumulating two years of savings they'll never need doing things they don't want to do, because it's the default..."

And unless your investments are self sustaining - ie they throw off enough earnings to support your lifestyle without going into the principal - it is still dumb to have fealty to a language as the only reason you aren’t working.

He talked about a “burn rate” so he obviously isn’t in that position.

I talked about the burn rate. Personally I doubt using a particular language I specialised in would be a dealbreaker if I wrote code for a living, but I find the mentality that one must in all cases spend 40+ hours a week working in jobs less well matched to ones skillset and interests out of fealty to not consuming any part of the principal of ones savings (irrespective of how large they are) or making any other lifestyle changes even more unfathomable.

I didn’t say in all cases. I understand wanting to take a break because of burnout [1], family obligations, to explore a hobby, pursue a passion, etc.

But because of a language preference?

I specialize in AWS consulting + app dev. It’s something I’ve been doing for a decade, I know it well and I even did a 4 year stint at AWS working in the consulting department (full time RSU earning blue badge employee). But I wouldn’t refuse on principle to get a job that required me to spend all day on GCP or Azure.

[1] I really don’t understand burn out though. In 30 years across 10 jobs, when the “shit I have to put up with” got to high I would just get another job instead if toiling away

I shot you an email.

$100+ oil should be the least of your cost fears, especially given that the $100/barrel panic threshold from 5-10 years ago should be more like $150-200 today due to inflation over that time. Trade issues (China restricting exports, etc), currency devaluation, national debt, and macro effects of shifting demographics are setting a pretty stark stage.

Fewer people migrate to Germany, and those who already migrated struggle to find jobs. My website helps people settle in Germany. Many of my colleagues are relocation consultants. They feel the difference. I spoke with someone at the city's talent and business promotion board and they see it too.

I have much more unemployed friends and they stay unemployed longer. Employers have started requiring fluent German.

For me, AI is a bigger threat. It wrecked my prospects as a developer, which was always my fallback if the site failed. Then LLMs and AI overviews started wrecking my traffic. It made me divert a lot of attention away from making the website helpful, towards making it resilient.

If nicbou the builder is having a hard time, that's all the economic downturn data point I need.

I share a similar sentiment about Germany. I mean, we do have a recession for a couple of years already.

As a Software Developer, I've experienced layoffs of International companies just nuking their German team, for both cost and law risks (from people trying to create a worker council and the like).

I'm still employed because of my YOE, my skills & a wide network of people that have seen the quality of my work, but I see even previous CTOs and great engineers without a job.

Maybe in the years ahead, I might need to work doing something else.

I've always wanted to go to trade school and run my own business anyways, just didn't due to software engineering being so fun, interesting, challenging and ofc, well-paid.

I've been practicing my German a lot (C1+), so in worst case scenario I can do other work, maybe become an electrician or something that involves moving atoms, rather than bits.

Do you see an impact on how people behave at work?

Sorry for the delay, I do see people changing their behaviors.

A lot of them have burned out and were/are unemployed. Great engineers and all.

The ones that are employed, are grinding like there's no Tomorrow.

This changed a lot from 10 years ago, when it was much more relaxing to work with software.

Still employed, but I’m afraid layoff may come at any moment, and then I may never find a similar job, ever. If I get laid off I probably need to start a training and go into a trade ASAP.

My salary hasn't kept up with inflation, but I had some really good years before that, while keeping my expenses low, so I've been ok. I've always been pretty obsessed with keeping my fixed costs low, which helps in times like these.

I have been questioning if I need to adjust some things based on what seem to be higher monthly costs, or if I've just had a few months of one-off expenses that make it feel that way. It would probably take me a few hours to sit down and figure this out and I haven't had the chance.

I am presently employed, but it has been difficult to find a new job. The market is worse than the dot-com crash, great financial crisis, or 2020.

I am affected my a political choice, which is law which did happen in 2015/2016 in my country (EU member state).

This have been disastrous: the web sites of my administration have been replaced by web apps, of course requiring one of the web engines from the WHATNG cartel.

I'm affected by inflation. Salary increases have not kept up. Not at all.

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