Ask HN: How did you make it through the 2008 financial crisis or dotcom bust?

I cannot agree with this strategy at all. Pay cut requires a time cut. And with that extra time, do whatever you want, but one of those things might be finding alternatives. It is not your responsibility as an employee to prop up the business.

SBA Payroll Protection Program. Your company could take out a loan and pay you 100%. 8 weeks is forgiven (strings are attached). The interest rate beyond 8 weeks loaned is 0.5%.

I graduated college right in 2001 and needed Visa sponsorship. A complete no go. I was unemployed for all practical purposes for 3 years until May 2004.

I remember job requirements turned absolutely bonkers with every acronym under the sun and 20 years of experience required to boot.

I took the opportunity to go to grad school and spent hours every day building projects with technologies I thought worth while. It paid off.

When the economy picked up again I had an awesome portfolio and a huge variety of skills. I had even published a book on MySQL while unemployed for wrox press.

Ironically I was making the biggest money in my life in tech 2008-2009

Working for a traditional tech firm, I went to lunch or happy hour every week with my more adventurous former peers who had moved to dotcomland. Since I could never “get it” (whatever it was they were doing, or how it was ever going to make money), I just took the salary increases old tech made to stay competitive.

Post dotcom bust, moved to CA and got a rent controlled apt and stayed with old tech. Researched how to short the housing market but never managed to find Michael Burrey. 401k / investments were highly defensive by 2007, took a 10% hit.

People need to look for something beyond changing the world through their jerbs and start living well below what their lifestyle can afford. Perhaps it’s having Depression-era relatives, or going to school with boom-and-bust oil kids who got a corvette from daddy and then had to drop out of SMU when daddy went bankrupt.

The cycles are like spring and fall. Whether you or Wall Street see it or not, it will always come. Always. Squirrel away those acorns and good luck.

I always changed my life shortly before one of these crisis took effect. Why? I don't now... Dot-Com bust: After school in 2000, I worked for a small startup which hired me full-time because I was able to code in Java. I had to quit this because of mandatory military service (was still mandatory in Germany in 2000) and later moved out of my home town to study computer science. For me, I could only pay for this with a side job and in early 2001 there are still huge job opportunities if you had some coding skills. I don't now, but I opted for the least modern industry and went to a company building software for steel-rolling and warehouse logistics. When the towers collapsed I was in the first month in the job and in my studying city (Aachen). Everything else went down but the industry I worked for was quite immune. They even kept me as a student worker while laying off other employees around me. I learnt a lot in this times, because I worked with developers having a coding experience of 40years AND they were open for new stuff. In 2007/2008: Ok, I skipped a lot of studying in between and in 2007 my employee offered me a full time job (skipping studying completely). I refused and quit the job from my side. Lived on savings and started to complete studying full-time - then everything went down. I actually owned some stocks and hedged them with put-options 4 weeks before the stock market collapsed. Sold everything with no losses. During studying I went for the more theoretical parts of computer science - that turned out to be very helpful because with most modern tech, I just needed to conclude which theory now was brought to live. Now: I quit my well paid consulting job in December 2019 to build a startup. Selling digital marketing products for brick&mortar business. Not the best thing for the moment, but I got some cash in the backhand and lets see if this (unintended) strategy pays off again.

In my experience, the last hired are the first laid off, regardless of performance. This applied in a large corporate context, involving human resources and myriad decision makers far removed from immediate work.

If your network primarily consists of coworkers, they probably won't be able to help you find new work that you'll be interested in. Don't hold it against people if you don't get referrals.

People are generally good, don't forget that. Situations compel action from the top down (to say it nicely).

This debacle isn't like the Financial Crisis. I worked in finance for almost ten years and was directly impacted by industry changes. Head count wasn't restored to pre-crisis levels. There were permanent, structural changes. The situation now is different. Government and shareholders aren't compelling structural changes. This is cause for hope, but sometimes getting what we wish for isn't what is best for us.

I turned hardship into opportunities for advancement. It came at great personal cost. Yet, I believe that the best days are ahead of me because of what I did in response to career instability. My story is far from finished. So, I am hesitant to give advice. However, I am comfortable with advising anyone considering business school for job change or advancement to reconsider, assuming you are paying. Tuition is higher than ever. Student loans and other debt will constrain your decisions and opportunities. Academic accomplishments can be achieved without taking on $175,000 in loans. Business school is rewarded by students more than students rewarded by business school. An MBA is highly regarded by those who have them. The reality is that these people were going to succeed regardless of the degree. While they are complicit in perpetuating a myth, it is largely a consequence of bias.

If you are laid off and would like perspective from someone outside of your network and can relate, you can contact me.