Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What skills will be useful during an upcoming recession/depression?

news.ycombinator.com

181–190 of 194 posts

Re: Ask HN: What skills will be useful during an upcoming recession/depression?

#181
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without knowing as much about the topic I really feel the same way too. This pandemic might take a "long" time but it will end and we will find ourselves with the same knowhow and infrastructure that we had going in. Surely things will get shaken up but there is a strong desire to go back to life as it was before. It's mostly a question of how that happens.

The biggest consequence will be creating two tracks of people: those who immediately lost their job, and those who could work remotely. 3+ months of earning is non-trivial, and they'll never get them back. Hopefully any stimulus will be aimed at recently un- or under-employed folks. If I, as a working software developer, end up getting a check... the system is seriously unfair.

Even three weeks of earnings is non-trivial. e.g. hair salons are shut down by government order as non-essential. Barbers and stylists typically rent their chair, are considered self-employed, and do not qualify for unemployment income. They are screwed right now.

They are being told by their landlords they have to keep renting their chairs, perhaps at a discount, because it's a lease. They are being encouraged to get SBA loans by the government, and their landlord. This is vile and immoral. The mere suggestion is unethical feudal nonsense.

Make some people go into debt in order to help secure the income of their lord? It's uncivil to say it out loud. Turning it into official policy is an abomination. It indicts the whole culture of a society to do this.

I think as a class, they should declare bankruptcy. Force the next higher class to find redress, by mortgagees taking haircuts on loans, all the way up to pensioners and 401ks. The entire point of the free market is that it's supposed to account for these risks, and absorb them equitably. If the market or government demands some low rung people experience worse misery than others, it is a recipe for widespread loss of trust in a system, that quite frankly right now does not deserve trust.

Re: Ask HN: What skills will be useful during an upcoming recession/depression?

#182

Skills are tactics. Dealing with a recession is about strategy. Most importantly: this is a time to focus on reducing risks, rather than maximizing profit. This is a crappy time to start a startup or being a freelancer. Keep your job, build your skills, save money, and start in a few years. Think about your job's security: Pay attention to your employers annual/quarterly reports. Which industries does your employer s…

>This is also a bad time to change jobs - depending on your local laws, it probably is much, much easier to lay off someone who just started. Counterpoint: this is a great time to change jobs. There is much higher upside on equity packages.

What's that ole Soros quote? Something like "when others are greedy, be cautious; when others are cautious be greedy"

Re: Ask HN: What skills will be useful during an upcoming recession/depression?

#183

I'd recommend learning about markets and economics. My suspicion is that states will continue to implement all steps necessary to contain the virus over the next 18 months and bail out all businesses and consumers in order to keep the productivity of the economy close to the level prior to the outbreak. Depending on how difficult it will be to contain the virus, this might require funds on an unprecedented scale in m…

Do you have any advice on where to read up on this sort of thing? I’ve always been interested but never acted upon it. Now seems like a good time to understand more about how our world actually works in terms of the economy

Take a look at the Economics & Finance videos on Khan Academy [1]. I have only watched some of them, but those I watched were good.

You could read some standard macroeconomics textbooks, but I'd advise against doing that, since they are expensive and unnecessarily formalized using elementary math, which doesn't really add anything to the material itself. There's however a good book on monetary economics by Mishkin called Economics of Money, Banking and Financial Markets, which is really good, but the Khan Academy videos on banking mostly cover the same material.

Personally I've learned a lot from reading economic history. Some books I can recommend are: Eichengreen - Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System

Frieden - Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century

Soros - Alchemy of Finance (skip the first couple of chapters on his reflexivity theory, but the 'diary' chapters are a gold mine)

Ferguson - The Ascent of Money (probably a good book to start, the others might be harder to completely grasp for a beginner)

Some other good book I can recommend (not history books) are: The Secrets of Economic Indicators: Hidden Clues to Future Economic Trends and Investment Opportunities by Baumohl

Inside the House of Money by Drobny (mostly about global macro trading, but you would learn a lot about economics along the way, would only recommend this after having built up some basic knowledge though)

Most importantly you should start reading the Economist, which has really high quality economics and finance articles, but is released only weekly and offers a good trade off with regards to time commitment and knowledge about what's going on in the world. Note that you will probably need to know some basics in order to understand everything, but you can look up things along the way. Economics really isn't hard to learn if you have a technical background.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy/playlists?view=50&s...

Re: Ask HN: What skills will be useful during an upcoming recession/depression?

#184
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without knowing as much about the topic I really feel the same way too. This pandemic might take a "long" time but it will end and we will find ourselves with the same knowhow and infrastructure that we had going in. Surely things will get shaken up but there is a strong desire to go back to life as it was before. It's mostly a question of how that happens.

The biggest consequence will be creating two tracks of people: those who immediately lost their job, and those who could work remotely. 3+ months of earning is non-trivial, and they'll never get them back. Hopefully any stimulus will be aimed at recently un- or under-employed folks. If I, as a working software developer, end up getting a check... the system is seriously unfair.

> If I, as a working software developer, end up getting a check... the system is seriously unfair.

What if you end up losing your employment a month or so down the road? The 'everyone getting a stimulus check' isn't great, but the effort to means test and make those somewhat arbitrary decisions is non-trivial, and there will always be someone who really did need it, but didn't seem to need it based on some algorithm.

Re: Ask HN: What skills will be useful during an upcoming recession/depression?

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hitting Syria give me the chills.

It's come to Afghanistan via Iran. That may be the least prepared country for it.

I was thinking the same thing about the densely-populated Gaza Strip. They're already severely lacking in medical needs.

Re: Ask HN: What skills will be useful during an upcoming recession/depression?

#187
post #34

I think the most important skill is learning how to gain access to zero-interest loans from the Federal Reserve. This skill allows you to lend to your buddies who can purchase distressed businesses and properties for pennies on the dollar, which gives you and them the opportunity to make billions in profits while everybody else is suffering. I’m still trying to learn how to do this; if anybody has any information abo…

Another option is to get massive zero-interest loans that the government will forgive later. That way you don’t have to go through the performance of buying a company, you can just pocket the cash.

We will need negative interest loans, not just 0 interest to buy overpriced assets such as real estate.

Re: Ask HN: What skills will be useful during an upcoming recession/depression?

#189
post #90

> I'm afraid that in this new reality my software/management skills won't be of any use in 6 months. First skill: Patience Second skill: Adaptability Third skill: Resilience. Software will always be needed. You just might need to work a "beer money" job for a little while.

or learn how to make your own beer

It's only cheaper to make your own if you drink a lot and get it perfect the first time around. Otherwise, you waste a lot of money while you learn, or end up only saving a few pennies a bottle but wasting your time.

That's why the people who get into brewing do it because they enjoy it, not for the money!

(The last time I made beer I forgot about it and found the barrel a few months later!)

Re: Ask HN: What skills will be useful during an upcoming recession/depression?

#190

Honestly, I don’t believe we will see a huge depression unless there is war. People are still available for work and all the equipment used for producing value is in good conditions. So long as government provides fiscal stimulus, depression shouldn’t happen. In case it happens though, you are better of farming stuff like potatoes and chicken than developing software until government steps in with fiscal stimulus, th…

We may be okay if COVID is our only real threat. Self isolation won't be impeded, and hospitals will not over saturate. If anything disturbs self isolation, like a massive earthquake, drought, Australian like fires, or like you say a war, there is no chance of a quick rebounding economy. That being said, as an aside, imagine slipping into a 3 month coma from a heavy Christmas 2019 party and waking up to eight other p…

One fear I have is that the current US administration will bring one (a war) to us sooner rather than later.
Post reply on HN