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I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

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Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#51
post #9

I graduated from university at the exact moment the dot com bust occurred, and the job market went from fizzing to non-existent in the space of a few weeks. I ended up working at a local charity, and then entering into a business incubator but for a couple of years I had no money to speak of. If I felt rich, I'd have McDonalds for lunch. On the other hand, I was living in a cool part of town with a group of people wh…

I imagine its worse now with the Student debt bubble - too many people with 100k in student loans.

The average Bachelor’s graduates has $38K in debt in graduation, the price of a new car. To get to $100K you usually need to go to graduate school.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#52
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't count your chickens before they vest, in 6 months somebody might be getting them at $90

It's advisable to hold your RSUs for at least one year for a favourable tax treatment, so the 33% discount he got is still very good; he's likely not going to sell his RSUs in six months. He got the offer and decided on his start date way back in August of last year so any luck he happens by is good luck. He could've chosen to be luckier if the stock price goes down further, but I'd say this is pretty lucky as it is…

Isn't the favorable tax treatment only on the appreciation from the vest price?

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#53
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine its worse now with the Student debt bubble - too many people with 100k in student loans.

The average Bachelor’s graduates has $38K in debt in graduation, the price of a new car. To get to $100K you usually need to go to graduate school.

I'd like to see the distribution curve, I know a number of "normal" (i.e., not terrible irresponsible) people with significantly more.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#54
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finding a job in the middle of a recession is financially incredible

Anecdotally I'm still getting lots of recruiter spam from these types of companies on Linkedin and my current company that offers a good deal of RSU's is still hiring. It's not everywhere but in this particular recession and within those offers already offering lots of high value RSU's I suspect hiring is not slowing by a ton.

Recruitment spamming isn't useful for accessing hiring rate. Recruiters are always building their database of who is out there and gathering information.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#55
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine its worse now with the Student debt bubble - too many people with 100k in student loans.

The average Bachelor’s graduates has $38K in debt in graduation, the price of a new car. To get to $100K you usually need to go to graduate school.

My college had a 30k/year tuition. 4 years of that comes out to 120k. Your figure assumes >70% of costs are paid without debt. 30k/year is common now for an undergraduate degree from a state school with dorm.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#56
The dot com burst was way worse than today. One reason is that back then the industry was 10% of what it is today, or even less. The other reason is that social distancing is creating the need to start selling online for a lot of small brick and mortar shops. Most of web development companies I know are overwhelmed by the demand in the last weeks. So we might be one of the few industries that benefits from all this mess.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#57
post #52
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's advisable to hold your RSUs for at least one year for a favourable tax treatment, so the 33% discount he got is still very good; he's likely not going to sell his RSUs in six months. He got the offer and decided on his start date way back in August of last year so any luck he happens by is good luck. He could've chosen to be luckier if the stock price goes down further, but I'd say this is pretty lucky as it is…

Isn't the favorable tax treatment only on the appreciation from the vest price?

Ah I'm not too sure. That might be the case.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#58
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't count your chickens before they vest, in 6 months somebody might be getting them at $90

It's advisable to hold your RSUs for at least one year for a favourable tax treatment, so the 33% discount he got is still very good; he's likely not going to sell his RSUs in six months. He got the offer and decided on his start date way back in August of last year so any luck he happens by is good luck. He could've chosen to be luckier if the stock price goes down further, but I'd say this is pretty lucky as it is…

I'm not sure what tax treatment you're talking about, but I'm guessing you mean converting short-term capital gains into long-term. RSUs are taxed as income based on the price on the vesting date, so if you sell when it vests there's no capital gains and thus no advantage in waiting.

That said, I think Microsoft still does a 1-year cliff, so they won't have anything to sell for a year anyway.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average Bachelor’s graduates has $38K in debt in graduation, the price of a new car. To get to $100K you usually need to go to graduate school.

My college had a 30k/year tuition. 4 years of that comes out to 120k. Your figure assumes >70% of costs are paid without debt. 30k/year is common now for an undergraduate degree from a state school with dorm.

I was asked to estimate costs of doing a college.

What they estimated was that at a given moment, I would spend an average amount of an hour of money on a university's budget. This means I would actually have to budget an average of $60,000 a year to pay for it.

That's $60,000 if you count out fees on each member of their state.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#60
post #17

What’s the basis for this recession being dotcom level for tech and engineers broadly?

It could be hard for startups because of lower consumer and enterprise demand, plus VC funding drying up, but that’s still hypothetical I guess.
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