In 2000 I was a dev at an internet payments company and the work dried up and I was lucky to have bounced to enterprise software 6 months earlier before everyone was out of work. Leading up to it tech salaries skyrocketed. In 1997 I was making $70k and by 2002 I was at $125k (78% increase). Everyone I talked was a visual basic (VB) developer (lol).
In 2008 I was in a small startup that was pretty toxic and I could not get any interviews and one that I did they significantly low balled me on the offer. Still kept my job, Law and banking were decimated but tech had not fully recovered from 2000 so stayed pretty even keeled with no hiring.
2009+ tech has a resurgence with big tech and salaries recently skyrocketing. I remember hiring a mid-sr level dev in a startup in 2017 for $150k and now they are getting $400-500k.
Whether you keep your job or not is mostly luck here are a few tidbits of wisdom.
1. Be in mandatory roles and not nice to have. The staple jobs won't get cut but the newer ones or nice to haves can and will.
2. Be at a company that has some cash. If you are on a C/D round and are not profitable look out.
3. Be essential. I have always had a strong work ethic so I know during layoffs that I will go in the later rounds if at all. People doing a mediocre job look out. Companies don't layoff their best people first.
4. Make sure you always have 6 months of cash on hand in case you lose your job. People in 2008 lost their jobs and then their property or visa-versa due to not having a safety net.
5. Be humble and have a great attitude. This is just a general statement and not about layoffs. Be that person that the company can't live without.
The economy can turn on a dime just like what happened with COVID. One day things are great and the next we are locked in our houses for a year.
TC: 750k
YOE: 30
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comments
I also have to LOL at the desperate kids going "TC?" "Net worth??". Missing. The POINT. Guys like that will be first to walk the plank when companies cut corners and even when it happens they won't understand why.
You are right - make yourself indispensable, but not in a toxic way. Be good at your job and be the person that everybody wants to work with, not has to work with. Be in a position in your company that delivers real value, and in a company that delivers real value. When the hard times come, it's the trivia and the fluff that gets culled.
It's interesting how different today is compared to 2000 though - all those stupid web companies that weren't even making money, yet their share prices bid up into the sky. Alan Greenspan saying that the economy was "recession proof". For me, incidentally, that was one of the warning signs. I grew up as a kid in a country that was constantly in a recession so I never believe the good times last forever. I transitioned out of the startup I was in, also a payments company, and went into the tech side of the construction / design industry, and from there into tech consultancies through the 2000s. I did all the things you suggest and I was never laid off. I took a pay cut after 2008 but that came back after a while. But I never got cut when so many people I knew did.
This is a great post, and good reading especially for the kids who proliferate on Blind.
I have seen the 2000 and 2008 downturns. In both occasions, I was in startups that went bust.
If there is a parallel to the dot-com bubble here, it is the mania in crypto/nft - which could go poof, and nobody would even notice.
the kids on blind have a lot of learning in store.. as echoed here as well: https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/1520546244707373057