from Hacker News

The Coronavirus Recession and What It Means for Developers

by rileywatkins on 3/7/20, 4:45 PM with 34 comments

• by _bxg1 on 3/7/20, 11:51 PM

  I'm currently about to change jobs. The company I'm leaving is a small AI company with much of its business coming in the form of speculative investments/proof-of-concept contracts from large corporations with research budgets.

  I'm mainly leaving because the new opportunity is more exciting. But between the economic downturn and the "AI autumn", I'm definitely feeling like I made the right decision.

  The new company is small but solid, unbeholden to investors, and it provides a very tangibly valuable service to an industry which itself provides a very tangibly valuable product that basically everyone needs. So it feels like a good place to be when the storm hits.

• by elcapitan on 3/8/20, 8:24 AM

  I'm working in a travel startup, so this is quite scary. I hope that travel picks up quickly once the initial hit is ingested. But honestly right now I worry more about the health of older relatives than my job as a developer.

• by ErikAugust on 3/7/20, 9:56 PM

  “FAANG types aren't going to be as affected as early stage startup types or freelancer types.”

  I wouldn’t be so sure. Corporations use down cycles to shed employees. And often they will hire contractors.

• by spopovich on 3/7/20, 9:42 PM

  I’m curious, as someone who wasn’t in this field in 2008, what was that period like for devs?

• by almost_usual on 3/7/20, 9:46 PM

  I didn't even think about the Airbnb IPO until I read this, pretty horrible timing for them.

• by gentleman11 on 3/8/20, 6:20 AM

  Not familiar with the author. Do they have a track record for predicting things like this, or are they just speculating?