[HN Gopher] RIP Good Times (2008)
___________________________________________________________________
RIP Good Times (2008)
Author : simonpure
Score : 107 points
Date : 2022-05-19 17:56 UTC (5 hours ago)
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| davesque wrote:
| I always get a kind of morbid kick out of watching everyone do
| the same hand wringing over and over again every few years.
| [deleted]
| mtoner23 wrote:
| Chill out, talk to a friend not in tech, their business is
| probably doing great right now. Unemployment is unprecedently
| low. Things are actually pretty good right now
| gnulinux wrote:
| Except the stock market, which is in >1 year lowest.
| sophacles wrote:
| Its still higher than anything pre-covid though. If you look
| at the charts for S&P, dow, russel, nasdaq since 2008,
| there's a clear "bubble" around covid times, and the current
| values look approximately where I would expect them if there
| wasn't the covid bump.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Unemployment is low because companies have had access to really
| cheap money, and have been hiring people in an attempt to grow
| their business.
|
| This is the point of low interest rates, but it has caused
| inflation, _and_ it has caused a potential "bomb" now that
| rates are hiking.
|
| Those employees were hired in the hopes of fulfilling tasks
| which were _also_ being fueled by cheap money. When the money
| dries up (which it has), it 's only a matter of time before
| those jobs get cut.
| boringg wrote:
| Depends on which lens you look at. Is the world about to blow
| up? Most likely not. ( _Russia._ unseen asteroid). Are things
| going to be more challenging over the next 3-5 years compared
| to the last 3-5 years (less pandemic) yes. To your point,
| hopefully _if_ we are out of the acute phase of the pandemic
| then in comparison things might be better than that last two
| years though we aren 't going back to the 2010s era.
|
| If you work at a large corporation - probably stay on cruise
| control. As a founder / investor I would certainly be
| stretching out time lines and lowering expectations on
| favorable exits and if you are at a company without revenue I
| would be concerned. Macro environments have deteriorated
| rapidly - outside the fed stepping in (which would be even more
| concerning) unlikely to have great exits for awhile. Investors
| have also lost a lot of money recently so aren't likely to step
| in. Flight to quality ensues..
|
| But yes agree, everyone does need to chill out in these
| uncertain times. The sun will rise tomorrow just like it did
| today.
| baskethead wrote:
| The funny thing is that the presentation was completely wrong.
| The "good times" were only about to begin. Within a couple of
| years, tech went on probably its greatest stock market streak in
| history. If you look at tech from 2010 until 2021, the gains are
| so outsized that it caused things like massive income inequality
| in the Bay Area because the gap between tech workers and non-tech
| workers was humongous.
|
| AAPL went from $8 in 2010 to $180, not including the 28:1 split
| during that period. Google went from $300 to $3000, not including
| a 2:1 split. Amazon went from $100 to $3500, with no splits.
| Startups like Uber and Airbnb were about to be founded. Twitter
| was created only a couple of years previous. A tremendous amount
| of multi-millionaires and billionaires were minted during that
| time.
| [deleted]
| scarface74 wrote:
| Whether the Big Tech companies stock saw growth doesn't matter
| to VCs.
|
| And VCs have never consistently beat the S&P 500. They aren't
| the ones you want to take financial advice from.
| uberdru wrote:
| This is absolutely right, and likely to be the pattern for this
| downturn as well. Just some form of evolution in the digital
| and analog economies.
| gilmore606 wrote:
| I thought this would be a retrospective on the infamous Good
| Times email virus. Good times.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| Lots of young kids surprised by the business cycle. Recessions
| and downturns happen like clockwork nearly every 10 years for the
| past 50 years. Get used to it. It's not different this time. Save
| cash, dollar cost average your investments and keep living. Life
| goes on.
| fny wrote:
| A business cycle with double digit inflation and repeat supply
| shocks is not normal.
|
| A business cycle at 100%+ debt to GDP is not normal.
|
| This is a generational deleveraging that'll be painful for
| everyone.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| None of what you described is new or "not norm". Japan has
| been this way for nearly 3 decades and they are hanging
| around just fine. Sure it's not a growing behemoth but they
| are far from doomed.
| jdsully wrote:
| Double digit inflation happened before. The debt to GDP is
| new though, it's never been this high.
| bayareabadboy wrote:
| Does this crash feel uniquely frustrating? Or is that the nature
| of these things. I was in high school in 2008 so I'm not sure if
| I'm ignorant here or not.
| boringg wrote:
| Equity crash has been expected for awhile - the unsettling
| nature is how long will it go combined with the resurgence of
| inflation that we haven't since the 70s. Fed didn't manage that
| well and the 70s were tricky. The fed is a different animal now
| and so is the macro environment.
|
| Agree with a lot of sentiment - glad to see some of the hot air
| escape - there's some terrible companies and shady businesses
| out there right now. Hope we don't go into some global
| recession though - thats my concern (if all central banks work
| in lockstep).
| streetcat1 wrote:
| There is no crash. Unemployment rate is 3.6%
|
| Most of the former crashes hit the financial sector first and
| than hit the real economy. This one hit the financial sector
| and will stay there. This is why you see wallstreet / vc panic,
| but the real economy cannot find employees.
| hahaxdxd123 wrote:
| This feels extremely cathartic for me. Like we've all returned
| to our senses and are no longer pretending it's possible to
| have 100% YoY growth indefinitely for every vaguely tech
| related company.
| mdm12 wrote:
| Fundamentals matter again. It would be more cathartic if my
| portfolio wasn't down as much as it was!
| gumby wrote:
| I've lived through worse, 2008 among them.
|
| I obviously don't know where the bottom is but I do see
| multiple simultaneous contributing problems (war -> food
| problems; supply and transport problems exacerbated by Covid;
| artificially ("profiteering") high prices; a tardy (but firm)
| response from the fed -- though it is the nature of such
| responses is that they have to be tardy).
|
| Ironically the multiple causes is a positive sign: they can
| start to turn upwards independently. While the 2008 crash was a
| secular failure of a singular asset class, or perhaps more
| correctly two coupled asset classes (mortgages and CDOs). That
| was hard to work it's way out of the system, though unorthodox
| actual by the fed and other central banks helped cushion the
| shock...at a cost.
|
| So for example the crypto collapse is high profile but minor,
| even trivial, in the scheme of things.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Ah, yes, but the cracks first started appearing in 2006. That
| was when the easy loan and refinance spigot was turned off.
|
| 2022 could be this downturn's 2006. In other words, maybe,
| you ain't seen nothin' yet.
| tenpies wrote:
| The most fascinating part to me is how not like 2008 at all
| this one will be.
|
| I'm talking to every Boomer and gray beard I can - and even
| they can only go far so back. We have elements of every great
| financial, social, and demographic downfall in our midst
| right now, and a political class that seems _desperate_ to
| start WW3. I cannot help but remember how a Japanese Boomer
| once described the situation leading to WW2 in Japan: "it
| was like everybody lost their mind for a very long time".
|
| The very scary part is how utterly incapable current Western
| leaders are. Sure, occasionally a good law or policy sneaks
| through, but by and large the best way to emulate their
| actions is by asking "what would a saboteur do?". It has been
| flawless and continues to be as seen by this morning's US
| bill about making price increases in fuel illegal.
|
| Then there's how utterly over-financialized our system has
| become and it's _everywhere_ , from housing to sovereign
| debt. If anything, it's scarier because while the consumer
| balance sheet is not-that-awful, the sovereign ones that
| matter are catastrophic. That confluence of incompetent
| decision makers + desperation + big stages usually ends in
| catastrophe.
|
| _If_ we 're exceedingly lucky this would be a 2008, but I
| suspect we're still years away from any sort of "bottom" in
| either finance, demographics, or societal well-being.
| throwaway3221 wrote:
| baal80spam wrote:
| In 2008 I was 28 and I barely registered something is
| happening. Mind you, that was in Europe.
| BryanBeshore wrote:
| In 2008, I was 25 and in NYC. Seeing professionals with boxes
| full of work stuff, on their last days of work, was the norm.
| It felt like what I imagined the crash of 1929 and the
| dustbowl would be like.
| ardit33 wrote:
| 2008-2009 was bad world wide, except for Tech. Tech had a
| hiring freeze for late 2008-2009 and then things rebounded
| fast. Most large companies had minor layoffs (Except Apple and
| Facebook). Even Microsoft had layoffs, and Google (stealth shut
| down of products). Some smaller startups couldn't raise money
| and had to shut down. But things picked up full steam by 2009
| again.
|
| What saved tech? It was mobile. 2008 was the first year when
| you could write apps for the iPhone, and they were a hit. Same
| with Android later in 2008 early 2009. It started a boom of new
| companies, and then competition for talent. Also Google and
| Facebook got into a bidding war for engineers, which started
| driving up salaries.
|
| Also, a lot of the large tech companies today, were started or
| took off around that area (AirBnb, DropBox, Uber, Lyft, etc).
|
| Is this going to be another small bump 2008 for tech (a
| correction, hiring freeze, and then upwards), or a long drawn
| 2001 style bust?
|
| My bet it is going to be a 2008-2009 style of correction for
| tech (job market at least), with the 2001 style of correction
| for stocks. Why?
|
| 1. Stock were way overhauled, and coming back to pre-pandemic
| levels (almost half off for many companies).
|
| 2. Most large companies are still very profitable right now and
| have healthy margins.
|
| 3. Some will try to rein in costs, and have minor layoffs or
| hiring freezes, but no near 2001 style of busts
|
| 4. Tech is in a long term upswing trend that will last at least
| another 50 years.
| puranjay wrote:
| Do you feel that we've reached the peak of the smartphone
| enabled businesses that emerged after 2008? Like apps like
| Uber that relied on smartphones to unlock entirely new
| markets and possibilities?
|
| All we have today are optimizations on these earlier models.
| Nothing new that truly leverages any unique feature of the
| smartphone.
| avrionov wrote:
| I hope you are right.
|
| We still don't know the full extend of the current problems.
| The housing market, the crypto, the bad loans, the unicorns
| without profits.
| nwiswell wrote:
| After 2009, long term risk free rates continued their secular
| decline which culminated in March 2020 at an all time low of
| 0.54% for the 10 year Treasury yield.
|
| This was a major factor in the tech story. Rather than
| valuation being focused on _current_ profits, as is the case
| for most industrial stocks, valuation for tech is based on
| expectations of _future profits_ , i.e. growth. When long
| term interest rates are very low, these future cash flows are
| not discounted very much. Therefore, good growth numbers for
| tech in a low interest rate environment resulted in face-
| melting performance as all of that expected future profit is
| basically just assigned to the current value of the equity.
|
| That era is clearly ending. Long term interest rates hit the
| all time low and are rebounding in a way that is very
| distinct from 2009. I would not be surprised if tech stocks
| fundamentally reprice and never completely recover.
|
| Zoom out here:
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS10
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| interest rates follow inflation, it's too early to tell if
| inflation will go back being 4-7% like it was in the 1980s.
|
| The Fed for sure wants it at 2%, not 2.5% , not 1.7%...
| nwiswell wrote:
| What do you mean "too early"? Core inflation has been
| above 6% since January. The headline number is even
| higher.
|
| The Fed will be raising rates. The question is how far
| they have to go before inflation subsides, but it is
| monumentally obvious that long-term interest rates have
| to lift off. The days of zero-interest overnight rates
| are over.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=rocU
| svachalek wrote:
| I'm 50 and I've learned about every 5-15 years banks pull
| something that melts down the world economy. It's called
| "financial innovation". As others have mentioned, this episode
| is pretty painless and innocent so far, to the point that I
| personally am not sure we're actually in an episode yet. These
| little hiccups happen a lot more often than that, and we often
| forget about them a few months later. Actual meltdowns don't
| just make you feel worried and annoyed, they hurt a lot. Unless
| you're a bank.
| fartcannon wrote:
| If you're a bank, you make money before, during and after the
| meltdowns that you create. And if it looks like youre ever in
| trouble, you get bailed out by the same people whose money
| you gambled away. It's dark.
| streetcat1 wrote:
| Actually, if you read Nissim Taleb, banks are the most
| fragile companies. They have capped upside (basically
| interest rate) , and indefinite downside.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I'm only in my early 40s but as a young trader I sat next to
| people who traded the 1987 crash, Asia, Russia (90s), and the
| dotcom crash plus 9/11.
|
| Hindsight changes a lot of things. For one the market recovered
| from all previous crashes, with one major exception.
|
| I traded through 2008. It felt apocalyptic. I got a text
| message from a guy at Lehman on the Monday, surprised he was
| now out of a job. There was a queue of people at Northern Rock.
|
| We knew that a lot of bad things were about to come out,
| basically things that had been papered over to fix dotcom. The
| whole subprime thing was predictable, I went to a lunch at
| Goldman's where they basically just said it out loud, the
| subprime market is gonna explode and maybe take some other
| things with it.
|
| But what we have now feels like it's sweeping even that under
| the rug. Growth didn't bounce back hugely afterwards, it's been
| mild. But interest rates have hit a low nobody that imagined.
| The whole period since 2008 has been exceptional. A lot of
| things that seemed like frothy excess went on for a long time.
| A lot of stuff that should have died in 2008 got to live.
|
| So yeah it feels really big, but no climax thus far. No Lehman
| yet, and no Madoff. A couple of things sort of felt like maybe
| they would cascade, but didn't, eg Bill Huang's fund going
| down. For the GFC we had the two Bear Stearns funds going down
| as a preshock. Not sure if Luna really qualifies, given the
| amount of crazy things that happen in crypto.
| timr wrote:
| Lived through the first dot-com crash, the 2008 crash, and now
| this.
|
| The current reality, today, is nowhere near either one --
| speculative bubble tech has crashed, but the rest of the market
| is around February 2021 prices. The S&P500 is only just now
| entering "correction" territory.
|
| The only thing similar is that we have a ton of drama from
| people claiming that the end is near. But in 2008, the
| financial system _really was_ close to systemic collapse. Banks
| were having runs and being rescued by the FDIC. _Money market
| accounts were dropping below a dollar._ That was _crazy_.
| Seeing Terra break the buck is...not the same.
|
| Yes, inflation is high and that's concerning, but what's
| fundamentally driving a lot of the panic are the "high"
| interest rates (i.e. rates that haven't been "this high"
| since...spring of 2020). This too shall pass. Parts of the
| market that were wildly irrational will gain sanity, or they
| will go away. Fake wealth will be lost. It will be painful for
| the few who dove head-first into the froth, but to me, right
| now, this doesn't look like a moment for panic. For contrast, I
| was genuinely freaked out by what was happening in 2008.
| cammikebrown wrote:
| It's only just getting started though. We have no idea how
| bad it will get yet.
| puranjay wrote:
| How do you think it will impact startups that essentially
| grew by incentivizing users and never achieved unit
| profitability? A funding crunch can't be good for their
| survival
| timr wrote:
| I think the other thread from YC on what it means for
| startups is on point.
|
| "Survival of startups", plural, is not the metric of
| relevance. The strong will survive. The ones who were/are
| running on fumes are gonna have a bad time.
| ghaff wrote:
| In an era of belt-tightening, it's reasonable to expect
| that companies that can't even achieve a profit, including
| companies like Uber, will have to make changes and the
| people who have created lifestyles based on VC subsidies
| will have to face reality as well.
| jghn wrote:
| This is where I worry. My recollection of how the dot com
| crash unfolded was that first the bogus startups folded as
| expected. But they're part of a larger food chain. There
| were other b2b companies who had them as customers. And now
| they're out of money so they fold. Which affects other
| companies. And so on.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| To add to this. In 2008, I had a small but genuine fear that
| society itself would start collapsing. You'd see headlines
| about bankrupt municipalities turning off their 911 service
| because they ran out of cash. There were genuine bank runs on
| major consumer banks where grandmas kept their checking
| accounts. Things felt close to the brink.
|
| A lot of people forget that, because the recovery turned on
| so quickly in 2009. But nobody knew things would be so easy
| in the thick of November 2008.
| bcantrill wrote:
| You sweet summer child! First, this thing hasn't even started.
| My fellow vets of the dot com bust will remember that period in
| the summer of 2000 where we all called it "the correction": the
| sentiment was that some companies that never should have been
| funded in the first place would (obviously!) perish, but that
| those companies that "made picks and shovels" would endure. (A
| Gold Rush-era metaphor that I heard countless times.) At least
| in 2000, that optimism turned out to be misguided: when there
| are NO MINERS AT ALL there is little need for picks and shovels
| -- and the big tech companies all saw their businesses severely
| adversely affected by the end of 2000.
|
| And of course, it took years to find a bottom: the bust went so
| deep that EVERY significant tech company in ~2000 went through
| layoff after layoff after layoff over the first half of the
| next decade, as documented by the HN of the day,
| fuckedcompany.com[0]. Yes, the housing bubble started to form
| mid-decade, but tech itself hadn't really meaningfully
| recovered when 2008 arrived (and this famous Sequoia memo!) --
| and it was only from the embers of THAT bust (broadly deeper
| but much less acute in tech) that the next bubble began to
| form.
|
| So in terms of now: it's hard to know where this thing is
| going, but there are more parallels (to me) to the Dot Com Bust
| than to the 2008 Recession. I expect this thing to run pretty
| deep in tech, and I think some sectors (ahem, web3) may well
| face extinction. If it does run that deep, you will only know
| that it's over in hindsight: it will take years to recover, and
| it's only when everyone stops thinking about it that the seeds
| of a true recovery will be planted. So, get comfortable: it may
| be a while.
|
| One final note. Back in the depths of the bust (maybe 2003?), I
| saw a bumper sticker on the 101 that stuck with me: "Please
| God, Just One More Bubble." I remember thinking at that time
| that there would be no more bubbles forthcoming -- that nothing
| could possibly be as frothy as what I had lived through. I was
| wrong, of course, and I really hope the driver of that car
| cashed out on their NFT marketplace or whatever!
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company
| fullshark wrote:
| I am frustrated in that I have money but nowhere to put it,
| anxious over holding it because of inflation. Just kind of
| sitting around waiting, losing wealth.
| trey-jones wrote:
| Losing wealth to inflation might be preferable to losing it
| to equities in the coming months. Obviously nobody knows, but
| it seems long overdue. There are also positions that are
| very, very lucrative in bear markets, and I'll assume you
| know about these, or know how to find out about them.
| mistermann wrote:
| I am certainly not aware, any chance you could share a few?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. Consult a
| professional (or several), not some random muppet on HN.
|
| One way to play it is to buy long-term bonds at about the
| peak of the interest rates. Bond prices are inversely
| correlated with interest rates; as rates drop, bond
| prices rise. The longer term gives you a longer lever for
| the interest rate move to raise the price.
|
| Then, when rates bottom, sell the bonds and buy stocks.
| [Edit: Because that's the top for the bonds, and usually
| somewhere around the bottom for the stocks.]
|
| The observant will note that this requires you to know
| when the interest rates are peaking, and when they are at
| bottom. There are some technical markers that can give
| you hints, but the reality is that there is no absolute
| way of determining these things. They turn out to be
| informed judgment calls.
| tylerhou wrote:
| Buy inflation protected bonds from the government
| (TreasuryDirect) if you haven't already.
| ghaff wrote:
| While a decent recommendation, it has a fairly small cap
| for someone with a lot of money to invest.
| [deleted]
| trgn wrote:
| This is thermodynamically inevitable, at least, according to
| this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth,_Virtual_Wealth_and
| _Deb...
|
| Storing wealth for later is one of the hardest things to do.
| It is an unsolved problem, even after thousands of years.
| Capitalism has a strong claim to hint at a workable solution:
| it formulates a process in which savings can be converted
| into capital, capital being the lever to increase
| productivity, thus increasing wealth. Funnily enough, the
| accountants responded by starting to depreciate the capital
| assets, bringing it back full circle. It also necessitates
| capital being deployed productively. And that too is
| apparently not that easy either, as the current meltdown is
| showing.
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| flyinglizard wrote:
| Assets decay. Depreciating them seems more like a decision
| of a physicist rather than an account.
| puranjay wrote:
| Historically, gold has kept your purchasing power largely
| intact over long periods.
| waterlaw wrote:
| I'm the biggest gold bug ever. Been holding this awful
| asset for the last 12 years.
|
| This is the most manipulated, trash asset imaginable. The
| price of gold hasn't changed since 2011. It was $1900,
| still $1900.
|
| Worst investment of my life. Maybe 2024 - 2030 will see
| some returns in gold like we saw from 2001 - 2011.
|
| I'll keep investing in miners, because it's what I know and
| spend a lot of time reading drill results, balance sheets,
| etc.
|
| But diversifying my portfolio. Oil has done particularly
| well in the past two years. There are many other
| interesting commodities.
| JoeJonathan wrote:
| What do you mean by frustrating? In my memory of 2008, there
| was a real sense of panic, far beyond anything we're seeing
| right now. Before it was evident things had gone really wrong,
| plenty of people had a sense that something had to give--
| housing was going crazy, and I remember making $37k and
| qualifying for mortgages on NYC apartments--but inflation was
| <3% and unemployment was low.
|
| While I think we're headed for a whole new kind of disaster
| (albeit one I can't predict--unlike 2008, there's nothing
| fundamentally wrong with financing of housing, but I can't see
| how these prices are sustainable), I'm not sure it'll be
| 2008-level doom. The frustration, I think, comes from a real
| sense of the toll of inflation coupled with annoyance,
| sometimes unarticulated, that we could have put the breaks on
| by raising interest rates more aggressively long ago, circa
| 2015-2016, when the stock market started going crazy.
| BryanBeshore wrote:
| I agree with this. Basically the fed 'rescued' the system in
| 2008 by injecting capital into the system.
|
| However, this 'rescue' became the norm and they decided to
| continue easy money policy for the next 14-years. Now, here
| we are! This has been a concern for a long time now.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| Rates were being raised before the pandemic. Don't you
| remember all the complaining by the President?
| cyberlurker wrote:
| I think the hesitation was there was a minor economic
| slowdown around that time and inflation was still flat, so it
| is unclear raising rates would have been the right call.
|
| Its easy to see there is a problem now, but I don't believe
| anyone knows what amount was caused by the pandemic. Despite
| gripes everywhere, I actually think Fed policy has been very
| reasonable given the circumstances. If not for the pandemic,
| steady rate hikes were already happening and set to continue.
| csa wrote:
| > Does this crash feel uniquely frustrating?
|
| We are currently in a correction (at least officially).
|
| Whatever pain folks are feeling right now will feel trivial to
| what the pain will be like when an actual crash comes.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| This.
|
| I remember the 2008 crash and it was panic. Banks collapsing,
| large layoffs, hiring freezes, and a quick downturn.
|
| Hell the pandemic downturn in spring 2020 felt worse than
| this. Unemployment went way up, banks were pulling back,
| people were being laid off. That was an artificial crash with
| a fairly defined end time. A normal crash does not have that.
|
| Whatever this is, not a crash. Or at least yet.
| BryanBeshore wrote:
| Tech has crashed, and is very much in a recession, while
| the rest of the economy has been operating (decently)
| smoothly. This said, other parts of the economy are
| starting to feel knock-on effects of inflation, higher
| rates, and supply issues.
|
| Things could certainly get a lot worse. 2008 was brutal,
| though.
| puranjay wrote:
| Yeah this is not even remotely a crash. Even laggards who
| bought anything in late 2020 are still in profit. Anyone who
| bought anything pre 2020 is wildly in profit.
|
| In 2008, SPX eventually crashed to 700ish - a level it had
| last seen in 1997. A whole decade of investor wealth was
| wiped out
|
| Right now, we haven't even seen the pandemic era wealth wiped
| out. This is honestly a paper cut compared to a proper
| 2008-like crash
| dvirsky wrote:
| I don't know if this is just the start of a bigger thing, but
| this is nothing like 2008 for sure; in 2000 I was around but
| didn't work in tech directly so it affected me less. 2008 was a
| complete panic, people thought it was literally the end of the
| financial world as we know it, the market collapse was just the
| tip of the iceberg.
|
| In 2008 I was working at a start-up that had plenty of cash,
| but pretty crappy investors who panicked and decided they want
| their money back, and through the board forced the company to
| basically shut down, didn't even pay us our last paycheck or
| the severance required by law in my country. So I found myself
| unemployed (with a baby BTW), my wife was also laid off, we
| pretty quickly had to withdraw money from our not-that-big
| savings, my company was car gone and I needed a new car, and no
| company around even thinking of hiring. It was extremely scary.
| I did some freelance work for a couple of months, then found a
| job at a pre-seed start-up that managed to scrape a couple
| hundred K somehow, and got by for a bit. After a year things
| started to turn around and things went great up until now. But
| it was really traumatic.
| uberdru wrote:
| I saw this the first time around. Times are different. I do
| recall one VP wandering the halls loudly opining that "no start-
| up will ever go public again." In 2008.
| fullshark wrote:
| He was basically right!
| BryanBeshore wrote:
| Hahah. Because "times were different" and the money, well,
| that just kept flowing in the private market.
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| Recessions are for the economy what workouts are for humans and
| what forest fires are for the soil.
|
| They are essential , matter of fact fundamental for the long term
| stability of the economy.
|
| We should welcome them like we welcome hard workouts, instead we
| are wussies unfortunately.
|
| People are already calling for Jay Powell to rescue markets by
| ignoring inflation and cut interest rates once again, just to
| make their favorite meme stock rally again...
| 1270018080 wrote:
| I'm just surprised how quickly things are going badly. My company
| is trying to get a round of funding. If you asked me 8 weeks ago
| how it was going, I would've said "We're in a very strong
| position, hiring like crazy, tons of growth upcoming. We're going
| to get a ton of money." Now, it's "Bad. Who knows."
|
| We're still going to get money, but it's likely 75% less than we
| were thinking 8 weeks ago. And we're a real company with a real
| product and demand, not web3 or whatever. I can't imagine how
| those companies are going to fare.
| boringg wrote:
| They are going to going to go down like a Lead Zeppelin.
| mstipetic wrote:
| Good.
| goblinux wrote:
| a distributed lead zeppelin
| ajross wrote:
| Things turn around like this because the truth is that everyone
| (including and especially VCs) _knew_ that things were
| overheated, and had been for well over year. But you still want
| to cut deals in a market that 's overheated because if you
| don't someone else will, and there's a lot of money still being
| made.
|
| But once it turns over, the game is up. They know it's not
| coming back for another cycle for the same reason they knew
| that existing funding and valuation numbers were unsustainable.
| boringg wrote:
| Seems likes a good time to dust off the presentation and
| repackage it for todays woes.
| codeulike wrote:
| The economy is like a software stack thrown together out of
| random chaotic components and now and again it blue-screens and
| people squint at the hex error message and pretend they know the
| bug that caused it but really they don't. And the important thing
| is to keep backups
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| And the free market is a system where software runs without an
| operating system to keep an eye on fair scheduling and resource
| use.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| 'Free market.'
| speed_spread wrote:
| 'Operating System'
| tetrahedr0n wrote:
| > Free market: an economic system in which prices are
| determined by unrestricted competition between privately
| owned businesses.
|
| Interesting concept, I wonder if it works.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Sounds better than what we have today.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| daily reminder that we've never seen buffett indicators coming
| off this level:
|
| https://www.longtermtrends.net/market-cap-to-gdp-the-buffett...
|
| this could get really, really bad, in a way most people aren't
| prepared to think about
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