Devs laid off in previous downturns: How did you survive?

I was laid off during the covid crash, and was devastated. I spent a month recovering from burnout, then got started on making some money of my own with web apps. The apps were simple, but made enough money to pad my savings. They used browser automation to jump in front of shopping queues at popular web stores like sneaker heads or hype beasts shop at, or analyzed rudimentary crypto trends using machine learning. It was fulfilling to work on what truly interested in me, and the meager money gave me time to regain my footing.

When it came time to look for new employment, companies were generally impressed with my ability to make money in new and creative ways. My advice now to people struggling to break into the industry is to make some money with programming however they can. Coders who can Leetcode their way out of an algorithm are a dime a dozen. Programmers who are familiar with the infrastructure modern applications need to handle payments, send emails, preserve data in storage, and maintain uptime as a distributed cloud system, are much more valuable. They stand out from the pack because they are capable of the leadership and innovation that companies desperately need.

I was laid off from Eazel when their funding fell through in the 2001 dot-com crash. The founders were ex-Apple people and they arranged for Apple to interview those of us who had been laid off. I wasn't hired, but the people who did get jobs there made Safari. I spent the next few months at the library and watching my bank balance dwindle away, until some of my other former coworkers were hired at Danger and got me an interview there.

1) like a startup that cannot get new funding, you need to concentrate on your "burn rate". Consider whether or not you can move to less expensive housing, for example. Groceries over restaurants. How many streaming services do you need in the short term.

2) look at your resume, and think what you can do in the short term to improve it.

3) your reputation can precede you; if you get laid off, try to make sure you go out in a professional manner that will cause people who end up at other companies (that might be hiring) to think well of working with you again.

4) when unemployed, it can be tempting to get lazy; make it a requirement that you do something every day towards getting a job, even when you don't feel like it. Make a project plan on how you will find a job (what job boards to check on, what skills to brush up, etc.), and hold yourself to it in a way that keeps you in a work-like mindset.

5) if you haven't interviewed in a long time, look at each opportunity to interview as a chance to practice, because interviewing is definitely something one can do better or worse, even for the same actual job skills. Even if you're not sure you would want the job, take the interview as if you might, because you might be surprised, and also you at least get interview practice.

In the 2001+ timeframe, I saw two paths work for people:

1) Go someplace that looks boring but solid like health care. Pay might not be as good, projects might not seem as outwardly sexy, but it will be a solid paycheck.

2) Go someplace like a Google or Microsoft, IE: big tech, where even if one team is having cutbacks another will be hiring.

In the 2008+ timeframe... maybe it was the niche I was in, but I really didn't see much of a tech slowdown. I was contracting for part of that, and in a down economy companies like contractors so that they are expendable.

I was never laid off but I and had to lay some people off during the dot com bust, yet during the 2008 downturn my teams all grew in size (just a little slower than the prior years). Mainly what I saw was companies that had solid foundations, even if they were VC backed and unprofitable, did fine overall. They just had to be a bit less speculative and more calculating how they used their funds. Ones in speculative areas or doing weird shit got hammered and weeded out of the market fairly quick.

I personally never witnessed reasonable quality engineers not able to move around and find work (outside a short 6ish month window during the peak of the dot com bust), sure it took a little longer for some, but we are still talking like 2-3 months. I changed jobs twice during the dot com bust and recovery as well as during the 2008 cycle, but I had solid experience. The people who were mainly laid off were the inexperienced that didn't have a tech degree. e.g. where companies took a chance on training them to fill a tech role which they were struggling to fill during the boom cycle. People regardless of degree or no-degree that had 5-10 years did fine generally, and 10+ years did well as long as you were reasonable in salary requests.

The biggest issue I saw was salaries stagnated for a really long time and companies took advantage of the job market to hold the salary growth down. To be clear, salaries didn't go down so much as they just leveled off and stayed there for WAY too long IMO.

There was some good that came from the dot com bust. The market weeded out all the speculative job seekers who had no business writing code. It removed a lot of the poorly ran companies, and it forced companies to pay attention to the fundamentals. So it wasn't all bad either, and I think we were healthier after for quite a while.

Hopefully this cycle turns into another correction and we clean up some stuff and it happens quickly. Nothing says it has to be a horrid all or nothing event, most recessions aren't. 2008 was unusually tough on a lot of people but left the tech area relatively unscathed. This one won't be quite the same, but HNWP & LP's need to still put their money to work, so there will still be plenty of money for decent companies. And tech is everywhere and not optional for companies anymore, so there will be a market for good engineers and like positions.

I was hired during the years of/following the 09 downturn. It consisted of applying to 250+ positions and taking the first thing that came up.

I was just graduating from college in 2001 and I needed H1B sponsorship! It was scary times - but "luckily" I got hired making $14/hr as a developer. Even though I was underpaid, I was thankful for it.

My advice is to have emergency funds saved up that can last you at least 6 months or more. And always build a network even during good times - it pays off when job searching during recession.

I was never laid off because I never had a job, but I lived through those 2 downturns and many people I know got laid off. As I lived in EU countries, they got unemployment benefits without issues, but even then some sold their houses and also got jobs they were overqualified for and that made less money, because you cannot predict how long a crisis will last. There was never a job issue in these previous two downturns for good developers with good resumes, even if they had to be laid off. Cannot imagine that will be different this time.

Always good to cut costs as far as you can to make sure you have cash saved in case it really goes bad.

There was/is lot of money slushing around in startups/companies that are not doing well for traditional standards (p/e for instance); they might fall quickly when things get worse. If you work in one of those, you might already want to try to jump over to a (big) traditional corp that is running healthy profits. Something boring that hasn’t been propped up with a lot of vc money or hype. Might pay less but it will probably weather the storm.

Even when unemployed, you should never be jobless. Your full time job should be finding a new job.

By applying for unemployment benefits. That only works if you live in a sane country.