If COVID-19 causes a recession, will it be harder to get a job in tech? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: engineheat
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2020, 12:20:36 am
content: I'm sure it'll be harder, but not sure how much tech companies would be affected compared to other industries. Any advice?Thanks

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2020, 12:31:14 am
content: I just heard Amazon is booming and expanding hiring more stuff. I think the businesses that interac with customers in person will suffer the most. Technology ones probably not that much. We just having a story here with Toyota plants closing only for a few days for desinfection after an employee confirmed case.

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2020, 12:46:25 am
content: UPS is hiring like mad and a buddy of mine is a truck driver and he told me today that they're looking for drivers. I think home delivery will do WELL for the foreseeable future. That in turn will more computer systems for online ordered, package routing and tracking, etc.Tech should do WELL too. There's going to be a huge demand for more and better medical diagnostic equipment. Telecommuting is also going to be in high demand.

author: duak
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2020, 01:20:34 am
content: Some tech will do better, some will do worse. Medical tech will probably do very well. Gov'ts will likely shovel money into respirators, machines that go 'ping' and buildings to store them. They probably won't spring the money to staff them.I expect consumer stuff to take a shellacking if disposable income goes down the loo. If we have a credit contraction like in 2008/9 big ticket items like cars will also take a beating. There might be shiny new things in the Apple store, but fewer people will be able to afford them.I've never been through an international crisis like this before. Most Gov'ts are doing things to themselves simultaneously - it's sort of like group self flagelation. I'm older and more likely to suffer from COVID-19, so I thinks It's medically necessary but it's counter to economics as we've come to understand it.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2020, 06:06:59 am
content: I do not expect added delivery, stocking, and warehouse jobs to be other than short term.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2020, 06:19:36 am
content: My employer just enacted a hiring freeze.I think there's an important distinction between now, and the recession or depression likely to follow. Right now everyone is panicking about the virus and trying not to spread it, so companies that are well positioned to serve people in this situation are doing very well. This is temporary though, at some point the virus will die down and demand for masks, sanitizer, delivery and other services will plummet, nobody is going to care about any of that stuff once the perceived threat of infection has passed. Unfortunately the economy overall is likely to take a tremendous hit and it's very possible that the whole thing comes crashing down. If/when this happens it will be very hard to find a job anywhere, once the dominoes start falling people panic, become uncertain and cut back. This reduces demand for everything non-essential which causes companies providing that stuff to cut back and lay people off. Layoffs make people skittish and they cut back further which leads to more layoffs and the cycle continues as a positive feedback loop. I've been through the first dot com bust in the early 2000's and the recession around 2008 and both were rough. I was fortunate to be employed through both of those times but many were not so fortunate, I watched a lot of friends and colleagues pack up their desks and get escorted out of the building. Hiring freezes were widespread and people spent a lot of time looking for jobs.

author: julianhigginson
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2020, 06:30:12 am
content: I've seen a few recessions in my career, now.If this pandemic turns into a full blown worldwide recession, then YES you can expect product development worldwide to slow down.Less money floating about + less optimism about being able to sell a new thing in the immediate future means less money is invested in designing new things.Of course there's winners and losers and changes in market conditions will mean some kinds of companies will do very well.... Or some new product that will become useful to people in whatever the specific situation looks like could still make lots of cash, and manufacturing companies will be all looking to be making things like that... but I think overall, most manufacturing these days produces useless bullshit for the sake of consumption, and people in a recession won't be able to just blindly consume at the rate they have recently, so won't have as much need for useless bullshit. So in general, expect manufacturing will be hit. The market for product development work will contract.On the plus side, if it lasts for long enough, maybe we'll reverse climate change without needing world leaders and fossil fuel billionaires to actually do anything?

author: Electro Detective
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2020, 09:34:09 am
content: If theusual suspectmoney shifters drag thisBSout for another 6 months, the average small business and home gamer is FKTand may take 10 years to -perhaps- get back to where they are nowYou don't need forecast graphs, pie charts or parroted expert air based gab to work it out.Hit the streets and see most businesses in most places dying a slow painful demise.In 3 months there will be empty shops and warehouses everywhere, with locked out owners homeless on the streets (without dunny paper)once the banks seize their assets/homes/cars/Macs/Rigols to cover business debtsIf people snap out of their brain freeze in the next couple of weeks and just get on with it, there's a slim chance for recovery..and glimmer of hope to score a slab of dunny paperi.e. YES it may/willgood luckbe harder to get a job in tech,and everywhere else

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2020, 04:57:13 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on March 20, 2020, 06:06:59 amYeah. Dunno about that... It's hard to tell. But I'm suspecting the crisis may have a lasting effect on people's buying habits. Of course it will all depend on how long the crisis lasts. We'll see...

author: engineheat
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2020, 06:42:03 pm
content: The reason I'm asking is because I work in a manufacturing plant and I can't work from home. Although I'm a white collar employee and lots of my work can be done from home, the culture here frowns upon it. I'm thinking about quitting and look for a new job in tech, where I can work from home during all this.I've out of school for 3 years and this is my first job, but I already got $100k+ saved in the bank so even without income I should last a awhile. Just wondering how bad it's gonna look to future employers if I quit like this..thanks

author: chris_leyson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2020, 07:01:08 pm
content: @engineheat: I'm in the same situation, I work in a manufacturing plant and there isn't really a lot of work I can do from home. We have a similar culture that also frowns on working from home. I can't work on anything live because of safety rules etc so for now it looks as if I will have to go into work until the plant gets shut down. If you get a new job and quit then I'm sure any future employers will understand your situation.

author: rgarito
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2020, 07:07:34 pm
content: Probably depends on the tech...My company (Citrix) is buried in work (because everyone uses our technologies to work from home; nursing stations; etc). Only reason why we can't hire right now is there is literally no time to conduct interviews/nobody free enough to do it and it takes about 3-6 months to train someone new even if they are highly skilled.This is one time that I am not in fear of losing my job AT ALL....

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2020, 07:37:44 pm
content: If working from home becomes the norm, I wonder if it would push investment in hardware encoded remote desktop. One of the biggest problems with most remote desktop solutions I have used is slow response. The only exception to that is Dell's iDRAC, which is hardware encoded.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2020, 07:42:45 pm
content: That's kind of surprising actually, as fast as modern CPUs are inassuned the lag of remote desktop was simply the amount of data that needs to be sent. It's very rare that I use remote desktop anymore though, if I need to remote into a system I just use a terminal. Anything that I can't do from the command line I do on my local system then upload the result.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2020, 10:48:50 pm
content: Assuming a good remote desktop implementation, performance is dominated by latency and bandwidth unless video is being played on the remote system.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2020, 11:13:18 pm
content: Most likely the next "killer" remote desktop solution would leverage hardware encode blocks inside modern GPUs rather than using a dedicated ASIC like iDRAC does. I think Nvidia basically has the technology close to perfected, all they have to do is make a few tweaks and rebrand it for office use. Besides the software, all that's really needed is a cheap Nvidia GPU for the PCs that don't already have one.Quote from: David Hess on March 23, 2020, 10:48:50 pmWhere more or less every remote desktop solution has fallen over in my experience is when using data visualization software, especially with live feeds that constantly refresh the view or manually rotating a 3D view.

author: wizard69
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2020, 12:02:26 pm
content: Quote from: engineheat on March 20, 2020, 12:20:36 amThe economy can not survive this blanket shut down for much more than a week or two. There isn't a risk of recession but rather a massive depression, frankly one that outstrips the depression of the 1930's. So the answer to your question is pretty simply demand and end to the shut down and let the chips land where they may. That means lots of telephone calls to your representatives and senators.As in the past your ability to survive will based upon what is between your ears because the remaining business will have the pick of the litter so to speak. It actually may be a good time to start a business though if you can do so with minimal capital investment. We could enter into a year or more of 'short contract only' work until companies can actually start hiring.To perfectly honest the best thing the populace could do is demand an end to the shut down and let the chips fall where they may. It is pretty simple, the longer the shut down the more damage we do to the economy. Dome may think that that is horrible but the reality is the only reasons we have a shut down is to make life easy for the medical industry. Any argument that they are containing the virus is nonsense considering the virus is world wide now. Those that are likely to die from the virus will no matter what until there is a valid treatment.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2020, 12:38:24 pm
content: Quote from: wizard69 on March 24, 2020, 12:02:26 pmI don't think it's that simple. If the whole world were shut down for a few weeks, then the virus could theoretically blow over, leaving no new cases and the economy should recover fairly quickly. If we do nothing, then it has the potential to cause more economic harm, in the long run. Of course we know the whole world isn't going to shutdown, but China has already proven this can be contained. It will be interesting to see what happens to China now. I think this will make the rest of the world weaker and China will dominate more.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2020, 04:27:00 pm
content: They need to at least define a length for the shutdown. Here where I am the stay home order is "at least" 2 weeks and the uncertainty is paralyzing. I mean as a business how do you plan for that? Do you hunker down and hope you can survive 2 weeks or do you lay off all your employees betting that the lockdown will stretch out longer? It seems better to just say "we're going to try this for 2 weeks and then that's that", if it doesn't work it doesn't work, but ditch the uncertainty.This all certainly shows how woefully unprepared we are these days. We have few manufacturing facilities left anymore and those we do have are heavily automated highly optimized operations that already run 24/7. Gone are the days when we could simply hire a ton of people and crank the output way up to mass produce huge quantities of stuff in an emergency. This virus should not have come as a surprise, we've known for ages that something like this would happen eventually and we know there will be other massive emergencies like wildfires, earthquakes, floods terrorist attacks and pandemics in the future. We should have a plan in place already rather than panicking and flailing like officials are now.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2020, 05:05:10 pm
content: The uncertainty is a big problem indeed, but not sure they have currently a choice. Economically speaking, this is a disaster. No doubt about it.I think the idea is to confine people while monitoring the spread closely. Only when it shows signs of decline will they end the confinement IMO, with a margin.Problem is, no one knows when this is going to happen. While confinement itself is effective, at least at keeping things under control, since we largely under-detect infected people, it's almost impossible to judge just by monitoring the figures when it's going to be OK to end it. It's just going to be a game of probability. But for anyone in charge of deciding this - let's say things start to look good, they end the confinement, and a while after the infection rate is on the rise again. They may risk jail for that. Who's going to have enough balls?One thing I'm wondering is how long someone infected, but showing no symptoms, is contagious? Is it even possible to carry the virus more than a few days if we have absolutely no symptom, and if so, how many?

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2020, 06:41:38 pm
content: But you can't just press the pause button for s bit and then resume, the world doesn't stop turning. While we are all stuck at home we are still consuming food, water, energy, all manner of services, and somebody has to make or provide all of that. There is a whole supply chain involved in getting food on our tables, from the obvious stuff like farm workers down to all of the equipment makers, mechanics, chemical companies, fuel, truckers, road maintenance, spare parts, and dozens of other interconnected pieces. The people living in densely populated urban areas which is most people are utterly dependent on a functional economy for survival, we can't just shut it down. Disruptions cause ripples that propagate throughout the whole system and the effects can be catastrophic.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2020, 07:42:47 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on March 24, 2020, 06:41:38 pmAre sales going to be different? Obviously they will be. But I don't think it should be considered a recession in the normal sense. We could scare ourselves into an actual recession but we have to remember that everything is still here. We just put things on hold for a bit.The whole infrastructure is there and functioning. We're just cutting down on the non vitals and those can be paused or slowed. Some people will need some help getting by while they sit idle and that's something which can be provided. Now's not the time to get hung up on political ideologies. Just get done whatever needs to be done and we'll figure the rest out once we're through it.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2020, 07:47:53 pm
content: There's nothing political about this, at least there shouldn't be. I just view keeping the economy running as absolutely vital. That says nothing of my general political leanings. Speaking for myself, if I become unemployed and stay that way very long, I won't have medical insurance and will have to forgo treatment for anything non-emergency. If that continues long enough I'll end up homeless without food to eat and at that point I'll be willingness to take just about any job I can get regardless of the risk to make ends meet and with more than a year's wages in the bank I'm in a far better position than most. Don't underestimate the risk of a catastrophic economic collapse or the suffering it would cause. We are nowhere near as self sufficient as we were during the last great depression. Just look at how much a little impact like people buying extra toilet paper is having, the system is a delicately balanced house of cards and fewer cards are non-essential than people realize.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2020, 08:48:22 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on March 24, 2020, 07:47:53 pmI fear that aid may be viewed as welfare or socialism in the US. We simply need to do whatever needs to be done to keep everyone afloat so we can resume life as quickly as possible and with minimal damage done.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2020, 09:13:16 pm
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on March 24, 2020, 08:48:22 pmI agree. I think James has put forward a very good argument for a why decent welfare and universal healthcare system is necessary. I've noticed there's a culture of blaming the poor for their poverty, especially in the US. The poor are generally not scroungers but people who have simply fallen on hard times and are struggling to clime out of poverty. Done the right way, welfare and universal healthcare should really be investments, rather than supporting laziness because they enable people to get decent jobs and pay the money back in taxes.I hope some things good come out of this crisis and governments sorting out their health systems should be one of them.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2020, 10:53:15 pm
content: You'll get no argument from me on that. I'm a big proponent of universal healthcare and a robust safety net, that seems to come as a surprise to many who make assumptions on my views based on other views. I have no party allegiance and hold a mix of views from conservative to liberal and everything in between depending on the topic. I've always been a lone wolf by nature and am repelled by tribalistic behavior and groupthink.Nothing fundamental is going to change in time for this mess though, even under ideal circumstances it will likely take decades to get to that point. I fear that ultimately nothing will really get done, I mean we never really fixed any of the problems that led to the last financial meltdown and the lessons learned from the coronavirus pandemic will be short lived. Once things have gotten back to normal it will stop being s priority and preparing for the next pandemic or other disaster will return to being something we can deal with "later".

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2020, 11:18:20 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on March 24, 2020, 10:53:15 pmYeah I think so too.You can even be sure that some people are already working on taking advantage of the crisis instead of learning anything from it.

author: julianhigginson
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2020, 04:22:51 am
content: Quote from: wizard69 on March 24, 2020, 12:02:26 pmAaaah. Another person who doesn't understand exponential functions..... The next month in the US is going to be pretty eye opening for you.Anyway - while we're here, just how many human beings is it OK to allow to die, locked away from their families and slowly drowning in their own mucus, just so so "the economy" doesn't get hiccups?See the thing is - the economy may be an extremely large and complex system that all our lives are caught up in, but it's not a living thing. it can be stopped, paused, restarted, paused again, manipulated, and tuned to serve any need *we* decide it should, if we want that enough.

author: julianhigginson
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2020, 04:31:36 am
content: Quote from: james_s on March 24, 2020, 06:41:38 pmthis is why to maintain the 80%+ society-wide isolation that's required to get the transmission rate below 1, we need to hold everyone at home besides the people that actually produce the things we really need to live. And then we have very rigid anti-disease protocols in place for that reduced group of people, and keep a super close look at their health and monitor and trace any disease moving through their ranks...

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2020, 04:42:57 am
content: Quote from: julianhigginson on March 27, 2020, 04:22:51 amTo me it looks like a lose-lose situation. Our lives are inextricably tangled with the economy. Hundreds of millions of people are utterly dependent on the economy to have food, water, shelter, medicine and every other need. It's not like the old days where many people lived on farms that could be somewhat self sufficient, today vast numbers of people live in cities without a farm in sight. If the economy collapses completely we could end up with millions of people unemployed, homeless, facing shortages of food and clean water, no access to health care.So do we let them die locked away in a hospital or do we let them die alongside tens of thousands of others dying in packed shanty towns and camps as the virus continues to spread unchecked. It's a delicate balance, the shutdown we are doing is much like using chemotherapy to battle cancer, you just have to hope that the patient is resilient enough that the cancer dies before the whole body shuts down and packs in. We need to try to slow the spread but the economy is absolutely vital to the whole effort. We need to keep people fed, clothed, housed, we need to keep the hospitals staffed, the transportation system running, food needs to keep coming in and being distributed and sold, everything is interdependent, you simply can't just pause the entire thing for 6 months or whatever and expect it to start back up again. I can't just stop eating, stop consuming energy, and put myself in stasis, the world keeps turning.

author: julianhigginson
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2020, 04:54:20 am
content: sure, it's definitely a lose-lose situation... it'd be great if this never happened, but it is happening and the time to do something is actually a couple of months ago. But now is the closest to that we have.I'm just horrified that some people think it's better to lose a bunch of people's lives than mess at all with the economy. (which to be honest has been pretty much a dead horse before this happened anyway)The thing is, at the end of the day what we have, is a small portion of humanity who maintain *all* of our lives with their labour. (funnily enough, mostly these people are very poorly paid) while everyone else faffs around doing all sorts of other things that could actually be allowed to run down and yeah, maybe it'd suck a bit, but nobody (ok... a lot less) would die.if we didn't need to insist on entirely unrelated ideas like "profit" and "rent" (yeah, and "wages") we could make it so these people (or others who normally do other things but would like to be active, and can be trained well enough) are supported and protected to go about their work of keeping us all alive while the conditions that allow propagation of this virus are ended.And then we could get back to all the other stuff afterwards, if it still felt like such a good idea...