Ask HN: What skills will be useful during an upcoming recession/depression? - <AUTHOR> My economic knowledge is limited but it seems like the effects of the global domino triggered by conoravirus will echo for many years to come. As a generalist who never had an issue finding a job so far, I'm afraid that in this new reality my software/management skills won't be of any use in 6 months.<p>What skills would be valuable to develop now to adapt as quick as possible to the new state of things? <comment><USER3> People are acting as though we're going back to a pre-industrial economy with this. It's not true. The power isn't going out. The water will continue to come out of the tap.

So my suggestion short term is: learn to cook if you don't know how to. Not fancy, haute cuisine, but how to take whatever's in the pantry and make something tasty out of it. Learn how to grow some produce in small spaces, even if it's just herbs.

Learn how to not spend money. How to reduce your energy and water usage. How to do basic repairs and projects yourself. What you have to buy in a time of logistical disruption is time. If you can increase the time you can be without income from a month to four months or from six months to two years, that is a remarkable difference in your resilience.

<comment><USER4> I second learning to cook - it's a skill valuable in good times and bad and really helps you to eat cheaply and healthily if you are mindful of your ingredients.

There are tons of helpful videos to get you started. I recommend Bon Appétit's Test Kitchen on YouTube

<comment><USER5> Also, I've never met a partner who doesn't appreciate it!

And in terms of amortizing time spent learning, it's hard to beat getting better at something you do every day. Sometimes multiple times!

<comment><USER6> My partner's cooking is so good that restaurants food taste like paper to me. It has its downsides as well, I am eating much more and gained weight and getting into diet is hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Skills are tactics. Dealing with a recession is about strategy.

Most importantly: this is a time to focus on reducing risks, rather than maximizing profit.

This is a crappy time to start a startup or being a freelancer. Keep your job, build your skills, save money, and start in a few years.

Think about your job's security: Pay attention to your employers annual/quarterly reports. Which industries does your employer sell to? Travel, restaurants, hotel, retail, small businesses will be the worst hit, with little money to spend.

This is also a bad time to change jobs - depending on your local laws, it probably is much, much easier to lay off someone who just started.

Maybe broaden your skillls. In good times, it is more profitable to be a specialist - e.g. much better to be THE leading expert on scaling wordpress, rather than an all-purpose linux admin. In bad times, when jobs are scarce, being less of a specialist increaes the number of jobs you are suitable for.

Save money, lower your burn-rate, extend your runway - usually meant for start-ups, but this goes for your personal finances just as well

Become familiar with laws and benefits from the government for unemployment, lay-offs etc - if you should happen to find yourself unemployed, know what you have to do, how much assistance you can expect.

That being said: If you have a high risk-tolerance, and can afford to, now is also a great time to start a business or to invest, simply because nobody else is, so there is much less competition for everything.

<comment><USER8> I work for a university as a teacher. What do you think the economic implications might be for a university in the coming months? I can see less new people enrolling next semester, current students refusing to pay the same tuition if it's going to continue being all online etc.

<comment><USER9> I work for a company where universities are pretty much 100% of our customers, so I'm curious about this also.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cooking from basic ingredients. Growing a basic seasonal garden. Finding ways to be happy with less and appreciate the simple pleasures in life. Placing value on human relationships more than material things. The art of conversation. Enjoying simple/affordable/accessible hobbies.

<comment><USER11> All of these things seem learnable with available resources except the art of conversation, something that I actually need a lot of work on. And recommendations on how I can improve on this?

<comment><USER12> More emotion, less logic. People like to feel good. They don't necessarily want to learn something new.

Crack jokes, banter, wear a smile, but don't be a clown.

Best way is to surround yourself by people who do the same. Do not feel discouraged when they "throw a knife" (take the piss) your way, as it's a test of your conversational and mental frame. Agree and amplify, and laughs will be had.

Then again, don't surround yourself with bullies. A true friend stabs from the front to test and grow your mental frame, while enemies stab from the back to undermine your frame.

Point is, have fun. Don't be a walking talking wikipedia page of logical facts.

<comment><USER11> > Point is, have fun. Don't be a walking talking wikipedia page of logical > facts.

This is sort of what I am. I think it started long ago maybe when I felt as if this is one way I can provide value: to give you facts.

I'm aware that this is a problem, in that by doing this I'm not really engaged in a back-and-forth conversation -- I've been aware of this for some time, it's just that it's hard to transition away from this. I don't know how to do this, because this is who I am now, and changing who I am, that's a deep change to make, it is hard, and I don't know how I can do this.

<comment><USER12> Sure, but one shouldn't feel obligated to provide value. Providing intellectual stimulation when unasked for immediately marks one (to the lay person) as the proverbial know-it-all. Their body language will speak magnitudes; just watch the direction of their feet. Anything more than 30 degrees away from your direction will indicate they are not interested in the service you think you may be providing.

You must gain confidence. Have confidence in yourself, and you will find others will do the difficult conversational parts for you. The quickest way to gain confidence is to learn to lift compound weights and to increase the weight over the years.

<comment><USER13> An alternative view on this is to realize that being a non-judgemental sounding board often provides much greater value to your conversation partner than offering advice. I often find that people who are having trouble with something already know what the best solution is and simply need to build up enough confidence in their own reasoning to act on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Honestly, I don't believe we will see a huge depression unless there is war. People are still available for work and all the equipment used for producing value is in good conditions. So long as government provides fiscal stimulus, depression shouldn't happen.

In case it happens though, you are better of farming stuff like potatoes and chicken than developing software until government steps in with fiscal stimulus, though it will require some existing capital.

<comment><USER15> In many cases, people _aren 't_ available; they're sheltering at home, social distancing. Even for those who can work remotely, the disruption to routine is going to reduce productivity. And worse, many assets _are_ going to be destroyed- for instance, restaurants that go under while distancing is taking place are just going to be gone, and while the brute equipment can be reused later, the "organizational capital" (the habits and knowledge of how to run that particular business in that particular context most effectively) vanishes.

Various governmental interventions (stimulus, rent freezes, etc) can ameliorate this, but I'm not confident (and the financial sector isn't confident, I think) that the government is presently competent enough to get too much mileage out of implementing these; stimulus needs to be done correctly and promptly to have much effect.

If you're in (or your customers are in) an industry that can hunker down and "weather the downturn," the eventual return to normal will be priced in and you'll likely be fine. If you're in (or ditto) an industry that will suffer attrition, the uncertainty will be priced in and you're liable to suffer. Give some thought as to where you stand.

<comment><USER16> Restaurants won't have to go away if you freeze the rent and pay the previous employees a replacement income.

In other words, providing a stimulus package paid to the right people can prevent it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Math and physics carried me through two recessions so far. I never got rich, but also never poor.

<comment><USER18> It's a bit of a tangent, but do you have any advice on how to self-learn math? I'd like to complete some CLEP classes so I can meet the prerequisites for a CS program, but it's tough to learn on my own.

<comment><USER19> Depends what level but [https://www.khanacademy.org/math](https://www.khanacademy.org/math) has stuff. Really to learn maths you have to work through problems to grasp it and get it you head. Start simple and work up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you can learn how to repair things there will always be need of that in a siege. Returning value from utter losses will be of great need.

edit

For a couple simple examples consider the bic lighter. The strikers are made well enough it is possible to refill them and reuse them several times. Here is a video I made on it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fnnDu- _hso](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fnnDu-_hso)

possibly not the best video but it just shows it isn't very hard.

What about a ventilator that needs a part? Not hard for someone who knows a lot about 3d printing.

<comment><USER21> Strongly advise against making any parts of equipment for healthcare or even more - device that sustains life. If it breaks, it will be very simple for government to find you liable. That's also - sadly - reason why these ventilators are so darn expensive, so that they go thru lots of scrutiny and testing.

<comment><USER22> Plus skyhigh product liability premiums.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> while we see some industries taking a hit during this crises, we also see many others soaring with the rise of distributed and remote work. Software products targeting this field will get even more relevant and jobs will likely flourish. That is why I believe having software/management skills are still relevant in the short/long-term.

</comment><comment><USER24> Mental self-care and acceptance of negative experiences. Working out in small areas/body weight exercises. Cooking on a budget. Getting out of your own head and own problems and into thinking about other people, is also immensely psychologically healthy.

<comment><USER25> > Getting out of your own head and own problems and into thinking about other > people, is also immensely psychologically healthy.

Hmm, anyone have any tips about what to do if this actually just overwhelms and depresses you? I can deal emotionally with my own problems fairly well. But when I start thinking about the wide spread suffering among both the people I know and care about as well as the world at large,I get immediately overwhelmed and start to shut down.

<comment><USER26> "The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own . . ." —EPICTETUS

Stoicism helped me get out of my own head.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Communication never hurts. Being able to distill ideas down to their actionable core and spot miscommunication before it derails things is useful in any context.

<comment><USER28> ham radio operators builders, radio/comms engineers

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Speaking as an also-generalist, I think it's actually a good place to be. My whole career has been pretty much "Here's something you've never seen before, an we need it fixed.". People who can do that will always be in demand.

Beyond that, consider the Epicurean Tetrapharmakos

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrapharmakos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrapharmakos)

especially point three. If you think about it, what you _truly_ need to survive is easier had than you might think.

</comment><comment><USER30> It's a recession, not an apocalypse. These are kind of old news:

1\. Budgeting. Know exactly where your money goes and what dials you can turn.

2\. It's less about skills than products and services. So it becomes a better time to be a Costco or a cobbler (which helps people save money) than to be a Tesla (which helps people spend money).

For software, my suspicion is infinite monthly SaaS subscriptions will come under more scrutiny. And it might be a bad time to run a money-bleeding self- driving car startup. But that's my only firm guess at this point.

</comment><comment><USER31> I still think there is plenty of demand for web developers.

If you have time on your hands and know some basic programming then might I suggest learning some web technologies. Even if you can't land a job quickly you can make some income being an indie hacker too (though you may need to learn at least a few marketing skills and SEO)

</comment><comment><USER32> My thought is that this virus will have passed through the world, one way or another, in 4-8 months.

After that, the world reverts back to what it was doing.

My point is that this is no underlying weakness in the global economy. It's more like a slow moving natural disaster.

I'll admit I don't feel super confident that this is how things work. Happy to be corrected!

<comment><USER33> Sorry, I don't want to be too negative but I find your sentiment very naive and self-centred.

If you're well off now you'll be fine. If you're decently off in a wealthy country you'll be fine too. If you're one of the precariously employed and healthcare-less workers in a country like the US you will suffer and might die. If you are a precariously employed person in a poor country you'll watch many friends and family die.

Think what happens in Italy, a country with one of the best healthcare systems in the world, hitting South Sudan. Don't confuse your reality with how it will hit the rest of the world.

<comment><USER34> This hitting Syria give me the chills.

<comment><USER32> It's come to Afghanistan via Iran.

That may be the least prepared country for it.

<comment><USER35> I was thinking the same thing about the densely-populated Gaza Strip. They're already severely lacking in medical needs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> My father lost his job in the 2008 recession at an engineering firm.

He started his own consultancy.

Dozen or so years later he's pulling in mid 6 figures by himself working 40-60h a month at home.

Do the same. Have skills, learn to sell them.

</comment><comment><USER37> The care industry at local level is poised to do well and get funded more than in the recent past in order to protect the vulnerable part of the population from the disease and avoid further waves. They will need generalists and computer-savvy operators to smoothen their peaks for sure.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm learning how to refinish my decks. Needs some rotten wood replaced. A massive clean. A repaint. And a whole bunch of gross looking misaligned cuts replaced too. I'll then re-do the wiring for the staircase lights and outlet.

I like this project because it isn't blocking anything (like if I took the kitchen out). And when it's all done, this will be the summer I made our back decks beautiful rather than the summer we were stuck inside feeling anxious.

</comment><comment><USER39> > the effects of the global domino triggered by conoravirus will echo for many > years to come.

Why? As far as I know there's no underlying systemic financial reason for a depression or recession. The virus sucks. Some companies will no doubt have a bad quarter or two. But viruses pass, and this one will too.

> I'm afraid that in this new reality my software/management skills won't be > of any use in 6 months.

That seems hyperbolic.

<comment><USER40> I think 6 months of lock downs or stay at home would show a lot of companies are not prepared to not have income. Businesses going out of business aren't coming back, along with the jobs they provided.

<comment><USER39> Sure. But if there was a need for the goods and services those companies provided before, then there will be a need for those goods and services again. I don't think enduring financial collapse logically follows from even an extended quarantine.

<comment><USER40> I don't think that is necessarily true. Something like gamestop won't come back, individuals who put everything into a small business might not recover and try again. A lot is happening at one time.

<comment><USER41> Something like Gamestop not coming back doesn't mean those dollars aren't still going to flow to gaming

<comment><USER40> It's not just gaming, there's employees, local taxes, rents, physical distribution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> People skills & Frustration tolerance

1-2% of society are always on the verge of depression, as that is just how gauss distributions work. But chances are, it'll soon be 10%. Google therapeutic shopping and you know that people are willing to spend a lot of money to feel better.

So if you can handle hearing the whining of depressed people without it dragging you down too much, offer to do free video chat with lonely people now. Your goal isn't to change their situation in any way, but by telling you about it and feeling heard, you can help them change their feelings about their situation. So you mostly just listen, reveal related facts about yourself, and ask caring questions.

Once the crisis is over, your newfound ability to stay cheerful in the presence of adversity and your ability to get along well with different kinds of people will be a very valuable asset for romance and work.

Add cooking and laundry and those 4 traits are what I believe most HN readers will be lacking in comparison to the normal population.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'd recommend learning about markets and economics. My suspicion is that states will continue to implement all steps necessary to contain the virus over the next 18 months and bail out all businesses and consumers in order to keep the productivity of the economy close to the level prior to the outbreak. Depending on how difficult it will be to contain the virus, this might require funds on an unprecedented scale in modern times. It's difficult to predict how eager investors will be to finance these deficits. Obviously something like a hyperinflation scenario is completely out of the question for a developed state like the US and there will likely be more deflationary pressure over the next few years, but at some point states will have to deleverage and I'm inclined to say that they will probably do this using higher inflation rates, in which case you can probably profit a lot from knowing about markets and economics.

<comment><USER43> Do you have any advice on where to read up on this sort of thing? I've always been interested but never acted upon it. Now seems like a good time to understand more about how our world actually works in terms of the economy

<comment><USER42> Take a look at the Economics & Finance videos on Khan Academy [1]. I have only watched some of them, but those I watched were good.

You could read some standard macroeconomics textbooks, but I'd advise against doing that, since they are expensive and unnecessarily formalized using elementary math, which doesn't really add anything to the material itself. There's however a good book on monetary economics by Mishkin called Economics of Money, Banking and Financial Markets, which is really good, but the Khan Academy videos on banking mostly cover the same material.

Personally I've learned a lot from reading economic history. Some books I can recommend are: Eichengreen - Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System

Frieden - Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century

Soros - Alchemy of Finance (skip the first couple of chapters on his reflexivity theory, but the 'diary' chapters are a gold mine)

Ferguson - The Ascent of Money (probably a good book to start, the others might be harder to completely grasp for a beginner)

Some other good book I can recommend (not history books) are: The Secrets of Economic Indicators: Hidden Clues to Future Economic Trends and Investment Opportunities by Baumohl

Inside the House of Money by Drobny (mostly about global macro trading, but you would learn a lot about economics along the way, would only recommend this after having built up some basic knowledge though)

Most importantly you should start reading the Economist, which has really high quality economics and finance articles, but is released only weekly and offers a good trade off with regards to time commitment and knowledge about what's going on in the world. Note that you will probably need to know some basics in order to understand everything, but you can look up things along the way. Economics really isn't hard to learn if you have a technical background.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy/playlists?view=50&s...](https://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy/playlists?view=50&sort=dd&shelf_id=11https://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy/playlists?view=50&sort=dd&shelf_id=11)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Learn to learn.

And then practice learning. Our brains have very high capacity to learn, adapt and forget quite a lot - just believe that you can, and you will. All you need is focused effort. You only need to prove that belief once to yourself. I know this sounds philosophical, but it works.

Becoming an expert in an area is quite another thing. For that you need to evaluate the benefits.

> new state of things

Nobody can predict the new state of things. We can make an educated guess. And my guess is that software skills will be useful for many decades to come. You may have to get better to stay ahead of the competition and that might be more work. The economic impact of the lockdowns has already started hurting small businesses as contracts are being cancelled/paused. They can only take 2 more months of beating, but to clear economic uncertainty we all have to be back to normal working within next 15 days- that is simply not possible. So get ready for small biz to cut/die first followed by the bigger ones.

> will echo for many years to come

I think the worst is yet to show up, the next two months will show where we stand as a world on the pandemic. Right now we only see virus as a health issue, but the virus effect is also shaking up the geopolitical state of the world and questioning global trade and policies. We will probably come out of it quicker than before. The economic effects will be huge, but not necessarily bad for every country.

<comment><USER45> Like this a lot. Anything that has helped you learn how to learn?

<comment><USER44> I heard that from one of the senior professors 18 years back, and that stuck in my mind. I was doing that even before that but then had the formal phrase "Learn to learn".

What has helped? - It was definitely not books about the topic and I had very limited access to internet or videos.

I do not know the answer, but I will try to explain my scenario. There are some things you can replicate and some you cannot.

Something changed in me when I was 17 years old and that motivated me to learn a lot. Before that I was an average kid who thought studies are pointless burden. In a way, I was right because it was directionless but wrong because I was not getting educated in any other way either.

Unfortunately, I was a college freshman by then and with worst grades of my life prior to that. Parents and relatives looked down on me as a failure and my parents gave up on me. So here I was a new person, highly motivated to learn and catch up learning from the lost years and also had a high degree of freedom to think and learn whatever I wanted to. So few things - I had freedom, no pressures, I knew that I didn't know, self-motivated, no fear of failure, open-mindedness but still questioning everything, and no-ego.

Few beliefs set in quickly:

1\. Human brain can learn anything. And I meant learning, not memorization - <USER2> hated memorizing. I also believed that if I can do it, anybody can.

2\. Knowledge is universally accessible (as if it is in a higher dimension on a shared hard-drive) and if we focus just enough on what we want to achieve, our brains will tune to it. I know how crazy the second one sounds. I may have a wrong perception but it was my own (not induced by someone or a book or some movie). It works for me whatever the underlying neurological reason might be. Today, internet does the same thing - making knowledge universally accessible

Then, it was a top down approach starting with what I want to do or what problem I want to solve.

Did not matter whether the effort would pay back or whether it was any useful to me. I just needed to have some interest in that subject.

For one instance, it was music, I impulsively bought a musical keyboard. I was foolish to think that because I was good at a computer keyboard, I will be naturally good at the musical one too. I had lot of time after work and I wanted to stay away from programming all day (because programming is my hobby too). Then I selected one of the keyboard's built-in composition, Beethoven's Fur Elise in tutorial mode. The keyboard would tell me which keys to play. I hate memorization, so the first thing I did was to listen and hit the right key. I was basically exploring and feeling the keyboard like a toddler does with things. And then I would practice the song again and again and again for many hours a day (at least 3-4 hours). I would end up optimizing my finger movements when I used to get stuck. Then sometimes I would try to fit the tunes of some songs on the keyboard. Few months later a musician friend of a friend came in my room to see the keyboard. When I played Beethoven's Fur Elise, he was amazed at how well I moved the hand and the fingers. He was astonished to know that I had zero formal training. How did I learn that? Trial and error and focused effort. I came to know then that what I was doing is called "ear training". He shared more information about books, videos and musical languages. I gathered more resources to learn about those things, got good at playing complex musicals. But then gradually I stopped playing the keyboard - may be because it started to feel like work or may be because something else interested me more.

I'm not discounting the value of formal education. It saves you lots of time and prevents lots of mistakes.

I also dig deeper into the history of concepts, because it makes me understand and remember it. A college friend accidentally taught me that. For example when I was reading about pharmacology and drugs - I wondered why they name the drugs like they do. Exploring deeper is like falling down the seemingly infinite rabbit hole - but that is what keeps learning fun for me, even if I get off track for a while.

On the cons, every week I spend hours learning things that have no immediate benefit or use or any visible long term benefit. But most of the times, sometimes after many years, it turns out to be helpful in ways I could not have imagined.

<comment><USER45> That was awesome. Thanks for taking the time to write that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Being a doctor is always valuable, though I'm not sure it's that easy to retrain into one...

More importantly, knowing how to live frugally is valuable in and of itself, assuming we do end up with a once-in-a-century-type depression.

Not impossible, according to some ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22655670](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22655670)) but then forecasting is very difficult, especially when it involves the future.

<comment><USER47> Freelance general practitioners are massively being laid off (contracts terminated, no new opportunities) at the moment in the Netherlands. Almost no one is allowed to come to a gp office, anything that is not urgent is postponed...

<comment><USER48> Doctors should start making house calls again. In full protective gear

<comment><USER47> They do, as little as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Cyber security maybe? I don't think that companies will seize needing sales roles?

I know that Launch School is doing a webinar about this topic the coming days, titled:

'How to Navigate a Recession for Software Engineers'

I am not affiliated with them, but here is the webinar link:

[https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xarP2qpeRdKTfD- qikbX4A](https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xarP2qpeRdKTfD-qikbX4A)

</comment><comment><USER28> develop a flare for barter and trade. learn how to provide the things people actually need.

general construction trades and adhoc engineering.

farming. hunting fishing.

veternary skills surgical skills midwivery dentistry.

localized /offgrid/on site power generation.

production of fuel from raw materials.

<comment><USER50> Adding to this: learn the basics of ham radio. Not only is the theory fun if you're the math/science type, it's also a lifeline service if cellphone or satellite communications are down. You can learn enough in a weekend to get an amateur license and buy $20 radios that will let you talk across the state or further.

<comment><USER28> and right away find a local repeater and get accepted into an operators net, thats going to be crucial...

there should be some rep among operators to avoid bad apples that would try to take or make advantage with black comms

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Agriculture, hunting, fishing, carpentry and masonry.

<comment><USER52> Einstein: "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

<comment><USER53> Is there a war coming?

<comment><USER54> Well, hopefully we don't follow the 1929 trajectory too closely...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Work from home effectively.

</comment><comment><USER56> Learn to make a budget and stick to it. People who follow and understand the expression "Waste not want not." and act accordingly will be in a much better position.

Start with going over your latest bank or credit card statement and really think about where your money has gone and where it should be going.

"How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!"

</comment><comment><USER57> > I'm afraid that in this new reality my software/management skills won't be > of any use in 6 months.

First skill: Patience

Second skill: Adaptability

Third skill: Resilience. Software will always be needed. You just might need to work a "beer money" job for a little while.

<comment><USER58> or learn how to make your own beer

<comment><USER57> It's only cheaper to make your own if you drink a lot and get it perfect the first time around. Otherwise, you waste a lot of money while you learn, or end up only saving a few pennies a bottle but wasting your time.

That's why the people who get into brewing do it because they enjoy it, not for the money!

(The last time I made beer I forgot about it and found the barrel a few months later!)

<comment><USER59> All true although it's a great hobby for being stuck in the house and likely safer than buying beer currently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> There always are a few skills that help during recession. When recession comes, people want to switch to cheaper ways of doing things. So find a way to making stuff less expensive always helps.

</comment><comment><USER61> There was a thread on 4chan covering possible jobs during the Apocalypse.

Scavenging, Mushroom picker, Hunter, Under Ground Bunker Specialist, Medic, Combat/Army specialist, Tinkerer, etc.

</comment><comment><USER48> I can say that my apparently unusual innate ability to get slack and zoom video and screen sharing to work has been in great demand for the last few weeks.

</comment><comment><USER62> If this is the same level as '08 I don't think much will change in your sector. The demand will still be there,just a lot less of it. If your employer is not in tech either you lose a job or you don't see a pay increase for a while. If your employer is in tech then there are plenty of non-tech places all over that are starving for your talent which will do well in a recession.

</comment><comment><USER63> > "...I'm afraid that in this new reality my software/management skills won't > be of any use in 6 months."

I'm curious: What do you mean by this?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been following many threads on Reddit (and one on HN) about people getting fired already. As there is no indication this trend will be reversed any time soon, I get the feeling that a) lots of industries have already been hit hard and b) things may get progressively worse in the following months.

It worries me that, as a huge percentage of the web runs on ads, if lots of industries get into trouble, the ad space will inevitably suffer as well. The cascading effect of that will most probably affect in a very obvious way every company I've worked for, layoffs will oversaturated the market and my current skillset will be insufficient to give me any competitive advantage.

<comment><USER64> There will be a lot of layoffs. The question is, what kind of jobs are they? Are these experienced developers with multiple languages and platforms under their belt, or one-trick ponies that came from a bootcamp?

You're right - ad-driven web properties won't do well. There is tons of code written every day that does actual revenue-generating work, however. It's not sexy work, it's not VC-funded work, and that's okay.

During the dot-com bust I had no problems with work. My longest contract was for a hospital, writing software to help nurses schedule and track patient visits. This was tangible work, with a tangible benefit. It wasn't a nebulous business model.

<comment><USER65> > _Are these experienced developers with multiple languages and platforms > under their belt, or one-trick ponies that came from a bootcamp?_

During the last recession, many of those that were let go were the "expensive" experienced developers that could command higher salaries than new hires.

I know several experienced developers that lost their jobs last week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Knowing multiple languages, to maximize your options.

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean natural languages, not programming ones, right?

<comment><USER66> ha, I just revealed my status as a non-engineer. Yes, languages. I am trying to improve my Spanish during quarantine downtime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> the #1 thing is how to build community online... effectively, relationships.

this is actually harder to do for a lot of folks... especially the millions who are now forced to do it.

im training a few folks a week: [http://yen.camp](http://yen.camp)

<comment><USER68> This is a little narrower - but I'd be interested in suggestions for open source software useful for local online communities. People in my area use Facebook. Except that many (like me) just won't sign up for a FB account, and even those that do around here mostly loathe it.

I'd like to set something up but as this has just occurred to me I'm vague on specifics as yet. At a minimum I'd like easy-to-use community forums. Discourse is obviously a possibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Knowing Chinese ...

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you mind elaborating?

<comment><USER69> It is still too early to tell but what if the corona virus pandemic ends up hurting the us and Europe much more than China? Pushing the shift towards Asia/China into overdrive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> I believe that we should always be on the move to adapt to changing environment and foster multi-skilling. I am actually in the same frame of mind!

</comment><comment><USER53> Aim to be an expert in your field = what you love to do and you'll be fine. High performing people are unaffected during crisis.

<comment><USER71> I'm a "high performer", a core collaborator in a big open source project and a library maintainer of a few libraries with 10M+ weekly downloads on NPM. I have a BSc in CS and lots of "good" industry experience in strong start ups for long-ish ( 5 year ) durations.

I'm definitely going to be impacted by this recession. I was impacted by the 2008 recession and I was impacted by the dot-com bubble. A lot of friends went to do enterprise Java at banks, jobs without glamour and other things to pay the bills.

There are a lot of things I get away with right now that I won't be able to get away with anymore.

Also don't forget that "high performers" are more expensive and a lot of times "mid performers" do a good-enough job, so high performers had to compromise for mid-performer salaries during recessions.

Obviously start-ups closing and less funding all around also changes the supply-demand balance in the short term. It's likely to induce job changes and closures for at least some of us.

<comment><USER54> >A lot of friends went to do enterprise Java at banks

Perhaps I'm projecting but I think that cloud skills will be the enterprise Java/.Net of this recession. There is a trough of skills and a pretty clear line, it reminds me of desktop apps to web apps around 2008 as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Learning what to cook to stretch your food supply. Learning not to waste food.

</comment><comment><USER73> Honestly, right now during the pandemic, medical courier. How do you think tests get to labs?

</comment><comment><USER74> How to grow vegetables and fruit in the garden.

</comment><comment><USER49> Cyber security?

</comment><comment><USER75> turning stress and chaos into patient and focus (and using this time to do whatever is beneficial)

</comment><comment><USER76> Carpentry

</comment><comment> awinter-py if the GPS goes out of business because people aren't leaving the house, you'll need to navigate dense urban areas without assistance

</comment><comment><USER77> I think the most important skill is learning how to gain access to zero- interest loans from the Federal Reserve.

This skill allows you to lend to your buddies who can purchase distressed businesses and properties for pennies on the dollar, which gives you and them the opportunity to make billions in profits while everybody else is suffering.

I'm still trying to learn how to do this; if anybody has any information about what's required, please reply.

<comment><USER10> _which gives you the opportunity to make billions in profits while everybody else is suffering._

And hopefully utilize those profits to help fewer suffer.

<comment><USER52> And write book reviews explaining why the world will suffer a lot less if only more plebs will fall in line with your view of what is best for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> making masks.

Calling All People Who Sew And Make: You Can Help Make Masks For 2020 Healthcare Worker PPE Shortage

"In settings where facemasks are not available, HCP might use homemade masks (e.g., bandana, scarf) for care of patients with COVID-19 as a last resort."

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2020/03/20/calling- all-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2020/03/20/calling-all-people- who-sew-and-make-you-can-help-solve-2020-n95-type-mask-shortage/)</comment>


Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope - <AUTHOR> I'm 32+, live with my parents and have failed at 4 different startups in the past 10 years, two since I left my last paying job in 2012. In 2014, I had $0 taxable income (due to being unemployed) and was rejected by the following companies:
Google* (third time in 3 years) Twilio* (x2) Smartling* Samsung* Amazon+ Facebook Cloudflare
AppDynamics* DigitalOcean Placemeter* E.W.Scripps* Hatch AppNexus* OpenX ThoughtWorks* Roost ... several others I can't remember ... several others I can remember, but mutually decided the fit was wrong ... MANY others to whom I submitted a resume and never heard back
* = rejected after in-person interview + = withdrew, sensing impending rejection else, rejected after phone screen
In addition, I took the GMAT and was rejected by the following schools:
MIT Sloan Stanford Business School Columbia Business School Harvard Business School
If you're thinking "Wow that's a lot of calls and interviews to come up empty-handed", you're right. You see, while my resume is (apparently) attractive, I suffer from crippling anxiety, the kind that says "Hey, you have in interview tomorrow! No sleep for you!" It turns out interviewers don't like bloodshot eyes, dark circles and a foggy Xanax brain. (Nor does the GMAT.)
But finally... last week I had an interview at a major university, got 3 hours of sleep but somehow landed the job (pending HR salary approval). It doesn't pay like Google does, but I think I'll learn a lot and I'm extremely grateful that someone finally said "yes" to me. I'm going to make the most of it and will be a better engineer from the experience.
Don't give up! If you have any technical skill, whatsoever, someone out there wants to hire you. Just keep plugging along! <comment><USER2> I wouldnt worry about getting passed up by the bigger companies. Everyone knows their interview processes are highly dysfunctional jokes. Then most startup companies copy them because they all think they are going to be the next google etc.

My last interview at amazon went like this:

Stupid trick coding question over the phone that I did not understand at all. Followed by 3 memorization questions. followed by one question I felt was valid and i know i got it right.

I was being interviewed for a specific product that was right up my ally. I could literally build what they had built easily, but they never once asked questions related to the product or my experience.

I looked at the product a year later and basically nothing has been done to it.

<comment><USER3> I did the new grad assessment test last week for Amazon, I am more than positive I aced both sections, especially the coding questions (passed all tests). Yet somehow I still didn't advance. I have other interviews in the pipeline that were way tougher and I didn't get the solutions 100% yet I still advanced.

<comment><USER4> Could be worse. About five years ago I was interviewing at Amazon, and had gotten picked by the hiring manager and all that was left was a "trivial" HR screen. Lady there felt that since I had mainly done consulting I couldn't be trusted to stay at a full time job, and so overruled the hiring manager and I didn't get the position.

The rest of the story? A couple years later I had a chance to talk with the hiring manager while he was applying for a position at a place I was working - seems the person HR picked led to their whole unit being disbanded because they failed so miserably. He felt he had to take some of the blame for not keeping a closer eye on the person, but still...

<comment><AUTHOR> During this period, my dad said something that stuck with me: "The interviewing process is very human. There are all sorts of reasons it can fall apart, many that have nothing to do with you. Maybe they've got an inside candidate or someone decides they don't like the school you went to or the tie you're wearing."

I've found this to be true in a small number of my experiences. There are certain positions I interviewed for where my history was 100% in line with their needs, the interviews all went well and I should have gotten the job. But then didn't. Have no idea why not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Congrats on the new job!

> I suffer from crippling anxiety [...] foggy Xanax brain.

Consider asking your doctor about propranolol.

It's a safe, non-addictive beta-blocker often used to treat high blood pressure, but it also eliminates the peripheral nervous system response to anxiety, the "fight-or-flight" adrenaline rush feeling: racing heart, shortness of breath, inability to concentrate, shaking, sweaty hands, blushing, etc.

It doesn't effect your mental anxiety, but it'll cut out all of the physical symptoms, which makes the mental anxiety much easier to control, without creating any sort of brain fog.

<comment><USER6> +1 for Propranolol. As parent says, it does not affect your cognition! It doesn't make you sleepy or slow or happy or numb or relaxed or lightheaded or anything like that. It affects only your autonomic systems, eliminating the high heart rate and blood pressure, shaky hands, dry mouth, etc. These physical effects often push your normal performance anxiety over the edge, creating a cascading effect. Talk to your doctor if you think it could help, it might change your life -- it did mine, allowing me to become an influential voice at my company with an influential position to match. There's no reason you should allow a biological particularity put you at a career disadvantage compared to others. And it's important to realize anxiety is very often biological in origin, and non-pharmaceutical methods are often not enough.

While many people feel that other type of drugs, like benzodiazepines (e.g. Valium, Xanax) cause them to become somewhat of a different person, beta blockers like propranolol can better be described as making you a rock-solid version of yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> See my comment above. I don't really get nervous at the interviews... I'm actually fairly collected and confident in person. It's just that lonely, panicky night beforehand that gets me.

It's so torturous, I actually considered having a friend use my email to schedule the interview (or GMAT) for me, then only tell me I have an interview (or GMAT) the day I have the interview (or GMAT). If this situation had gone on much longer, I would have done this.

<comment><USER7> You might try meditation or imagining a positive outcome. The worst that can happen is they reject you. Apply at smaller places to practice. Places where even if you get the job you wouldn't take it. The best times to look for a new job is when you have one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A lot of software companies seem to have a set of conflicting beliefs.

1 Iterative/agile software development. YAGNI. Build the bare minimum, then iterate when you learn more.

2\. Hire slow, fire fast.

A really agile org would be hiring fast too. Now... I know a lot of this has to do with labor laws - hiring an actual employee brings extra baggage. And in the US at least, more people may want to be employees for reasons like health insurance.

Even with those considerations, companies should be bringing on more short term contractors, and the ones that work out stay longer. The ones that don't, for whatever reason, move on.

The same teams that will say "YAGNI, just build XYZ, ship it, etc" \- iow, just get stuff out the door - will hem and haw and take forever looking for a perfect candidate that, in reality, doesn't even exist.

It's early in the morning, this sort of makes sense in my head, but I may not quite be making sense. But it's still a seeming conflict that bugs me.

<comment><USER9> I agree with this sentiment

More to the point, they think employees have zero flexibility. That if the employee is hasn't worked with a certain technology (like Hibernate, but has Java experience) this doesn't matter.

<comment><AUTHOR> This. Above all else, this has driven me absolutely insane. I've immersed myself in and learned dozens of technologies in my past but because I didn't use _one lousy framework_ I don't qualify? Something I could pick up in a week or -- at most -- a month?

This is especially true of startups. They feel like they're under pressure to produce yesterday and don't have time for someone to get "up to speed".

Worst is when they say "Well you don't have any Ruby experience. Maybe you could do a Ruby coding assignment for us." Then you spend the whole weekend cranking out a Ruby application only for them to say "This is great. Well done. But we really need someone with Ruby experience."

 _desk smash_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe the lesson here is "quit trying to get jobs at tier 1 name brand companies". There are, by definition, only 500 companies in the Fortune 500. There are hundreds of thousands of smaller companies around the country that could use your skills.

<comment><AUTHOR> What post did you read?

"Smartling* Cloudflare AppDynamics* DigitalOcean Placemeter* Hatch AppNexus* OpenX ThoughtWorks* Roost"

<comment><USER8> They may not all be 'tier 1' companies (I just made up the phrase 'tier 1' \- 'top tier' may have been better), but there's a commonality to many of these - they're largely well-known names in many communities.

I knew Google, Facebook, Amazon, Samsung, Cloudflare, appdynamics, DO, openx and thoughtworks without even batting an eye - the others sound familiar, but I can't say definitively if I know what they do.

"Midwest-city tool and die cutting" probably needs someone with this person's skills just as much, perhaps moreso, than digitalocean needs yet another devops guru.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Congrats! Good luck!

Re crippling anxiety - I highly recommend improv classes.

<comment><USER11> I indirectly second that. A colleague took improv classes for vaguely similar reasons, and he had a positive and helpful experience.

<reddit>Great username for this particular post.</reddit>

<comment><AUTHOR> I created this account to comment on an article of a sexual nature the other day but never did. So I reused it. I freely admit it is very weird in the context of my post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the job market is eating itself up.

This year I sent tons of CVs, very few responses, a lot of technical tests, some interviews where "you don't fit the profile"

Companies usually like me when I start working for them, but to "cross the chasm" is hard.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is how I feel. I've been a badass at everything I've ever done, including being an employee. My last employer _begged_ me to stay and I did for a few months longer.

So to have my fate determined by a short interview over the phone by some arbitrary questions just seems... suboptimal. Inefficient. Stupid.

Someone has to fix the incumbent resume-based hiring process. It is fucked beyond belief.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So many sad recruiting stories ...

Some thoughts/tipps: Start your interview with: "I happy to be here ... am really nervous, i couldn't sleep last night." ... that removes questions marks in recruiters had about your eyes.

Don't tell em about xanax, better, don't use it.

@pookieinc 3+ years are not impressive ... i code for 15 years and possibly the guy who are you talking about your job too ... so don't behave like the god of coding.

@pXMzR2A 270+ job applications ... hmm your resume must be shit or you apply for jobs you are not qualified for ... i would love to see it, there must be a major bug in it :)

... and btw. congrats and merry christmas

</comment><comment><USER13> Congratulations. Regarding the crippling anxiety: I was the same way from college until a couple years ago. I couldn't, for the life of me, get a good night of rest on the nights before an important event. But simply changing up my diet[1] fixed that problem very quickly. It's worth a shot for you to look into doing that. I know how destructive and terrible it feels to be unable to rest properly.

[1] Specifically, I cut out wheat and corn altogether, reduced my carbohydrate intake to less than 50g a day, and never ate anything with added sugars.

<comment><AUTHOR> Being chronically sleep-deprived is the worst and I appreciate your sympathy.

However, I just can't get behind your dietary suggestions. Corn and wheat are not psychoactive substances. I don't think there's any solid science to support the idea that adding/removing them would affect your general anxiety levels.

As I said in another response, Lexapro gave me one amazing month of clarity away from my condition and it was a near-religious experience. I could make plans again. I became interested in girls again. I wanted to scream from the mountain tops and work as a door-to-door salesman for the pharma company that changed my life. Then I relapsed.

In other words, for some people (like me), there is a serious physiological issue at work that needs a pharmaceutical fix. No amount of vitamins or yoga or whatever is going to change that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> JS + Ruby/Rails dev here w/ 3+ years experience under belt. Currently looking for job myself and have been for about 3 months. Funny how, like OP, my resume and exp. is "very impressive", yet it doesn't lead anywhere, not even to a phone interview sometimes.

I'm attempting the numbers game approach (apply for 100 companies, 5 will get back to you, select from those 5), but I've hit the edge of: what if there are none that are willing?

Thanks for the luck, will keep banging head against wall until a job is found. Happy holidays!

<comment><USER15> 3 years are impressive?

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish I could downvote this. Maybe the guy went to Stanford or MIT. Maybe his Ruby work is available on Github and is solid. Maybe he did an independent project that showed remarkable creativity and drive. There are any number of reasons his resume could be "very impressive" with only 3 years under his belt. Don't be a dick.

<comment><USER15> You're the one who wants to downvote me.

I didn't say anything offensive, just asking a question.

Learn the difference between other people saying something offensive and yourself implying some offensive meaning into a neutral statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't suffer from anxiety.

In the last 8 months, I have submitted 270+ job applications, received 3 interviews, got rejected by all three, none of which were high reputation companies.

Great to hear you had a success! :)

<comment><USER17> Did you ask for anyone to look at your CV and help you improve it maybe? For what it's worth, I'm not in HR but I interview a lot of people and see a lot of CVs (not hiring currently though). You can send me your CV privately if you want some feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Congratulations! It sounds like you've landed somewhere really good.

Thank you for reminding us not to give up. A lot of your story sounded familiar, although you were way more persistent than I was. I'm 33, and recently got rejected from two different bay area "dream job" companies after making it through several phone rounds in order to fly out for in-person interviews. The more recent of which, I got nervous the night before and only got three hours of sleep. The hardest part of that rejection was wondering "what if" I had been just a little bit sharper.

After the second rejection, I accepted a position with a small defense contractor near my home in Washington DC. The bureaucracy and mindless restriction are sources of endless frustration. The combination of billing by the hour and a long commute leave very little time and energy for keeping up the job search.

Reading your story reminds me I have very little to complain about. Thank you for posting. I'll use some of this time off to send out some more applications. Hope you have a great Christmas and good luck once the new job starts!

<comment><AUTHOR> What's hard to stomach about the no sleep aspect of everything is that I think companies/interviewers think "Well if it's fair for one, it's fair for all. They're all under the same pressure, so we'll see who overcomes it."

But that's not true. I know it's not true because I used to be one of the people who didn't feel interview pressure. When I landed a dream-type job a few years ago (which ended up being a nightmare due to a psychopathic boss, but that's beside the point), I remember going into the interviews head- strong, cocky and almost arrogant... which they apparently loved bc they hired me on the spot.

Ha! It makes me laugh now. I'm twice the engineer I was then, but half the interviewee simply because my ego has been recalibrated to reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Congrats! And as a side-note, I think it is suitable for persons in your [before-job] situation - to ask for internship or contract-to-hire work instead of direct hiring. We all know interviews suck. And working temporally for 2-3 months would be much more effective (for you and the company) to see if you're a good fit or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, interviewees don't dictate hiring terms. And suggesting a short-term deal probably makes you look weak. I wouldn't recommend this approach to anyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> tl;dr: There are lot of opportunities for software engineers!

6 weeks ago, I left my job and here's my share of the search experience. 1 week after leaving the job, I got a cold email by a company who is 25-min drive away in Foster City. I did initial call with the HR on Dec. 1. On Dec. 2, I did my first phone interview. I was asked to rate my competency in Python and JavaScript on the scale 1-10. Then the interviewer asked me questions that were targeted at that level. I did badly, but not horribly, with the Q/A on technical parts and ok on some of the basic ones. On Dec. 3, I did second phone interview, which went great in the first half and badly in the second half. In the later part, I just started to get nervous and lost my cool. They still felt I was competent, so on Dec. 4 I did a full day of interview. I did 5 different interviews from engineers to CTO and CEO. By the end of the day, I was offered the position @ 135K. This is where you expect the typical ending of me accepting the salary and living happily ever after. Not so fast there, reader. I pressed for higher salary - 25K more than they were offering. They didn't budge and neither did I, so no cigar.

In parallel to interviewing at that company, I also created my profile on Underdog.io. I spent Dec. 5 to Dec. 16 talking with 7 different companies in New York. I saw that their Salary range is lower than in Bay Area so it did not go far.

On Dec. 13, I created my profile on Hired.Me. Since then I have had 5 offers. I have made strong connection with one of the company and will be having in- person interview in a month (I have 3 week family wedding planned in Jan :)).

From my experience, there are so many companies looking for quality engineers. If you are having hired time getting hired, I am open to talk with you. I personally don't pursue working at big companies for the sake of them being big. I am looking for a company where I fit in based on my programming design sense and culturally.

I'm 27/M/Single/SF - so I don't have much constraints as someone who may be older with family or in non-tech savvy part of the county.

<comment><AUTHOR> The key part of your story is that you've made it to SF. I got lucky in 2010 and found a company that would hire me and let me move to a tech hub from my home state. Once I left that job and then the big city (to reduce my burn and work on my independent project), I found it damn near impossible to get back. The fact that I wasn't in the city was a killer for almost all companies, especially startups (where I really wanted to be).

So I moved to the city again for a few months and had a dozen interviews in the first couple of weeks. Some I rejected... some rejected me (obviously), but the activity difference was _stark_. It was like the floodgates opened.

Everyone should keep that in mind when job-hunting. If you've left or lost your job in a tech hub _make use of the time you have left in your apt_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Grats on the job!

I hear you about the anxiety. I managed to land an interview with nvidia in 2001 and was so nervous that I couldn't eat or sleep for the 24 hours before the start of the interview (then ate lunch with them at their cafeteria and was wolfing food down like an animal). Didn't fare well, but a year later of hunting and working as a substitute teacher, I ended up working with a great team at FedEx for a while and went to being a "computer scientist" at the army research lab after that.

Anxiety is a challenge, but it can be overcome! I'm even in the process of starting with "toastmasters" to get me out of my comfort zone and learn how to be "on" around strangers.

Again, congratulations and thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER22> Glad to hear a good story on Xmas day :) Well done you!

</comment><comment><USER23> Congrats, and a very Merry Christmas to you.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's a viscous circle with all the rejection. Don't take it personal. We live in a cruel world, but that does not make you less valuable as a person. Jesus loves you. Merry Christmas.

</comment><comment><USER25> Congratulations! All the best! More good things to come for you.

</comment><comment><USER26> About 7 months ago I interviewed at Twitter, making it through two phone interviews before failing to solve some tricky algorithms questions in the on- site interview. Recently a Twitter recruiter contacted me on Linkedin looking for referrals and I sent him my resume, only to be told that they were looking for people with more experience, despite significantly more relevant experience on my resume.

Is the BigCo interview process just that arbitrary?

<comment><AUTHOR> "Hey we're looking for people. Just not you."

That's some cold shit.

<comment><USER26> Right? There was the obligatory 'we're keeping your resume on file', but that didn't make it sting any less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just curious, so this is a university staff position or are you enrolling in a business school as a student? Either way, congrats!

</comment><comment><USER28> It's scary to see just how many talented folks there are out there, that are struggling to find some work.

It's not like most of you are blue-collar workers either. Those supposed job 'shortages' at those big tech firms seems more like a sinister collusion strategy to flood the market with cheap labour possibly.

</comment><comment><USER29> Congrats and best luck for the future.

In a way it's kind of belwildering how radically different seem to be the job hunting experience for many HW users.

You see so many posts like "I had multiple six-figure offers", or "it's impossible to find enough candidates for the position" and then you see posts like this.

<comment><USER3> I'm a comp eng new grad with a bit of H/W exp. All I see when I look for entry positions are software?

<comment><USER29> You could look for embedded software positions.

I graduated in Electronics but it was clear for me that I liked software more, and embedded is a good compromise.

After a while, if you do ok with your job you could ask to move to more HW focused roles inside the same company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just what I needed to hear! Thanks!!

</comment><comment><USER31> Hey man congrats on you new job! I have one keyword for you: "mindfulness". Start practicing it.

Cheers, —A

</comment><comment><USER32> You should get some help anxiety thing. I have seen people let ego / pride decide. There is no shame asking for help when you need it.

</comment><comment><USER33> I have goosebumps reading this. Thank you so much for sharing. This is meaning.

</comment><comment><USER34> Read the tao te ching my friend. Read and read it and read it and... Good luck

</comment><comment><USER35> Good luck and all the best in the new year!

</comment><comment><USER36> Good work! And congrats!

</comment><comment><USER37> Congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER38> keep rocking !</comment>


The Data Journalism Handbook - <AUTHOR> http://datajournalismhandbook.org/ <comment><USER2> Where can people with Data Journalist skills be found? We're trying to hire what we're calling a Data Editor (similar I believe) where the role is about using our data to tell compelling data-driven stories. It requires the ability to analyze and ask questions of our data (in MS Excel at a minimum) to ultimately develop short data-driven narratives of their findings.

While we've found folks who are amazing at the data analysis part or the writing part, never have the two met. Either we're looking for a unicorn or simply not looking in the right places? Any recs on where to look?

<comment><USER3> I do what you're describing, as a community it's a real mix of backgrounds. Personally I think you're best off looking for someone with an editorial background and a willingness or interest in the technical side than the other way around, a knack for spotting a story is a harder skill to learn. The other thing is that presenting those stories in anything other than words is another skillset entirely, both in terms of design and development. Finding someone that can do all 3 very well is a tall order. More recent grads coming out of journo school increasingly have some programming or stats proficiency, that would be the best place to start looking. The other place would be the more hard (as in both high quality and more technically/theory focussed) graphic/information design courses.

<comment><USER4> Dunno, the trouble with a lot of data journalism that currently exists, is that the people doing it don't have a strong statistical background and tend to forget things like using null hypotheses and regression analysis and take the things they find in data at face value much too often. So sure, teach a writer to do data analysis, but when you do, _really_ teach them.

<comment><USER3> I couldn't agree more. Serious data journalism is essentially a subset of investigative journalism and it really takes a team - qualified statisticians, domain experts, journalists and visual designers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seriously, "wobbing" is now becoming an internationally used term?

The word is derived from the acronym WOB, which stands for "Wet Openbaarheid Bestuur", a relatively recent Dutch law that obliges government institutes to make government documents available upon request. This law is systematically being sabotaged by all layers of government, to the point of intimidating people who dare to make such a request.

<comment><USER4> Couple of Dutch co-authors of that book, so it's much more likely that it sort of slipped past the editors :-) In the US people are more likely to talk about FOI or FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is a great idea, but the web version of the document is surprisingly difficult to navigate and read. In fact, it's downright unpleasant. I understand why it is available as a hardcopy version through a publisher, but I wonder why the PDF isn't available for web use.

<comment><USER7> Hi. We're working on making the source code that was used to generate the web version and the ebook available on Github soon. With that anyone can easily generate a copy of the book in any format of their choice.

Liliana

<comment><USER6> Great stuff! Thank you very much for your reply, and I look forward to it.</comment></comment></comment>


A New Rocket(r) is Fast Approaching Launch - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rocketr.com/a-new-rocketr-fast-approaching-launch/

<comment><USER2> Signing a $50,000 contract when you don't have the money to pay for it sure is gambling alright, but it's gambling with someone else's time, money and livelihood. I sure hope the vendor was in on the risk.

There's a lesson in this for all you contractors out there. Take money up front (I used to expect 50% for small projects, but less for larger ones.) Don't assume your client necessarily has the money to pay once you've completed the job.

<comment><USER3> Yup. I just left a comment on the blog about this.

There's a little more context there that is probably relevant to this story. In short, the bet wasn't made quite so belligerently. It just so happened that unexpected circumstances made the situation a little more dire than we anticipated when we signed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dear web 2.0 hipsters: there are guys like Elon Musk and John Carmack actually launching rockets. This is nothing to do with that. It's just a silly little website with a toy iPhone app. Please try to pick some halfway meaningful names.

I'm looking at you too, Urban Airship.

</comment><comment><USER5> It is fascinating how even the most value startups, behind the scenes are actually having a lot of problems...good luck with your new launch.

</comment><comment><USER6> > It was a $50,000 contract and I didn't have the money when I signed it.

I hate these people.

<comment><USER3> If you knew me, you would know that there is no way I would not show up with the money in hand under any circumstance.

You hate the people who don't pay. And I don't blame you. That being said, you probably don't care whether they sold lemonade to get it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Really appreciate the honesty in this post. Looking forward to seeing the new Rocketr!

</comment><comment><USER7> Totally unrelated but I like the little rocket logo, maybe it is the curved flame or who knows, it is just too cool.

</comment><comment><USER8> Thanks for the submission! I'm an engineer at Rocketr and our talented team is very excited to get shipping!

</comment><comment><USER9> It's post's like this, knowing others are going through the tough emotional cycles, that inspires and helps all of us. Yes building a company is still really f*cking hard!!

</comment><comment><USER10> Web design readability fail for grey text on white background.</comment>


So you want to reform democracy - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@joshuatauberer/so-you-want-to-reform-democracy-7f3b1ef10597#.cc53frkwl <comment><USER2> > If there was an idea that could 'fix' democracy, it would have been thought- > up already.

If everyone accepted this fallacy, nothing would ever get built.</comment>


The Brick Factory Problem (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://mappingignorance.org/2013/08/13/the-fascinating-history-of-the-brick-factory-problem/ <comment><USER2> From a followup post "Progress checking Zarankiewicz's conjecture on the brick factory problem" [[http://mappingignorance.org/2013/10/01/progress-checking- zar...](http://mappingignorance.org/2013/10/01/progress-checking- zarankiewiczs-conjecture-on-the-brick-factory-problem/)]

"This means that N_0(5) \approx 6\cdot 10^{1228} , a really big number. The fastest computers today perform in the order of petaFLOPS (10^{15} operations per second), so even if they could check each case in a single operation, it would take in the order of 10^{1204} years to check if the conjecture holds for K_{5,n} with all n\leq N_0 ."

<comment><USER3> I guess the tangle of cables behind my desk isn't going to improve anytime soon, then.</comment></comment>


Instapaper like Article Extractor open sourced - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jiminoc/goose/wiki <comment><USER2> I created something similar in Ruby: <https://github.com/peterc/pismo>

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't the image extraction based on the goose algo?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks interesting. There is another good project that does this called Boilerpipe: <http://code.google.com/p/boilerpipe/>

I recently developed a web service that performs these sorts of operations called Linguini (<http://linguini.me>). The service hasn't been officially launched but it's in beta and usable. It can extract html/blog text through JSON web service calls and can tag names/companies/locations in that text.

<comment><USER4> Boilerpipe is great. Also see the diffbot article API which is quite good: <http://www.diffbot.com/docs/api/article>

There is some deeper discussion of text extraction tools on Tomaz Kovacic's blog: [http://tomazkovacic.com/blog/56/list-of-resources-article- te...](http://tomazkovacic.com/blog/56/list-of-resources-article-text- extraction-from-html-documents/)

One advantage of Goose, (the linked project), is that it tries to also extract the best _image_ from the webpage. None of the competitors do this. I am not sure how good Goose's _text_ extraction is, compared to boilerpipe or diffbot.

A new tool just popped on my radar called justext: <http://code.google.com/p/justext/> It was written by the BiWeC web-as-corpus people, who crawl the web and expose it through the SketchEngine for NLP research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stupid question, what's the legality or the "rules" on extracting pic + chunk of text from random websites?

Are there any rules I presume there must be?

<comment><USER6> Well, we're talking about copyright. And so long as you're not re-publishing anything, you're definitely fine.

Instapaper arguably is republishing, though the copies are private to each user. I suspect they could still be in trouble if sued, though.

<comment><USER7> This is one of the reasons Readability links you back to the original article when you share document inside the service. It keeps a small overlay at the top which you can use to make the page more readable again.

Slightly off topic: I've been playing around with an idea for a service that would be able to share content this way - would make reading a lot more fun again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Super nice, I was playing around with the idea of running an article extractor and running the output through festival (with a little clean up the output is surprisingly good, and certainly a lot better than it used to be a few years ago) so that I could hear blog post while I was working.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is anyone else interested in seeing something like this used with zap reader? Zap reader takes articles and renders them a word at a time in the same spot on the screen. You can adjust the words per minute, I can understand stuff in the 300 to 500 wpm range. I think their ui is not very good and it seems to just read through a page, including navigation and header/footer.

</comment><comment><USER10> There's also a C# port of Readability algorithm: <https://github.com/marek- stoj/NReadability> which is being used by InstaFetch - an Instapaper client for Android (<http://instafetch.immortal.pl/>).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> list of all the unit tests with the extraction results: [https://github.com/jiminoc/goose/blob/master/src/test/java/c...](https://github.com/jiminoc/goose/blob/master/src/test/java/com/jimplush/goose/GoldSitesTest.java)

<comment><USER11> accessing the urls in the unit tests seems like a recipe for slow build, why not put the test inputs in the repo?

<comment><AUTHOR> it's on the list of things to do, however one of the challenges is that those sites are always changing or updating their templates. So it's nice to have the most up to date links to hit against.

Goose also pulls all the images down as well to inspect them to try and find the most likely main image for the page.

It will probably be split into an online/offline test. If that sounds like something someone wants to help hack on, the more the merrier!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Wikipedia going to survive? - <AUTHOR> With the aggressive push for donations, wikipedia seems desperate to keep floating. Have you been seeing the Donate Banners every time you visit wikipedia ? <comment><USER2> The foundation has more and more money each year and spends quite a bit on things that are not critical to running wikipedia, so I have no reason to believe that Wikipedia is at financial risk.

</comment><comment><USER3> They have $90M in savings. They already met their donation goal, half way through the donation period. They spend $2M a year on keeping the site running. They are fine.

</comment><comment><USER4> You must be new to Wikipedia, if your never seen Jimmy Whales's begging bowl before now

</comment><comment><USER5> They do this every december. If you watched pbs in the us you would think the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wish more people would donate

<comment><USER7> I usually give $10 per year. Not because I think they need it, but because they are an important institution. I'm concerned that the number of contributors is going down though.

<comment><USER8> Taking how often they are doing edit-a-thons into account, it's possible that some of your money goes into recruiting new contributors. (WMF also has a scholarship for known-good contributors to attend these conferences.)</comment></comment></comment>


Bank of England considers launching a CBDC and it wants to hear your opinion - <AUTHOR> https://forklog.media/the-bank-of-england-is-considering-jumping-on-the-cbdc-bandwagon/ <comment><USER2> I wonder what that means for the lay person in finance, would it be comparable to California's IOU [0]?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOU](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOU)

<comment><USER3> Don't think there are any similarities. CBDC is basically digital cash.</comment></comment>


Comcast Wants To Put Data Caps On All Customers Within 5 Years - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/14/comcast-wants-to-put-data-caps-on-all-customers-within-5-years/

<comment><USER2> We really need to make municipal monopolies illegal. That is step 1.</comment>


Q. Why is it so hard to swat a housefly? A. It sees you coming in slow motion - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/q-why-is-it-so-hard-to-swat-a-housefly-a-it-sees-you-coming-in-slow-motion-8818124.html <comment><USER2> I always thought it was because of the air pressure as you try to smash them... that's why fly swatters are perforated?

<comment><AUTHOR> Had thought that too, seeing all kinds of perforated patterns in fly swatters, now I have on hand an electric tennis racket</comment></comment>


Apple: Their Tablet Computer History - <AUTHOR> http://liquidpubs.com/blog/2010/11/08/apple-their-tablet-computer-history/ <comment><USER2> _Please note: iOS-Safari (iPad/iPhone/iPod) is limited to loading just the first 6-6.5 MB of images on a webpage. To see all images, please use another browser. Thank you._

I get that there are a lot of images in the post, but you couldn't keep it under 6Mb?

<comment><USER3> This limitation seems very bizarre on the iPhone 4, which has 512MB of memory. (I'm actually pretty annoyed that MobileSafari doesn't have configurable caching in general; I'd happily give up a gig of solid-state storage if it meant that web pages always stayed in memory once loaded.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Gotta wonder who has the largest collection of these products and prototypes.

Word is Jobs won't have nostalgic old products around, no matter how important or successful they were. If it's not in production now, it has failed; only current success should be on one's mind.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm kind of shocked that the eMate (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMate_300>) wasn't mentioned. IMHO, it's somewhere between a laptop and a PDA/tablet.</comment>


The most popular subdomains on the internet - <AUTHOR> https://bitquark.co.uk/blog/2016/02/29/the_most_popular_subdomains_on_the_internet <comment><USER2> I'm confused about hgfgdf and lkjkui anyone have an explanation for those?

<comment><USER3> I cant find explanation even for govyty or 1rer :-/</comment></comment>