May you live in interesting times. Sounds like a Chinese proverb doesn't it? On the surface it does sound like one, but actually it's actually a curse. Interesting times usually involve drama and conflict, whereas boring times usually means peace. A quick glance around will reveal that we are indeed living in interesting times. The West is involved in two wars, we're in the midst of a once-in-a-century financial crisis, the US is having one of the most important elections ever, etc.
Myron made a remark that we're finally growing up because we're encountering our first ever full blown recession. Technically we did go through the 2001-2003 recession which was caused by the dot com bubble bursting; however, we were still in academia, and our jobs were only co-op jobs. I've been pondering how long this recession will last, and how it me on a day-to-day basis.
Some of the people I talk to thinks that this recession will only last a year. Some people have this delusional view that their messiah, Barack Obama will get the economy back in order after he takes office. Unfortunately, I'm quite skeptical about the short recession scenario. If we look at the dot com bust, most of the damage to the economy was restricted to key sectors like tech. This credit crisis has spilled over to a lot of sectors including financials, autos, natural resources, media, retail, housing, etc.
In terms of how this recession will affect us, I think the number one threat is obviously job loss. A recession usually means unemployment goes up, and there's less jobs to go around as company's make less money. If you've been following the headlines,
Yahoo recently announced that it will layoff 10% of its workforce. I've had a few people ask me if I'm worried about this. Honestly, I'm not worried simply because I've learned to only worry about things that I can control, and this is something totally beyond my powers. The last round of layoffs has probably made me a bit numb over the whole process, as the first time is always the scariest.
I remember the first time we had the threat of layoffs, I was talking to a Yahoo manager who was part of Inktomi (the search engine that Yahoo bought during the dot com bust). Basically, Inktomi is one of those stories where the stock was in the hundreds, and it fell all the way to a few dollars. Anyways, during the dot com burst, the manager said he endured nine rounds of layoffs because the company kept bleeding cash. He basically reached a point where he no longer feared layoffs as he was a survivor. Lets hope the economy doesn't get so bad that it will require multiple rounds of layoffs.
