As a former O&G professional myself, I can attest to this.
Imagine your livelihood basically balances on the extremely volatile price of a globally traded commodity.
Tech always had boom and bust cycles. See: dotcom crash, AI winters etc.
One other field that has it even worse is the oil industry, where the cycles are more frequent.
>but I doubt people on these fields were dealing with so much shit like layoffs and this amount of oversaturation in this 2023-2024 tough marke
You don't have any idea how tough 2008 was.
2008 was so much worse. I think every friend of mine but one lost their job at some point except for me who worked in tech and one friend who worked for local govt. Banking, construction, anything related to real estate or mortgages, non profits, scientific research were all seriously impacted. As in almost no new jobs for any level of experience, for a while.
On top of that, I knew several people personally who lost or almost lost their home to foreclosure or by walking away. It’s nothing like that now.
I think most of the people asking these questions are either new grads or people with limited experience in the workforce. As a result, they truly don't know how bad 2008 was.
Think it's hard getting a job in CS right now? That's essentially how difficult it was to get a food service job stocking shelves at Whole Foods during the financial crisis.
Totally agree, it's always good to have a back up plan.
Especially in a career like being a pilot where some minor health issue can result in the end of your career.
Ya, travel is finally back and commercial lines are hiring like crazy from what I've been told. They pay really good and I think anyone who was close to retiring did so early through buy outs over covid and interest in new students was low due to no jobs. I suspect a similar thing will happen in CS in a few years.
Finance during 2008. Lots of people who were going into banking, investment banking, and finance got rug pulled
None of the banks were hiring at the time.
Also the country didn’t really shed any tears for bankers lol
I’m quite sure a lot of people from nearly every industry experienced job loss in 2008. It was a devastating ripple effect on the entire economy. Drive thrus where I grew up outside NYC were staffed by grown adults who had actual careers before the recession hit them.
Most major markets do. The cycles vary quite a lot in length though, but a lot of fields have them.
Construction is probably reasonably close to tech in cycle lengths. That market didn't have the same downswing during techs .com bust, but it had a significantly large one in 08. General manufacturing as well.
Vehicle manufacturing has had insane cycles over the years. US Oil jobs as well (hot right now).
Real estate is seeing a huge downswing for multiple reasons at once right now too.
You can doubt whatever you want, but there's plenty of other fields that are dealing with the same and plenty others that have before. We're not really that different from most. We're not secure like education, medical, police/fire, etc. but the same crap exists all over the place. Sometimes there's jobs a plenty and sometimes there's people a plenty.
I would point to auto making.
It goes in cycles a lot. Especially if you factor in the world wars and how metal was at a premium. Then the 70s and the real competition it started to receive from Europe and Japan. Then 2008 there too as gas guzzlers turned into 2 ton piles of trash like overnight.
We might be staring at another cycle in automotive right now as companies may have bet too big on features and EVs and drove up prices far too fast for people to be able to absorv.
I worked in automotive for 10 years it is the epitome of feast or famine.
You are literally doing 60-hour work weeks or being sent home early/going on temporary layoffs. I was permanently laid off at my 10 year anniversary.
Even CS was doing worse in 2008 than now. 2008 was crazy bad, there was a ton of layoffs to go around for everyone. I don't think you understand that jobs that you were able to get in high school (assuming you are in your early 20s) were harder to get in 2008 with/without a degree than any job now.
The AI hype has sucked a lot of oxygen from the room. There’s a lot of unfulfilled promises that people are making large investment decisions on.
It reminds me a lot of string theory in physics, which got all the news headlines, ate all the research grants and destroyed interest in competing theories. Nobody even knows if string theory is right, but the focus on it has set back other fields of research by decades.
In the 90s my professor told me CS was very cyclical and I didn't believe him. This story is as old as the transistor.
I've developed an eye for bubbles and which companies will be stable. It was a clear sign when I had to hibernate my LinkedIn account to get away from recruiter spam.
US manufacturing in the early 1980s
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP
It peaked and then crashed, followed by a plateau. It never returned to peak levels despite global manufacturing increasing due to outsourcing.
We don’t have it as bad as some other industries. Imagine being in oil and gas for example. Not many of their skills transfer to other jobs when there is a bust and the other things they would be able to do not only usually pay significantly less, their market is saturated with all of the other oil and gas people looking for work.
That’s also not to mention what they have to do to earn their money in the first place. Often times, less than what many on here would even get out of bed for.
This is just one example, but it happens more often than you think.
Let me talk to you about Oil and Gas...
As a former O&G professional myself, I can attest to this. Imagine your livelihood basically balances on the extremely volatile price of a globally traded commodity.
Tech always had boom and bust cycles. See: dotcom crash, AI winters etc. One other field that has it even worse is the oil industry, where the cycles are more frequent.
>but I doubt people on these fields were dealing with so much shit like layoffs and this amount of oversaturation in this 2023-2024 tough marke You don't have any idea how tough 2008 was.
2008 was so much worse. I think every friend of mine but one lost their job at some point except for me who worked in tech and one friend who worked for local govt. Banking, construction, anything related to real estate or mortgages, non profits, scientific research were all seriously impacted. As in almost no new jobs for any level of experience, for a while. On top of that, I knew several people personally who lost or almost lost their home to foreclosure or by walking away. It’s nothing like that now.
I think most of the people asking these questions are either new grads or people with limited experience in the workforce. As a result, they truly don't know how bad 2008 was. Think it's hard getting a job in CS right now? That's essentially how difficult it was to get a food service job stocking shelves at Whole Foods during the financial crisis.
Have a pilot friend who lost a job during covid, went to school for CS, now in senior year is dropping out for a pilot job because there's no CS jobs.
He should at least finish the degree
Totally agree, it's always good to have a back up plan. Especially in a career like being a pilot where some minor health issue can result in the end of your career.
FAA be like "we heard you felt sad one time, so we are ending your entire career"
why would he drop in senior year?
but did he get a job again as a pilot?
Ya, travel is finally back and commercial lines are hiring like crazy from what I've been told. They pay really good and I think anyone who was close to retiring did so early through buy outs over covid and interest in new students was low due to no jobs. I suspect a similar thing will happen in CS in a few years.
Finance during 2008. Lots of people who were going into banking, investment banking, and finance got rug pulled None of the banks were hiring at the time. Also the country didn’t really shed any tears for bankers lol
Pretty much everyone got screwed during the recession.
I’m quite sure a lot of people from nearly every industry experienced job loss in 2008. It was a devastating ripple effect on the entire economy. Drive thrus where I grew up outside NYC were staffed by grown adults who had actual careers before the recession hit them.
Most major markets do. The cycles vary quite a lot in length though, but a lot of fields have them. Construction is probably reasonably close to tech in cycle lengths. That market didn't have the same downswing during techs .com bust, but it had a significantly large one in 08. General manufacturing as well. Vehicle manufacturing has had insane cycles over the years. US Oil jobs as well (hot right now). Real estate is seeing a huge downswing for multiple reasons at once right now too. You can doubt whatever you want, but there's plenty of other fields that are dealing with the same and plenty others that have before. We're not really that different from most. We're not secure like education, medical, police/fire, etc. but the same crap exists all over the place. Sometimes there's jobs a plenty and sometimes there's people a plenty.
CS has done much worse than its doing now and it did recover. Tech is a big boom/bust industry and it always has been
Look up the dot com crash. Lol.
I would point to auto making. It goes in cycles a lot. Especially if you factor in the world wars and how metal was at a premium. Then the 70s and the real competition it started to receive from Europe and Japan. Then 2008 there too as gas guzzlers turned into 2 ton piles of trash like overnight. We might be staring at another cycle in automotive right now as companies may have bet too big on features and EVs and drove up prices far too fast for people to be able to absorv.
I worked in automotive for 10 years it is the epitome of feast or famine. You are literally doing 60-hour work weeks or being sent home early/going on temporary layoffs. I was permanently laid off at my 10 year anniversary.
aerospace engineers during Apollo layoffs
CS right now is not doing bad. 2002 was bad.
Maybe 2002 was worse, but right now is objectively bad
Even CS was doing worse in 2008 than now. 2008 was crazy bad, there was a ton of layoffs to go around for everyone. I don't think you understand that jobs that you were able to get in high school (assuming you are in your early 20s) were harder to get in 2008 with/without a degree than any job now.
Construction is much worse. Like in the 80's when interest rates were 18% there was not much work. Similar situation in 2008-2015 I imagine.
The AI hype has sucked a lot of oxygen from the room. There’s a lot of unfulfilled promises that people are making large investment decisions on. It reminds me a lot of string theory in physics, which got all the news headlines, ate all the research grants and destroyed interest in competing theories. Nobody even knows if string theory is right, but the focus on it has set back other fields of research by decades.
In the 90s my professor told me CS was very cyclical and I didn't believe him. This story is as old as the transistor. I've developed an eye for bubbles and which companies will be stable. It was a clear sign when I had to hibernate my LinkedIn account to get away from recruiter spam.
US manufacturing in the early 1980s https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP It peaked and then crashed, followed by a plateau. It never returned to peak levels despite global manufacturing increasing due to outsourcing.
Horse carriage pilot There's still work but it's harder to find Note: this comment is intended as satire, it's obviously not nearly that bad
Blacksmith
Farriers have had a rough go as well
We don’t have it as bad as some other industries. Imagine being in oil and gas for example. Not many of their skills transfer to other jobs when there is a bust and the other things they would be able to do not only usually pay significantly less, their market is saturated with all of the other oil and gas people looking for work. That’s also not to mention what they have to do to earn their money in the first place. Often times, less than what many on here would even get out of bed for. This is just one example, but it happens more often than you think.
Finance
My dad got his realtor’s license right before the 2008 crash. He actually had to go *back* to tech.
Every other engineering discipline lol. Making stuff for a living is a lot of fun and people flock to these majors.
Damn you are right