in Depression, Recession

What skills will be useful during the upcoming recession / depression ?, Hacker News

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                   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.

            

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                   Or get a loan from an Indian bank. The interest rate does not matter since you don’t have to pay the loan back:) There were some high profile cases of people taking millions of dollars of loans and running away (search for Neerav Modi, Mehul Choksi) so I am not making this up.

                                      
                   Which gives you the opportunity to make billions in profits while everybody else is suffering. And hopefully utilize those profits to help fewer suffer.

                         
                   Another option is to get massive zero-interest loans that the government will forgive later. That way you don’t have to go through the performance of buying a company, you can just pocket the cash.

                         

            

                   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.

                   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.

            

                   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.
                         

                   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!

            

                   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 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.
            

                   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.
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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} (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.

            

            
                   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.
            

                   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.

            
                   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.
            
                   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.

            
                   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.
            

            

                   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.
            
                   Aim to be an expert in your field=what you love to do and You’ll be fine. High performance people are unaffected during crisis.
            
                   I’m a “high performer”, a core collaborator in a big open source project and a library maintainer of a few libraries with M 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 22656830 recession and I was impacted by the dot-com bubble. A lot of friends went to do enterprise Java at banks, jobs without glamor 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.

            
                  > “… 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?

            

                   Honestly, right now during the pandemic, medical courier. How do you think tests get to labs?

            

                   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 im training a few folks a week: http://yen.camp

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                   Einstein: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought.” , but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. “
                                                   

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                   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= but then forecasting is very difficult, especially when it involves the future.

            
                   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 …
            
                   Being a doctor involves at least 4 years, plus an extra 3-4 for residency – and that’s assuming you have met the pre-med requirements. There are several other health care options that are much quicker to learn. Such as nursing, physician’s assisting, lab work. Etc.
                                      
                   Not useful since so many Chinese are bilingual already. Besides, I have a feeling they are going to get the coming recession much worse than the USA.
                                                   

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

                   i think both would be usefull espescially when its time to rebuild. (if you know old programing language and are able to port ancient applications and data structures to a recent language and platform you will be valuable for the rebuilding.

            

            

            

                   Greg Fenves, the president of UT Austin tells the story of his dad who sneaked out of Buchenwald and was recognized at a factory using prisoners for slave labor by an SS guard who knew him from the camp. Upon being asked what he was doing there (being too young for normal labor selection) he on the fly responded that that Buchenwald had thought the factory would need an interpreter

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                   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.