[wccrawford]

I'm full stack for 19 years and I love React, and I've been laid off for 1.5 years now. This is a terrible job market right now.

That doesn't mean you don't have good skills, it just means that too many people have them. It happens from time to time in every industrial, for all skills.

Obviously, I don't have any good advice about how to deal with it.

[altern8]

You mean you haven't been working for 1 1/2 years? How do you buy food?

[Sohcahtoa82]

> I'm full stack for 19 years

That's the key.

I've been an AppSec engineer for about 12 years, but it wasn't until about 5 years ago I started working somewhere that actually paid a market rate. I wasn't living paycheck to paycheck for the first 7 years, but certainly wasn't putting much away.

Now, I've got nearly a full year of after-tax paychecks in savings. I could easily go ~18 months without pay without a change in lifestyle. I could stretch it out to 3 years with some belt tightening.

In about 6 more years, the house will be paid off and any savings I have could last even longer.

[altern8]

Got it. I need to start saving some money.

Hope you find another job soon!

[vkou]

Presumably they haven't been living paycheck to paycheck for the past 19. It's not that difficult for a SWE in North America.

[happytoexplain]

That's not rare for a SWE in NA. Difficult is another matter. Plenty of SWE's in NA are now staring down the barrel of not being able to afford their own home for much longer (or to afford their first home).

[vkou]

If you've been working for three years as a junior and just put down a big down payment on a house you can barely afford, yes, you're going to have problems.

If in 19 years as a SWE, you haven't saved up a lot of money, you are one or more of:

1. Incredibly unfortunate in the jobs you've been taking.

2. Have made some incredibly bad investments.

3. Are spending like a sailor, burning every dollar as it comes in.

4. Have gone through one or more absolute life catastrophes.

... Then yes, you are also likely to have financial problems if you're out of work for two years.

I don't mean to say that these are incredibly uncommon. They aren't, especially in people chasing the startup carrot and ending up with nothing but the brown, sticky bit.

But I think it's fair to say that a large number of people in the profession should have managed to avoid all four. (With #3 being the main 'avoidable' culprit, and with #4 being largely unavoidable.)

Consider that somehow, people making less than a quarter of our prevailing wages manage to live... Fairly comfortably.

[altern8]

Yes, I guess investments, etc., but 1.5 years is a long time.

I don't think I could go more than 2-3 months. Maybe I should start saving some money.

[Sohcahtoa82]

Location matters a LOT.

The parent comment mentioned North America. This is huge. Tech salaries in Europe are half what they are in NA. In India, they're like 1/4 to 1/3.

Saving is absolutely important, especially in such a layoff-ridden industry. You should really strive to get at least 6 months of living expenses into savings.

[happytoexplain]

>In India, they're like 1/4 to 1/3.

My company pays 10k a year for an Indian contractor, full time. I don't know what their agency pays them, but it can't be even 1/4 of a typical NA SWE salary. More like 1/12th.

[a96]

Most of Europe has social security and reasonable health care. Cities even have working transit systems. Living costs are massively different. I expect the costs in India will also be.

Not that it means you'll be raking in a lot of surplus money, but that's also not directly tied to the size of your salary.

[altern8]

I know but there's always something shiny that keeps me away from that goal.

But I keep reading about people getting fired because of AI and every time I do I get progressively more anxious and closer to getting start on that.

[wccrawford]

Correct. My wife still has a job, and our families have been very supportive.

And as the others said, we've been saving money. We thought it was for retirement, but we're having to use some of it early for this situation.