[teiferer]

Skill. Knowledge. At your age, your biggest assert is your future earnings potential. The more employable you are, the better you will make iduring and after a downturn. In fact, the highest skill folks tend to even profit from hiccups in the economy.

[johnnyanmac]

Are the ones newer to the workforce just screwed or is there a way out? Kinda sucks that all this went down around 6-7 years into my tenure and it's just been a few years of scraping together freelance + portfolio projects to try and climb out of tbis rut.

(This might sadly be rhetorical given what I hear of '08, but perhaps there are new channels open to take advantage of. Or at least old channels to raise awareness of).

[OGEnthusiast]

Newer ones are definitely screwed.

[teiferer]

6-7 years of experience make you prime material for employment in the sw industry. Experience but not too expensive/entitled yet.

Have you considered applying?

[estimator7292]

None of that is true. Not one word of this applies anymore. Being highly skilled means you're highly paid, which puts you first in line for cuts. Talent doesn't get you hired, networks do. "Future earning potential" is just nonsense words, you can't eat "future earning potential".

This advice is from half a century ago. The times have moved on.

[teiferer]

What's your advice then, if it's not investing in your hireability?