An economist I was listening to recently recommended assessing your employer's debt to equity ratio to determine its resiliency in a recession.

That doesn't really mean anything. Lots of large companies with hundreds of billions in their bank account lay people off by choice rather than compulsion when the environment ensures that they won't get too much negative press for it. Same thing happened in 2008 with Microsoft, Google and many others.

Which Google layoffs are you referring to?

Does that count for tech? I just looked at tech's and it's all between like 0.25 - 0.6 for the few samples I looked at. Netflix is 0.8 but still I think is low for most companies?

If you Google "good debt to equity ratio" one site says 2.0 - 2.5.

I'm not sure if this applies here.

> Does that count for tech?

Financial debt kills because free cash flow gets squeezed. For most tech companies, operating expenses constrain free cash flow.

Quick ratio [1] and free cash flow (or alternatively, operating cash flow) as a fraction of cash on hand (or less conservatively, current assets) would be my go-to acid tests.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/quickratio.asp

Yeah, think like equity analysts during upturns, and in a downturn think like credit, ie. map out the sources and uses of funds.

The big caveat here is rising rates on floating rate debt, and the marginal response of revenue to higher rates.

Can you explain that like you'd explain it to your elderly mother

A little bit more detailed than that?

I used to work for the oil industry felt (and probably objectively is) far less stable.

There are other things to look at such as how resilient their business model is, their price/ earning ratio, etc. But in general, I would say those tech companies that have huge price swings during the pandemic are most likely to going have some sort of layoff. They are the ones that most likely over-hired.

> An economist I was listening to recently recommended assessing your employer's debt to equity ratio

Do employers even offer that kind of detailed information to employees?

For a publicly traded company, that information would be publicly available, if that's what you're asking.

And at a startup, particularly an early-stage one, I would feel pretty uncomfortable if they wouldn't tell me that information in an interview.

They should -- if they are not willing to answer on the runway you probably should not join/prepare to head out.

So Apple, Google, MSFT, and AMZN?

I’ve never in over a quarter of a century worried about whether a company is viable. My concern is whether my skillset is in sync with the market, my network strong and having a go to hell fund.

Well said. My skillset is really old but I just got a job with a modern skillset company however the company is in the hiring biz... any suggestions on what to do in this situation? Think I burned my bridge leaving the old place

My skillset was “really old” in 2008 at 34. I was still doing VB6 (7 years after it had been discontinued) and C++/MFC (Windows). What I did have is a level of maturity and the ability to talk to customers and knowing how to get things done.

I went to a company that used modern technology and learned how to talk the talk and built my resume.

But if I were in that position today instead of 2008, I would spend as much time as it took to study data system and algorithm style interviews - ie “grind leetCode and work for a FAANG” (tm r/cscareerquestions).

I fell into a remote role at $BigTech through the cloud consulting department specializing in enterprise application development where that wasn’t necessary.

> my skillset

What is your skillset?

Right now it’s cloud application development, deployment consulting - “cloud application modernization”. I started specializing in that five years ago.

Before that it was regular old C#/Javascript “full stack development”. I could throw my resume up in the air and have a job offer in less than a month.

5 years before that I was just coming out of an “expert beginner stage”.

> Right now it’s cloud application development, deployment consulting - “cloud application modernization”. I started specializing in that five years ago.

Is that working with Google Cloud and AWS and deploying apps on them?

I work at AWS in the Professional Services department.

Netflix is a company that does rolling layoffs. Things don't work, whole or parts of teams are let go. Life goes on.

> What is a safe company during these times?

funeral service

I’m taking it as a half joke, but funeral homes are in slow decline as well due to rising cremation rates

Invest in crematoriums! :)

No one is safe, and no company is safe these days.

We’ll run, small, efficient startups that raised significant capital right before the crash.

This is what is defined as “successful” these days? How much money a company has raised and not having a profitable business model.

The question is what are good companies to invest in long term. And IMO the “bad bets” of the last few years become good bets (netflix, uber, facebook, wework, etc.)

The US military. I've heard they keep on recruiting for the inevitable war with Russia...

There is no such thing as a safe private company.

Liquor stores.

there are some great distribution graphs towards the bottom of the "layoff charts" tab here https://layoffs.fyi

Defense & energy (oil)

As someone who used to work in oil: oil (or any commodities) is an industry you go into if you don't mind a major wipeout every few years. Layoffs there are cyclical and far reaching.

I'm sure it's fine for now, though.

hard to see Google, MSFT or Apple laying anyone off

They are falling but their competitors are rising. It is not the end of the world. It is just capitalism.