> almost every company could handle this by simply not rehiring after attrition

The problem is that there's a selection bias for attrition. It's possible that your worst employees are the ones who stick around the longest.

Absolutely valid - the equation shifts quote a lot during down markets, because top performers tend to fly to stability - and usually that is a incumbent situation.

> It's possible that your worst employees are the ones who stick around the longest.

That's another failure of management, rather than the line employees.

So I work for a company with "strong cash reserves" and "trajectory to profitability", and I was a child in 2008. We haven't done any layoffs yet, but it's definitely possible. Any advice for someone in my position with no recession experience?

Don't overly panic - keep your head down and do good work. At the same time, put off discretionary purchases and ensure that you have a few months of emergency liquidity setup if possible. (not always possible).

Keep a eye on linkedIn for connections who are hiring and make sure to stay connected.

Study up for technical interviews. Do some real interviews for practice. Update your resume. Network. Build a larger emergency fund. Check your budget and plan through how you could lower your expenses if the hammer falls. Think through alternative income you could build.

This, but with one twist: "... plan through how you could lower your expenses if the hammer falls."

Don't just plan - implement that plan now. You won't be any worse off, and will be much better prepared if the hammer actually falls.

If the hammer does NOT fall, then the money you saved while in this mode is just a nice little problem to have - pay down other debt, save it, etc...

I went through the 2000 .com bust and learned this lesson in time for the 2008 slowdown. It really helped and also allowed me to trim some unwanted expenses long term.

That’s fair advice, it’s just that it can be quite difficult for many people to keep their expenses cut to the bone. Many people don’t even know what they are spending. I think a first step is to understand your budget, maybe then make some easy cuts to start increasing your savings, and have a plan how you might cut to the bone quickly if you needed to.

For example, you might analyze your spending and realize that you’d save a lot of money by cutting daily Starbucks and avocado toast and that it’s trivial to make that at home. So you do that now to get some extra savings with no pain. You might also realize that moving back in with your parents is the single biggest thing you could do for your budget, but not a thing you would do unless you were laid off. But you could still have the conversation and be ready to pull that ripcord fast instead of waiting till you were out of money after a layoff.

I'd say lower your expenses now, regardless of layoff there's likely a strong buying opportunity in asset markets that could set them up for life.

You need an emergency fund and you need to cut expenses right away. I'd also practice interviewing. I have a leetcode routine I do. But keep in mind, interviewing is going to be hard with very good competition.

  Sunday - Stack | Queue | Priority Queue (Heap)
  Monday - String | Math
  Tuesday - Tree | Dynamic Programming
  Wednesday - BFS | DFS
  Thursday - Graph
  Friday - Linked List
  Saturday - Sabbath

Maintain a broadly diversified portfolio. If you have money to invest, try to avoid tech, since it's highly correlated with your employment situation. Keep costs low and savings high.

Also most importantly don't read the news. I had just started working in 2008 and honestly didn't really pay attention to the recession and luckily it never affected me materially or mentally.

have plenty of cash reserves. cash in a bank account, and low expenses are the way to weather these moments.

Always a good time to check in with old friends and coworkers who respect your work.

If things get bad be prepared to make significant changes, like moving to an area with more opportunity, etc.

Interview.

So for another summer child - What would be an actually good thing for a company to be saying?

Ironically - two very different things: a) We are managing the company very conservatively and are cutting travel/advertising and projects that are not making money and shifting them to projects that do, and not replacing people who leave unless the CEO or board approves (ie, the do less better strategy)

-or-

b) We are in trouble, so we are going to address this now by a sizeable layoff, but with generous layoff terms. We will also kill anything that doesn't have a clear trajectory to be sucessfull at runway length * 0.75.

Where you want to avoid is in a company that does sequential waves of 5-10% layoff. That means that that they didn't focus enough and are now past V1, without enough velocity to takeoff (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_speeds). That's when the company suddeny laysoff the vast majority of their workers with crappy layoff terms.

Profitability and low debt.

If you're making money and don't owe money, you can't go bankrupt.

Of course, profitable companies can become unprofitable, especially in a negative environment, so the more profitable it is, the safer it is.

The only thing that stops the timer on the bomb is taking in more money than you spend.