The Recession

So we have a recession now, which is best defined by Harry Truman, as "It's a recession when your neighbour loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours "
This is the second recession, that I am seeing. The previous one, was the one in 2001, when the dot-com bubble burst. There are some differences though.

That recession, was mostly IT specific. Other industries, were hit, but not as bad. People knew, that dot com bubble, was going to burst, though, most of them (including me) hadn't thought, it would be so bad. That also saw layoffs in indian s/w companies, a thing, many people, never dreamt of, at that time.
Till 2000, indian s/w companies, were hiring like crazy, and suddenly got hit, by the recession. Till the time, they knew about the recession, it was a bit late, and they had excess employees on their payroll. The size of IT industry in India was comparatively very less. I guess it was below $10 billion.Though, within 2-3 years, the recession in Indian IT was gone, and it was back to hiring binge, and the pace was greater then the one in late 90's.

This time, things are different. I am no longer a guy with 1-2 years experience :-) which might actually be a bad thing in a recession. The recession has hit most of the sectors. Auto, finance and realty are the worst hit. And it is spreading to other sectors. Though layoffs haven't yet started on a large scale. If the recession continues for a longer time, there might be layoffs. There are recruitment freezes everywhere now. Projects are being put on hold, and the usual recession related stuff is doing the rounds(no pay hikes, though in these times, most people are happy enough to have a job) .
Actually even this time, the recession was in the offing. Most people just didn't took a clue from the downward slide of the BSE sensex.

On the positive side, the hit on realty, was very much expected. The rates were (and still are) pretty inflated by speculators. Hopefully the downward slide in realty will last longer then the recession.