What are you tips to weather a downturn?

I graduated into the great financial crisis, which is my benchmark for a downturn. I'm hoping there are some folks who can relate stories of the dot com crash on here. I'll give my thoughts based on my limited experience.

If you can (and many can't – being able to save months of living expenses in cash, put money away in post-tax investments, etc is certainly a privileged position), some of the best prep you can do for a downturn is done well ahead of it, during the good times.

• Cultivate a life outside of work: hobbies, friends, community, sources of fulfillment that aren't your job. Being laid off is a lot more painful if your job is also your social outlet, community, source of fulfillment, and/or main hobby.
• Make an effort to keep in touch with former coworkers that you enjoyed working with. It can be fun, and they can help refer you in to roles in the future (during a downturn, but also generally).
• Try to save some of your paycheck, even if you already maximize your 401(k) and other retirement accounts.
• Aim to have several months of living expenses in cash. This allows you to weather a period of unemployment without having to sell investments or take a loan from retirement accounts. (If the economy takes a dive, any investments you have in a 401(k) or taxable brokerage account are probably down too. You don't want to sell them while they're down if you can help it)
• Be aware of how your current total compensation matches your market. If you know you're paid substantially more than you'd get anywhere else (e.g., due to stock appreciation), consider that when making large purchases. For example, don't buy a house or a car that you couldn't afford with more typical compensation for your area & experience.

Of course, there are some helpful in the moment things you can do if you feel like things are going the wrong way at your company.

• In general, aim to keep personal activities off your work machine. Don't log in to iCloud. Don't log in to streaming services. Don't use it for personal development work.
• Don't load a company's MDM profile onto your personal mobile device if you can avoid it (you often need this to log on to a VPN, check corporate email, etc). These can allow remote management of your device, possibly including wiping it.
• If you have any important credentials that are only on your work machine, get a copy of them on your local machine. 401(k) credentials, health insurance logins, Carta logins, and so on might be personal credentials that you only ever use on your work notebook.
• If you're not in the habit of summarizing your accomplishments (on a resume, or for your own use), start – it's much easier to do this if you can re-read design docs, PRs, etc.
• Figure out whether you'll exercise any stock options you have if you're laid off. You typically have a limited amount of time to do this after leaving, and you lose any stock options if you don't exercise them. This will probably cost money (sometimes a lot of it); make sure to account for this cost when thinking about your emergency fund.

As I mentioned, I graduated into the great financial crisis, and I had a tough time finding a first job. One of the bigger mistakes I made was internalizing a feeling of scarcity ("the economy is bad, and I need this job") for too long, long after the worst of the crisis had passed. I left a good amount of money on the table by lowballing myself in part because of that mindset.