Reddit’s former CEO on surviving Silicon Valley’s dotcom crash—and his recommendation to these dealing with tech layoffs at this time

“I used to be getting paid an enormous amount of cash on the time and I had three different affords for internships,” Wong mentioned in a name with Fortune. 

Only one 12 months later, as Wong celebrated graduating in pc science from Carnegie Mellon College, some 200,000 jobs had been lower in Silicon Valley.

The dotcom bubble had burst.

“The whole lot crashed,” Wong mentioned. “There are these big layoffs once in a while, proper? It’s nothing new, however it was my first time seeing the skilled results of an enormous macroeconomic downturn.” 

Having landed a job on the then startup PayPal, Wong watched a era of tech employees get spat out by the business. 

His early expertise at Silicon Valley carefully mirrors the headwinds at play at this time. Amid lots of of hundreds of layoffs with extra predicted to come back, many tech employees don’t know the way safe their roles are.

But not solely did Wong survive the chopping board, he additionally thrived.

Throughout a interval of upheaval Wong went on to affix Fb in 2005, earlier than taking the helm at Reddit in 2012 —and nearly based a WeWork rival in-between. Immediately, he’s the CEO of his personal local weather enterprise, Terraformation.

Though Wong was “fairly fortunate” to get his large break in the course of the crash, he revealed two items of recommendation for tech employees within the present local weather: Cease planning and get into A.I. 

 1. Flip to A.I.

Regardless of Goldman Sachs predicting that 300 million jobs could possibly be misplaced to synthetic intelligence, the event of huge language fashions may additionally present a lifeline to some, Wong insists.

“It looks like a hype prepare, however really there’s an unlimited quantity of worth overhang,” he says.

Even when Elon Musk, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, and hundreds of different tech leaders handle to persuade firms to hit pause on their A.I. developments, Wong claims {that a} decade’s value of innovation has already been launched prior to now few months.

As a substitute of mulling over the chance of a layoff, Wong suggests candidates ought to take a look at sidestepping into A.I.

“You don’t want an unlimited quantity of technical ability,” he insists. “Nontechnical folks can construct fairly priceless and novel functions on A.I. There’s this monumental quantity of leverage that a person can have.”

2. Cease profession planning

Benjamin Franklin, Winston Churchill, and plenty of leaders have recited some variation of the phrase: “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

It’s why there’s recommendation aplenty on easy methods to plan each side of your profession and land that dream position. 

However maybe it’s time to take a leaf out of Wong’s guide.  

As a substitute of making a five-year plan and giving himself an annual private efficiency evaluation to remain on observe, he insists he “randomly moved round” in his profession and labored “actually arduous” wherever he landed.

He believes that not specializing in the place you need to go subsequent makes you extra grounded within the job you’re really doing—as an alternative of dreaming in regards to the subsequent large factor and scraping by in your present position with little vitality.

“For those who’re actually good at no matter you’re doing proper now it creates a basis and offers you loads of possibility energy for no matter comes subsequent,” he says, whereas including that it might even open up paths you’ll by no means have deliberate to take. 

“Be sure to’re actually good on the time, wherever you’re,” he repeats. “It doesn’t matter in the event you don’t know what the music goes to be. For those who’re a great dancer, you’ll be able to adapt.”