<i>I&#x27;m expecting a 30-40% decline in S&amp;P 500, 30% decline in bay area real estate values, 30% of bay area &quot;well-funded&quot; startups going bust, and 25% reduction in market rate pay for software engineers over the next 2 years. Hopefully that will turn out to be a gloomy forecast, but it&#x27;s best to prepare for the worst.</i><p>I don&#x27;t dispute your gloom, but I challenge your %s.<p>- &quot;Well Funded Startups&quot; have a &gt;1 correlation to the overall stock market.  (Market moves 10%, they move higher than 10%)  So if we see a several year 30-40% decline in the S&amp;P, this will cause more than 30% of the &quot;well-funded&quot; startups to go bust.  Anyone who can&#x27;t switch to cash flow positive would have a high likelihood of going under.<p>- Real Estate values tend to move slower than stock market prices.  (People can ride the market out, and just not sell the house)  It would take a very sustained market hit to cut real estate by 30%.  Also, much of the money fleeing China is coming to the Bay Area.  (This isn&#x27;t to say that it couldn&#x27;t happen, but you&#x27;d need to see 5+ years of a depressed stock market)  The reason it tanked so much in 2008 was that the bubble was in the financing mechanism.<p>- I think if you count equity, the market rate pay for engineers would get hit worse.  Options that on-paper are worth 500K can quickly go to zero in a down round.  Other variable comp will get hit too.  Not sure about base salaries.  Even in an enormous down market, most of the world will still be short engineers.  In 2001 the folks who got crushed were the Marketing majors posing as Web Engineers.<p>You didn&#x27;t mention my big hope though...  A 30-50% reduction in Bay Area commute times!  :-)<p>One bright side to a crash - it is better to start a company where good talent is plentiful and cash is scarce, than the other way around.