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Surviving through the 2000 one must have been a hard one, although it picked up fast ;) What were the signs? What could you see at the time that made sense to y

by daragao 11y ago

Surviving through the 2000 one must have been a hard one, although it picked up fast ;) What were the signs? What could you see at the time that made sense to you that was something wrong? Or at the time you never felt anything was wrong, business was just really good. After the disaster happens everyone has good theories about the causes, but before no one really remembers to look to obvious signs which transcend how the economics are going, like why there is so much people getting so much money although their knowledge doesn't support their business. How can a tech business be built by someone that is non tech (or even averse to it), to make a business do you only need a good talk and gut, or do you actually need to know about the business.

csixty4 11y ago
Not the OP, but the big one for me was everybody's rush to IPO. You weren't a real tech company if you weren't publicly traded and offering your employees stock options. In 2000, I was working for a twenty year old, privately owned, profitable software company at the top of a growing vertical that decided they needed to rebrand as a dot-com, buy their next biggest competitor, and IPO. They got as far as the first two before the bubble burst completely. Seeing infrastructure brands like Cisco, Java, and RedHat all over the mainstream financial press made me worry the tech would suffer for the sake of marketing. Indeed, I saw companies investing in tech from those brands before their use cases justified it, because they could show investors their name brand hardware in the data center and cash in on that brand recognition. But the cost doesn't matter because you'll get rich when you IPO next year, right?
mooreds 11y ago
Ha, hindsight is 20/20, as they say. I guess I would say that the voracious hiring, the dependency on other startups for revenue, the grand plans(an office in Londow and one in Singapore!), the hiring of high level executives that didn't seem to add value, the grand renovation (we had a custom built climbing wall in our building... was just got show), and later, the hamhandedness of the layoffs were all signs. Of course it was a different world back then because the hardware and software were a much larger portion of spend for internet companies. Signs may be different now. That said, "History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme." https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:History https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:History
- daragao 11y ago
  Exactly... I'm looking for the rhymes! :D
kls 11y ago
I knew it was a bubble when they where doing 2 week Flash bootcamps (the big front end tech at the time) and the people coming out of them where commanding 90-100k with no experience. I will say the latest front end coding boot camps are looking a lot like the late 90's to me. I protected myself by signing on with a profitable startup in a market that was slightly more rescission proof than other markets.
- daragao 11y ago
  That's what I feel, the frontend development movement is a very weird place right now, I like it but also fear it.

by daragao 11y ago

csixty4 11y ago

Not the OP, but the big one for me was everybody's rush to IPO. You weren't a real tech company if you weren't publicly traded and offering your employees stock options. In 2000, I was working for a twenty year old, privately owned, profitable software company at the top of a growing vertical that decided they needed to rebrand as a dot-com, buy their next biggest competitor, and IPO. They got as far as the first two before the bubble burst completely. Seeing infrastructure brands like Cisco, Java, and RedHat all over the mainstream financial press made me worry the tech would suffer for the sake of marketing. Indeed, I saw companies investing in tech from those brands before their use cases justified it, because they could show investors their name brand hardware in the data center and cash in on that brand recognition. But the cost doesn't matter because you'll get rich when you IPO next year, right?

mooreds 11y ago

Ha, hindsight is 20/20, as they say. I guess I would say that the voracious hiring, the dependency on other startups for revenue, the grand plans(an office in Londow and one in Singapore!), the hiring of high level executives that didn't seem to add value, the grand renovation (we had a custom built climbing wall in our building... was just got show), and later, the hamhandedness of the layoffs were all signs. Of course it was a different world back then because the hardware and software were a much larger portion of spend for internet companies. Signs may be different now. That said, "History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme." https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:History https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:History

daragao 11y ago
Exactly... I'm looking for the rhymes! :D

kls 11y ago

I knew it was a bubble when they where doing 2 week Flash bootcamps (the big front end tech at the time) and the people coming out of them where commanding 90-100k with no experience. I will say the latest front end coding boot camps are looking a lot like the late 90's to me. I protected myself by signing on with a profitable startup in a market that was slightly more rescission proof than other markets.

daragao 11y ago
That's what I feel, the frontend development movement is a very weird place right now, I like it but also fear it.