10 ms·

During the dot-com bust of the early 2000s, I was working at a super-market. One of the guys stocking shelves was a software engineer laid off by a large compa

by jwiley 11y ago

During the dot-com bust of the early 2000s, I was working at a super-market. One of the guys stocking shelves was a software engineer laid off by a large company after 40 years. The management at Winn Dixie put him stacking boxes in the freezer section...since they knew he needed the money and wouldn't quit. Maybe he deserved to get fired, maybe he didn't. The lesson to me that has been reinforced over my career in the tech sector is: don't ever expect a company to value you more than the next quarters earnings reports.

SilasX 11y ago
And learn how to job search. There's surely a better job that guy could have found.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  I think you're forgetting what the early 2000's were like for software developers.
  - epx 11y ago
    Had a friend that literally had no money for food in this time (2002, actually).
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
      - ebbv 11y ago
        What a disingenuous and snide response. Software engineers outside the valley, especially in the late 90s and early 2000's don't make ludicrous amounts of money. Even if you live frugally and save up, being suddenly laid off will lead you to burning through savings very quickly. It's not like retiring, you don't get the time to prepare. Lastly, lack of empathy is not a virtue.
      - jonesb6 11y ago
        Ever see Office Space? How much do you think those programmers made? Can't even afford a stapler on that salary.
    - enjo 11y ago
      I entered the job market in 2002, it was absolutely brutal. It took a REALLY lucky set of circumstances to come together for me to find a job. That one job was it too. I was in Dallas while my wife was in PhD school and I had two interviews in 6 months.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - jerrysievert 11y ago
    i worked at the Open Source Development Lab 2001-2002, and left for the same reasons everyone else who had been there left - after walking out of that job, i spent 1 year unemployed in portland until taking a high level software engineering job for much less money. would i have made the same decision? no, i wouldn't have worked at the OSDL and would have preferred to burn out at another dotcom, but it did teach me how to live very frugally, and how to set money aside for rainy days. now i try to keep at least a year's worth of living expenses, preferably 2-3, just to make sure i can survive the next one.
- latj 11y ago
  Maybe not. There is more age discrimination in software than in other areas. But around 2000, it was out of control. There were fewer jobs and everyone wanted to hire "the kids in the garage" type developers. If he was engineer-management he definitely wasnt needed because everyone was cutting down tech teams to a minimum. Many out-sourced their software jobs to India at this time. Some just got rid of those positions altogether just in case this Internet thing turned out to be a fad. It was a very confusing time. Just before the burst, kids couldnt figure out why companies wanted to hire them but dropped out of school to go for it anyway. After the burst loads of younger programmers went to law school for no reason and lots of older programmers went to work at bookstores to keep the lights on.
  - epicureanideal 11y ago
    This is a very strong argument for developing some sort of secondary income aside from your day job. Maybe it never becomes a replacement for your day job check, but if you lose that check, an extra $1000/mo could mean a lot...
- look_lookatme 11y ago
  I worked at a Michaels in Plano in 2001 stocking yarn and frames with a guy that had been a systems consultant for EDS for a decade. He was in his early 30s. He got a new job after about a year of constant interviews. I use to cover for him when he'd take them. Those were dark days, man.
- acdha 11y ago
  Other people have pointed out how rough the period around 2000 was but it's also worth looking at how similar things were the previous time that'd happened in the early 90s when the defense contractors laid off a ton of engineers as the Cold War died down. That meant that you had large numbers of people with similar backgrounds all on the job market, in the same areas at the same time, competing for a sharply reduced number of jobs. Those kind of effects cascade: maybe you find a job but need to relocate, which means selling your house for a lot less than it was worth last year, or your spouse's job is also cut back because it was still linked to the local economy even if they didn't work at the same company. I got my first tech job in 1996 doing QA for a COBOL compiler vendor in San Diego. It paid $15/hour and there were multiple applicants with physics & engineering Ph.Ds and years of experience! The detail which is more sobering the older I get is that the company figured – correctly, I'm sure – that the more experienced applicants were likely to leave as soon as they could find something better, so it didn't matter how willing anyone was to take any job available. Sure, the market eventually recovered and some people repurposed all of that Cold War tech to make things like carbon-fiber golf clubs and bicycles commonplace but that's hardly going to help the person who went from living the American dream to struggling just to make the next mortgage payment, pay for their kid's braces or college tuition, etc. Even if they did eventually find a job, let alone one which pays comparably, it can take years to recover financially even if nothing else happens.
  - hga 11y ago
    And that's wasn't the first Cold War related layoff period, we largely stopped fighting it in the '70s (roughly "Vietnam" through when the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan gave Carter a clue), and between that and the end of the Apollo program aerospace crashed and never returned to its old level. My family hired an EE to do electrical engineering in ~1972 and he was thrilled to be able to get back to it after doing all sort of random service jobs including "cleaning toilets" (the latter might have been exaggerated to me to motivate working hard to get into college), I learned a whole lot from him.
    - dredmorbius 11y ago
      Interesting. So this crash happened before the oil embargo (fall, 1973)?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Gibbon1 11y ago
  I've noted one reason keeping up with and having good relations with coworkers is important. Helps you get work later. Especially true as you get older your chance of finding a job via a cold call goes way down. But even so in a big downturn you may find all your industry contacts are in the same boat as you are. I had a lot of friends in the web industry all out of work 2001-2004. And in a fast changing field 18 months out of work is bad news because your experience rapidly becomes obsolete.
dclowd9901 11y ago
After being laid off twice during my short career life (I'm only 33), I've learned one lesson loud and clear: Always be ready for a great opportunity, and when it comes, go for it. That and always keep learning, because there's going to be some young go hard ready to come in and fuck your shit up.
- askafriend 11y ago
  That's me right now, early in my career. I'm ready to go hard and fuck your shit up. Sorry!
  - dclowd9901 11y ago
    Haha, come at me, youth! Seriously, though, as long as you keep up, and avoid being a curmudgeon, you're gonna be fine. The only ones who die in this industry choose to stop swimming.
    - MikeNomad 11y ago
      Trying to work with your analogy... Does that mean H1Bs are the sharks, or the chum?
      - x5n1 11y ago
        H1Bs are our century's slaves, imported to work the tech plantations. Cheaper than locals. Fewer rights. Easier to exploit. And also make their owners a lot of money. In this case they are better off for it, that much has changed.
        jmspring 11y ago
        I'm mixed on your analogy. I would rather argue, H1Bs are the modern day SCABS (union comparison) when you consider Tata and the other body shops. They are there to be used by companies break down wages, remove workers, and ostensibly reduce costs. Reality is, they do displace workers, but over the long terms costs go up due to lost customers and revenue and the need to replace those workers with competent unsourced individuals (happening a lot over the last 3-5 years). This is not speaking to the general H1B individual, only those that places like Tata and IBM have been hiring to "offshore work" and "reduce costs"; and those same companies slowly lose enterprise customers fed up with the lack of quality. HP was another company that took on contracts providing corporate IT services, outsourced them and then found customers firing them and then insourcing talent.
Gibbon1 11y ago
I started trying to find summer jobs while in college 1981-1983. Totally totally failed until summer of 1984. I felt like such a loser and my parents could not understand how I kept getting turned down for jobs. I don't think the valley really recovered until 1987-1988. Part of that was because the last of the manufacturing went to Asia. And also because the Japanese were trying to keep the Yen weak and the Reagan administration was trying to keep the dollar strong. This didn't bode well for the tech industry in the Bay Area.
finstell 11y ago
Economic downturn happens every now and again. That's expected. You cannot change it. What a software engineer should have done was to be prepared for it. I don't see any valid reasons for him to end up in a supermarket job. 2000s crisis lasted a couple of years at the most. He should have had the means to survive comfortably the temporary time period when he was without an income. The lesson is: Be prepared as if you are going to be out of job anytime. That's a typical mistake of US based people. US is not a social country, you are on your own when shit happens, you should better be ready for the worst case scenario at all times. Your monthly income is not for you to spend monthly. It's for today and future.
- SolaceQuantum 11y ago
  I don't know anyone who is regularly prepared to go years without income. A lot of people can't afford that.
- mtbcoder 11y ago
  That's assuming one has the ability to sock away enough savings to ease the burden of any long-term unemployment. The reality though is that millions of US citizens do not even have this option, even knowing full well that they need to be saving more. They simply cannot because the cost of living is too great and wages are too low. The fact that the US is "not a social country, you are on your own when shit happens", while correct, is big a problem for all citizens and it amazes me how pervasive this cowboy mentality has become, especially amongst the populations that are living month-to-month and which would greatly benefit from strong social contracts.
  - bcg1 11y ago
    We're talking about tech jobs here, not minimum wage jobs that don't provide a living wage. I think the point is really that most people conflate their NEEDS with their WANTS and end up living hand to mouth because of it. If you are a tech worker in the USA and you don't have extenuating circumstances that eat up large portions of your income (like child support, back taxes, massive student loan debt, etc) and cannot be avoided, then you should be able to limit your monthly expenses to be able to save money. The truth is though, that most people "need" the latest phone, the latest computer, a new car (because apparently no other cars are "reliable"), etc. In my experience just making small changes to your lifestyle can have a massive impact on your ability to save.
nul_byte 11y ago
Quite hard to comment without context. This guy might have just been left behind, and was working on some soon to be obsolete language and never made any effort or interest into learning something new.

by jwiley 11y ago

SilasX 11y ago

And learn how to job search. There's surely a better job that guy could have found.

ryandrake 11y ago
I think you're forgetting what the early 2000's were like for software developers.
- epx 11y ago
  Had a friend that literally had no money for food in this time (2002, actually).
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - ebbv 11y ago
      What a disingenuous and snide response. Software engineers outside the valley, especially in the late 90s and early 2000's don't make ludicrous amounts of money. Even if you live frugally and save up, being suddenly laid off will lead you to burning through savings very quickly. It's not like retiring, you don't get the time to prepare. Lastly, lack of empathy is not a virtue.
    - jonesb6 11y ago
      Ever see Office Space? How much do you think those programmers made? Can't even afford a stapler on that salary.
  - enjo 11y ago
    I entered the job market in 2002, it was absolutely brutal. It took a REALLY lucky set of circumstances to come together for me to find a job. That one job was it too. I was in Dallas while my wife was in PhD school and I had two interviews in 6 months.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- jerrysievert 11y ago
  i worked at the Open Source Development Lab 2001-2002, and left for the same reasons everyone else who had been there left - after walking out of that job, i spent 1 year unemployed in portland until taking a high level software engineering job for much less money. would i have made the same decision? no, i wouldn't have worked at the OSDL and would have preferred to burn out at another dotcom, but it did teach me how to live very frugally, and how to set money aside for rainy days. now i try to keep at least a year's worth of living expenses, preferably 2-3, just to make sure i can survive the next one.
latj 11y ago
Maybe not. There is more age discrimination in software than in other areas. But around 2000, it was out of control. There were fewer jobs and everyone wanted to hire "the kids in the garage" type developers. If he was engineer-management he definitely wasnt needed because everyone was cutting down tech teams to a minimum. Many out-sourced their software jobs to India at this time. Some just got rid of those positions altogether just in case this Internet thing turned out to be a fad. It was a very confusing time. Just before the burst, kids couldnt figure out why companies wanted to hire them but dropped out of school to go for it anyway. After the burst loads of younger programmers went to law school for no reason and lots of older programmers went to work at bookstores to keep the lights on.
- epicureanideal 11y ago
  This is a very strong argument for developing some sort of secondary income aside from your day job. Maybe it never becomes a replacement for your day job check, but if you lose that check, an extra $1000/mo could mean a lot...
look_lookatme 11y ago
I worked at a Michaels in Plano in 2001 stocking yarn and frames with a guy that had been a systems consultant for EDS for a decade. He was in his early 30s. He got a new job after about a year of constant interviews. I use to cover for him when he'd take them. Those were dark days, man.
acdha 11y ago
Other people have pointed out how rough the period around 2000 was but it's also worth looking at how similar things were the previous time that'd happened in the early 90s when the defense contractors laid off a ton of engineers as the Cold War died down. That meant that you had large numbers of people with similar backgrounds all on the job market, in the same areas at the same time, competing for a sharply reduced number of jobs. Those kind of effects cascade: maybe you find a job but need to relocate, which means selling your house for a lot less than it was worth last year, or your spouse's job is also cut back because it was still linked to the local economy even if they didn't work at the same company. I got my first tech job in 1996 doing QA for a COBOL compiler vendor in San Diego. It paid $15/hour and there were multiple applicants with physics & engineering Ph.Ds and years of experience! The detail which is more sobering the older I get is that the company figured – correctly, I'm sure – that the more experienced applicants were likely to leave as soon as they could find something better, so it didn't matter how willing anyone was to take any job available. Sure, the market eventually recovered and some people repurposed all of that Cold War tech to make things like carbon-fiber golf clubs and bicycles commonplace but that's hardly going to help the person who went from living the American dream to struggling just to make the next mortgage payment, pay for their kid's braces or college tuition, etc. Even if they did eventually find a job, let alone one which pays comparably, it can take years to recover financially even if nothing else happens.
- hga 11y ago
  And that's wasn't the first Cold War related layoff period, we largely stopped fighting it in the '70s (roughly "Vietnam" through when the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan gave Carter a clue), and between that and the end of the Apollo program aerospace crashed and never returned to its old level. My family hired an EE to do electrical engineering in ~1972 and he was thrilled to be able to get back to it after doing all sort of random service jobs including "cleaning toilets" (the latter might have been exaggerated to me to motivate working hard to get into college), I learned a whole lot from him.
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    Interesting. So this crash happened before the oil embargo (fall, 1973)?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Gibbon1 11y ago
I've noted one reason keeping up with and having good relations with coworkers is important. Helps you get work later. Especially true as you get older your chance of finding a job via a cold call goes way down. But even so in a big downturn you may find all your industry contacts are in the same boat as you are. I had a lot of friends in the web industry all out of work 2001-2004. And in a fast changing field 18 months out of work is bad news because your experience rapidly becomes obsolete.

dclowd9901 11y ago

After being laid off twice during my short career life (I'm only 33), I've learned one lesson loud and clear: Always be ready for a great opportunity, and when it comes, go for it. That and always keep learning, because there's going to be some young go hard ready to come in and fuck your shit up.

askafriend 11y ago
That's me right now, early in my career. I'm ready to go hard and fuck your shit up. Sorry!
- dclowd9901 11y ago
  Haha, come at me, youth! Seriously, though, as long as you keep up, and avoid being a curmudgeon, you're gonna be fine. The only ones who die in this industry choose to stop swimming.
  - MikeNomad 11y ago
    Trying to work with your analogy... Does that mean H1Bs are the sharks, or the chum?
    - x5n1 11y ago
      H1Bs are our century's slaves, imported to work the tech plantations. Cheaper than locals. Fewer rights. Easier to exploit. And also make their owners a lot of money. In this case they are better off for it, that much has changed.
      - jmspring 11y ago
        I'm mixed on your analogy. I would rather argue, H1Bs are the modern day SCABS (union comparison) when you consider Tata and the other body shops. They are there to be used by companies break down wages, remove workers, and ostensibly reduce costs. Reality is, they do displace workers, but over the long terms costs go up due to lost customers and revenue and the need to replace those workers with competent unsourced individuals (happening a lot over the last 3-5 years). This is not speaking to the general H1B individual, only those that places like Tata and IBM have been hiring to "offshore work" and "reduce costs"; and those same companies slowly lose enterprise customers fed up with the lack of quality. HP was another company that took on contracts providing corporate IT services, outsourced them and then found customers firing them and then insourcing talent.

Gibbon1 11y ago

I started trying to find summer jobs while in college 1981-1983. Totally totally failed until summer of 1984. I felt like such a loser and my parents could not understand how I kept getting turned down for jobs. I don't think the valley really recovered until 1987-1988. Part of that was because the last of the manufacturing went to Asia. And also because the Japanese were trying to keep the Yen weak and the Reagan administration was trying to keep the dollar strong. This didn't bode well for the tech industry in the Bay Area.

finstell 11y ago

Economic downturn happens every now and again. That's expected. You cannot change it. What a software engineer should have done was to be prepared for it. I don't see any valid reasons for him to end up in a supermarket job. 2000s crisis lasted a couple of years at the most. He should have had the means to survive comfortably the temporary time period when he was without an income. The lesson is: Be prepared as if you are going to be out of job anytime. That's a typical mistake of US based people. US is not a social country, you are on your own when shit happens, you should better be ready for the worst case scenario at all times. Your monthly income is not for you to spend monthly. It's for today and future.

SolaceQuantum 11y ago
I don't know anyone who is regularly prepared to go years without income. A lot of people can't afford that.
mtbcoder 11y ago
That's assuming one has the ability to sock away enough savings to ease the burden of any long-term unemployment. The reality though is that millions of US citizens do not even have this option, even knowing full well that they need to be saving more. They simply cannot because the cost of living is too great and wages are too low. The fact that the US is "not a social country, you are on your own when shit happens", while correct, is big a problem for all citizens and it amazes me how pervasive this cowboy mentality has become, especially amongst the populations that are living month-to-month and which would greatly benefit from strong social contracts.
- bcg1 11y ago
  We're talking about tech jobs here, not minimum wage jobs that don't provide a living wage. I think the point is really that most people conflate their NEEDS with their WANTS and end up living hand to mouth because of it. If you are a tech worker in the USA and you don't have extenuating circumstances that eat up large portions of your income (like child support, back taxes, massive student loan debt, etc) and cannot be avoided, then you should be able to limit your monthly expenses to be able to save money. The truth is though, that most people "need" the latest phone, the latest computer, a new car (because apparently no other cars are "reliable"), etc. In my experience just making small changes to your lifestyle can have a massive impact on your ability to save.

nul_byte 11y ago

Quite hard to comment without context. This guy might have just been left behind, and was working on some soon to be obsolete language and never made any effort or interest into learning something new.