Experiences varied wildly. For employees, it was a terrible time. Large companies were laying off left and right, and Sequoia did indeed advise all CEOs to fi

Experiences varied wildly. For employees, it was a terrible time. Large companies were laying off left and right, and Sequoia did indeed advise all CEOs to fire their devs if their product was already on the market. However, since the stock market was doing so badly, it was the beginning of the moment where a _lot_ of money started looking for somewhere else to go. So if you were of the wherewithal to go out and make a startup, it was a great time to be looking for funding. So it depends a lot on who you ask. I will say, though, that real estate started taking off in ~2011, so it was more than a month of panic, but I would guess that in 2011-2013 or so SF was far and away the strongest local economy in the US.