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I worked through the tail end of the dotcom boom and saw all of the dot com bust. My company went from 1500 people to about 300 people in 1 year. Layoffs decim

I worked through the tail end of the dotcom boom and saw all of the dot com bust. My company went from 1500 people to about 300 people in 1 year. Layoffs decimated the company, and eventually we were bought by a competitor. I have coworkers who were out of a job for 2+ years. One of my personal friends on H1B had to pump gas overnight, and transferred his balances between credit cards just to stay alive. Entire technology parks were abandoned wastelands. Even worse was that the idea of "outsourcing" to India started up during this time. So not only we were losing our jobs, the thought was that we could possibly be losing our jobs forever, because why wouldn't the engineers in India be just as effective for 1/5 the price? The per-capita job loss in Silicon Valley was worse than Detroit in the 80s, and the job losses were so bad that the traffic on 101 was actually okay. I honestly felt like my way of life was dead, I even went to the hospital for a panic attack. Take into considering that while the wages for software engineers were high, they weren't as high as they are now. I was making good money, almost 6 figures, and it felt like I might have to find a new job in less than 5 years. It felt like a very dire situation. After a couple of years, things started to stabilize, and it didn't feel so dire. However, I think people who went through the bust like I did were naturally reticent about joining companies like Facebook, Google, Netflix, etc which were the next wave of companies that defined Silicon Valley so we missed out on a lot of upside.

digb 7y ago
Why do you think the outsourcing never got quite as bad as everyone expected?
- sizzle 7y ago
  You get what you pay for, high quality code costs money and off shore talent will generally immigrate to first world countries if they have the talent cause of wage suppression abroad for the same skillset. My 2 cents
  - digb 7y ago
    I think the other commenter is probably closer to accuracy. Here in NYC, offshoring to Chile/DR and other countries in the same timezone is surprisingly popular, even for early stage startups. The idea that people will just immigrate is a bit of a stretch. Coming from an immigrant family I will tell you that some of the most talented people stayed behind while others got lucky. My $0.02, just like anyone else's, and I know people currently in India launching really great code schools, but the talent argument never held in my mind.
- acdha 7y ago
  Communications is a big factor: if you can’t make good software in house, adding a time delay and lack of business knowledge won’t help. The savings are almost always overstated by a huge margin: people with equivalent skills charge more or move. Most of the sales pitches assumed you’d get good results at, say, 20% but don’t work when that’s really 85%.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
throwaway87378 7y ago
> Take into considering that while the wages for software engineers were high, they weren't as high as they are now. That is a common misconception when people do not take inflation and housing cost increases into account. $1USD today is worth only 65 cents in 1999 according to the consumer price index: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1USD+in+1999 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1USD+in+1999 CPI inflation is only 56%, but house prices in the Bay Area have risen 280%: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=median+house+price+san+francisco+bay+area+past+20+years https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=median+house+price+san... https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/06/22/median-price-tag-for-a-bay-area-home-hits-a-record-shattering-935000/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/06/22/median-price-tag-for-... Tech worker salaries only seem high relative to salaries for other workers, because the tech worker salaries have not been falling in inflation/housing cost adjusted terms for the past 30 years. IMO computer programmers are, as a whole, grossly underpaid today, just not as underpaid as much as people in other lines of work.

digb 7y ago

Why do you think the outsourcing never got quite as bad as everyone expected?

sizzle 7y ago
You get what you pay for, high quality code costs money and off shore talent will generally immigrate to first world countries if they have the talent cause of wage suppression abroad for the same skillset. My 2 cents
- digb 7y ago
  I think the other commenter is probably closer to accuracy. Here in NYC, offshoring to Chile/DR and other countries in the same timezone is surprisingly popular, even for early stage startups. The idea that people will just immigrate is a bit of a stretch. Coming from an immigrant family I will tell you that some of the most talented people stayed behind while others got lucky. My $0.02, just like anyone else's, and I know people currently in India launching really great code schools, but the talent argument never held in my mind.
acdha 7y ago
Communications is a big factor: if you can’t make good software in house, adding a time delay and lack of business knowledge won’t help. The savings are almost always overstated by a huge margin: people with equivalent skills charge more or move. Most of the sales pitches assumed you’d get good results at, say, 20% but don’t work when that’s really 85%.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

throwaway87378 7y ago

> Take into considering that while the wages for software engineers were high, they weren't as high as they are now. That is a common misconception when people do not take inflation and housing cost increases into account. $1USD today is worth only 65 cents in 1999 according to the consumer price index: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1USD+in+1999 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1USD+in+1999 CPI inflation is only 56%, but house prices in the Bay Area have risen 280%: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=median+house+price+san+francisco+bay+area+past+20+years https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=median+house+price+san... https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/06/22/median-price-tag-for-a-bay-area-home-hits-a-record-shattering-935000/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/06/22/median-price-tag-for-... Tech worker salaries only seem high relative to salaries for other workers, because the tech worker salaries have not been falling in inflation/housing cost adjusted terms for the past 30 years. IMO computer programmers are, as a whole, grossly underpaid today, just not as underpaid as much as people in other lines of work.