5 ms·

I moved to California to work at a dot com on March 3, 2000. The NASDAQ peaked one week later on March 10. To me that era is captured in Douglas Coupland's nove

I moved to California to work at a dot com on March 3, 2000. The NASDAQ peaked one week later on March 10. To me that era is captured in Douglas Coupland's novels Microserfs (pre-crash) and JPod (post-crash). JPod was also made into a show for Canadian TV that's a lot of fun!

noduerme 5y ago
I don't know whether to laugh or cry for you. Being part of it was something. I took a greyhound to San Francisco in 97 and went through the yellowpages trying to find jobs. Lived in a scary as hell weekly bum hotel in the tenderloin and walked, in a suit, to the Hilton every day to make phone calls for interviews. I was 17. Called one company called "Sunset" or "Sunrise" productions, who needed a designer. Interviewed with them in SOMA; it was Bear Magazine/GBM and man, I walked out of there feeling like fresh meat. But it was almost $30k/year. Got hired for $28k/yr [at a "web startup"] as a junior designer instead - I didn't need that kind of therapy bill. Was treated like complete shit, made to work 12 hour days in competition with senior designers and the AD, while they complained about the webmonkey grunts next to me who I was trying to learn HTML from. In an office of "producers" and salespeople who were all getting ridiculous paychecks and buying late-model jeeps, the only smart ones were the ones who were brewing their own code and staying up late working on their own projects. The producers stayed up late playing WoW and avoiding their wives and babies. Hitting on the one female designer who loathed the place. It taught me never to work in an office again as long as I live. Can't believe I didn't read either of those Douglas Coupland novels. "Generation X" was pretty seminal, though.
- Slartie 5y ago
  > The producers stayed up late playing WoW and avoiding their wives and babies. Sure about this? World of Warcraft was first released in 2004.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    I'm not sure and I cringed when I wrote it b/c I wasn't playing the games they played. They were playing some RTS thing involving bases and armies on the local network. A top-down 2.5D game you could scroll around a map on. [edit] after some checking I'm pretty sure it was some earlier version of Warcraft, not WoW.
    - Slartie 5y ago
      Yep, sounds very much like Warcraft. That also matches the timeframe much better.
  - ido 5y ago
    Probably Warcraft II.

noduerme 5y ago

I don't know whether to laugh or cry for you. Being part of it was something. I took a greyhound to San Francisco in 97 and went through the yellowpages trying to find jobs. Lived in a scary as hell weekly bum hotel in the tenderloin and walked, in a suit, to the Hilton every day to make phone calls for interviews. I was 17. Called one company called "Sunset" or "Sunrise" productions, who needed a designer. Interviewed with them in SOMA; it was Bear Magazine/GBM and man, I walked out of there feeling like fresh meat. But it was almost $30k/year. Got hired for $28k/yr [at a "web startup"] as a junior designer instead - I didn't need that kind of therapy bill. Was treated like complete shit, made to work 12 hour days in competition with senior designers and the AD, while they complained about the webmonkey grunts next to me who I was trying to learn HTML from. In an office of "producers" and salespeople who were all getting ridiculous paychecks and buying late-model jeeps, the only smart ones were the ones who were brewing their own code and staying up late working on their own projects. The producers stayed up late playing WoW and avoiding their wives and babies. Hitting on the one female designer who loathed the place. It taught me never to work in an office again as long as I live. Can't believe I didn't read either of those Douglas Coupland novels. "Generation X" was pretty seminal, though.

Slartie 5y ago
> The producers stayed up late playing WoW and avoiding their wives and babies. Sure about this? World of Warcraft was first released in 2004.
- noduerme 5y ago
  I'm not sure and I cringed when I wrote it b/c I wasn't playing the games they played. They were playing some RTS thing involving bases and armies on the local network. A top-down 2.5D game you could scroll around a map on. [edit] after some checking I'm pretty sure it was some earlier version of Warcraft, not WoW.
  - Slartie 5y ago
    Yep, sounds very much like Warcraft. That also matches the timeframe much better.
- ido 5y ago
  Probably Warcraft II.