7 ms·

I was in tech during the dot com bubble. It was the same then as today. In the early 2000s, there were two open tech jobs for every qualified person. Businesses

by madrox 4y ago

I was in tech during the dot com bubble. It was the same then as today. In the early 2000s, there were two open tech jobs for every qualified person. Businesses like Microskills (no longer around) sprung up to teach basic network administration and other IT skills and do job placement. When the market contracted, a lot of people who were treading water or were making more than their role could afford got pushed out. It's no different now. Instead of network admin bootcamps it's coding bootcamps. Lots of people have been building a lot of dumb stuff (more than usual) for the last several years and the market is correcting. The good news is that what came after that contraction was a huge wave of innovation that became known as Web 2.0. Most of the unicorns you're familiar with today came out of that period. Keep your chin up and you'll see.

shams93 4y ago
I was there in the early 2000s metldown. What is different today is lack of easy money, also these jobs are likely never coming back, having so much automated is changing the world very rapidly and the powers that be have no plan it would seem besides perhaps having a nuclear war intentionally to "clear out" the population of 99.9% of humans.
- madrox 4y ago
  I'm not sure how serious you are being. Back then, money wasn't easy and those jobs didn't come back either. New jobs did emerge, though. We also didn't wait for the powers that be back then to figure it out, either, lest we forget that was the "series of tubes" era.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Also dot-bomb was really nuclear winter for jobs in the tech industry. I was lucky enough to slide into a new job with someone I knew after I was laid off. I didn't have so much as a nibble anywhere else. The new company barely made it through but it did. The pay wasn't great but I mostly enjoyed it, I learned a lot, and it directly led to knowing the person who brought me into my current role. So far this is nothing like that from what I can tell. People are taking longer to land positions and at least some of the highest compensation will be very hard to come by, but there seem to be lots of positions. They may just be in insurance companies rather than prestigious tech companies.
    - wyclif 4y ago
      Tend to agree with this take according to what I'm seeing while currently interviewing. Not as many sexy tech jobs in cool startups, but still plenty of boring jobs in banking/fintech, insurance, enterprise, etc.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      There was no “nuclear winter”. I was an ordinary enterprise dev working for profitable enterprises like banks, insurance companies, etc and jobs were just as easy to come by from 1996 -2008.
      - nikau 4y ago
        Exactly, a lot of the people who never got back into the industry should never have been there in the first place, eg. website designers using frontpage and getting paid the close to the equivalent of $200K in todays money.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        I think part of it is that a lot of dev/tech-adjacent jobs that basically had to be done at a tech company or a company that depended on tech companies pretty much went poof. I'll believe that strictly dev jobs were still available (though that's not the common wisdom). It's probably also true that developers at trendy tech companies couldn't imagine slinging Java in insurance or banking. In my case, I had worked for a computer company as a product manager (with some coding on the side) and then an IT industry analyst--and there was very little in that vein.
        madrox 4y ago
        It's beside the point, but I think you're forgetting that Java was trendy 20 years ago. That didn't change until Ruby and Python came on the scene a few years later.
        ghaff 4y ago
        Yeah, probably COBOL and CICS would be better examples in that timeframe.
  - Baljhin 4y ago
    I must have grown up in a parallel universe of the dotcom era: one of the biggest reasons -- and criticisms of - the dotcom Bubble growth was due to too much and easy (wait for it...) VC money. Back then, literally any wild, and foolish, idea that you could smack 'Tech' onto was guaranteed to get fast & easy investor money. >Back then... Oh wait...
    - flakeoil 4y ago
      For reference, around the year 2000 the interest rates were around 5% (the fed rate). So, no, in general terms there were no easy money then compared to today (or the years up to today). But sure, a lot of the money that was around at that time went into IT/dotcom companies instead of into other sectors.
    - madrox 4y ago
      To be clear, you're correct. That was this current wave's web3. Once the bubble burst, though, money stopped being so easy. That's the period we're about to come to now.
Dr_Birdbrain 4y ago
Great perspective. In many ways the current tech scene has become entrenched around a handful of big players. I am looking forward to hopefully a fresh batch of startups creating new dynamism.
- dev_0 4y ago
  [dead]
twblalock 4y ago
The big difference between now and 2001 is that we aren't seeing a lot of tech companies completely fail and go out of business like we did then.
- time_to_smile 4y ago
  That's because this bubble is much larger than the dotcom and has impacted far more than just tech (lookup "Everything Bubble"). A major part of this is companies still have a lot of cash. When you pull up the financials for many newly IPO'd companies you'll see that many of them have questionable ability to ever generate profit, and most certainly not at the size they are at. However all of them have pretty healthy cash reserves from the (obviously overvalued) IPOs they just went through. Facebook/Meta was the poster-child for "don't worry about profit, just worry about growth!" For years it was assumed that Facebook proved this strategy made sense, but even today we're seeing this giant falter. Even if Facebook pulls it off, it doesn't mean that many of the "growth is all that matters!" startups following in its shadow will. We'll see companies fail, but this bubble will take a lot longer to unwind than the dotcom bubble.
  - lancesells 4y ago
    Meta had $23B in profit last year.
  - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
    Facebook was definitely not the poster child for this, they have been running profitably since well before their IPO. Sheryl Sandberg did a great job building that business. I think Uber might be a better example of the strategy you're referring to.
  - flashgordon 4y ago
    Also unlike back in the day, this set of layoffs feel/looks largely opportunistic as a way to kowtow to wall st. The veil is off. Companies are unashamedly open about who they are in bed with. Agree the bubble is inflation induced and the fed is trying to demand more unemployment to cut down spending. Wouldn't an alternative be investing in public infrastructure/housing projects instead? I do feel very frustrated and ignorant at not being able to grasp this entangled web all the while normalizing the blood letting and sacrifice of real human livelihood for the sole enrichment of wall st.

by madrox 4y ago

shams93 4y ago

I was there in the early 2000s metldown. What is different today is lack of easy money, also these jobs are likely never coming back, having so much automated is changing the world very rapidly and the powers that be have no plan it would seem besides perhaps having a nuclear war intentionally to "clear out" the population of 99.9% of humans.

madrox 4y ago
I'm not sure how serious you are being. Back then, money wasn't easy and those jobs didn't come back either. New jobs did emerge, though. We also didn't wait for the powers that be back then to figure it out, either, lest we forget that was the "series of tubes" era.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Also dot-bomb was really nuclear winter for jobs in the tech industry. I was lucky enough to slide into a new job with someone I knew after I was laid off. I didn't have so much as a nibble anywhere else. The new company barely made it through but it did. The pay wasn't great but I mostly enjoyed it, I learned a lot, and it directly led to knowing the person who brought me into my current role. So far this is nothing like that from what I can tell. People are taking longer to land positions and at least some of the highest compensation will be very hard to come by, but there seem to be lots of positions. They may just be in insurance companies rather than prestigious tech companies.
  - wyclif 4y ago
    Tend to agree with this take according to what I'm seeing while currently interviewing. Not as many sexy tech jobs in cool startups, but still plenty of boring jobs in banking/fintech, insurance, enterprise, etc.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    There was no “nuclear winter”. I was an ordinary enterprise dev working for profitable enterprises like banks, insurance companies, etc and jobs were just as easy to come by from 1996 -2008.
    - nikau 4y ago
      Exactly, a lot of the people who never got back into the industry should never have been there in the first place, eg. website designers using frontpage and getting paid the close to the equivalent of $200K in todays money.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      I think part of it is that a lot of dev/tech-adjacent jobs that basically had to be done at a tech company or a company that depended on tech companies pretty much went poof. I'll believe that strictly dev jobs were still available (though that's not the common wisdom). It's probably also true that developers at trendy tech companies couldn't imagine slinging Java in insurance or banking. In my case, I had worked for a computer company as a product manager (with some coding on the side) and then an IT industry analyst--and there was very little in that vein.
      - madrox 4y ago
        It's beside the point, but I think you're forgetting that Java was trendy 20 years ago. That didn't change until Ruby and Python came on the scene a few years later.
        ghaff 4y ago
        Yeah, probably COBOL and CICS would be better examples in that timeframe.
- Baljhin 4y ago
  I must have grown up in a parallel universe of the dotcom era: one of the biggest reasons -- and criticisms of - the dotcom Bubble growth was due to too much and easy (wait for it...) VC money. Back then, literally any wild, and foolish, idea that you could smack 'Tech' onto was guaranteed to get fast & easy investor money. >Back then... Oh wait...
  - flakeoil 4y ago
    For reference, around the year 2000 the interest rates were around 5% (the fed rate). So, no, in general terms there were no easy money then compared to today (or the years up to today). But sure, a lot of the money that was around at that time went into IT/dotcom companies instead of into other sectors.
  - madrox 4y ago
    To be clear, you're correct. That was this current wave's web3. Once the bubble burst, though, money stopped being so easy. That's the period we're about to come to now.

Dr_Birdbrain 4y ago

Great perspective. In many ways the current tech scene has become entrenched around a handful of big players. I am looking forward to hopefully a fresh batch of startups creating new dynamism.

dev_0 4y ago
[dead]

twblalock 4y ago

The big difference between now and 2001 is that we aren't seeing a lot of tech companies completely fail and go out of business like we did then.

time_to_smile 4y ago
That's because this bubble is much larger than the dotcom and has impacted far more than just tech (lookup "Everything Bubble"). A major part of this is companies still have a lot of cash. When you pull up the financials for many newly IPO'd companies you'll see that many of them have questionable ability to ever generate profit, and most certainly not at the size they are at. However all of them have pretty healthy cash reserves from the (obviously overvalued) IPOs they just went through. Facebook/Meta was the poster-child for "don't worry about profit, just worry about growth!" For years it was assumed that Facebook proved this strategy made sense, but even today we're seeing this giant falter. Even if Facebook pulls it off, it doesn't mean that many of the "growth is all that matters!" startups following in its shadow will. We'll see companies fail, but this bubble will take a lot longer to unwind than the dotcom bubble.
- lancesells 4y ago
  Meta had $23B in profit last year.
- disgruntledphd2 4y ago
  Facebook was definitely not the poster child for this, they have been running profitably since well before their IPO. Sheryl Sandberg did a great job building that business. I think Uber might be a better example of the strategy you're referring to.
- flashgordon 4y ago
  Also unlike back in the day, this set of layoffs feel/looks largely opportunistic as a way to kowtow to wall st. The veil is off. Companies are unashamedly open about who they are in bed with. Agree the bubble is inflation induced and the fed is trying to demand more unemployment to cut down spending. Wouldn't an alternative be investing in public infrastructure/housing projects instead? I do feel very frustrated and ignorant at not being able to grasp this entangled web all the while normalizing the blood letting and sacrifice of real human livelihood for the sole enrichment of wall st.