> During the [dot com] boom, many people that couldn’t write a for loop got degrees and somehow got entry level jobs. This wasn't universally true. In the SE U

> During the [dot com] boom, many people that couldn’t write a for loop got degrees and somehow got entry level jobs. This wasn't universally true. In the SE US, late 1990s, I got 2 responses over a year of submitting applications for entry level coding jobs. One response was for a position hundreds of mi away. Overlapping this time, I was serving as an employment counselor. I learned that this region was super insular and you need some kind of inside referral to get hired - in pretty much every industry. Local tech wasn't immune to that mindset. It took me a few years to make connections and start working and even then it self-employed, on-site support. Thirty years later I'm still doing that. On the other side, once I broke into an industry I could go all over. I got a referral into an ARC and within a few months I was serving all of them. They were all years needing someone but went without rather than hire cold.