Pretty much the same for me (east coast.) I moved from a startup to a more stable software company for a few years. My startup stock options were worth nothing.
Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
291–300 of 419 posts
Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
#292I had a summer internship at HP while I was in college. (I graduated in 1992.) When I graduated, the assumption/expectation was that they would offer me a job. They hesitated, and a manager who was unusually nice to me explained that HP hires people who will stick around for many years -- and thus, they weighed every hire carefully. He went further and said that several years before that, when there had been a recess…
He went further and said that several years before that, when there had been a recession, everyone at HP -- all the way up and down the ladder -- worked 9 days out of 10, and took a 10% salary cut, in order to ensure that there wouldn't be any layoffs. I have a good friend who has helmed several very successful software companies. His philosophy is quite different: it is unfair to ask employees to work take a pay cut…
Doesn't pass the sniff test. Employees can find another job while working at the place they got a pay cut. Sorry to say but your friend might have terminal executive-brain.
Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
#293This is the most useful thread in HN in years. As someone who started his engineering career after the burst, is good to hear the experiences (good ones and bad ones) before the next one burst.
This bust will be very different than the first tech bubble. The first tech bubble laid off a lot of folks working for small (really hurt.
Most of the valuation of big tech companies came from their terminal value (which was unknown for a long time because the business models haven't been proven). That value is now better known, but valuations haven't come down to earth because there has been so much foreign money flowing in to the US because investors just have nowhere else to put it.
The other unknown in all of this is the student debt bubble. I have a feeling the next recession is going to trigger a wave of bankruptcies as the knowledge workers that will get laid off will no longer be making payments on their student debt.
Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
#294I had a summer internship at HP while I was in college. (I graduated in 1992.) When I graduated, the assumption/expectation was that they would offer me a job. They hesitated, and a manager who was unusually nice to me explained that HP hires people who will stick around for many years -- and thus, they weighed every hire carefully. He went further and said that several years before that, when there had been a recess…
He went further and said that several years before that, when there had been a recession, everyone at HP -- all the way up and down the ladder -- worked 9 days out of 10, and took a 10% salary cut, in order to ensure that there wouldn't be any layoffs. I have a good friend who has helmed several very successful software companies. His philosophy is quite different: it is unfair to ask employees to work take a pay cut…
Well, they can always leave if they can find such another job.
I'd love to been suggested that arrangement instead of the "We're sorry we are out of money" excuse I got (while the company was heavily spending in other stuff). 3 months later they "got a new client" and posted new job ads to hire back the positions (while swapping all senior positions with junior staff).
What angers me about the situation is not that I was laid off, but that it was a decision only justifiable by focusing exclusively in the short term.
Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scania, the truck manufacturer, did this during 08-09. 10% paycut, 20% time reduction and they encouraged people to use the time to study and improve. None were laid off.
While I think this might be a good step in production work, it might be killing for firms in knowledge intensive industries. When this happens the first to move are the still employable and affordable youths. So the average age and salary might go up after a move like this. In the long run older firms get more trouble hiring youthful people, etc. Source: an interesting discussion with a union bargainer that was actua…
I've actually seen the opposite of that, on medium/small firms (at least the ones I've worked on) when hard times hit the first to go down are the senior positions (except those close to management) and they're substituted with way cheaper out-of-college people.
Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
A pay cut would be an "over my dead body" issue for many unions. Edit: Since this apparently does not go without saying, the feedback loops in a union are all wrong for taking that kind of risk (remember, the pay cut does not guarantee company survival). People willing to rock the boat with calculated gambles like that do not rise to positions of authority in a union.
That depends on where you are. If I recall correctly, In ~2009-2010 German automotive unions worked together with management and employees and negotiated widespread reduction of work hours in order to prevent layoffs. Of course unions/employee representatives have a different place here(e.g. half of members of the board of directors are elected representatives of employees.)
That's a quite specific german phenomenon that does not replicate much outside, specially around europe.
France, Spain, Italy, etc... Tire-burning trouble starts with just mention of the possibility
Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dunno. Practices in 1997 and 2002 didn't differ in very appreciable degree, just that piles of crap C++ became piles of crap Java. AJAX was made possible not by Google but by Microsoft's XHR and IE5. RSS never took of in any appreciable commercial way… I would say the bust had no substantial impact on technology side of thing. Perhaps the pricing became bit more modest, and sure, lots of careers were "filtered out".
Ajax was made technically possible by Microsoft XHR and IE5. It took Gmail and gmaps to bring this to wide attention.
Yes. I remember people (including me) being a bit amazed by the web version of Outlook that first made use of it. Technically MS introduced this functionality in IE5 in 1999, as an ActiveX control.
It was a Microsoft-only thing for a while though, until Mozilla/Safari/Opera implemented their own versions. That took a few years IIRC.
At any rate, Gmail was what made the world really take notice of what AJAX could do.
Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey, lately i'v read "The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company" and your story really resonates to what the founders said. Snippet: > We have always considered that we have a responsibility to our employees to plan our work so we can assure job continuity. We do not intend to have a "Hire 'em and fi re 'em" operation. This poses some serious considerations. One is always compelled to fi nd the most effi c…
It's sad. Most companies these days (to include HP) are hire and fire shops. All of them deny it. Want to know why my resume is full of 1-2 year stints? Because when a project is winding down I've learned to start looking for a new job - because it's the safe thing to do. Managers will tell you up until the day you get your layoff notice that your job is safe.
At my last real job, the entire IT staff was getting laid off when the new CIO came in. One team after another and replaced with contractors. We knew in November of 2016 things weren't going to last. I was on the last IT team still employed.
My manager was fighting tooth and nail to try and save at least some of us. But come February (3 months longer than other IT teams) the fight was over and he lost. We were all laid off. I was given 6 months severance + insurance if I would stay around for 1 month and do a knowledge transfer to the new team, one of the easiest decision of my life. The majority of the team were escorted off premises that day.
Manager's boss helped everyone secure a new job (except 1 who just disappeared never to be heard from again), I got a contract gig for double the pay of that job.
I still talk to everyone, and we are all in better positions today than we were there.
Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
#299The current environment is nothing like the dot-com boom. The dot-com boom/bust was driven by public markets, whereas now the public markets are the ones who are filtering out the wild valuations now before it gets out of hand and throws the country into a recession like it did last time.
Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scania, the truck manufacturer, did this during 08-09. 10% paycut, 20% time reduction and they encouraged people to use the time to study and improve. None were laid off.
While I think this might be a good step in production work, it might be killing for firms in knowledge intensive industries. When this happens the first to move are the still employable and affordable youths. So the average age and salary might go up after a move like this. In the long run older firms get more trouble hiring youthful people, etc. Source: an interesting discussion with a union bargainer that was actua…
Google "dead sea effect" for some interesting discussion of this sort of thing. Many companies end up with a majority of employees with no mobility, and the culture in those workplaces suffers because of this.