I went to work as a corporate drone. It was spirit crushing.
Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
341–350 of 419 posts
Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
Start a new company. Lots of talent available and investors look for heads-down new things. Classic Namazu stuff.
What is "classic Namazu stuff"? I have never heard that phrase.
It's probably not super common, I just like to use it to describe economic upheaval and opportunity.
So there's this giant catfish in Japanese mythology, the Namazu. It's captive in the ocean, under a giant keystone held down by the daimyojin Kashima. When Kashima gets tired or distracted, he lets off pressure a little, the Namazu wriggles around to get free and that wriggling sets off earthquakes and subsequently, tsunamis.
After an earthquake, there's always a rebuilding and a redistribution of wealth. And after the Edo earthquake of 1855, woodcut prints depicting the namazu and society (namazu-e), money falling from the sky, businessmen vomiting and defecating money, etc. got super popular. (https://www.illustrationchronicles.com/When-Giant-Catfish-Sh...)
Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know of one company that actually managed to pull off the pivot thing! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TippingPoint They switched from an internet appliance (kind of like an early Chromebook) to smart deep packet inspection firewalls. Not a ton in common between those except that they both require hardware to be built. If I remember right, local lore was that they pulled it off partly by realizing early that they nee…
Here's another example of a successful pivot: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18063362 Posting anon. In 2009, the startup where I was working was hitting the skids, and our investors (correctly) were not willing to back us. We all kept grinding for a month or two in honorable futility, but after a while, my bank account depleted and I had to go. To make various ends meet and to keep my mental health during the w…
Ouch! I hope your fresh start paid off, though.
Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
#344I basically missed the whole thing.
Partially because of my location (Phoenix isn't exactly a hub of tech startups - while there is more activity now somewhat, back then it was much different), and partially because I stuck with my employer at the time and didn't participate outside of that.
I was working for a long established software company that developed an insurance claims management system using a variant of COBOL. I didn't participate in that side of things, though - I was involved on a different team for development of an internally used application which was written in VB6 with an Access DB backend MDB file (ugh).
I basically worked there for about 6 years doing that, and completely missed the whole "dot-com" thing. Might have been a bad career decision, but then again, maybe staying in Phoenix was also one. But the pay has been steady, it has kept a roof over my head and the electricity on.
Since then, I have moved on to other jobs and continued with my career. I haven't become rich, and at my age I don't expect to ever hit a unicorn and be on the bottom floor of a startup and retire early. I am expecting to work until I die, whatever form "work" takes. Currently, it is still coding as an SWE and hopefully that will remain the way it is for a while.
Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
#345Fear, that's what it was. You never really know how well your company is doing till the shake down time.
Companies you thought were doing well go out of business. Companies you had as a backup to maybe apply if you lose your job go out of business before yours. So many unemployed developers fighting for the few jobs out there. Hiring freeze in most places. Whatever job you have even if it's tethering on the edge becomes the most secure job.
Layoffs were brutal, I saw someone got laid off on their start date! Those that worked for 3 months before layoff were lucky.
What can you do about it? Nothing! It's like being in the middle of a war zone, you can only pray you don't get hit by shrapnel.
Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In the dot com boom, people who could rub two lines of visual basic (for applications) were getting jobs. If you did not like your job, you could make a phone call and have a few offers waiting for you by the end of the day. Yea, that doesn't sound anything like today! /sarcasm
There was no “grinding leetcode” in the late 90s...
What were SWE interviews and interview prep like back in late 90s/early 00s?
Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
#347Got stuck with a huge tax bill on my stock options when Yahoo went under, took 10 years of brutal back to back contracts to pay it off. The state didn't care that I had nowhere near the opportunities again they just mercilessly hammered me for taxes until I paid it off a couple years ago but took nearly 15 years to pay off the tax debt and meanwhile I could invest in nothing else.
I've seen something similar to this in other responses in this thread, how exactly does one get a big tax bill for your stock options while simultaneously not being able to pay them off? I'm not understanding something about the situation.
Taxes on equity and option grants are complex beasts [ISO/NSO/RSU, Conversions between ISOs to NSOs, Income vs. Cap Gains, AMT, 83(b) elections, Exercised vs Non-exercised, Vesting schedules, etc]. Unless you personally understand the nuances in everyone of these cases, you should 100% work with a tax professional (and if you do understand, you are probably a tax professional!).
Here is an earlier discussion on taxes on options: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10020063
Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding here is that you wouldn't owe taxes if you sold exercised options (at loss or even) because you would make no gains. You may even be able to write off some taxes? I'm not exactly sure what happened with people who go bust. My guess is they could have had the type of options where you don't pay taxes up front, and then they weren't able to pay when it was finally time. Like you, I would love to hear m…
Unlike the normal situation where you pay taxes when you sell an asset, with options when you acquire them any difference between the strike price and their value at acquisition is a taxable amount. If your acquisition occurs when you cannot sell because the shares are not publicly tradeable or because you are subject to a rule not allowing sales then in the time between when you acquire and when you could sell the s…
Yes, this is my understanding as well. You owe a lot of taxes initially (that you to pay to even exercise) and then you wouldn't pay AGAIN if the company goes bust.
That would, of course, suck, but you wouldn't "owe more" if the company goes bust. It would just be what you already paid now being worth less than what you paid for it.
I guess I don't understand the point being made with that in mind. If you took out a loan to exercise the options (don't do that), then that would be a big problem.
Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
#349This thread is scaring me. Question on exercising and such. I have all exercised options, but not all vested, been here about 2 years, so half vested. Didn't pay taxes at exercise because there was no difference between exercise price and market price. What happens taxwise if my company goes under? Don't I only owe taxes if I sell vested options?
Did you file 83b election when exercising at market price? If yes, you already paid the taxes (which were $0). If not, there may be taxable income at vesting periods. Talk to tax professional. I'm certainly not one.
An 83b election is to be issued at the time of grant, not the time of exercise.
Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
#350throwaway I was hired as the first software developer for an eCommerce company in the late 90's. Little could I know at the time that writing secure server software would become so lucrative. While I was not directly impacted by the bust given my founding role and creative importance in value to the organization never-the-less the bust did hit the business. Having been the sole architect and first to create many of the founding technologies in payments used everywhere today our company was being utilized by Paypal for several years before they created this functionality themselves in house. The bust was a cycle of economics unavoidable but looking at database records in realtime for Ebay and therefore PayPal purchases of famous people was a way to pass the time. And yes, I still create critical realtime systems.