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Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?

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Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?

#251

Post by CSMastermind »

Havoc wrote: post #181
reuven wrote: post #156

I 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…

>the boss/owner should be paid last Yup. My dad is big on that too. Always thought he overplayed it, but one day he explained that the people he employs are quite poor. So if they don't get paid they can't put food on the table - literally. While he has a bit more of a buffer.

Leaders Eat Last. A very good book by Simon Sinek but based on an old Marine Corps principal.

While other services have 'head of line privileges' - basically the more senior you are the more you can cut in line to get food at chow time. In the Marines, you always line up most junior to more senior.

It drives home the responsibility leaders have to take care of the people who follow them.

Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?

#252

Post by mikasjoman »

After reading this thread, now I get why /r/financialindependence is so full of IT guys like me. We got so roasted during 2001, that we never ever again want to be dependent on our cosy well paying jobs we know not to take for granted. I think FIRE is mostly an insurance for us who has seen those dark days. Like 50% of the other swedes working in IT, I got kicked out of the trade for many years. Moved to China, had a crazy wild life there, married there and moved back to Sweden after 12 years. Currently work in one of the four big IT consulting firms. After the 2001 IT bubble/crash, I still today fear that the crash will come again and wipe us out. Today I grow a healthy sized emergency fund and my investment portfolio is very hedged against a stock market crash. I suggest the same to anyone who asks me for advice.

Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?

#253

Post by DennisP »

As a regular dev on the east coast, working for a company with large corporate clients in conservative industries, the crash had basically no impact at all.

People looking for new jobs might have had a little more trouble. And the dotcom boom brought a lot of devs with minimal skills, just because it was impossible to find good devs; some of those who hadn't leveled up in time for the crash got shaken out. But anyone who really could write code did fine, in my town.

Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?

#254

Post by ggambetta »

mikasjoman wrote: post #252

After reading this thread, now I get why /r/financialindependence is so full of IT guys like me. We got so roasted during 2001, that we never ever again want to be dependent on our cosy well paying jobs we know not to take for granted. I think FIRE is mostly an insurance for us who has seen those dark days. Like 50% of the other swedes working in IT, I got kicked out of the trade for many years. Moved to China, had a…

Very interested in FIRE myself. Would love to hear more about your hedging strategy!

Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?

#255

Post by galangalalgol »

lackbeard wrote: post #119
phd514 wrote: post #37

I was ~1.5 years out of college and at a small dot-com with a niche SaaS at the time. I distinctly remember 9/11 and the chill that came over our office that day. That passed in time, but our economic prospects never recovered. I used to hit the gym in the mornings and then work ~10am-7pm and I distinctly remember the day ~9 months later when the VP of engineering called me on my cell while I was finishing up my work…

I graduated from college and entered the industry just post-bust (early 2002.) I went to work for a company that had, 6 months prior, laid everyone off and decided to pivot with the remaining VC cash. I think it took them 3 or 4 months to figure out what the new company would be. That strategy wound up being successful for them (us, I guess...)

I started about a year before you. I went into embedded rtos stuff. At the time it was comparable to the beat SV offers and by the time SV recovered enough to start offering double or perhaps triple embedded rates, I had learned i actually liked it an felt the amount of domain specific knowledge i had aquired was a good investment. I'm not sure that was the case, but at 40 having never changed jobs from that original corporation, I think I at least got stability and fun work out of it.

Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?

#257

Post by Havoc »

bambataa wrote: post #212
Havoc wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the boss/owner should be paid last Yup. My dad is big on that too. Always thought he overplayed it, but one day he explained that the people he employs are quite poor. So if they don't get paid they can't put food on the table - literally. While he has a bit more of a buffer.

I guess that’s the downside of paying people as little as you can get away with.

>I guess that’s the downside of paying people as little as you can get away with.

Fair point I guess...to an extent.

People somehow manage to live paycheque to paycheque regardless of the absolute number they get paid in my experience.

In this particular case - it's in the context of 40% unemployment. So the market equilibrium is quite low.

Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?

#258

Post by Havoc »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #228
Havoc wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the boss/owner should be paid last Yup. My dad is big on that too. Always thought he overplayed it, but one day he explained that the people he employs are quite poor. So if they don't get paid they can't put food on the table - literally. While he has a bit more of a buffer.

I have done this when companies I worked at where having difficulties, I volunteered to wait for my pay and prioritise other colleagues who had less of a buffer (single parents for example) Did mean in one case I had to take the hit when the company collapsed and claim via RB2 (this is in the UK) - of course it turned out that my employer had not been making my NI payments so no unemployment benefit for me.

>I have done this when companies I worked at where having difficulties, I volunteered to wait for my pay and prioritise other colleagues who had less of a buffer (single parents for example)

That's quite a brave move if you might end up never getting paid. Props

Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?

#259

Post by desas »

varjag wrote: post #166
JohnBooty wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

occasional recessions are useful because they destroy bad ideas (not exclusively bad ideas, but many bad ideas) and therefore free up resources for new ideas. Some of which will be good, some bad. I feel this was absolutely true for the world of internet applications. The stuff built in the early dot-com era was typically garbage from a technical standpoint. Heaps and heaps and heaps of spaghetti code written in PHP,…

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.

Re: Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?

#260

Post by cranium »

wjnc wrote: post #189
fastbeef wrote: post #164

Earlier 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'm not certain it would be bad for knowledge intensive industries. My reasoning is that people would use their time more wisely and get more done. As for young people (also affects older), I think the implication `more time working => more done` is still deeply ingrained even when there are arguments against it[1].

I do agree that having forced off-time can be distressing to some people. Some may like to think they are indispensable to run the company, and suddenly they feel betrayed because their company doesn't need them working at 100%. Or they are optimistic and think the grass is greener elsewhere. Or...

Anyway, I think it would be interesting to see studies of """productivity""" when employees are forced to do part-time work. Based on what I know, I wouldn't too surprised to see good social benefits (but it doesn't mean everybody would thrive).

[1] A simple search here on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=long+hours

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