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

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

#361

Post by at-fates-hands » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 7:08 PM UTC

Zaskoda wrote: post #12

Zaskoda wrote: post #10

Backdrop: I was inspired by games and went to CS undergrad with the hopes of becoming a videogame developer and ultimately a designer/director. I started college just as BBS distribution gave way to the World Wide Web; I had to learn HTML in order to distribute my shareware games. Moonshots: I dropped out of school with only a year left to graduate because the Web development startup I launched with two of my friends…

The cartoon if anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dMFM-Jqji0

This just solved a huge mystery for me.

One of my first managers I had after becoming a developer used to say, "Listen, if you don't get your stuff done, you're going to be having fudge stripes and pringles for breakfast, ok!?" All of us junior devs had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

I always thought, "That doesn't sound too bad to me."

It was actually a reference to this cartoon. Thanks for solving a 10 year old mystery for me!!

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

#362

Post by jermaustin1 » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 7:15 PM UTC

johndough wrote: post #356

jermaustin1 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 la…

> one of the easiest decision of my life. Which way did you decide?

The free 6 months of pay and insurance for staying for only 1 month!

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

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Post by appleiigs » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 7:15 PM UTC

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…

what is FIRE?

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

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Post by ethbro » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 7:16 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #257

bambataa wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a definite threshold between "their responsibility" and "the economy's responsibility."

I'd say generally the number at which you can no long afford to (a) put a roof over your head in a reasonably safe environment, (b) buy enough at the grocery to feed yourself and any dependents, (c) afford necessary medical care.

When you're trying to figure out how to make your paycheck cover only those things, we're not talking about disposable income anymore.

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

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Post by jjeaff » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 7:21 PM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #170

jen_h wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start a new company. Lots of talent available and investors look for heads-down new things. Classic Namazu stuff.

Capital's harder to get, but personnel and real estate is cheaper if you get funded. And then while you develop, hopefully the market recovers, and there's cash available for subsequent rounds and with customers to buy your stuff.

And it really depends on who your customers are. The amount of cash available during a recession doesn't change. It just gets more sluggish and people tend to be more reluctant to let it go. But it's there all the same.

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

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Post by bdcravens » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 7:26 PM UTC

You need to frame it in terms of the times. The web was relatively new, and there was a dramatic shortage of talent. Remote work was pretty rare, and the infrastructure to support it was very nascent.

Web development wasn't very mature: just knowing HTML could net you a nice paycheck. You could go even farther with basic spaghetti-code skills in languages like PHP, ColdFusion, and ASP. Frameworks really weren't a thing. Javascript wasn't used for much more than form validation, so you could go to your favorite "DHTML" website and find scripts to copy.

Couple this with the high pay, and there were a TON of "developers" who were one- or two-trick ponies. Someone who honestly was better suited for sales or management were writing code and making big bucks, and assumed this was their life path. For many, they turned into developers. Many didn't, and left.

In my experience, if you knew more than one backend language, and were happy working in boring fields (often in boring locations) like travel or healthcare or energy, you probably didn't go without work for long. (I was at Sabre at the time, working in their HR department, and 9/11 affected me more than the dot-com bubble)

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

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Post by bdcravens » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #232

For me, the most crazy change was several stories in the early 2000s of running into (literally) used car salespeople who mentioned they were software devs for a while in 1999. They were hustling cars in 1997, hustling code in ‘98 and ‘99, and back to cars in 2001. I spent the crash in the financial industry which was hit in its own way: one fire-sold company office, one closed satellite office with a job transfer to…

> They were hustling cars in 1997, hustling code in ‘98 and ‘99, and back to cars in 2001.

Hasn't changed that much, except now there's the in-between step of getting hustled by a boot-camp promising big $.

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

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Post by sizzle » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 7:35 PM UTC

julian_t wrote: post #240

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.

When I was a contractor in fintech, I did a lot of work for one guy on and off over 10 years. He was always very prompt in paying, and I only found out after some time that some of his clients (big banks) were very slow to pay him. At one point he paid everyone contracting for him out of his own pocket for nearly a year. None of us were exactly poor, but it contrasted with other clients who were happy to pass payment…

These are the types of people that earn my respect and loyalty as an employee. No nonsense, no BS, no trouble!

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

#369

Post by sizzle » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

digb wrote: post #330

ping_pong wrote: post #98

I worked through the tail end of the dotcom boom and saw all of the dot com bust. My company went from 1500 people to about 300 people in 1 year. Layoffs decimated the company, and eventually we were bought by a competitor. I have coworkers who were out of a job for 2+ years. One of my personal friends on H1B had to pump gas overnight, and transferred his balances between credit cards just to stay alive. Entire techn…

Why do you think the outsourcing never got quite as bad as everyone expected?

You get what you pay for, high quality code costs money and off shore talent will generally immigrate to first world countries if they have the talent cause of wage suppression abroad for the same skillset. My 2 cents

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

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Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 7:50 PM UTC

For me, it was pretty good. I was working at a medical devices company on a new product. Upper management was all too aware of what was happening out in the .com world. They didn't want to risk losing the core developers to .com riches, so a few of us got "shhh, don't tell anyone else" retention bonuses to make it less likely that we'd quit.

It was nice getting free money with no strings attached for a few years while still doing a job I loved. Kinda sucked when the gravy train stopped, though.