There's kind of a resume gap there between 2001 and 2020.
He was engineer, senior engineer, and then cto at active campaign..
I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
41–50 of 322 posts
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#42I was part of the dotcom crash. I went to community college which made things more difficult than university grads. Many people left the field in my year. Not really sure how many programmers are left in the group today either.
After living in java throughout school I managed to get a minimum wage 6 month contract in php and never looked back transforming that into 6 more months and fighting out a 2500 month wage for my last 3 month contract with them.
The interview for that was tough. In the end it was myself and another person from university who spoke in more advanced terms. The final piece was a take home assignment and I did it quickly and the other person couldn't so I got the job. After I got the role I would see the candidate she would come in and have lunch with the a co-founder she connected with during the interview process. When she found out she didn't get the role she cried in the middle of the room for so long, very uncomfortable. There was always a bit of hate from that co-founder after, you could tell the co-founders were fighting (they were a couple founder team). My advice know your stuff and when you get the call give it your all even if it looks/seems impossible.. I applied to so many jobs before I got even that interview.
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#43All of a sudden my unsexy junior dev job at shitcorp isn't so bad.
I'm perfectly happy at my job at a very small established company. Unbelievable freedom, no mandatory overtime, everybody is on a first name basis with the CEO, no stress, no "PIP"s, no worries about my equity going down the toilet, and I got my own office.
My total compensation might be half of what I could get at large corps but I don't need to live in a city (lower rent and housing prices, fresher air) and money isn't everything. I can commute the short way to the office via bike which takes off even more time I spend at work.
Working at small companies can be really good.
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#44The tech situation in y2k vs today is incredibly different which makes them somewhat hard to compare. E-commerce was minuscule, telemedicine didn’t exist, social media wasn’t a thing as we know it today, ridesharing didn’t exist, cloud computing wasn’t a thing. It seems highly unlikely that we will regress to a state where such services are not required.
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#45In the age of RSUs, graduating in the middle of a recession is financially incredible IF you managed to get the job before all the hiring freezes AND it is at one of the publicly traded big N companies with good trade volume. Your RSU price is lower, you get more stock units for the same dollar amount at the time of joining in your initial grant (arguably much more important than refreshers). I have a friend who rece…
That's not that financially incredible. That's the price that MSFT was at less than a year ago.
Well, if he had joined two weeks prior, his RSU price would've been $190, so he basically got 33% more RSUs. It's basically luck but I'm happy for him.
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#46In the age of RSUs, graduating in the middle of a recession is financially incredible IF you managed to get the job before all the hiring freezes AND it is at one of the publicly traded big N companies with good trade volume. Your RSU price is lower, you get more stock units for the same dollar amount at the time of joining in your initial grant (arguably much more important than refreshers). I have a friend who rece…
Don't count your chickens before they vest, in 6 months somebody might be getting them at $90
It's advisable to hold your RSUs for at least one year for a favourable tax treatment, so the 33% discount he got is still very good; he's likely not going to sell his RSUs in six months.
He got the offer and decided on his start date way back in August of last year so any luck he happens by is good luck. He could've chosen to be luckier if the stock price goes down further, but I'd say this is pretty lucky as it is already for something he can't control.
Edit: ignore the tax part, I think I'm wrong there.
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#47In the age of RSUs, graduating in the middle of a recession is financially incredible IF you managed to get the job before all the hiring freezes AND it is at one of the publicly traded big N companies with good trade volume. Your RSU price is lower, you get more stock units for the same dollar amount at the time of joining in your initial grant (arguably much more important than refreshers). I have a friend who rece…
Finding a job in the middle of a recession is financially incredible
Anecdotally I'm still getting lots of recruiter spam from these types of companies on Linkedin and my current company that offers a good deal of RSU's is still hiring. It's not everywhere but in this particular recession and within those offers already offering lots of high value RSU's I suspect hiring is not slowing by a ton.
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#48This is a logical fallacy
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#49I graduated from university at the exact moment the dot com bust occurred, and the job market went from fizzing to non-existent in the space of a few weeks. I ended up working at a local charity, and then entering into a business incubator but for a couple of years I had no money to speak of. If I felt rich, I'd have McDonalds for lunch. On the other hand, I was living in a cool part of town with a group of people wh…
I imagine its worse now with the Student debt bubble - too many people with 100k in student loans.
Not to mention that the coming downturn is likely to depress wages for most jobs, including developers. Debt isn't an issue if you can afford to maintain it, and most people with student debt thought they would be entering a highly lucrative market. That might turn out to be wrong for the next decade.
This is an opportunity for businesses to reduce wages for new hires because people will just be thankful they've got a job.
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#50This is just a personal anecdote. It is the very definition of survivorship bias.
I don't disagree with the logic. But a bit... wet blanket, no? I’m having a good laugh imagining the motivational oomph that's lost when adding the caps below.
"To all the young programmers worrying about the uncertain job market, I promise things will get better FOR SOME OF YOU."