How did your tech career survive the dot-com bubble?
August 23, 2015 4:02 PM Subscribe
Did your software career survive the first dot-com bubble? What did you learn, what would you do today, and how did you weather the collapse?
As a software developer, I found this 1998 Wired article very unsettling. Modulo a few proper nouns, it might as well have been written this month. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, "See, this is new?"
I am self-taught, have about four years of professional experience, and work for a medium sized consulting shop in the Midwest. But this isn't about me—I'm interested in the lessons about work and money you learned the hard way.
As a software developer, I found this 1998 Wired article very unsettling. Modulo a few proper nouns, it might as well have been written this month. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, "See, this is new?"
I am self-taught, have about four years of professional experience, and work for a medium sized consulting shop in the Midwest. But this isn't about me—I'm interested in the lessons about work and money you learned the hard way.
One other thing to add: I think the experience made me far more conservative (you could say paranoid) about the companies I'll work for, in terms of stability and viability. I have mostly worked for companies that everyone reading this has heard of. Big companies (which can of course have layoffs, but are unlikely to sink completely). In some ways, that's great. But it does mean that I've turned away a bunch of opportunities that were riskier but could have been great both financially and for career development. After seeing so many seemingly successful companies vanish, I don't want to work anywhere I don't have extreme confidence in... (I do get exposure to some of the other companies via consulting and side projects, but it's not the same as really taking the leap.)
posted by primethyme at 4:30 PM on August 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by primethyme at 4:30 PM on August 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
That was a rocky time to be sure, and it did seem like a lot of people around me had lost their damn minds. Honestly, now does seem bubbly, but nothing like the complete insanity of that time. In June of 2001 I went to a dinner party with about 12 people and I was the only one who still had a job.
One thing I'm glad I did was take a job with an outlandish salary (so it seemed to me at the time; I knew it couldn't last but I thought I might as well get it while I could) and got to work for a while abroad.
I'm glad I worked so hard to fit into my company that I survived 5 rounds of layoffs.
There were a few things I wish had gone differently though. I wish I'd been in a more stable housing situation, because I ended up paying too much rent when the crash came.
I wish I had saved a cushion to allow me not to worry.
I wish I had not used credit cards to smooth things over and just been more frugal.
In the end, even though it was post-September 11 NYC when I was finally laid off, I was only unemployed for 6 months, with a good freelance gig in there to tide me over.
posted by maggiemaggie at 4:40 PM on August 23, 2015
One thing I'm glad I did was take a job with an outlandish salary (so it seemed to me at the time; I knew it couldn't last but I thought I might as well get it while I could) and got to work for a while abroad.
I'm glad I worked so hard to fit into my company that I survived 5 rounds of layoffs.
There were a few things I wish had gone differently though. I wish I'd been in a more stable housing situation, because I ended up paying too much rent when the crash came.
I wish I had saved a cushion to allow me not to worry.
I wish I had not used credit cards to smooth things over and just been more frugal.
In the end, even though it was post-September 11 NYC when I was finally laid off, I was only unemployed for 6 months, with a good freelance gig in there to tide me over.
posted by maggiemaggie at 4:40 PM on August 23, 2015
What primethyme said about building social bonds is spot on. It was important not only to my survival at my company, but even after I was laid off, everything good that happened in the next year was because of those bonds.
posted by maggiemaggie at 4:44 PM on August 23, 2015
posted by maggiemaggie at 4:44 PM on August 23, 2015
I spent 9 months unemployed Sept 2001-May 2002. I wound up taking a job as a technical writer. I got my way back up the software ladder, it just took a little longer and the path meandered more than it did for others starting circa 2004.
The key is to be flexible. A number of my friends had some lost years, went into testing or other industries before getting back on their feet.
Ask for help in a downturn if you need it. I am sad to say one of my friends took his life in this period. He suffered in silence. He is missed.
posted by crazycanuck at 4:47 PM on August 23, 2015
The key is to be flexible. A number of my friends had some lost years, went into testing or other industries before getting back on their feet.
Ask for help in a downturn if you need it. I am sad to say one of my friends took his life in this period. He suffered in silence. He is missed.
posted by crazycanuck at 4:47 PM on August 23, 2015
Dot-com work turned out to be a sidebar (mis)adventure that served to significantly increase my compensation in my longer-term, more stable career arc in a different work realm, but using the same skills and tech.
posted by NortonDC at 5:00 PM on August 23, 2015
posted by NortonDC at 5:00 PM on August 23, 2015
I was working for a large blue computer company at the time and managed to survive a huge layoff in May 2002 for the simple fact that they wanted me to help train the outsourced team to do my job.
My strategy for future employment was to network a lot. Especially once LinkedIn came about, I connected with all my ex-coworkers who had moved on to other places. When I finally did get laid off by that big blue company, I had an email almost instantly from my old boss asking me to come interview at the place where he'd landed. Of the four jobs that I've had since then, three were gotten through connection with ex-coworkers. It's like 2 or 3 times easier to get an interview at a company if you have a friend inside to vouch for you so keep up those contacts.
The other thing is to keep learning constantly. What you're doing now will be obsolete in a year or two so make sure that you're at least conversant with the newest stuff. Go to tech meetups which will do double duty of networking and education. I don't know where your live but in my smallish city there's a tech meetup (usually through Meetup.com) almost every night of the week.
primethyme: I hate to say it, but I honestly believe it also helps to be likable.
At the very least, don't be an asshole. Do your best to not burn bridges and make a bad name for yourself.
posted by octothorpe at 5:07 PM on August 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
My strategy for future employment was to network a lot. Especially once LinkedIn came about, I connected with all my ex-coworkers who had moved on to other places. When I finally did get laid off by that big blue company, I had an email almost instantly from my old boss asking me to come interview at the place where he'd landed. Of the four jobs that I've had since then, three were gotten through connection with ex-coworkers. It's like 2 or 3 times easier to get an interview at a company if you have a friend inside to vouch for you so keep up those contacts.
The other thing is to keep learning constantly. What you're doing now will be obsolete in a year or two so make sure that you're at least conversant with the newest stuff. Go to tech meetups which will do double duty of networking and education. I don't know where your live but in my smallish city there's a tech meetup (usually through Meetup.com) almost every night of the week.
primethyme: I hate to say it, but I honestly believe it also helps to be likable.
At the very least, don't be an asshole. Do your best to not burn bridges and make a bad name for yourself.
posted by octothorpe at 5:07 PM on August 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
Be frugal. Spend money where you get real value and save money on everything else. Living below your income not only helps you save money but also means that you don't need to cover as much when you get laid off.
Say, you make a $100, spend $90 and save $10. You get laid off after year and you have $120 in savings, barely enough to cover one month and a couple weeks of unemployment. If you make $100 and spend $75 and save $25, you will have enough for four months of unemployment, a much more comfortable situation.
Furthermore, as you go through life, be clear with yourself which of your expenses are necessities and which can be turned off if money gets tight. In our house, Internet is a relative necessity, HBO and house cleaners are not. So I know that if I lost my job, my monthly expense would not be my usual $75 but really I could comfortably get it down to $68, giving me that much longer money got really tight.
By the way, the higher rate of savings means that you get to point of knowing you can walk away from any job if you need to, it is not just in case of layoffs. It is lovely to know that you can choose to let them take their job and shove it - even if you don't.
posted by metahawk at 5:28 PM on August 23, 2015 [4 favorites]
Say, you make a $100, spend $90 and save $10. You get laid off after year and you have $120 in savings, barely enough to cover one month and a couple weeks of unemployment. If you make $100 and spend $75 and save $25, you will have enough for four months of unemployment, a much more comfortable situation.
Furthermore, as you go through life, be clear with yourself which of your expenses are necessities and which can be turned off if money gets tight. In our house, Internet is a relative necessity, HBO and house cleaners are not. So I know that if I lost my job, my monthly expense would not be my usual $75 but really I could comfortably get it down to $68, giving me that much longer money got really tight.
By the way, the higher rate of savings means that you get to point of knowing you can walk away from any job if you need to, it is not just in case of layoffs. It is lovely to know that you can choose to let them take their job and shove it - even if you don't.
posted by metahawk at 5:28 PM on August 23, 2015 [4 favorites]
Networking is so important. I asked our summer interns if they were on LinkedIn yet. If they weren't, I told them to create one and start connecting with people here (work). Keeping up with former colleagues is a must.
I honestly believe it also helps to be likable
Yes. Yes. When you know of an opportunity, are you going to let the jerks know about it?
You really have to be aware of the financial situation of your employer. You're just a number on a spreadsheet.
posted by LoveHam at 5:49 PM on August 23, 2015
I honestly believe it also helps to be likable
Yes. Yes. When you know of an opportunity, are you going to let the jerks know about it?
You really have to be aware of the financial situation of your employer. You're just a number on a spreadsheet.
posted by LoveHam at 5:49 PM on August 23, 2015
Hanging onto connections with coworkers who you like and who like you is good advice in any industry and any job market conditions. I kind of disagree that just "networking" is always a good use of your time if you don't genuinely like the people you work with, but finding a couple people you connect with at every job you take and then keeping in contact with them through the years is a great way of keeping tabs on other job opportunities in case your situation changes suddenly.
posted by deathpanels at 5:53 PM on August 23, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by deathpanels at 5:53 PM on August 23, 2015 [4 favorites]
I never thought about it before, but yeah, my network probably saved me. I got laid off from a startup that went bust, and was unemployed for a month or 2. Once word got around someone I'd worked with before invited me to come back and work where he was.
And I've leaned on it a time or two since then. It is always nice to have an "in" at as many places as possible, someone who can get your resume to the people hiring directly.
posted by RustyBrooks at 5:57 PM on August 23, 2015
And I've leaned on it a time or two since then. It is always nice to have an "in" at as many places as possible, someone who can get your resume to the people hiring directly.
posted by RustyBrooks at 5:57 PM on August 23, 2015
Its all about your network, at least for me. My first job was the only one I ever got "cold". A coworker who left that job pulled me into his startup when my first company tanked. Then some college friends recommended me to what ended up being my next company. And my current job started with them contacting me on the recommendation of coworkers from my second job. I've been working continuously since 1998 and every job since then has come this way.
posted by thefoxgod at 6:56 PM on August 23, 2015
posted by thefoxgod at 6:56 PM on August 23, 2015
I survived the dot com collapse by leaving my comfort zone for a new
area, worked hard to get up to speed, shifted between management,
development, and customer-facing activites as conditions demanded.
If another collapse comes and the best way to put food on your family
is by learning Cobol, go for it and let your wings take dream.
posted by morspin at 7:24 PM on August 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
area, worked hard to get up to speed, shifted between management,
development, and customer-facing activites as conditions demanded.
If another collapse comes and the best way to put food on your family
is by learning Cobol, go for it and let your wings take dream.
posted by morspin at 7:24 PM on August 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
I went back to my pre-dot-com job of corporate law firm lawyer, which was exactly what I'd planned my fall-back to be. I was pushed out earlier than usual -- January 2001 -- and this turned out to be a Godsend. Better credentialed lawyers than me who were laid off six moths later struggled very hard to get back on their feet, simply because the recession was really kicking in and the notion of a dot-com veteran happy to wear a suit again got familiar, and then old, right quick.
The value my dot-com work had long-term was mixed.
On the one hand, it didn't confer specific experience or really network values. We were doing social media at exactly the time social media fell into a multi-year lapse between the first generation (TheGlobe, SixDegrees, GeoCities) and the second generation (Friendster, MySpace, Facebook). The people scattered to the four winds and to my knowledge weren't heavily involved in the second generation (certainly no one in our company was). (If you must know we were basically Pinterest if it had been invented in 1999 ... so much so many people asked me if our patents were valid when Pinterest really started to roll!)
On the other hand, it gave me an experience with moving fast and breaking down complex problems and articulating good solution, and a desire for success in the business world, as opposed to strictly being a lawyer, that stuck with me. Within a couple of years of the return to law, I was on a bond trading floor doing research as well as legal stuff, was running the whole analyst team a few years after that, and a hedge fund manager a few years after that. I am absolutely convinced i never would have done that had I not had the dot-com startup experience.
posted by MattD at 8:15 PM on August 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
The value my dot-com work had long-term was mixed.
On the one hand, it didn't confer specific experience or really network values. We were doing social media at exactly the time social media fell into a multi-year lapse between the first generation (TheGlobe, SixDegrees, GeoCities) and the second generation (Friendster, MySpace, Facebook). The people scattered to the four winds and to my knowledge weren't heavily involved in the second generation (certainly no one in our company was). (If you must know we were basically Pinterest if it had been invented in 1999 ... so much so many people asked me if our patents were valid when Pinterest really started to roll!)
On the other hand, it gave me an experience with moving fast and breaking down complex problems and articulating good solution, and a desire for success in the business world, as opposed to strictly being a lawyer, that stuck with me. Within a couple of years of the return to law, I was on a bond trading floor doing research as well as legal stuff, was running the whole analyst team a few years after that, and a hedge fund manager a few years after that. I am absolutely convinced i never would have done that had I not had the dot-com startup experience.
posted by MattD at 8:15 PM on August 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
I survived being laid off during the dot bust by being willing to move. My existing network was important in that it provided excellent references, but I found my next job through the old fashioned numbers game of submitting resumes and cover letters to every advertised job I could find (in the US) that I was a reasonably good fit for. That included jobs in places where I didn't have any members of my network to provide an "in". One of those panned out.
Among other things, the experience has made me think long and hard about owning versus renting. Being able to move easily does give one an advantage in finding a new job.
posted by jazzbaby at 6:46 AM on August 24, 2015
Among other things, the experience has made me think long and hard about owning versus renting. Being able to move easily does give one an advantage in finding a new job.
posted by jazzbaby at 6:46 AM on August 24, 2015
I've lived through the bubble and the crash and I've always found both the bubble articles (luxury vehicles as a sign-on bonus!) and the crash articles (unable to land a single interview for months!) rather specious when compared to what I was experiencing myself or through fellow software engineers and web developers (geographically, New York during the bubble and the beginning of the crash, and Minneapolis during the middle of the crash and the eventual recovery). No one was getting rich during the bubble and from what I saw of the crash, the salaries had dropped about 10% and the number of available jobs had dropped about 25% but everyone who wanted to work continued to work, for about the same money. Same with the current bubble - I have a few techie/ VC/startup founder friends in Silicon Valley and New York, and I am just not seeing the drama that gets portrayed in the news hype cycle.
If you want to look at some numbers, here is a good source. Key quote: employment declined by about 17 percent however average wages grew by nearly 36 percent during the same period. Not so bad for an OMG...CRASH, right?
The best money lesson I've learned along the way - although unrelated to the bubble/crash yo-yo - is that automatic deposits are the way to financial happiness. Just take a random number that's slightly uncomfortable (say, 25% of your salary) and set up automatic buy-in's into an index fund or automatic transfers into a savings account. You will not miss the money but man, will it accumulate into something meaningful when you need it.
posted by rada at 8:33 AM on August 24, 2015
If you want to look at some numbers, here is a good source. Key quote: employment declined by about 17 percent however average wages grew by nearly 36 percent during the same period. Not so bad for an OMG...CRASH, right?
The best money lesson I've learned along the way - although unrelated to the bubble/crash yo-yo - is that automatic deposits are the way to financial happiness. Just take a random number that's slightly uncomfortable (say, 25% of your salary) and set up automatic buy-in's into an index fund or automatic transfers into a savings account. You will not miss the money but man, will it accumulate into something meaningful when you need it.
posted by rada at 8:33 AM on August 24, 2015
I got laid off Sept 7, 2001. I'd been doing mostly VB/SQLServer programming for a small military contractor moving into commercial contracting because Philly's Navy bases closed. After the layoff, I learn PHP by programming for a friend running his own ISP, and updating my personal projects site with some new CGIs. I kept up with the local perl mongers, and someone posted of a local consulting company looking for perl programmers. I got that week-long job, then they offered me tech writing for a few months. That took me through spring until a high school friend told me about a PHP/perl/Oracle programming job available at his company (he's not a programmer). For the ISP, I'd been working with sockets and command-line PHP scripts, which *sounds* really impressive, so they hired me.
In short: networking, keeping up the skills.
That's the work half of it. My personal life was pretty solid too. Husband and I bought our house *before* the housing bubble, and his salary was enough to cover everything, especially after we cut the lawn and cleaning services. My car was paid off. He still works in higher ed, who generally don't lay off, so we didn't worry about his job. The kiddo wasn't even a gleam in our eyes yet.
My work is not and never has been sexy: library systems for small Navy projects, pharmacy software for independent pharmacies, white mail (aka, spam you ask for), college admissions. No VC funding, no cutting edge, just supporting business, but also companies that are more likely to be sold than to completely collapse. That means hiring managers don't think I'll get bored or run off for something better after six months or will code up a project with an obscure framework that's obsolete in six months. Philly aspires to be Silicon Alley, but we have too many established industries for that. Side projects keep my skills fresh, but that's harder with a kid, and my projects themselves are never sexy, both in subject matter (recipes!) and technology (some jQuery, none of this Angular stuff).
posted by JawnBigboote at 8:33 AM on August 24, 2015
In short: networking, keeping up the skills.
That's the work half of it. My personal life was pretty solid too. Husband and I bought our house *before* the housing bubble, and his salary was enough to cover everything, especially after we cut the lawn and cleaning services. My car was paid off. He still works in higher ed, who generally don't lay off, so we didn't worry about his job. The kiddo wasn't even a gleam in our eyes yet.
My work is not and never has been sexy: library systems for small Navy projects, pharmacy software for independent pharmacies, white mail (aka, spam you ask for), college admissions. No VC funding, no cutting edge, just supporting business, but also companies that are more likely to be sold than to completely collapse. That means hiring managers don't think I'll get bored or run off for something better after six months or will code up a project with an obscure framework that's obsolete in six months. Philly aspires to be Silicon Alley, but we have too many established industries for that. Side projects keep my skills fresh, but that's harder with a kid, and my projects themselves are never sexy, both in subject matter (recipes!) and technology (some jQuery, none of this Angular stuff).
posted by JawnBigboote at 8:33 AM on August 24, 2015
The best advice I've ever gotten is "Maximize your options." It applies to social networks, money, and career decisions equally well. Do it with integrity though. You don't want to be a brown-noser, or unethical about money issues.
posted by Gusaroo at 10:19 AM on August 24, 2015
posted by Gusaroo at 10:19 AM on August 24, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
One thing that I do believe helped me both during the crash and during the aftermath is that I have always strived to be a very versatile employee. I can program in a lot of languages, know how to run a lot of types of systems, have lead teams doing a bunch of different stuff, and have held the majority of roles that exist in a software project. That might prevent me from getting a job that needs an ultra-specialized guru, but being skilled and experienced in a lot of stuff greatly broadened the set of jobs I was able to be considered for. This is of course true even without a crash. Individual technologies come and go (I wouldn't want to be a specialist Flash developer right now), but if you know how to do several things and learn quickly, you'll have a lot more options.
I hate to say it, but I honestly believe it also helps to be likable. I don't really enjoy socializing with people from work, and I'd rather be at home with my family. But because I build those bonds, people enjoy working with me, and they want to work with me again in the future. It really helps when you have friendly faces at a bunch of different companies around the world...
posted by primethyme at 4:26 PM on August 23, 2015 [9 favorites]