I really question that, id believe that 300,000 jobs from tech companies have been lost, but 40% of all tech jobs. Sounds like nonsense, especially since the source is an outplacement company.
I find it hard to believe. That means that there were only 750,000 jobs to begin with. Yet, according to BLS, there were 3.45 million IT jobs in 2001. It is not clear if that figure is before or after the layoffs in question, but either way the 40% doesn't work.
IT != "Tech jobs", one is a superset of the other. A good chunk of the entire "IT industry" is going to be tech support, computer repair, technical sales/analysts, etc. Not the kind of jobs you are thinking of when people say "tech jobs" (jobs at FAANG and the like). It doesn't include the dozens of thousands of on-prem IT people at schools and the like.
Yes, you are right that tech jobs encompass even more than IT, but that means the total number of tech jobs was even larger than 3.45 million. Yet the original claim was that there were only ~750,000 tech jobs in total across the USA. That remains hard to believe.
I, like the commenter that set the context, can find it easier to believe that 300,000 jobs were lost at tech companies, representing 40% of jobs at tech companies. No doubt, the vast majority of tech work happens outside of tech companies – probably doubly so back then when it was the norm to do everything in-house rather than outsource a lot of the work to tech companies like we see today. But the comment I replied to discounts that notion, so here we are...
Man had just started my career the year before and these companies hit close to home, Alcatel was one of our customers, JDS Uniphase was where we got our slimy C?O.
Amazingly I was never laid off, but that was a rough 2 years seeing stock go from $160 to $0.20 a share, losing 80% people due to layoffs, wheeling office furniture into the parking lot, etc.
Nortel had a similar trajectory. Just prior to the crash it represented 1/3 of the Toronto Stock Exchange by market cap. It essentially went to null and took 10’s of thousands of jobs, the wealth of hundreds of thousands of small investors and Ottawa’s tech sector with it.
Ah, the good old days. I was hired for my first job in tech at a new .com startup in February of 2000. Everything was awesome and nothing could possibly go wrong! The NASDAQ peaked the next month. It wasn't obvious everything was falling apart for quite a while. It was an interesting few years.
I like helping employees do their job more efficiently with custom software. One of my favorite places was working part time for an environmental lab that rolled their own LIMS software and just about everything else. People were so grateful for helping them solve their problems.
If the software isn't tied directly to a companies bottom line things are much more chill, in my limited experience anyway.
That's when my son graduated college. A couple years earlier one of his friends was offered a job in IT rather than finish his degree. (e.g. no need to graduate, we'll hire you now.) I suggested that was a short term strategy and that lack of a degree could result in lack of mobility later.
He graduated at a time when companies were rescinding offers to hire and even trying to claw back hiring bonuses. It was a long time before he found work in the field and I suspect that it has affected the trajectory of his career to this day.
See my comment above - not the person in question (to my knowledge), but also no degree and hit 2001 with 2 years experience. I'm not "hacker news material" - i.e. no Big Tech or Startup experience. Just slowly, steadily worked my way up in salary mostly at small-ish (6-100 employees) software / marketing agencies or doing similar work.
As for my advice, I don't regret it at all. But the one thing that might have made a difference was that I could afford to put our sons through college (public school, UIUC) so neither graduated with debt.
That is sad to hear, but hopefully you do not feel too much regret over it. 9 times out of 10, your advice would fare better, but you happened to roll the die in an unlucky period.
> 9 times out of 10, your advice would fare better
Not according to the data. There is absolutely no period where general college attainment has shown to improve mobility when as compared to equivalent people without college attainment.
What the data does show is a tendency for those with the capability to successfully complete college to have greater mobility when as compared to dissimilar people (i.e. those hindered by disabilities), but it is faulty to attribute that to college. Clearly it is the life challenges that hold people back. It is not the lack of a degree that keeps the down syndrome kid from being considered 'management material'.
There is a stronger case to be made for high school attainment, but even that is no doubt confounded by the rise of industrialization showing up at the same time, providing new mobility opportunities. The meaningful gains in high school attainment we have seen over the last 20 years have not translated to improved mobility for that subset of the population.
>What the data does show is a tendency for those with the capability to successfully complete college to have greater mobility
From the perspective of the company, if the only way to have a signal on this is via a degree, and you have two identical candidates otherwise, which one are you choosing?
The people are identical. You already know they have equal capability.
You, the employer, are just performing a coin flip to choose, albeit using a medium that is not an actual coin. Using up precious resources to weight the coin in your favour as the worker might find short-term gain, but you will lose in the end. The data around this is abundantly clear.
Those who actually succeed long-term find a way to leverage their resources to ensure that they are not identical to the other guy – but to become one who is better. Distracting yourself by the coin flip is a recipe for failure, as we see time and time again.
True. We've probably forgotten with the employment market having been strong for a long time, leaving employers desperate to accept anyone they can get, but back in the day degree holders were often rejected because of their degree too. "Overqualified", as employers liked to put it. In other words, "Your flashy 'car' doesn't impress me."
But either way, the takeaway is clear: If you are the worker, you don't want to get caught playing that game. You will lose in the end.
To be fair, a Ferrari will normally retain its value, assuming you don't damage it. A degree on the other hand, even with the utmost extreme care, becomes worthless the day you drive it off the lot. Guaranteed. In fact, it is likely less than worthless as you will no doubt have to pay someone to dispose of the piece of paper for you.
So, yes, you make a good point. The employer is, all else equal, most definitely not selecting the degree holder if hiring is done based on financial resolve. Imagine dumping all those resources into a degree that has no resale value – literally worthless – only to apply to a job that identical people without degrees are also applying to. Not a display of financial literacy, that is for sure.
I would have graduated with a Comp Sci degree in 2001, but I dropped out in late 1999 with a low level web dev job. (Yes, my title was something like Assistant Webmaster.) My first job (slicing in Photoshop, Cold Fusion being used for local small business web sites...) actually fizzled out, but then I got a proper salaried job doing Classic ASP + SQL Server + Microsoft Commerce Server type work. Been doing work roughly in that area ever since, typically for small businesses. While I did see a local company downsize sometime around 2002/2003 from 50 to 20 employees (but then they hired me not long after), I wasn't affected negatively by the "tech crash" because every local business was on board for getting at least a web site up.
The pro move was to look at that job as a long-term internship that allowed him to save up cash so he could go back to school when the economy went south without taking out student loans.
This was something we were talking about in college in the late 90s as the dot coms were getting huge: do you stay in college and get the degree, or do you take the first job that comes along, save up your money, and head back to school when the economy turns south?
That would be a good strategy if you anticipated the crash. Many did not. But in any case this was at a time when a college degree was reasonably affordable and I could cover the cost of his degree.
ah yes, the "irrational exuberance" period, as termed by Alan Greenspan, when investors were poring money into anything that was labeled a '.com'. Companies were renaming themselves to include the '.com' in their official name.
I also remember a satire article about a startup with the idea of turning everyone's monitor yellow. "Think Yellow".
Anyway, I was also a casualty. I spend about 6 months looking for full time work.
> Thursday’s moves from a variety of tech titans, which already are slogging through the worst year in the industry’s history, caused analysts to wonder whether the carnage would get even worse and when it would come to an end.
Written July 27th, 2001. Talk about statements that age like milk.
I remember this time. I worked for a small b2b startup at the time and one of my coworkers left to take a better offer at another company that week. The company he went to laid him and everybody else off that same week. He ended up in the local newspaper in one of those "oh well" shrug-emoji articles.
Since we were bootstrapped we ended up lasting a little bit longer, but pay freezes and such eventually killed the company and forced them to sell.
When the pay freezes hit, I was able to use a personal connection to get another position at lower pay, but in a virtually recession proof industry which brought in extraordinarily valuable income and stability at the time (my wife and I were basically Ramen poor during this). The job market took 3 or 4 years to rebound and I personally didn't go back into startups until around 2007.
I remember seeing job posting for "entry level with x years in y technology" where x > 10 and y technology hadn't even existed 3 years prior.
Very very scary across the entire tech world. The cuts last year and this year are huge, but don't have quite the same exploding bubble feeling from back then. Still, it's no fun to be on the receiving end of them.
We must be looking at the same openings. I am constantly surprised at the expectation that applicants have >1 or 2 years of production experience with Elixir & Phoenix (seemingly excluding Erlang from that experience as well).
Where are all these entry level Elixir jobs that these companies are banking their applicants having? It's hard enough just to find an FP position (around here anyway), but sure, let's make it even more specific.
This happened while I was in high school. My dad worked in IT at a company that actually still exists. He even survived the layoffs, though with a series of dramatic pay cuts.
It was such a shock going from a pretty sweet gig to the terror of sudden destitution. He was so lucky to survive but was suddenly sleeping in his cube and living in constant fear of being the next let go. I think he was the only one of his coworker/friends to survive the layoffs at his company.
Dad would describe sitting in his cube when a team of security people would get off the elevator. Everyone was terrified, not knowing who they were coming for. If it was you, they would physically remove you from your cube and haul you down to HR and that was it. One of your coworkers would pack your things into a box that you'd be handed on the way out. That happened to dozens (hundreds?) early in the process, and continued regularly for a couple of years.
I think he felt trapped at the time - there obviously weren't many tech jobs hiring, so losing a job could mean long-term unemployment or even changing careers after 20 years in the field.
Our family situation sucked, but we were extremely fortunate compared to many of those around us. Every time another mass-layoff event happens, like we've seen so many of lately, I think of those times and grieve for the people going through that now.
Not really any wisdom or insight to share on this. I just really hate the series of events and decisions which lead to hardworking people seeing their lives upended like this.
Also the founder / CEO of the company bought a private island around this time. It was featured in a magazine and, looking at the photos, it felt so bizarre and frustrating that, while so many suffered, some at the company seemed to do quite well.
What I don’t get is not having investments/cash to hold you over for a year or even 2. Whitecollar jobs pay well and I’d expect most people to have earned quite a bit in the dot com frenzy.
You might make a lot of money, but if you're a young adult, you might still need to buy a car, a house, get kids, etc. All of which cost a lot of money, to a point where you might not be able to save much.
Might be the case for some. We lived in a flyover state, so pay was far from West coast. Dad's career started out with him living in a rough trailer park and hitching rides to work. Before the bust he was doing well, but he had a tough climb getting there and hadn't had much time to save up (along with starting a family and such).
Again, we were very fortunate to come though it as well as we did. Many close friends had it much worse.
There's bound to be a variety of financial and career situations out there. To me, it's difficult to imagine anyone getting canned and thinking 'meh, no biggie'.
> To me, it's difficult to imagine anyone getting canned and thinking 'meh, no biggie'.
I think there’s a subjective component where it does feel like a big deal no matter what savings you have. But objectively if you can cover expenses for a year then it really is ‘meh, no biggie’ .
Walked into a friend’s house one day. His dad had a nice home office, hardwood desks with lots of bookshelf space and literature on just about everything to do with IT at the time.
He wasn’t there that week. He was doing long-haul trucking and would be back home in 5 days or some such.
When I graduated from Columbia in 1999, I interviewed and got offers at various tech startups, but entry-level jobs on the "PM track" for those without a CS/engineering degree didn't formally exist at the likes of Microsoft or Yahoo as far as I know. I had a technical background, but was almost entirely self-taught, and had no interest in writing code for money anyway. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36027171>
Of my offers I chose an investment banking job where I worked with tech companies. Thank goodness for that; I got to participate in the dotcom bubble without being directly swept up in its popping, and saw the Valley immediately post-bubble collapse. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34732772>
50 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 94.9 ms ] threadI, like the commenter that set the context, can find it easier to believe that 300,000 jobs were lost at tech companies, representing 40% of jobs at tech companies. No doubt, the vast majority of tech work happens outside of tech companies – probably doubly so back then when it was the norm to do everything in-house rather than outsource a lot of the work to tech companies like we see today. But the comment I replied to discounts that notion, so here we are...
Amazingly I was never laid off, but that was a rough 2 years seeing stock go from $160 to $0.20 a share, losing 80% people due to layoffs, wheeling office furniture into the parking lot, etc.
Sounds a little like the soft landing scenario that's currently making the rounds, as the stock market keeps making new highs.
Every company will have a dedicated Software team. It might not be sexy stuff, but it's still an important part of an organization.
In the early 2000s, plenty of organizations weren't as digitized yet.
If the software isn't tied directly to a companies bottom line things are much more chill, in my limited experience anyway.
EDIT: on -> own
Yep. But conversely, the pay also tends to be lower, and there is a chance operations can get offshored (eg. Cummins or JPMC's internal systems)
He graduated at a time when companies were rescinding offers to hire and even trying to claw back hiring bonuses. It was a long time before he found work in the field and I suspect that it has affected the trajectory of his career to this day.
As for my advice, I don't regret it at all. But the one thing that might have made a difference was that I could afford to put our sons through college (public school, UIUC) so neither graduated with debt.
Not according to the data. There is absolutely no period where general college attainment has shown to improve mobility when as compared to equivalent people without college attainment.
What the data does show is a tendency for those with the capability to successfully complete college to have greater mobility when as compared to dissimilar people (i.e. those hindered by disabilities), but it is faulty to attribute that to college. Clearly it is the life challenges that hold people back. It is not the lack of a degree that keeps the down syndrome kid from being considered 'management material'.
There is a stronger case to be made for high school attainment, but even that is no doubt confounded by the rise of industrialization showing up at the same time, providing new mobility opportunities. The meaningful gains in high school attainment we have seen over the last 20 years have not translated to improved mobility for that subset of the population.
From the perspective of the company, if the only way to have a signal on this is via a degree, and you have two identical candidates otherwise, which one are you choosing?
That's right, the one with the Ferrari. But that is a game you, the worker, don't want to start playing. You will lose in the end.
You, the employer, are just performing a coin flip to choose, albeit using a medium that is not an actual coin. Using up precious resources to weight the coin in your favour as the worker might find short-term gain, but you will lose in the end. The data around this is abundantly clear.
Those who actually succeed long-term find a way to leverage their resources to ensure that they are not identical to the other guy – but to become one who is better. Distracting yourself by the coin flip is a recipe for failure, as we see time and time again.
But either way, the takeaway is clear: If you are the worker, you don't want to get caught playing that game. You will lose in the end.
To be fair, a Ferrari will normally retain its value, assuming you don't damage it. A degree on the other hand, even with the utmost extreme care, becomes worthless the day you drive it off the lot. Guaranteed. In fact, it is likely less than worthless as you will no doubt have to pay someone to dispose of the piece of paper for you.
So, yes, you make a good point. The employer is, all else equal, most definitely not selecting the degree holder if hiring is done based on financial resolve. Imagine dumping all those resources into a degree that has no resale value – literally worthless – only to apply to a job that identical people without degrees are also applying to. Not a display of financial literacy, that is for sure.
This was something we were talking about in college in the late 90s as the dot coms were getting huge: do you stay in college and get the degree, or do you take the first job that comes along, save up your money, and head back to school when the economy turns south?
I also remember a satire article about a startup with the idea of turning everyone's monitor yellow. "Think Yellow".
Anyway, I was also a casualty. I spend about 6 months looking for full time work.
Written July 27th, 2001. Talk about statements that age like milk.
Since we were bootstrapped we ended up lasting a little bit longer, but pay freezes and such eventually killed the company and forced them to sell.
When the pay freezes hit, I was able to use a personal connection to get another position at lower pay, but in a virtually recession proof industry which brought in extraordinarily valuable income and stability at the time (my wife and I were basically Ramen poor during this). The job market took 3 or 4 years to rebound and I personally didn't go back into startups until around 2007.
I remember seeing job posting for "entry level with x years in y technology" where x > 10 and y technology hadn't even existed 3 years prior.
Very very scary across the entire tech world. The cuts last year and this year are huge, but don't have quite the same exploding bubble feeling from back then. Still, it's no fun to be on the receiving end of them.
This was common with Golang and is common with Rust now.
Also, a ton of Elixir/Phoenix jobs want unrealistic experience in the field.
Where are all these entry level Elixir jobs that these companies are banking their applicants having? It's hard enough just to find an FP position (around here anyway), but sure, let's make it even more specific.
It was such a shock going from a pretty sweet gig to the terror of sudden destitution. He was so lucky to survive but was suddenly sleeping in his cube and living in constant fear of being the next let go. I think he was the only one of his coworker/friends to survive the layoffs at his company.
Dad would describe sitting in his cube when a team of security people would get off the elevator. Everyone was terrified, not knowing who they were coming for. If it was you, they would physically remove you from your cube and haul you down to HR and that was it. One of your coworkers would pack your things into a box that you'd be handed on the way out. That happened to dozens (hundreds?) early in the process, and continued regularly for a couple of years.
I think he felt trapped at the time - there obviously weren't many tech jobs hiring, so losing a job could mean long-term unemployment or even changing careers after 20 years in the field.
Our family situation sucked, but we were extremely fortunate compared to many of those around us. Every time another mass-layoff event happens, like we've seen so many of lately, I think of those times and grieve for the people going through that now.
Not really any wisdom or insight to share on this. I just really hate the series of events and decisions which lead to hardworking people seeing their lives upended like this.
You might make a lot of money, but if you're a young adult, you might still need to buy a car, a house, get kids, etc. All of which cost a lot of money, to a point where you might not be able to save much.
Again, we were very fortunate to come though it as well as we did. Many close friends had it much worse.
There's bound to be a variety of financial and career situations out there. To me, it's difficult to imagine anyone getting canned and thinking 'meh, no biggie'.
I think there’s a subjective component where it does feel like a big deal no matter what savings you have. But objectively if you can cover expenses for a year then it really is ‘meh, no biggie’ .
He wasn’t there that week. He was doing long-haul trucking and would be back home in 5 days or some such.
Of my offers I chose an investment banking job where I worked with tech companies. Thank goodness for that; I got to participate in the dotcom bubble without being directly swept up in its popping, and saw the Valley immediately post-bubble collapse. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34732772>