Ask HN: What was the job market like during the dot-com crash?

I went back to school at 25 to get a CS degree in 1997. My first year I would hear stories of people about to complete bachelor's degrees being flown from Halifax to Boston (Canadian, here) to be courted (hotel, dinner, etc) by IT companies.

By the time I graduated in 2001 my cohort were taking jobs at Staples selling computers so there's that. Many people were getting into graduate programs to wait out the downturn. I am not sure how this affected minimum education standards for new hires down the road.

I did OK but there were some lean times.

The only people in demand was anyone with 10+ years experience. Job requirements got ridiculous and if you needed any kind of visa sponsorship you could just forget about it regardless of experience.

If you didn't have every single acronym in the job req and 5+ years of experience with each, the employers simply were not interested. Things like, you'd used Eclipse but not IntelliJ disqualified you because IntelliJ was requested. Some job reqs even requested more years of experience in some technology which had only been around for half the time mentioned.

Sending 100+ resumes a week without any callbacks became the norm. Recruiters could simply sit back and wait for the resumes to come to them. If you weren't actively looking, no one would call you.

Enterprise market was essentially the only game in town. Any kind of web dev just died overnight. I managed to start and finish a masters degree before things got better again.

A lot of shaking off of weak developers. I don't say that to insult the very talented developers during that time who couldn't stay employed. Rather, they suffered along with the rest, due to way too much supply. Developers who knew one language who could get hired merely by having a word or two on their resume and having a pulse; when things dried up, everyone who should have been an entry level sales person were all clammering to get the jobs and money they were used to, but it was a buyer's market at that point.

You made it through by being versatile. Not by starting to learn while you were job hunting, but being prepared when jobs were aplenty.

You had to be ready to be employed in a non-VC funded world, doing boring things.

I liken it to today, where you have an abundance of 6-week boot camps and developers writing code against the sexy Javascript framework du jour. Those developers will starve if we hit another period where VC dries up.

Learn some boring stuff, even stuff that gets laughed at on HN. .NET. Java. In places like Houston, there's TONS of jobs, but they're not in Rails or Clojure or Angular. They're in .NET, writing apps for big oil or healthcare.

Though it wasn't as big then, I think learning dev-ops will really take someone far when no one's writing Twitter aggregators or social networks for quadcopters.

tl;dr When times are lean, boring languages in boring companies that make real, not VC, money is how you stay afloat

    Firmware
    Open Firmware
    It's the appropriate technology,
    Features
    FCode booting
    Hierarchical DevInfo tree. 

    Hack Forth
    Using Emacs on the keys,
    Save in
    NVRAM if you please.
    With your
    Open Firmware
    You can fix the bugs in no time
    Bring the kernel up in no time
    We'll have an FCode time!

I graduated in the summer of 2001 (BS ECE). Many of my classmates had their already accepted job offers rescinded before graduation. I ended up working a non-degree job for a year before finding an internship that I worked into a full-time position. Finally found a more permanent career in 2004 when I was hired into an aerospace company (where most of the jobs were).

Keep in mind, besides the dot-com crash and then the sept 11th attacks, the real macro environment of the early 2000s was outsourcing. Everybody believed you could just hire a team in India or Russia for pennies on the dollar. It would take another 5+ years for that trend to reverse as companies recognized the challenges in moving their development resources off-shore.

As I stated, I responded to the off-shore movement by switching to a less-affected industry (aerospace/defense). Most "market corrections" really affect the most vulnerable segments of the job market: entry-level and near-retirement.

Depends on where you were. If you were in San Francisco, I can't speak to it; but if you were in your standard middle American city, it was fine. I graduated with a CS degree in 1999. In 2000, I got a job doing Java dev with no Java experience on my resume, and a 20% raise from my previous job. Later in 2000, I got a job doing Java/Perl (with both on my resume) and another 15% raise. In 2001, I got a Java job and 10% raise. And then in 2002, I got a .NET job (with two weeks of .NET experience) and a 25% raise.

The main downside was that smaller companies kept going out of business (which is why I had so many jobs in that time period -- two of those companies disappeared entirely, one of them taking a month's worth of salary with it, which super-sucked).

A key thing, though, is that lots of really, really, really marginal developers got hired in the late '90s -- I worked with some of those at the first company that went out of business -- and they very possibly never got a job in the industry again. Crashes make companies a lot more selective, just as bubbles make them hire any warm body who can possibly even theoretically write code.

Wiped me out. And chances of a recovery are `nil` at this point :/

I graduated in 2000 with several years experience. First gig out of school resulted in huge layoffs but I was paying attention and had already been looking, plus was still young (read: cheap) so didn't have any problems finding something. People who graduated the next two years after me though who hadn't really hustled to build up their resumes ended up leaving tech altogether because they couldn't get hired - and this was in a tech hub (Seattle). It was 2005 before it because "easy" to get hired again and I started to see new grads reenter the market. Even in the 2004-2006 timeframe salaries were pretty stagnate with the exception of places like amazon.com which seemed to be shoveling money at as many people as they could hire.

One of the big challenges was that large companies were the only place to get hired - the few startups that were around were often zombies leftover from the dot-com times; it was clear they weren't going anyplace, and (perhaps exaggerating slightly here...) nobody was starting anything new. Keep in mind though a lot has changed in 15 years - it took a lot more capital for infrastructure in those days so there were fewer companies starting up anyway.

For people my age and older... we saw the pre-dot-com slowness of the early 90s, we got caught in the dot-com downturn, we got caught again in the post 9/11 downturn, then we saw our house values melt down in 2008... so as far as I'm concerned, in good times be painfully frugal and stash cash because the bad times are just around the corner...

Let's just say it became way more difficult to get $5k gigs building Flash banner ads.

My experience running my own small consulting company was actually positive. In the late 90's I thought I was a loser since nobody was handing me seven-figure cheques. In hindsite, the stuff I worked on was solid and maybe better than the flashy dot-coms. By focusing on business value rather than what was fashionable gained us increasing revenues year after year.

2008-9 was actually worse... that was the first decline in revenues and it combined with changing climate toward outsourcing with our government clients.

We had to get adjusted to not being treated like a rock stars just for knowing unix. We stopped chanting IPO, IPO. We learned the stock market is disconnected from reality. Took a hit in salary, but nobody starved that I recall. Looking back on it, it was if we hit the lottery but we were too young to realize that this isn't a normal economy we were living in. But c'est la vie, change is opportunity and all that. Just keep your skill set relevant and keep switching jobs until you land a gig working on something that is interesting with people you enjoy being with, and don't expect to get rich, but if you work hard you just might anyway.

In Portland (where I was and still reside) it was pretty ugly. Pretty much everyone I knew in tech was unemployed for long-ish periods. I gave up hunting and started my own business freelancing - did that for over ten years. That gradually got better over time and by 2005 or so I was making more than my last salaried position. During that period I learned to live below my means and always have a 6+ month cushion, so all-in-all it wasn't a terrible thing.

I started recruiting for startups around Philadelphia in 1998. For the first couple years anyone who could spell Java would get significant raises to leave big companies in the area for funded startup scene. Signing bonuses were given to most hires, and stock options were valued highly by most hires.

When the crash happened, I started to get calls from developers who wouldn't take my calls a year earlier. Many had a few jobs within a short period of time. I remember placing one guy three times in two years due to closings.

Many recruiters couldn't generate enough revenue and subsequently left the market, which was actually a good thing because the market had become flooded and needed a purging. Salaries came down a bit, but candidates at this point would put very little value on stock options. Options went from being looked at as a large piece of the package to being considered the equivalent of lottery tickets.

To be insulated, I'd encourage you to try to become 'known' in your space. Those with solid reputations and networks were always employed, even if they bounced around a bit.

Speaking of The Bubble, there's a documentary on YouTube filmed shortly after/during the burst. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsVpNB2Lv3U

At one point you see these things, pink slip parties.. fascinating stuff. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pink-slip-party.asp

Anyway, we're not in a bubble, so don't worry. :)

1) I was fortunate enough to be in a good place where my wages were not hit terribly hard, but there was a big slowdown in wage growth.

2) I did take a pretty dull "and stressful for being that dull" job with an insurance co. as a senior developer after the startup (probably closer to 'small biz' at that point) I worked for had a major restructuring. The dull job did allow me to focus a bit more on some other freelance/networking opportunities.

3) As a few have noted, the biggest thing afterwards seemed to be the outsourcing wave. That plus the sudden glut in the market seemed to nearly wipe out entry level opportunities. There was a period of time where I (being only 6-7 years out of college myself) don't recall working with a single new graduate.

Every time I hear about this, I think about how much of a mistake I made not getting my associate's in '97 and heading to the bay. I, too, graduated into the crash in 2001, but I was lucky because I had an independent study with a professor who referred me to his friend who was hiring.

Now, while it was terrible for B2C, government consulting was booming. It wasn't the sexiest of work, but it was a good four years of my life.

I just wonder what would have happened if I could have grabbed the money and then go to school during the crash instead... Perhaps it wouldn't have made a difference.

There were three interesting groups that came out of that time. One was the CEO/CIO/CTO's of startups who found themselves barely qualified for entry-level roles when the bubble burst. It was a sad awakening for them. Another group were mid-career types who found their careers and salaries put on hold for 5+ years while the market improved. That was sad because many were very talented but with no place to apply it; some never really getting their shot again. The third were those who would have otherwise been starting businesses, but the times just weren't right so they put their heads down working in boring jobs waiting for their moment.

I finished college in 2002, and moved to Dallas to support my wife while she pursued her PhD. Dallas was particularly hard hit with Texas Instruments and Ericsson shedding thousands of engineers. The market was flooded.

I submitted 45 applications. I ended up with two interviews. It took me 4 months to get my first job. I was being paid about half of what I was making as a high schooler in 1998.

In the end it was one of those strange blessings. That company ended up being a fledgling Quickoffice which launched me into my startup career.

Still, it was quite tense at the time.

The Bay Area was hit hard, and startups stopped being sexy. Oddly enough, I'd say that it was a great time to make money if (a) you'd made the connections before the bust, (b) you were building something of substance like Google, and (c) you were willing to play a longer game. The upshot of a time when no one's getting rich quick is that there's more audience for get-rich-slowly strategies. Technical excellence tends to produce get-rich-slowly paths; it's viral marketing bullshit (and overhiring) that's behind many of these rapid-growth get-rich-quick startups. When people lose faith in charismatic nonsense, that's the time to drive hard with true excellence and lower-risk get-rich-slowly strategies. If your goal is excellence, you don't want your industry to be "sexy", because that brings in poseurs with zero competence but superior social skill, and they end up (a) getting all the resources, and (b) humiliating the whole industry when they fail.

Think also about Paul Graham. Y Combinator is a case of him monetizing a reputation that he earned (and, yes, he actually earned it) by standing up for startups in the depths of winter. I, for one, plan on making a strong and vocal case for Real Technology (it shall rise again) after the Snapchat/Clinkle frivolity blows up and humiliates the current cool kids. Being able to explain why shit went to hell ca. 2017, as it will, is going to help us make a case for building something better in the next iteration.

That said, it was a bad time for entry-level salaries, and graduate school admissions were ridiculously competitive in 2003-05. If you had a $60k offer (that'd be $72k today) you were in the top third of CS graduates, and non-STEM graduates were lucky to see $40k. I'd guess that the more experienced engineers didn't see a massive salary drop (maybe 10-20% at worst) but it wasn't a good time for job hopping. Certainly that feeling that one could get a 20% raise, just by walking across the street, died out.

It was a good labor market for finance because there was a lot of cheap talent. First-year Goldman Sachs analysts were only in the $60-65k range. (Bonuses could be 50-100%, but they were also working 60-110 hours per week.) Undergrad quants (that's rare but the positions exist) were generally getting $80-90k offers.

People expected housing prices to come down, but they didn't decline by much because there was this other bubble that was building at the same time...

Stock incentives became considered worthless, and most people were happy to have a job.

If you are serious about a long-term career in tech and you are concerned about this, here are some considerations:

1) There are industries like health care and insurance that have traditionally been good places to hang your hat during a downturn. If you can learn about regulations, trends, and domain-specific tech in those fields, you will always have a job.

2) Both in the dot-com era and more recently, there were loads of people who entered the industry because they saw dollar signs. If a downturn hits, many will be quickly weeded out because they won't have put in the hard work to round out their skills and portfolio, or thought about their long-term career progression. You can avoid being pruned by planning ahead and taking action now to make sure you've got solid credentials.

I was fed up with college in the summer of 1998. I was tired of a computer science degree program which required classes in COBOL and IBM 370 assembler. So, I went home to get an associate's degree and start earning some of that hot dot-com dough. By the Spring of 1999, I was looking for my first programming job with another year to go on my two-year degree.

That job search took months. Without a degree or professional experience, I didn't hear back from anyone. Which really stunk, because back then you had to fax your resume and my local Kinko's charged something like a buck a page. I was stocking the sci-fi section at Borders and reading computer books at night.

There was nothing like today's open source community, no sites like Github. It you couldn't point to a commercial product you built, you had no business claiming you could program. Recruiters wouldn't even talk to me.

I got a job at a company that hired pretty much anyone and sent them to a two-week BASIC course and made them web programmers. Literally, the guy who sat next to me drove limos and had zero exposure to programming before taking the job. But they could bill for his time by the hour, so...great! You can read a bit about my story and the technologies I worked with there in my three-part blog series "Pick is a living fossil of computer history" https://davidmichaelross.com/blog/a-living-fossil-of-compute...

Once I took that job doing Pick, I heard from recruiters at least once a week...for Pick jobs. Again, unless you had a job with a certain technology, you couldn't get a job with that technology, because there were 20 other people with more experience willing to work for the same crappy entry-level wages.

The early 2000s were much the same until I dropped $1000 of my own money on a Java certification and suddenly I was getting calls about Java positions all day long.

My advice? I hate telling people to build up a Github profile because not everyone has the luxury of coding in their spare time. But that's one of the most visible things you can do to prove your knowledge of different technologies. Be glad you have it, and use the heck out of it.

Save up money so you can go for months without a programmer's salary. You might need to.

Accept that you might have to take a job that's not very interesting of glamorous. But never take a job in a technology as old as your parents.

The MBAs went back to wherever they came from. Engineers were suddenly more interested in the work and the team. No more of those ridiculous parties, which were never fun anyway. Lots of people took a few months to a year to travel or relax. People no longer talked about "time famine".

Actually it felt great. Like a return to the basics.

I think diversifying your skill set can help protect you against a bubble burst. I had a reputation for being both a programmer and visual designer and I think it kept me afloat through the early 2000s.

And by "diversifying your skill set" I don't mean just being proficient in more than one area, but also being perceived as being proficient in more than one area. This is probably hard to do without switching jobs. You have to sell yourself as being "good at both A and B" during the interview and only then will the perception take root.

Incidentally, this was a double-edged sword for me, since peoples' perception of me being a designer (I had merely added a couple art samples to my resume) always seemed to pull my career in a less technical direction than I wanted to go, partly because I stayed at the same company so long.

As I recall, talented people were still paid well in 2002, it was just not as hard to find them.

Also, the "dot com bubble" makes it sound like it happened all of the sudden. Lots of smart people thought things were fishy by 1998. By 2000 everyone was convinced. Just because some people are talking bubble now doesn't mean things are going to fall apart next month. Make hay while the sun shines. And be careful about car leases and mortgages.