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Comment by zamfi | Hacker News Reader

Having been there in 2008 (but not 2001) I will say that 2008 did hit developers a little bit: a number of companies (including big ones like Google) had hiring freezes for about 6 months, and investment dried up starting in early 2008 and lasting until nearly the end of 2008. It looked scary for a little bit, even for developers. (Though of course nothing like the rest of the country.)

Starting in late 2008 it was all rainbows and ponies again.

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Yeah, you weren't there in 2001 if you think a 6 month hiring freeze is a hit :)

How long were the hiring freezes in 2001?

It was more like they laid off 50-100% of the company.

80%+ of the VC-backed tech companies died between March 2000 and Oct 2001 (fuckedcompany.com, anyone?), the remaining laid of 50% or so, hiring was dead until 2003, and while the the VCs had stopped hiding under their desks by then, they were still skitterish until 2005. Which is why I was shocked at how mild the pause was in 2008...

Hiring freeze? If only we were so lucky. Imagine half the tech companies around you straight up folding, and the other half laying off half their workforce. Now imagine you're part of this huge sea of newly shit canned developers and there are NO jobs available anywhere. That was pretty much 2001 for me.

It was to the point where I honestly thought this whole internet fad had come to an end and I picked the wrong career path. A very large amount of people I know left the field altogether because they couldn't find work in tech.

Picture SOMA with 50% office vacancy. Literally landlords would give you an office for free just to keep people from vandalizing it. And this went on in 2001-2003. The recovery of tech took a really really long time.

I miss the tech crash. So many great people were floating around with nothing to do. It was a good time to be starting something.

This isn't the SOMA I remember back in the day. Even if that estimate is accurate, "SOMA" was barely a thing. Now SOMA is literally south of market, and a 50% vacancy would be quite different.

Yeah, 2001 was a bloodbath - but the years leading up to it sure were fun!

Fair! Yeah, I had a kiosk software company that took it in the shorts, at least my attempts at making it work in the US. (Primary customers were real estate trusts like malls and airports and such.) I ended up selling my part and doing consulting dev work when I realized I was beating my head against a brick wall. But yeah, I was back in dev land from the end of 08-onward and despite all the blood sloshing around the canyons of Wall St. the job market for dev bros in NY was booming.

Yup. I remember working for my employer at a job fair during a hiring freeze.

Big corporations are nucking futs.

As long as the check clears...

Ponies didn't start until late 2010.

Hmm, the blood was really in the streets around March 2009--e.g. folks thought BAC and C might go to zip.

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