The problem is that most of the people I've talked to were employed at huge, profitable companies that made actual products. So it was just a blip for them.
I was working on web development after school and got laid off, but all that meant was I had to eat the food my parents made for me instead of eating at fast food places with my friends..
Understanding and adapting to those changes are key. Next up -> IOT - computers in everything - applying AI - Biotech - ? Generally something expensive has to become cheap for the masses. Hayes modems took $1200 - $2000 devices down to <$300. Ethernet made LANs cheap. Twitter made stupidity availability massively scalable for zero dollars:)
Those jobs never really came back as websites became more "Dynamic" and CMSes began to proliferate: So rather than hiring 20 web developers converting copy and design to websites you could hire a 1-3 engineer(s) to customize and run your CMS and non-technical people can provide the content.
A good reminder that economic downturns can be actually healthy for people, families, and the environment. With less money, people will drive less, travel less, drink less, eat less meat, spend more time with loved ones, etc etc
It really hit hard about 2 years later in 2003, when all non-web contract work dried up and clients started having trouble paying for work you’d already done. That was really brutal for me, personally. I was also selling some software in addition to doing the contracting. I got really lucky and someone saw my products and wanted to license them for their particular niche. I was just barely able to hang on until a year later when things mostly returned to normal.
If it hadn’t worked out, I probably could have taken a job doing some development work I hated if I really had to. There were still openings, but they were at places like Accenture, or whatever a small-time version of them would be.
But no small number of people, including many who had worked at large firms, basically left tech.