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.