I'm sort of curious about this, as I was still in grade school at the time. Can someone who was, say, in college or a recent graduate in 2003 comment to this? What was the climate like?
Why would you study engineering? It's Wall Street hours for teacher pay. [family member]
[Classmate X] has gotten a job at Google? That's interesting. Who are they? A [management] consulting company? They're not? That's curious, X seems like they're smart enough to work for a consulting company. [Numerous classmates, top 10 research university.]
You should think about dropping one of your degrees (East Asian Studies and CS) since the combination of the two will make you virtually unemployable. [Academic advisor, top 10 research university. Her concern was that I'd be seen as a flight risk from any job which didn't allow me to exercise both areas at once, and that there existed virtually no jobs that would allow that.]
You should come work in our research lab while persuing your Master's in engineering. We'll offer you a $20k a year salary to do this. This is one of the best offers you'll get in the current economy. [an academic I worked with during undergraduate, who I believe was not attempting to deceive me with this line, although he was clearly mistaken. I was positive I could swing $30k, somewhere.]
Own a business? Don't be crazy. Get a job at a nice safe megacorp, that way you'll have job security and health insurance. [parents and self]
In 2003, there wasn't a way, as an "outsider," to get into the funding scene. The system felt more closed than now. You still need to "know someone who knows someone," but before, everybody who knew anybody was probably out of reach.
In 2003, Google was still a mystery. Nobody knew they were making billions of dollars a year.
In 2003, a startup wasn't something you just did. Startups were for serious people doing serious things who would give 60% of their company to a VC for a $3M A round. Seed rounds were $20k friends and family or $100k "I know a rich guy" rounds.
...and if you were in elementary school in 2003, I feel tragically old and unsuccessful.
In 2003, I was entering my senior year of CS. When I was taking classes that weren't really my cup of tea (operating systems, networking, processor architecture), I was constantly hearing news about offshoring, Indian IT grads, how dumb startups/Silicon Valley/tech were, how the tech boom had robbed and ruined America, etc.
I finished the CS degree but rather than try to find a job (which I assumed would be unstable and at risk of company collapse or outsourcing), I went to grad school for Urban Planning. Found out that there's plenty of programming work, plenty of tech fields outside of the C systems programming that I didn't enjoy, and that even bad programming jobs are way better than good jobs in other fields, wrt pay, benefits, flexibility, hours, etc.
That said, my company has an office in Mountain View and when I'm there (a couple times a year) the feeling is completely different. If you go out on Castro St, people at bars just assume you work in tech and are comfortable chatting about your work. It's obviously not like that in Missouri.
Edit: I feel like I should point out that there is a startup culture here now and it's growing. There was nothing like that in 2003, so it's not exactly the same.
The game industry was the only thing in software "going well". It's completely decoupled from the web/dotcom business. I think EA's stock doubled from 2002-2004 because everything else in tech was completely stagnant, at least business-wise.
I moved to Redwood City first, then SOMA later in 2002. SOMA was completely different -- sort of tumbleweed-y as someone here put it. My roommate from craigslist was 5 years older and worked at a company in San Mateo, but otherwise I met almost no other tech people.
Everyone I knew from college said they wanted to move out to California, but not many did because they couldn't find jobs (although most of my college friends were not in tech).
I did have a college acquaintance who started at Google in 2002, and I found that interesting because I had used Google since summer 2000, but not noteworthy as far as I can remember.
After that summer internship in 2002, I converted to full time at EA for a $60K salary. That sounds ridiculously low now!
In 2003, I was sick of my job at EA, but I wanted to stay in SF. The only decent companies I could find with programming jobs (i.e. not doing IT at a bank) were Dolby and I think Macromedia, which later was bought by Adobe. That was kinda it for the city? Most jobs then were on the peninsula.
"Startups" weren't a thing. I don't know when they became a thing again, but I think it did have something to do with the Google IPO in 2004 (I've worked there since 2005, after they posted a recruiting billboard near EA/Oracle in Redwood City).
I think I bought Hackers and Painters around 2004 or so. I was reading the Joel on Software forum at the time, and I think I got the recommendation there. That was my Hacker News. I learned so much as a green programmer from reading that forum and Joel's essays.
(To a lesser extent I learned from Paul Graham's essays, which at that time weren't only about startups. Although I thought he was sort of arrogant until I saw him speak in person at Google, I think in 2005 or 6 when he was starting YC.)
All of that wisdom still applies, so for the younger people who haven't seen them, start with the top 10 essays here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ .