Dot-commers Back to the Dorm

securitas writes: "This is an interesting story about how many dot-com workers and CEOs left school, went broke, and are now back to their dorm rooms, studies, and keggers, having been through the modern equivalent of the Holland's tulip mania." Free reg. req. Bleah.

Comments

The most interest part was the last

[WillSeattle]

The comment about having to share a dorm room and all that entails when you lived, for some, the life of the CEO must be humbling indeed.

Those in other countries perhaps can't understand of which we speak - a CEO in the US makes about 500 to 600 times the base pay of the lowest paid employee in the US, not the 30 to 40 times common in Europe or the 20 to 30 times common in Asia.

So one day they're living the life of Riley, jetting around; the next I'm watching a film with them at the Film Fest, and they have less than my friends who work part time.

Zam. Icarus, you flew so high ...

Comfort of College....

[digital_freedom]

seeing hot girls again , instead of your greasy cubicle mates?
keggers instead of the watercooler?
sounds pretty good when you aren't making 6 figures and your stock options are worth less than your used college textbook.
A lot of my friends who went to dot-coms and e-business pipe dreams are now going back to school for more. I guess you just try to do the last thing that made you happy. For a lot of us who were beaten in the dot com bust that means school. At least we'll have plenty of doctors and lawyers who can code too.

Man, go back to college.

[standards]

One of my colleagues was recently let go and looked for a job, without much results. So he decided to head on back to school.

He was involved in "dot coms" for the past couple years after dropping out of college. To be honest he was hired because we NEEDED people - the rapid growth thing led to some crazy hiring decisions. We hired our share of idiots.

Anyone see this before?

So it's good he's going back to school, and to be honest, he really needs the education. Maybe he'll go into political science or something. He just wasn't cut out for the technology business.

So all this isn't about dot-com CEOs going back to school. It's about the uneducated going back to get an education.

Re:Man, go back to college.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, what these former CEOs have learned is that education is worth something. But it's only worth something if the student makes something of it.

Sure, you can go to a good school and get a sucky education. You can get a degree without a lot of learning, and come out not much different than how you went in. Then you can get a mindless job somewhere for the next 45 years, and you're done.

OR, you can go to an average school, and sign up for good courses. You can study hard. You can pick and choose the best professors. In the end, you have the same piece of paper, but you have a real education.

The choice is yours (the student's).

Very few schools actively help people to fail. Perhaps yours is one of them. If you're not getting an education, then just be lazy and squeek by and you get the piece of paper.

Some schools are for-profit businesses, but look into it ... some are effectively "owned" by an individual or stock holders, and they'll be the ones that are MOST interested in your money.

So thankful I stayed out of the dot bomb craziness

[Suicyco]

I was offered several high paying and risky jobs at startups but refused them all, preferring to stay in my current gig as a well-paid (not exhorbitantly) consultant in a very vertical market. I figured I didn't want to be one of the layoffs everybody should have seen coming and now I have many friends who got loans based on fictitious stock prices and now owe the banks more then they can probably make in 10 years without the pumped up silliness of their former jobs. So as it stands now I have a great job, many opportunities and in my business work only increases when there are layoffs (downtime!! :-) so I am a happy camper. I used to wish I had taken some of those jobs but got cold feet and now am glad I did. Stability and growth are what its about, not stocks that you HOPE in a year you can sell for what they are worth now.

Dont knock Experience

[BrookHarty]

We have to turn people fresh from college away from our open posititions at work. They dont have any pratical experience in troubleshooting, teamwork, and physical experience with tcp/ip, unix, networking, networked applications, etc. We have hired alot of dot.com'rs, they have more experience than people with BA in computer science. Some people even started at ISP's as teenagers and worked thier way up to being an engineer. Only recently has colleges started giving courses that apply to the real world.

On the subject of no jobs for dot.com peeps, we have 7 openings in my group (growth), and almost 30 for our department. We cant even find the right people to fill the jobs, it seems hard to find any unix/dba/network specialist or someone with a little experience who would pick it up. We hired one person who started 2 ISP's from scratch and sold them off before the boom, a very rare find. The local head hunters run out of people with any marketable skills quickly.

This is in Seattle Washington, so people in BFE like Spokane Washington would still be out of work.

Depends on the post you want to fill

[horza]

You are naturally speaking from what you want as employee material in the post you are seeking to fill. If you want someone that can maintain a Unix/Win box, knows the main driver conflicts, and doesn't mind spending a lot of time under a desk then a BSc CompSci isn't going to be as useful. However if you want a programmer, or db guru, then it's pretty essential. The boom sucked many people into the industry that call themselves 'programmers' who don't know basic algorithms (yes, I've seen bubble-sort used in live code). I'm currently rewriting the backend for a retailer, cutting down their stock update time from over 12 hours to just over 5 minutes. All it took was some database knowledge and some simple routines (eg binary searches and trees). Most of it 1st year CompSci stuff. It is stuff however that needs to be *taught*. Of all the dot-commers that are going back to school, or unemployed, I bet virtually none of them are programmers with BSc in CompSci.

Phillip.

Maybe if people just SPENT less...

[dangermouse]

I was going to post anonymously because the company I worked for has sort of regrouped and seems to be doing well, and I don't want my post to reflect negatively on the people involved in any way... but I changed my mind. If you heard the full story about parent companies and mergers and whatnot, you'd understand, but I don't want to go into that. Suffice it to say that the people I considered the "real" company, those I considered my "real" employers and co-workers, I have a great deal of respect for and gratitude toward.

Let me further preface this comment by saying that I do realize the overinflated tech sector actually collapsed (duh), that I understand that jobs are pretty hard to come by at the moment, and that I'm fairly afraid of what would happen if I lost mine somehow.

But (here comes the comment) I had the same fear back before the collapse. I came in at the tail end of the boom, and I was employed at what everyone around me considered an absurdly low wage (and which, really, was pretty low). I took the job because I believed the work was worthwhile and something I could be proud to have participated in (it was, it is). But despite my relatively low wages, I managed to save nearly half of what I made, simply by living within my means. I simply wasn't comfortable with debt or with living on the edge of my bank account.

Sure enough, I lost that job, through no fault of my own. When it happened, I had enough money to live for just under half a year, but I was still scared sick, because there wasn't more coming.

Didn't take long, fortunately, for me to find a new job. I now make twice as much as I was making before... and I'm saving money at about two and a half times the rate, because I haven't increased my expenses much over what they had been (I lost two roommates, so the rent tripled). It will probably be years before I do, and you can be sure I'll have at least one significant raise under my belt beforehand.

I guess my point is that I don't understand how people can suddenly find themselves making twice what they should be making (often more) and respond by spending it all. Think about how much money some of those people could have in the bank, right now... And it's not for the sake of the money itself, it's the security and peace of mind that having something to fall back on -- or someday build a future on -- gives you. I'd rather have that than a Porsche any day.

Re:The best comment on the dot-com collapse!

[Zeio]

Exactly. There is a mix to be had, certainly the poindexter depart of defense employee from 1960 isn't precluded from being the next hero, but the next is more than likely not to be this type of human.

Jobs should be based on merit, not quotas.

You work for the group of who are in essence communist-socialist. The potential to generate revenue is first and foremost; at best a tertiary concern could be the ability of that individual to conform to the pointy headed boss' work schedule.

My former IT boss/director was a lamer and inept as his job; but because he was punctual, wore a suit, fit the mold and talked the talk. He just couldn't walk the walk to save his ass. I turned down an offer for his jobs for something in California that paid $20,000 more than his job. Last I heard he was still dressed up in his little suit looking for a job.

I can go either way, California style or NYC Stock market style. Shorts or suit. I want a job to pay the bills. But to not look at me because I don't feel like dressing up for your (recruiter) lame-ass self is real swift. I have always gotten my own jobs, recruiters usually turn up shit jobs. All the recruiters I have ever talked to don't have a f-ing clue what I do for my job - and they clearly suck and finding me jobs because I managed to find myself one here during the .bust in the middle of Si-Valley. In fact, when I mentioned once I had Novell experience, an OS which I like but not nearly as much as the *nix varietals, he said that that was passé - and that Active Ditectory was the new thing. I remember getting my MCSE certification a long time ago so I could tell the PHBs with certainty that running an "All Microsoft Shop" was a -bad- idea. I also remember reading that while Novell has been in better shape, there are a significant number of people going from ADS to NDS (good decision). The "recruiters" knew a buzzword, sure they heard of XML, but they don't know anything about XML, have never seen XML code, and they don't know why the people who want XML people want and XML person, etc.

Most of the recruiters called me back a few times, but they failed to turn up any real leads. I feel bad for the guys washing the floors in the mailroom when they could have probably found something better without a recruiter.

I'll stick to work that I cultivate myself. Sure, I'll give bonehead recruiters a chance, but you guys suck at it (always seem to be well groomed, kempt, ex-jock losers who fail to realize taxi-drivers turn a better dime than they do), and you don't make the loot we make because your work is secondary to this business.

Just like the travel agent, your job is contingent on someone actually going out and doing something. When you contribute nothing to the advancement of humanity, you should serve the ones you do without being mealy mouthed cocky pricks.

Not really

[FallLine]

Come now, I'm all for experience, but this is "experience" hardly that.

Firstly, there is a world of difference between the "get-rich-quick" work ethic and that of someone fighting for a real startup--where they actually have to make things work.

Secondly, very few DotComemrs took real risk. Sure, many watched their stock options become worthless, but it was virtual money from the get go. It's not as if most of those kids could have gone to other jobs paying equivalent amounts of "real" money.

Thirdly, relatively few really were sufficiently high in management level positions to take any real responsibility for what happened. Many of those who were in "management" still do not; their attitude is that they had no responsibility for their investors money--it stinks.

Fourthly, besides the fact that they it was not their own money, by and large, they were living in such an artificial and over-inflated environment that few of them can claim to have any real business experience, other than perhaps to be a little more skeptical of the next fad.

Lastly, why shouldn't they hold their heads high? You think the DotCommers have it any worse than previous generations of college aged kids that were applying for jobs during full blow recessions? I have far more respect for the earlier generations there, they at least can claim to have seen real struggle.

Re:The best comment on the dot-com collapse!

[Tetsujin28]

You just threw away the resume of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Wozniac, Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, etc...

Right. But he's looking for EMPLOYEES, not wizards or entrepreneurs. These call for very different skills sets and personalities.

If I owned a company, and was looking for employees, the last thing I would want is a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs.