When the dot.com economy crashed, Google and Apple weren't producing billions in quarterly profits. Facebook didn't even exist. Today, the local economy is a very different thing. There's a new layer of massive and massively profitable companies that are not relying on venture money to keep their doors open. Meanwhile, a number of truly fundamental breakthroughs in AI, A/VR, genetics (CRISPR), transportation, and energy are happening simultaneously. Any one of them could trigger another tech boom, especially when corporate balance sheets have ludicrous amounts of liquidity. All five at once indicates a world-historical event in the making (think Second Industrial Revolution).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Industrial_Revolution

Accordingly, there's no reason to be investing in fluff like file sharing, app-based bike delivery, or "valuable" services like Shazam when there's real work to be done. In other words, the VC correction unfolding now is exactly that, a correction (long overdue, to my mind, and an unambiguously healthy thing). It will hurt a lot of overextended people to be sure, and unprofitable companies with dubious valuations that are laying people off now are wise to get ahead of the crunch.

As the squeeze tightens, salaries will even out, the balance of power will shift to employers, traffic may improve (slightly), and rents may even stop climbing. But 20-30% declines in the overall housing market? Dream on. Prices here are a function of a massive shortage, off-the-charts desirability, and deeply-rooted peculiarities in the tax code (Prop. 13), not Florida-style speculation. All of these factors are far more impervious to temporary downturns in the employment market.

Having lived through the dot.com crash, I can certainly hear echoes, but deja vu it isn't. The world is now a very different place.

I recall sending my resume to over 50-60 companies for junior web dev work @ $15/hr after college and only getting two answers back. It was pretty brutal.