Cause this "crash" is surely like that – it has to be the most "expected and talked about" one in modern times...
2008 crash was different. Literally everyone was over-leveraged and swimming debt.
This feels more like the 2001 crash coming than the 2008 crash. Most of the economy will trundle along while those running on VC money will fade away.
Offers were withdrawn, tons of companies went under, even the big firms like Cisco had massive layoffs.
The dot-com crash was in the Spring of 2000.
I was c/o 2003. There was a lot of slack in the entry-level pipeline as companies were recovering but didn't need to seek new graduates because there was a 3 year backlog.
This one is more of a general "Hey this market is too high", but nothing as concrete that's completely out of whack imo.
The crisis with the housing criss wasn't that housing collapsed, it's that the world economy went along with it.
TV is TV, but that was genuinely happening. The market was just completely broken.
I was young(ish) at the time, but I imagine some knew housing wasn't sustainable. I'm not sure there were many outside the stars of The Big Short quite knew how vulnerable the entire banking system was because of housing before it all came down.
I feel like the elephant in the room here is crypto? There was some frothiness between 2009 and now, particularly around businesses with intensely negative unit economics (see: Uber, WeWork) and their sustainability. A lot of the prognostications around a crash then was specifically skepticism about these companies commanding sky-high valuations without line of sight to profitability, but at least there was some fundamental value there.
Then we started going even frothier and abandoning even the pretense of fundamentals with the crypto and NFT fad. That was a lot harder of a bubble to keep going.
My read is that the crypto bubble burst (as it very well had to) and it (along with rate hikes) triggered a general re-evaluation of tech that included all of the perennially unprofitable companies, and taking them down several pegs.
Unclear where we go from here - but IMO the skeptics from 2009 were right on their merits (even if spectacularly off on the timing), and it took an even dumber, even bigger bubble built on top of it to cause the industry to fall over.
[1] The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
Kozmo was the GOAT in the dead pool.
Blows my mind that Kozma's failed business model is back and bigger than ever, but with the same fundamental profitability problems.
The idea was fine but they didn’t understand they were in a low-margin industry. That pattern showed up a lot, especially where things like shipping were key chokepoints. Cement.com memorably failed but you can easily order building supplies in many places because the real value is proximity and there wasn’t a high-margin business as a middleman.
Maybe someone will try and fail again in 10 or 15 years.
1. What did it feel like day to day as a person working in the industry during that time, and did it differ from the "bubble" period prior or more "normal" period immediately following?
2. How long after the bottom before the recovery felt "real" to you, and did you see companies / people change their behavior?
1. It felt like a nuclear winter for tech jobs between 2000/2001 and 2004/2005. Jobs were available but it was way more competitive to get them and you were a lot less likely to get that dream job. You either settled for a crappier job or you changed directions. Many younger people just went back to school (get the master, law degree, etc.) as an alternative.
It felt like the party was over. All the great company perks disappeared. Traffic on freeways disappeared. The mood was very flat. It wasn't sexy being in tech like it is today. Nowadays people just talk about TC or stock. That kind of talk disappears.
2. Like I mentioned above, it was about a 3-5 year period. Again, not all situations are the same. But whenever you have large macroeconomic problems, they take time to sort out. It also depends on how quickly the downside factors resolve themselves. The longer it takes to solve those, the longer a recovery is dragged out.
It also depends on what the growth engine is for pulling things back up. Back then, there was a resurgence in internet business starting around 2005 when "web 2.0" got popular and many new businesses came on the scene. This includes social networking, ecommerce, web publishing.
My company made imaging peripherals, and were very conservative, so they weren't on a bandwagon. Our jobs were OK.
I feel like the .com crash was pretty telegraphed. People who could spell "HTTP" were being hired as Chief In Charge Of Everything Web Gods, and they were spending company money like candy.
It cleared the way for companies like Google and MySpace (which met its end, not long after).
My company got fat on consumer cameras, which were destroyed in about 2010, after the smartphone revolution started to really get going. The next seven years were kind of a mad scramble for market share, while the managers kept doing everything but admitting that they really screwed the pooch, by not anticipating the rise of cellphone cameras.
Come to think of it, there is a lot of that "Nobody saw it coming" language, here, as well.
I am very fiscally conservative, and my indicator of a coming reckoning, was watching all the Scrooge McDucks, diving into their piles of money. That doesn't end well (see: 1929).
In early 2000 within a few months the traffic on 680 south over the Sunol Grade(main road to the SV from points NE) went from dead stopped at 4:30am, to no traffic at all at 7:30am. It was breathtaking.
I managed to hole up in a consulting gig in manufacturing. We had our rates shaved 20% and felt lucky. Everyone who had left for greener pastures called up looking for work over the next year. I mean everyone. It was sad.
As described above, there were no jobs to had.
I recall a new building put up around the 580/680 interchange. I used it as my canary, when it was occupied I would call the recovery happening. It was empty from 2000-2003.
2008 was bad for other sectors, tech had issues, but nothing like 2000.
What's going on now isn't the same. There are specific pullbacks. Twitter is about the Elon buyout. In other places there is money. And in my manufacturing universe I'm having trouble finding people.
I did get pretty good at Web stuff, but as a volunteer side gig. I've actually been designing Web sites since the mid-'90s, but I never made it a full-time vocation.
2. I think it was about five years, before the next bubble began to form, as Google started getting big. 2007, was when smartphones showed up (the iPhone). That changed everything, but it took a few years, to really become ubiquitous.
With all the massive scaleups, companies were becoming bloated as hell. They also became fairly sloppy with their money.
Time to pay the piper.
But unlike some bubbles, there's a real industry, here (like in the 'oughts). It's a return to a [still pretty decent] baseline, as opposed to an implosion to nothing.
In the early Web days, the money started to become silly, and people were thronging to the industry, despite having no qualifications, and no passion for the tech. They just wanted money.
Basically, they were expensive, and they sucked (sound familiar?). Most were Web developers, or around the process of creating and maintaining Web presence.
Also, some people were very, very good, and some marvelous tools came of it.
This is like the Late Devonian extinction. The table needed to be cleared off, to give rise to the new.
The company that I worked for, had survived being fire-bombed during the war, a major depression, and multiple recessions. They were absolute tightwads.
At one point, they started making a whole lot of money, and got silly.
Piper, meet company.
They have basically contracted back to what they were. Everyone is writing them off, but I'll bet they come out of the scrum, OK.
Same with the tech industry.