To be sure the 2001 crash was also mixed in with 9/11 and its aftereffects. But, in general, I agree. 2001 was catastrophic for a lot of people in the broad tech domain--as in not even a sniff of work and, for many, just got a job any job doing something else. I was really lucky to get a related job at the small company someone who I had been a client of in a prior role ran. Things still got difficult over the following year but I had not so much as a nibble otherwise.
Offers were withdrawn, tons of companies went under, even the big firms like Cisco had massive layoffs.
> To be sure the 2001 crash was also mixed in with 9/11 and its aftereffects
The dot-com crash was in the Spring of 2000.
It wasn't a point in time. I was laid off a couple weeks after 9/11--and there were many subsequent layoffs at many companies through ensuing weeks and months. It probably began around Spring of 2000. I was at an analyst conference around that time when Cisco reported down-earnings.
I remember friends coming back to the university job fair telling me how bad it was out there. With 1-2 years experience they came back to our engineering job fair looking for internships and entry-level positions. Those without prospects just rode it out in graduate school. If you weren't in a position to repay student loans it was better to load up more debt and delay it a few years.
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.
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.