Yep yep yep. You see it, you hear it, hell you can feel it down in Irvine. Burn baby burn. Dot coms, things related to .coms, people sweeping up in .coms, hell even anything with the name ‘.com’ in the old title is manning the lifeboats, cause the great Titanic is going down full wash.
I was in the middle, a nova hot techy, my res getting 400 hits a day, money being thrown like I was a stripper. At then end I nearly garnered a cool 80K.
Now? Well I am happy to say I got a job after hapless searching for nearly 2 months. Lucky for me I can still pay the rent and save a lil, though its lean. But I am damn happy. The job is good (non .com…it relies on the website as a addition to seminars), I get to do a bit o traveling, and I got me health. Praise the lord and pass the ammo.
But man o man, I am sitting on the hilltop watching the gates come down. A whole bunch of pals at Buy.com got the axe Wed, Some former drones are getting chipped outta Silcon Valley up north, and today you read the everyone who has a corner office is cashing in the chips and making for Mexico. How the mighty have fallen. No more free lunches kids, I am saying it now, its the dire times for the IT pro.
And talk about a flood. I have talked with headhunters who say they have maybe 25% openings from last year if it is a good week, and nearly trebled the amount of ppl looking.
Kids, everywhere ya look its hack and slash. Major companies that were gonna be the godsend for the net are gonna washout within the year. The net is maturing, ppl are getting off the bandwagon of its the next big thing, and this is good and bad. Good, in that it really cuts down a lot of fluff out there. Bad in that a lot are gonna suffer for it.
But take heart, if you want to stick it out and ride the wave (it will die down but never be the roaring fire of the past 3 years), tighten your belt, find a company that uses the skills but does not depend on the VC, take the pay cut if ya gotta, and hold on to that job for dear life.
But for those that wanted the fast buck. Its a lost cause in my eyes, boys and girls. Find something you can fall back on and get out while ya can.
But enough ranting on my part (and boy did that feel good) Lets hear what everyone feels. I say the .com is getting close to permanent sleepyness. Anyone willing to raise a flag and counter me? I would be a lil happy to hear positive news just once.
That’s all that the internet is right now. If any of you have any econ classes in your past, you’ve heard of the tulip depression - The Netherlands somehow got the idea that the world would need lots of tulips - and the people of the country bought it hook line and sinker. People were taking their life savings and 'investing ’ in tulip bulbs. Of course, after a year or so, the masses got tired of tulips and the whole tulip-based economy crashed.
The internet can survive, bought not in it’s current state. Why? because right now, it is basically acting as a middleman for the products of others. Someday the people that supply the goods will realize that with a minimum of funding they can cut out the middleman, and run him out of business. They will then be free to put prices back where they want them
Why is everybody so surprised? Why does everybody think well, yeah every other bubble before this has burst eventually, but not this one! No, this boom market will go on FOREVER! :rolleyes:
Of course I’m doing nothing to cheer Heath up,here.
I don’t think we’ll see a death rattle so much as a back-away and reorganize. The problem business has had with the Internet is that it’s a medium they’re not used to. However, they assumed they were: they treated it like either a magazine or a television, and it’s neither. The problems they’re seeing are due to the fact that they’re trying to run things exactly the same, and things aren’t.
For example, shopping on-line. If I go to Wal-Mart and look at lawnmowers, I’m pretty much just comparing Wal-Mart’s selection against itself. Sure, I can go across town to Lowe’s, but still, I’m going from a small base. Online, I can simultaneously compare prices everywhere, plus read reviews, plus compare different models, etc. All while naked. Okay, that last point doesn’t really matter. So I have much more power that they’re not taking into account.
On the other hand, the things they HAVE done while shopping online actually, IMO, decrease my chances of buying. When I walk into a store, I do not want to be assaulted by cashiers screaming their daily specials in my ear. I don’t want to have to wade through aisles of things I don’t want if I can easily get to the things I do. And furthermore, I can simply walk into an analog store and BUY something without needing a password or becoming part of that store’s e-community. I find all of these things annoying, but it seems to be the MO of the online store.
The internet isn’t going anywhere, though it may develop. The internet itself is doing fine, it’s just business is going to have to figure out how to make money off of it. At the same time, businesses are going to figure out what sorts of things they should do online and shouldn’t, and likewise, we’ll realize that while the internet can be very convenient for many people, not everyone HAS to be online.
It’s just like any other medium - it will just take a little bit longer to figure out how business can effectively use it.