[cameroncf]

I wasn't in the valley at the time but was part of a startup that lost our angel funding before it happened because the angel's funds were overcommitted already in failing startups.

My view has always been that during the dot com boom, companies were so short staffed that they would basically take anyone on, regardless of their technical skill, with the hopes of training them up to learn programming. Janitor, receptionist, your weird cousin Eddie who ate glue - all of them could get a tech job if they really wanted one.

When the bubble burst, lots of people lost jobs. Both skilled people and unskilled. This was a huge darwin moment for people who'd worked at startups. Lots of people went back to whatever they were doing pre-bubble. The better people typically found work, even if it took a little while to do so.

In my view, it really did serve as a healthy shake-out of talent in the long run. This very well may happen again soon...