I started in 2008. People weren't changing jobs very often. You didn't see signing bonuses, or having multiple offers from top companies. It was like having a normal job. There really wasn't bootcamps or a crazy startup culture at that time. Most people I worked with got into it because they loved computers or programming their whole lives. But in general, compared to the horror stories I hear about the dot com crash, it was nothing.
My impression was that it was not bad, because it was such a dynamic time for the industry with the maturation of mobile, Web 2.0, online payments and social networks. I have some financial issues from real estate but did not have any problem supporting myself being a dev at home. At the beginning of 2008 I started a website in the online craft selling niche that was extremely successful by my standards.
> as someone who wasn’t in this field in 2008, what was that period like for devs
It was bad...
- Interviews required an IQ test (litterally some IQ test, where had to recognize numeric and geometrical patterns).
- Had to pay airline ticket to go to an interview, was never re-reimbursed (because the person who worked on the position I interviewed, decided to come back .. .so the recruiting agency did not re-reimburse)
- 60K per-year jobs (US) , required a 2 day take-home-and-code test.
12+ years of C++ would get you 40$ per hour, 3 months contract.
a PHP job with 2 year experience, required computerized test with about 60 or so questions.
Most resumes you send would never receive a reply.
Recruiters were just building up their databases, and posted, most-likely fake job opportunities.
For myself, I was at a startup that was clearly failing (for reasons utterly unrelated to the economy), and jumped ship.
I found a solid dev position in under 30 days in the fall of 2008, right at the peak of the crash, and then moved to a better one at the end of 2010.
Some companies instituted hiring freezes and others had layoffs. Many companies terminated all of their engineering contractors.
Overall, it was a time where you had to be able to demonstrate your usefulness, and you could still lose your job to unluckiness, if your whole division was tossed.
2008-2010 was not a time for "rest and vest" to be a viable strategy. Folks who looked like they were doing that were always the in the first round of layoffs.
Generally not drastically different than the norm at the large (FAANG like) company I was at, but pay raises and bonuses were lower and harder to get and there were recurring lay-off rounds.
Oddly enough, while the .com bust in 2000-2001 was really bad (was a period of about a year where hardly anyone was hiring in tech in my region), 2008 wasn't bad at all. While it was obviously much worse for the broader economy, it was really not bad at all in tech, and as the area where I lived never experienced a giant housing bubble it wasn't as hurt by the housing downtown as other places in the US.
I entered the job market from the military around that time. The only employers calling me back were government contractors (despite having really great scores on Brainbench and other technical evaluation platforms). Opportunity seemed to be a regional problem. Southern California (San Diego and
Orange Counties) were stagnant. Other areas (Bay, NYC, Boston, Seattle) seemed less effected.