[shagie]

Fibber Magees, Mountain View (now St. Stephen's Green). Out of work people in tech at the pub at 2 in the afternoon. On their right, a beer. On their left, a pager that isn't buzzing (hoping for a message from a recruiter).

Talking to the guy who got a job serving gelato next door and a guy who is about to start work 3rd shift at Blockbuster as a cashier. They've got masters degrees in CS but when the company closed up quickly, they had to find a job quickly that paid some of their bills (rent in Mountain View wasn't cheap).

Those were not happy times.

I was fortunate. My manager had previously worked at Apple in the bad years and at the first signs of future possible problems had gotten two open reqs for our team approved all the way up the chain to the C level. While the reqs were approved she really dragged her feet on writing up the job position and after a bit, HR got tired (I presume) asking her and then we had a hiring freeze and well, that was the end of that... except that we had two C level approved reqs that were unfilled. Then contractors weren't renewed... and then contracts were ended early. When the layoff happened she was told to lay off two people from a team of four. She laid off the open reqs and pointed out that if the director levels were to force her to lay off some from the team, she would immediately rehire them back in to those open reqs. So, our team survived intact. That was 2001. However, in 2009 she wasn't my manager anymore (and had gone to do other things).