[DanielHB]

I was too young at the time, but people who were there at internet companies in the 2000s what was it like? Did people think the same way as today where there is too money going in and not enough value coming out? Was it obvious to insiders only or to the general public as well?

These days it seems even a significant porting of the general public is aware of the overhype. But back then internet wasn't much of a thing so information didn't spread as fast so I imagine a lot of people didn't even know there was a huge hype around the internet.

[scarface_74]

I was working in Atlanta GA for boring old profitable enterprise companies and the environment didn’t change at all.

I started working in 1996. By 2001, I was making $70K. The company I worked for did bill printing for utility companies. To put that in perspective, I had my first house built in the suburbs for $175k. This was well within the rule of thumb of not spending more than 3.5x income for a house.

On the other hand, I didn’t have that much invested in the stock market. The entire dot com bust was a shrug and curiousity to me while it was happening.

On the other hand, the real estate crash in 2008…

While all of my latest projects (cloud consulting) have in some form another involved “AI”, they are really just AWS API calls that are much easier using Gen AI LLMs. But could have been done with much more development and training of ML models before.

When the AI bust happens, it will have the same affect on me - none. Until businesses stop needing people who know how to translate the latest tech into business value, my career is safe.

[guestbest]

It didn’t last past 2001 (lasted from 1996ish to 2001) and much of the money was stock and not real money so the paper millionaires never had the money since it never vested by the time they were hired until the time the dot com company went bust. VA Linux was a prime example of a company that didn’t have a profitable exit and evaporated with the market correction that I remember started in late 2000. The 9/11 attacks in NYC erased any chance of a dot com recovery.

Everyone knew there was this thing called the internet because cable broadband was being deployed everywhere and being sold for less than cost. That company whose name I couldn’t remember went bust I think around 2003(?) and I think AT&T took them over and doubled the price.

I remember someone showing me that you could do to domino’s pizza website and get a free pizza (unlimited orders) just for going to their website. I think that was 2002-3(?). There were lost of giveaways during that era. It all came to a stop as the internet grew and costs pilled up more so than the dot com bust.

[oinfoalgo]

No, it is not the same at all.

I worked at a small investment firm in college during the time and I remember the portfolio manager doing the portfolio allocation for a retirement plan. Randomly picking Janus mutual funds in the hall right before he went to lunch.

I remember the secretary complaining in December 1999 how she knew a secretary at another firm that got rich from an IPO.

There has just never been a level a speculation like in late 1999 that I have ever experienced. This was over geocities level webpages on dial up modems with almost no business plans to even make money.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

I do miss it somewhat. At the time, a selected number of us on my product team were given retention bonuses because the company didn't want us being poached for internet jobs. I'm not complaining, because it was free money but anyone wanting to poach us away would probably have just offered more.

OTOH, I remember being in SF in spring 2001 for Embedded Systems Conference and overhearing a couple of Web developers on the same bus talking about how everyone they knew was losing their jobs. So I guess by that time, the end was in sight! Our bonuses continued for at least a year after that.

[DanielHB]

This is the first time I ever hear of temporary "retention bonuses" in big Cos to avoid poaching.

So I guess the hype was worse back them because I don't think anyone is getting them now haha.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Yeah, once they were sure that the whole .com thing imploded, the bonuses went away. Then we used the lack of bonuses as leverage for raises :-)

[shaftway]

FuckedCompany.com was the source for tips about this. We'd check it every morning, and it predicted our company's layoffs like clockwork.

[api]

It was largely the same. A ton of Internet companies struggled to find a way to make money after the initial land grab, and most failed. The hype was breathless and over the top.

A lot of late 90s to early 2000s hype has come true. Today we have substantial companies with no physical office and that have never used physical mail, delivery for everything, and ubiquitous connectivity for devices. It just took about 15-20 more years to get there.

I suspect we will have AI replacing programmers on non-trivial and non-slop projects in 15-20 years.

The social optimism of the late 90s and 2000s about the Internet was mostly wrong though. We didn’t really anticipate either surveillance capitalism or mass disinformation breaking whole segments of the population off from reality. Like most well intentioned people we had trouble even imagining the uses that “dark triad” personality types would have for the technology.

The pessimism around AI is, I think, an overcorrection from the excessive optimism around the net and the web.

[telesilla]

It felt like we all had an equal chance at success back then. Now it's limited to those with enough money or very rare luck. The riches of today were sown almost in the first decade of the 2000s, it seems. Who today will get rich from AI starting from nothing? (not that wealth is the end goal, but in the context of this thread it is)