Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
I started my own consulting business in 1995.  I&#x27;ve thus been through two recessions -- in 2000, and then in 2008.<p>In 2000, I had just hired five people to work for me, as I expanded my Web consulting agency.  For about a year, we had lots of work, from clients all over the world. The phone was ringing off the hook. We were making money. I was learning how to sell work done by other people, not just by myself.<p>And then the bottom dropped out.<p>It was very difficult, since I had to pay salaries, office rent, and the like.  I was scared. I was upset.  I even worried that the debts would force my family to lose our house.  (We didn&#x27;t actually come close to that, but I did worry about it.)<p>I mean, when I started my own business, I figured that if things didn&#x27;t work out, I could always get a &quot;real&quot; job, at a real company.  But now I was on the hook for other people&#x27;s salaries.<p>I ended up firing everyone, and taking no salary for several months.  I had enough work for myself, most of the time, and much of that money went toward paying back the bank&#x27;s line of credit, as well as (to some degree) paying my own salary.<p>As a result, I promised myself (and my wife) never to have full-time employees again.  I did have a bunch of employees whom I hired on an hourly basis, giving them a generous proportion of whatever money they brought in . (Too generous, my accountant consistently told me.)  This meant that in bad times, I wasn&#x27;t on the hook for their salaries.  I should note that this arrangement wasn&#x27;t for everyone -- but I was very straight about it with potential hires, and also told them that it was completely OK for them to be doing other jobs while working for me.<p>So yeah, this recession really hurt. And it made me much more cautious.  There were months when I had literally no work, but that was pretty rare -- again, I was generally able to get enough work for myself to get by.  But I was putting out feelers <i>everywhere</i>, looking for whatever development projects I could find.<p>Fast forward a few years, to recession #2.  We were living in Chicago, where I was finishing the coursework and initial research for my PhD.  I would walk with my eldest child to her kindergarten, and we would see a growing number of homes for sale.  Moreover, we saw that they were for sale for a <i>long</i> time.  We had a very clear view of the US housing market turning sour, but it wasn&#x27;t clear at that point that things were going to be as bad as they were.<p>We moved back to Israel in the summer of 2008, and it was immediately clear that things were bad, and getting worse.  Lots of high-tech companies were laying people off.  I was worried that I would get swept up in this, and not be able to find work.  And indeed, it was hard (but not impossible) to find projects.<p>The good news was that I had enough of an established reputation by this point that I managed to find projects.  Again, I wasn&#x27;t filling my calendar 100%, but it was about 75% full, which was much better than other people.  I also got into training more heavily, and that turned out not only to fill my calendar pretty consistently, but also showed me how much I enjoyed training and could&#x2F;should specialize in it.<p>One of my worries was that lots of people would get laid off, and then start their own consulting businesses, competing with me.  My accountant laughed when I said this, telling me that most people who have full-time jobs done then want to go into business for themselves. And he was right.<p>I do expect a recession -- or if nothing else, a slowdown -- in the coming year, and I&#x27;m starting to prepare myself for it. I&#x27;m now doing training in Python and data science, and constantly reach out to companies to find out if they&#x27;re interested in such things.  But I also have a large (14k subscriber) free, weekly newsletter about Python that gets my name out. And I&#x27;m selling a growing number of online courses to individuals, which will (I expect) cushion any problems I might have with my in-person corporate training.<p>But each recession is different, and teaches us different lessons -- so I&#x27;m hoping that my previous experience will be helpful, but I&#x27;m sure that I&#x27;ll discover all sorts of new problems as the coming year unfolds.