Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
TLDR - your going to be fine.<p>I lived thru it, I did OK, a few of my friends left the industry some struggled most where ok if they had real software chops. The people that really took the hit where network / sys-admins / corp PC repair-support they where gutted as there was a glut of MCSE/A+/whatever get a cert in 4 weeks make 100k.<p>That being said, this time it is structurally different, in that period, we where trying to eat the world with software today software has eaten the world. Development has always been and always will be an understaffed profession as it competes for the top half of the intellect spectrum along with Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers etc.<p>It's easy to assume that you have to be at least smarter than half the population to write software. From there you have the slackers that take themselves out of the pool e.g guy could be Einstein but he would rather smoke pot and work at 7-11. Might not be a significant portion of the population but it takes a bite.<p>Then the person actually has to want, desire and be interested in being a developer over some other intellect based career. Then a portion of us just burn out and leave.<p>Anyways there are a lot of factors that lead to a serious shortage in available developers and as best as I can reason it is systemic and incurable until AI gets to the point where it can turn a persons thoughts into software.<p>I would armchair guess that the pool of potential good developers worldwide is 10% of the population. Those that actually pursue it and stay with it is certainly far less.<p>Tangential, but that is what I love about these younger companies and their age discrimination and asinine interview processes. They lack the experience to know that their perceived cool factor actually holds no currency and the real currency is in attracting and retaining good development talent. They build so many self defeating filters to them accomplishing that goal.