Hiring freeze? If only we were so lucky. Imagine half the tech companies around you straight up folding, and the other half laying off half their workforce. Now imagine you're part of this huge sea of newly shit canned developers and there are NO jobs available anywhere. That was pretty much 2001 for me.

It was to the point where I honestly thought this whole internet fad had come to an end and I picked the wrong career path. A very large amount of people I know left the field altogether because they couldn't find work in tech.

Picture SOMA with 50% office vacancy. Literally landlords would give you an office for free just to keep people from vandalizing it. And this went on in 2001-2003. The recovery of tech took a really really long time.

I miss the tech crash. So many great people were floating around with nothing to do. It was a good time to be starting something.

80%+ of the VC-backed tech companies died between March 2000 and Oct 2001 (fuckedcompany.com, anyone?), the remaining laid of 50% or so, hiring was dead until 2003, and while the the VCs had stopped hiding under their desks by then, they were still skitterish until 2005. Which is why I was shocked at how mild the pause was in 2008...

It was more like they laid off 50-100% of the company.