On the Front Lines of the Dot-Bomb

Full disclosure:

I worked briefly for a dot-bomb 2000-2001, having been lured away from a Fortune 100 company for cash and stock options. My timing was perfect: the company went bankrupt a little over a year after I started.

Paul Beston was obviously there too:

Like most dot-coms, the company had no profits to speak of, and it had been trying longer than most. The leadership was not concerned, however. On the contrary, when I joined that March the mood was euphoric. Convinced they were in the vanguard of a new way of doing business and that naysayers just didn't "get it," the leadership instituted a massive hiring plan.

"Right now, the priority is to get big," the CEO told employees at my first company meeting. "We need to ramp up the hiring process."

I wondered how more hiring was going to help us get to profitability sooner, but then I was pretty new to the business world and figured I was being small-minded. No one else seemed concerned about profitability, and they were all so bright. Most company meetings were spent mocking our competitors or old-line, established companies that any day now would wash up on the rocks of obsolescence. Profitability was not mocked so much as ignored.

Read the whole thing. Print it out and stick it near your phone at work for the next time a tech sector recruiter wants to talk happy talk to you.