Iyow - in your own words

Sigh, I hate these stereotypes of young-dot-commers happily skimming the cream off of dubious tech savvy. Now Coming Soon! To a theater near you! Web 2.0!!

SFGate really should’ve known better – the amount of ad revenue cited by one of their interviewees ($450/mo.) really doesn’t go that far in SF. And these little niches of income do not a down payment or retirement plan make.

It has not been a free ride for those of us on the work end of the stick. As a close friend said after the first bust, “I rode the tail-end of the dot-com wave, and all I have to show for it are 57 t-shirts and a severe case of burn-out.” As another friend said with a shiver as we discussed the oncoming whatever-it-is over dinner, “I’m scared.”

Maybe my crowd is just too straitlaced, but a bunch of us who did the first round of irrational exuberance in the Valley through the late 90s boom and bust are still slogging away. Yes, there were plenty of aspects of excess at the end of the last milennium. Champagne pink-slip parties. An all-you-can-eat buffet of castoff expensive hardware a tech geek could want. Enough venture capital flowing to bloat the valuation of companies exponentially beyond what was warranted.

But as 2000 waned into 2001 melted into 2002… there were times in the last few years that the Valley was just bone-dry. Some of us consulted and fought over scraps with gimlet-eyed entrepreneurs. Some dug in their heels and rode out their corporate luck. Some of us got more than a little hungry. Some are finally going after that second (or third or nth) shot.

And hey, no pity and no regrets – it’s been an exciting time, with plenty of opportunities to empower oneself. I just don’t understand this 2.0 business – a lot of us never went anywhere.

P.S. For my money (heck, it’s on the Internet – it’s free!) this is the best anthropological record and cartoon of what will be known as Web 1.0. Plus, she’s really good at making fun of bad dates.