Did you lose your job in the dotcom bust?
I’m doing a story on pink-slip veterans of the Valley’s dotcom bust in the early 2000s who can share their perspective of those hard times with people who have been laid off in the current recession.
I’m looking for personal stories from any of you who may have lost your jobs back then, then perhaps changed careers or reinvented yourselves or even left the area and can now share some valuable advice for folks in the same position today.
Feel free to email me at pmay@mercurynews.com or call me at 408 920 5689
Thanks,
Pat
Subscribe via RSS all feeds
I was a production test engineer. I designed and built automated production testing stations. This included developing the software which automated the tests I designed.
My last job as a production test engineer was at DSL (networking) equipment manufacturer where I was laid off during the summer of 2002. A short time later the company failed and was sold off. This was the tail end of the bursting dot-com bubble.
Many other companies were overwhelmed with applicants for the production test engineering positions they had open. It seems several other telecommunications companies had also gone out of business. I had hit the wall in my job search, when suddenly…
A biomedical device company whose website job section I had been watching had just posted a position. It was for a software test engineer. They wanted someone who understood software (I had written software and understood it intimately), who was an experienced test engineer (I certainly was an experienced test engineer) and who knew test automation (wow - did I ever know about that subject!).
I crafted a resume which started with the summary “Test Design and Automation”. I uploaded my newly crafted resume to the company website and was called in for an interview the next day. During the interview the hiring manager said my resume “jumped out” at them.
The result is that I was hired in the fall of 2002 for a permanent position and have been here ever since. I am currently a principal software quality engineer working on FDA classified class-2 (life-sustaining) medical devices. I am the last line of defense against software bugs before our devices go into hospitals and onto patients. I also provide evidence to the FDA that our software is safe and effective.
Lost my home to foreclosure. As I was retrieving my household effects, I picked-up a trespassing charge (real empathy shown by the SJPD and DA here, eh?). The misdemeanor shows up on background checks..making this Ph.D. Engr. virtually unemployable.
How many other technical professionals have been exploited by Chief Rob Davis and an over zealous DA office?