Fact or Fiction: All those stories about dot coms true?

[TommyVercetti]

I was in highschool and then college back when the dotcoms were booming (1998-2001). I have heard and read a lot of totally unbelievable stories about that era, how the employees were getting paid, how little qualifications it took to get jobs, and how it was the gravy train.

I heard that totally jackasses were being hired because of a "shortage" of workers, and getting paid 60-70K as starting salaries for designing websites. True?

Some dotcoms were offering BMWs to their newly hired employees.

There were secretaries who were millionaires.

Are all these and more outrageous stories true, or just made up stories by the media and bullshitters?

 

[RabidMongoose]

I remember reading that story about how some company was offering a BMW or would pay your student loans if you joined them.

I worked as an intern at a .com for a couple of summers in Santa Clara, right next to the Intel complex. I have no idea how the hell they managed to make money since their website wasn't anything great. When I first saw their website, I thought it was an amateur website...later on they got a lot more professional look, but people were throwing money at them all of the time. Everything was free - free lunches, free dinners, free laundry service, etc. since they were trying to 'gear up' for their big IPO that I don't think even happened. Half of their employees in the 'engineering' (CS) department were Indian ladies that didn't know anything.

The secretary was a temp that used to hang out with a lot of players with the NBA - that was kind of cool. The marketing interns spent a lot of their time talking on the phone to their friends. One of them spent about 5 hours a day talking to a friend in NY.

Oh, and I also caught one of the marketing people watching beastiality videos.

 

[mjquilly]

ahh, the days when being able to check email ment you qualified for a 50K/year job

 

[sygyzy]

No these were all lies created by CNN, NBC, Dateline and other news agencies.

 

Yes, crazy stuff happened.
I liked the pay. Producing of value and earning great money was a dream come true.

It was just a dream mostly.

 

[amnesiac]

If only I stuck my money into Qualcomm.

 

[waggy]

Originally posted by: TommyVercetti
I was in highschool and then college back when the dotcoms were booming (1998-2001). I have heard and read a lot of totally unbelievable stories about that era, how the employees were getting paid, how little qualifications it took to get jobs, and how it was the gravy train.

I heard that totally jackasses were being hired because of a "shortage" of workers, and getting paid 60-70K as starting salaries for designing websites. True?

Some dotcoms were offering BMWs to their newly hired employees.

There were secretaries who were millionaires.

Are all these and more outrageous stories true, or just made up stories by the media and bullshitters?

heh yeap. i worked at a place and making a killing running the operations department.

The web page they had was crap. i could have made a better one myself.

We got lunch everyday catered, Promises of stocks when we went live, nice offices and nice computers etc.
me and my buddy got out with a insane "anti-contract" as they called it (got laid off but they didn't want to admit that so paid us NOT to work).

Some of my friends had even better jobs. it was a insane time. amazing how little business sense some people had.