
Ask HN: What Is Your Most Vivid Memory from the Dotcom Boom? - altotrees
For those who were around: what was the most vivid memory, either of the technology during the dotcom boom, or the excessive spending that sprouted up around it?
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dannyobrien
Sitting in Netscape’s sysadmin offices at midnight Dec 31, 1999, watching them
monitor for Y2K issues. My friend was on duty that night, and we’d offered to
keep him company. Most of their servers had times that were skewed and/or in
different time zones, so the actual transition was smeared over many hours.
But by my watch, the real local midnight was celebrated by somebody popping
their head over the top of their cubicle and shouting “Fishcam okay!”
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishcam](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishcam)

I know there were probably more dramatic places to spend that moment, but I’m
glad I hung around for that.

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hodgesrm
The night it all ended. For a few years you couldn't get into any restaurant
SF North Beach on the weekend without reserving days or even weeks in advance.
Then one Saturday night my wife and I were walking around looking for a place
to eat and realized every restaurant we looked at had tables available.

(I think it was in February 2001.)

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mud_dauber
I live in Austin. Route 2222 hugs the bluffs west of downtown; it has 2 lanes
in each direction with no center (turn) lane. The curves are sharp &
unpredictable, especially in wet weather.

I was headed home on a Friday afternoon at the height of the boom. Traffic
suddenly slowed to a crawl as we navigated the worst of the curves - mostly to
rubberneck at two 20-something tech bros who had just crushed the front of a
brand-new red Ferrari into the rock wall. They were unhurt - but definitely
missing the Masters-of-the-Universe look.

This was the era of Trilogy in Austin recruiting "only the best". I smiled all
the way home.

~~~
tudelo
This might be one of the only times where it is acceptable to slow down and
marvel. I can't imagine how terrible that felt for those guys...

------
gadders
Eric S Raymond reflecting on his new found wealth due to the VA Linux IPO:
[https://news.slashdot.org/story/99/12/10/0821224/esr-
writes-...](https://news.slashdot.org/story/99/12/10/0821224/esr-writes-on-
surprised-by-wealth)

Not sure what it was eventually worth when he could cash out.

------
joezydeco
Reading fuckedcompany.com every morning and watching the carnage happen in
realtime.

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muzani
Being 13 year old, knowing to make some HTML then reading stories about how
people were making $50 per web page (!!!)

My MBA father told me to try it out, but I couldn't find any buyers and it was
a huge pain without CSS and all that.

------
vparikh
Sure there was crazy evaluations, greed, and ridiculous business ideas that
would never succeed getting real coverage. But what I remember was the
excitement that was around at the the time - that anything was possible. There
were entire shows on prime time TV about technology and its effects on
society. Sunday mornings had talk shows on the industry and where it was
headed. There was this crazy show called The Site which was actually pretty
good. Even the the DevNull cartoon thing was a bit off. There was real
excitement around and people knew the world would never be the same.

------
shaftway
Checking fuckedcompany.com multiple times per day, seeing rumors about a third
round of layoffs at 60% of staff in two days, and then seeing 16% layoffs
right on schedule.

------
o_nate
I remember taking advantage of the promotions at places like UrbanFetch and
Kozmo.com. Once I ordered a couple of music CDs and had them delivered to my
door same-day for a total outlay of a few dollars. I remember seeing all the
delivery guys with their Kozmo-branded messenger bags hanging around on the
sidewalk outside their Manhattan offices, waiting for someone to order
something I guess. I had a feeling this couldn't last.

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quickthrower2
I wanted to buy Redhat shares because, well it was the boom and it was a tech
company and it was Linux man, Linux is cool. (I had no idea how to install it
though!). I was scared/unsure of how to buy a US stock from the UK so I didn't
end up doing it. If I recall correctly they went 6x shortly after the IPO.
Damn!

~~~
pkaye
I got some IPO shares in Redhat due to some bugs I reported. Made a good
amount of money enough to jump start me going back to college the next year.
Half way through the first year the tech bubble collapsed. Before long
employers were going bankrupt or having massive layoffs. I remember some laid
off workers were clamoring to get enrolled into college near the cutoff
window.

------
heelix
Being able to order dogfood, delivered, for less than I could buy it for
locally.

------
caspercrf
This E-Trade commercial that played during the Superbowl.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnQMq5wtZcg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnQMq5wtZcg)

------
chasedehan
Listening to my father and his work friends at Microsoft in the late 90s
talking about their upcoming retirements from their investments solely in
Cisco and MSFT.

It sounded so glorious, yet... my dad is still working.

~~~
quickthrower2
Surely a later 90's investment in MSFT has done well to date?

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rosege
Wondering how companies with not very good ideas or products and losing huge
amounts of money could be getting the valuations that they were.

------
davidjnelson
Playing quake 3 arena in the office with 30 other engineers after the work
day.

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etaioinshrdlu
Sites like the HamsterDance. The web was so much more chaotic back then.

------
staticautomatic
Rich friends in high school bragging about buying Cisco stock.

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segmondy
it's no different than today, tons of jobs, money flowing, watching most
people get far richer than me.

------
tanseydavid
America Online buys TimeWarner!

