Meryl's Notes Blog
Things wordy, geeky, and webbyYes, It’s Bad
Thursday, January 17th, 2002 at 12:54 PM | 2 commentsTypically, I’m a Yes Man when Zeldman speaks. While reading Alley of the Shadow, I find myself disagreeing with him… for the first time. I agree that there are Web design businesses that are thriving.
But, some shrink and others go bankrupt. I know a lot of talented casualties. Zeldman writes:
“Don’t con me with the old saw that if you’re good at what you do, provide services that are a little bit different from the other guy’s, remain accessible and accountable to your clients, and keep your head, you can stay in business and maybe even grow a little.”
These hard-working, level-headed folks have worked for businesses that had no choice, but to cut them. They’re looking for jobs and even trying to to find freelancing or contracting opportunities with no luck. A couple have taken risk to jump into freelancing and instead find the tables turned on them, leaving them out to dry.
There are people working and there are people who aren’t and that’s always been the case. However, unemployment has increased to 5.8% and the last time we were at that number was April 1995. Yes, it’s bad - not as bad as in the early ’90s, but worse than in the last 7 years.
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2 comments
Cute piece, that one by Zeldman. Funny. Chic. Makes me want to buy a bottle of Dasani.
It would be dead on, except he completely ignores the bulk of the people who were hit by the dot-bomb layoffs: Those of us who were just laboring in the trenches, doing HTML and ASP and Javascript and Java while also working on the VB projects that were our company’s bread-and-butter. Those of us who weren’t working the glam jobs in Silicon Alley.
People like my former boss at Lucent’s Advanced Media Solutions department, who finally took a buyout and has enormous talent and web skills and told me last week he can’t find a permanent job.
People like the students who graduated with me from The Chubb Institute in June of 2000, some of whom couldn’t get an entry-level programming job for months after graduation, others, like me, who got two, and got laid off from both. And the students graduating now–what chance have entry-level programmers without an M.S. got?
You want to know how hard it is to get a job in the NYC web development area? I joined Webgrrls last year. Every week or two, there’s another meeting on how to get a job during the downtimes. There are usually about 100 women there, all in New Media, all looking for jobs. And women are still the minority in the business, so we can guess that there are an awful lot of web folks going begging now.
Except for those folks at the top that Zeldman knows. Hey, can I pass along my resume, ya think?
Strikes me as if he’s rubbing a little salt in the wounds. I’m working. These people are working. So, it’s a little rough - no biggie.
I’m living in San Francisco, the point at the end of SiliValley. This area got hit, hard.
But then, I usally never agree with Zeldman…
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