Startups had unbelievable burn rates, sales and marketing teams overpromised technology, and greedy executives, who should never have been in charge of money, sought to invest millions in building the appearance of an empire rather than grow organically. Eyeballs, not earnings, was the focus. Many such companies would go bankrupt overnight. I was out of a job for six months. It was the most humbling part of my career. We almost lost everything. For a short time, we were on food stamps. I knew some scripting languages, Oracle, and systems engineering at the time and was doing mostly web based development, DBA, and server infrastructure buildout work - yet we couldn’t afford to pay for baby formula. During that six months, I taught myself C, discovered machine learning, and picked up other skills that would later open doors I never imagined would be possible for me. Hard times brought perseverance, humility, and an appreciation for the value of a dollar. I learned some of the most foundation skills and life lessons during the dot bomb.
