I was around but very young and not working in Silicon Valley proper. I think my first tech internship was just a year or two after that, can't remember exactly.
Never really had trouble finding work on the West Coast since then though. This year, I was unemployed for half a year (after quitting voluntarily) and finally found work with a European company. Guess the boom times are over! It's AI or bust now, lol (and I have neither the skills nor the interest to work in ML).
Keep in mind though I'm also a nobody, some rando self taught web dev coming from the LAMP world into React. We're pretty much bottom of the barrel as far as programmers go, so I'm not surprised I'm not a competitive candidate! I love the frontend, but more for its visuals and UX than coding. It's a very far cry from AI or algorithms or really any sort of non visual coding.
The kind of I stuff I used to get paid for when I was younger, Wix handles effortlessly now (and I recommend it my clients too... don't pay me, just make it yourself on Wix in a few hours). React's probably headed down the same path: https://v0.dev/
Not GP but I was just starting my career back then. I remember commute traffic on 101 through San Jose and Sunnyvale going from bumper-to-bumper to smooth sailing, where you never even had to touch your brakes.
From the crash of April-ish 2000, it was 6-9 months before the best of the best could even get an interview, and about 36 to something approaching normality.
