The
Dot-com bubble burst in the year 2000. After a period of manic investment in novel
technology companies through the end of the 1990s, companies ran out of funds
and programmers were out of jobs. Countless tech companies lost most of their
valuation in days or weeks.
In
the early 90s, investment in technology companies was steadily and reasonably
growing. The invention of the internet opened a whole new sector for companies
to deploy products to. Anyone who had an idea for a product that could help
people online had the opportunity to start a company. In 1993, Free Range Media
was founded when HTTP was just 2 years old and the world wide web was just 3 years
old. Free Range Media saw an opportunity to enter a rapidly growing market by developing
websites. They left their old role developing media for CD ROMS to build out web
sites for clients that already had a real-world presence but also wanted to
have a presence online. Free Range eventually made websites for clients such as
the NFL, CBS, and Zenith.
As such companies rapidly dropped in value and the market crashed, many programmers
were left without a job; there was a general glut in the market as people tried
to find work. The poorer prospects of programming as a career caused
enrollments in computer science programs to drop significantly. Specifically,
the University of Washington Tacoma computer science program eventually dropped
from its high of 285 students to below 200 students. Throughout the downturn,
many companies that were perceived to be booming and had valuations in the
millions or billions shut down or were folded into other companies.
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