Dot Commers Who Won't Say Die

from the good-for-them,-the-clueless-bastards dept

Business Week has an article about the many dot commers who are sticking with their jobs. People seem to forget that there are still "dot coms" out there, and plenty of people who work for them. These folks are either in denial (which some of them admit), or they're going to work for a startup for the same reasons people used to go work for a startup: it's fun, you get to do many different jobs, you have more control over your destiny, it's a small tight-knit group, there's a clear vision, there's a charismatic leader, and there's a remote possibility of a financial payoff. Notice that the payoff part comes at the end. Over the past couple of years things got skewed to the point that people felt the only reason to join a dot com was for the stock options. It's good that people are going back to more realistic reasons... Also, of course, many people who are still at dot coms feel that they've "turned the corner", and they're in a better position since they learned from the mistakes of earlier failures. That may be true for some of them, but there's still a good chance that many will fail - however, that's part of the excitement of working at a startup.