Actually it’s luck and skill. I’ve known absolute geniuses that spent the dot-com boom teaching in schools. I’ve known complete boobs who were glorified car salesmen and developed massively popular websites that then collapsed. SOmetimes it’s skill, sometimes it’s luck….The dot-com boom was less about legitimacy than it was about hype, con-artists, and upper level managers with the technical savvy of a mud puddle.

Location had a lot to do with it. Are programmers in Pittsburgh who never made more than 50k better than some schmuck in Silicon Valley with a liberal arts degree who happened to stumble into an IPO at the right time?

The dot-com boom was jam packed with under-qualified, over hyped con artists, many of who over-estimated their own talent and began to believe their own hype….

When the walls came down and legitimate business rules began to apply again, the wheel turned and shook the excess flour from the pan.

Now they are all wondering what the smell is….and are upset that their company sold the HDTV in the rec room?

I’ve watched countless losers over the past three years leeching off their families and whoever else (and complaining all the while) because they were too proud to lower themselves and consider other job possibilities…

I rode through the boom and did very well for myself as a network admin and now a writer….very well….

But for every one of me…there’s twenty thousand people in other businesses (and many in tech) who think you people whining about perks and stock options are whiney b_tches. ANd quite frankly I agree with them.