It didn’t occur to me how important these three values were to me in my life until the first tech bubble explosion. 

I quit my job at the ISP I was working at, packed everything I owned at the time into my car and drove west like many others had done since 1849. However, unlike others, I wasn’t in search of gold. My search was for knowledge.

The ISP I worked for was great, but it was in Arizona and not in the thick of innovation like San Francisco. All of the companies I wanted to be surrounded by were covered in my monthly delivery of Wired Magazine. Sites like Google were popping up.  I knew I was missing huge opportunities and if I sat around working at the ISP any longer, I’d completely miss some of the most important years in Internet & technology history, so,  I took a risk.

It seemed completely risky. The entire drive to California I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to find a job and that I’d return home empty handed. I was afraid of living in a bigger city and doing things like riding public transportation. I was afraid of density. I was just afraid, but I pushed ahead anyway and didn’t let that fear own me. 

I’ll never forget the first day I went out looking for a job. I’d spent one week in the city enjoying myself and decided it was time to pound pavement. I had discovered Craigslist. I put a few resumes out there and immediately got some calls. The first job interview was downtown at a web design firm. I went shopping for a “respectable” outfit the day before, got up super early and headed down 16th Street to my first ever subway ride riding alone. I was absolutely terrified and full of “what ifs”.

What if I got on the wrong train?

What if I go the wrong direction?

What if I get off on the wrong stop?

What if I can’t find the place I’m interviewing?

What if I spill coffee on my shirt?

What if I bomb this interview?

I just kept going. Terrified, but kept going. Everything went right but the interview. I bombed it and I knew it after five minutes. I applied for a job that I wasn’t even remotely suited for. I came from an ISP background and was trying to make a jump over into a world that I barely understood. It was a world of Internet glamour, fashion, style and hipness that I knew nothing about. The “respectable” outfit that I thought was cool was very uncool and my nerd came through 150%. Not a match and we both knew it. I excused myself and thanked them and when I walked out of their doors, I’ll never forget seeing the very large Banana Republic across the street and thinking about how metropolitan that whole experience was.

I was growing up and Banana Republic was shining back at me with its grown up suits and gear for the professional world. I had failed, but now it was time for coffee and another try. That night I refined my search and looked for jobs that would be a better fit and within two days I found one. I landed a job making 65k as the technical liaison for a design firm in San Mateo which was in the basement of the Bank of California, several floors below the original Napster. I was a fit for this company because of my ISP background. Their two largest clients were Redback Networks and 2Wire. 

I felt so fortunate. It wasn’t until later that I realized you could get a job pretty much anywhere if you could spell UNIX. It was probably best that I didn’t know that and didn’t figure that out until later when I was in a position to hire people at another company. 

Several jobs later I found myself at the end of the bubble. Everyone around me was getting let go from their jobs. It was only a matter of time until I too lost mine. I worked at a company called NBCi which was owned by GE/NBC. We had passed 4 waves of layoffs and I was starting to break out in hives from being on call for over 200 days. My team was vanishing either from finding new jobs or leaving with a wave. There were still jobs to find, but they were few. The unemployed masses were starting to pile up and the pink slip parties were getting larger and larger.

As some point, I realized my options. I could stay with the mothership as it sank and move to the corporate headquarters, away from my dreams, away from everything I had moved to the Bay for, or I could get out there on the pavement again and look. My three options at the time were Sendmail, Wine.com and iAsiaworks. I decided to go back to working at an ISP. It was an environment that I understood and loved and there was still a lot more to learn there. Also, it would allow me to travel and work in Asia. Something I always wanted to do. Well, I went to work there and within 6 months the entire company was out of business. I took the only 4 weeks of unemployment I’ve ever had in my working life and I watched the world crumble around me. Talented people couldn’t get jobs and I mean people much smarter than me. I saw them pack up and move away one by one. I took a job working at a non-profit making 1/4 my previous salary. It paid the bills and kept me on my quest for knowledge. Kept me learning and I didn’t give up. Everyone else around me gave up.

The whole situation made me sick. All of my closest friends moved. The city was lonely. Rent signs were everywhere. You could finally park in South Park. The bubble had officially burst. 

That down time seemed like the best time to start a business or join a startup. It seemed like the one time we should have stuck together and done whatever it took to succeed and guess what? It was. A lot of amazing businesses rose from those ashes. The people that didn’t give up went on like roaches surviving nuclear winter. 

People talked about the people that left and said terrible things. That they weren’t talented, that we finally got rid of the people that sucked. Sure, a lot of people in the bubble sucked, but there were a lot of people that were damn awesome, but they all had a lot in common. They wouldn’t take responsibility, they wouldn’t be brave and they most certainly were not flexible. 

It was on a train ride to my job in Oakland when I figured this all out and realized how important these three values are to me and how important I wish they were to everyone else. Ever since then they are like filters. I hear things like:

“I’m sorry I was an asshole, I had too much to drink.”

“I can’t get a job because there aren’t any jobs.”

“I’m depressed and can’t do any better.”

“Why did you make me feel bad?”

Etc.

 Instead of:

“Wow, I drank a lot like a dumb ass and I acted like an idiot.. I’m sorry.”

“I can’t handle making less money than I made before. I can’t handle how it will hurt my pride.”

“I’m letting my emotions rule me.”

“I am making myself feel bad.” 

You see, each and every one of us is responsible for the decisions we make. We can’t make anyone else do anything. We can only influence them, but we are responsible for ourselves. We’re responsible for what we put in our bodies, how we drive, where we walk, where we work, what we say, etc. There’s nobody to blame but ourselves when it comes to those things. Sure, there are things outside of our control. Some health things for example, but how we go about dealing with them and our attitude towards them is entirely determined by how we choose to approach life afterwards. 

I believe in what we’re all capable of. We can do anything we set our minds to. We can create pretty much any reality for ourselves that we want. 

Jumping off the trapeze is more fun than hanging on and falling is not the fault of the bar. You can’t flip if you don’t jump and if luck is how you finally grab hold to the other side, then jumping is the only way to experience it. 

Sunday, September 20th, 2009 » Just Me