Just because dot-coms are going under everywhere one looks doesn’t mean my life after college has to as well.
It’s taken me almost a year to be able to see the truth in that statement. As a journalist with an interest and background in the online industry, I thought my degree and work experience as a Web guru would buy me a one-way ticket to success in the real world. I thought I’d be the one who would get the killer dot-com job every twenty-something dreams about — the job where I’d make enough money that I could retire in my 30s, work (or maybe I should say hardly work) in a huge downtown office and play foosball or pinball during breaks, spend summer nights on the company “booze cruise,” or take an expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas for no reason other than to eat dinner at the Stratosphere. But somehow, these dreams have faded in my mind the same way you forget how sunshine feels on your face during the dead of an Oregon winter.
I know I’m not going to get a job like that because it no longer exists in today’s marketplace. The dark cloud of impending dot-com doom has made its way through the tech industry, handing out more pink slips than raises or signing bonuses. At least I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m a couple years too late to indulge in the blitz of job opportunities.
The scary thing, however, is that there is some good to the demise of the dot-com industry. Just think about the possibilities. Maybe someday we’ll finally stop hearing about the kids who join Internet startups to make a quick buck. We’ll stop reading articles in newspapers and magazines about the hottest CEO who struck it rich with the right investors. We’ll realize that working 12-hour days so we can retire quickly isn’t as glamorous as it’s cracked up to be. We’ll appreciate the jobs and lives we have in “suburbia” because we won’t be burned out from the long commute in and out of the city. We’ll be able to afford apartments and houses that aren’t the size of a shoebox, as well as spend time with friends and family, not just the caffeine-addicted co-workers in the cubicles next to us. We might actually own stock in a company that doesn’t just give us our paychecks. We won’t try to become the next Bill Gates anymore. If we are unemployed, we’ll look for a company that wants to hire and retain experienced employees, not the next whiz kid down the street.
Most importantly, we won’t be one of the statistics. We won’t be part of the thousands of SUV-driving wannabe yuppies who lose their jobs every day (according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas, a Chicago-based employment consultor that tracks the dot-com sector, the 2001 dot-com layoff toll now numbers almost 65,000). We won’t be mentioned on message boards for Web sites that serve as online sources for “bad news” and related information on the failures of the dot-com industry. We won’t be the topic of discussion among our friends, who we hope pity us, but instead enjoy their boring 8-5 jobs more than we’ll ever know.
So where does this leave me and my journalism degree? Since I can’t join the force of dot-comers, I guess I’m stuck with one realization. I might actually have to use what I learned in college to get a job — or at least a job with security, whatever that may be. And I think I’ll take that stability over anything, unless it comes in the form of my own private jet …