I was working in the first dot com boom during 1998-2001. Now, I was working in Amsterdam rather than the US, but I did get to feel exactly how screwed up this situation got. And looking back at it, this article does re-iterate a lot of those points quite clearly.
The people that succeeded were for the most part the ones that put in long hours, were ruthless about achieving their goals and cared not about things like "work/life balance", "emotional stability", "health concerns", etc. Whenever I came out to the US to talk shop with other internet infrastructure people, they were working long hours, ignoring what the industry said they could / couldn't do. There were women in tech, but they weren't the programmers - the ones I met tended to be algorithms people, data scientists, etc. They weren't in the meat grinder of bashing out C/perl code.
The article covered the long hours, it covered what happened when things went pear shaped, and it did a pretty good hatchet job on the kind of focus and ruthlessness you needed to get where you wanted to go. It was amazing to watch and now a little scary. Then the dot-com bust happened and people lost everything. Plenty of people I knew said "fuck it" and left the industry. Those that stayed either made their money, or they were just suckers for loving their jobs. They didn't have strong personal relationships with others. They just loved kicking ass and taking names in their work career. That sometimes worked out for them and sometimes didn't.
A lot of the people I knew in the tech field did just leave and look for something more stable. The people that stuck it out were homeless, couch-surfing, living with family/friends, existing wherever they could just to get over the sheer loss of everything. Not everyone is cut out for that level of destitution and dedication - eventually they'll snap and go off to something more stable.
This field is terrible. It chews you over and spits you out. If you're lucky then you make a bunch of money and save a bunch of money. Plenty of people working in tech and living in San Francisco aren't even doing that. We don't necessarily churn out people who are risk takers out of university - heck, churning out creative thinkers just became an "in vogue" thing again with this whole maker faire mentality that's happening nowdays. But when the thing crashes again, you'll see the same cycle - those who are willing to risk it all and live hand-to-mouth from wherever they can will do it. Others will go find whatever is safe and stable and start life again from there.
Now, is that gender biased? Maybe. Someone has to go do a little more research to figure that out. But from what I saw, there were a handful of women that stuck through that and came out ahead. Most that I knew just gave it in and went back to school, moved in with parents, or decided to stop work and have babies. The guys seemed more happy to take the risk again and again and live hand-to-mouth.
There's lots to fix. We have to stop being insensitive asshats. part of that is institutional - the brogrammer culture is strong here. Part of that comes out of all of the stupid stress and anxiety that litters this community. It's hard to pay attention to how you live, how you interact, how you make others feel, how to communicate well and well, how not to be an asshole if you're always stressed out, anxious and sleep deprived. add in a bit of being shouted at and some threats about your job security and .. well, you just stop giving any fucks. Part of it is no constant exposure to dealing with other people and a focus on your ability to churn out code - your job doesn't tend to want you spending time each day to improve yourself in all ways - it needs to be work relevant, and hey you have that deadline that just appeared? Eww. It's good to see people standing up and calling out bad behvaiour. it's good to see that some communities are sprouting up and eschewing shitty behaviour. But I'd really like to see the stress, anxiety and hours drop as well as a focus on people interaction. My 20 year old self gave no interest to any of these things. My 35 year old self .. suddenly realises that it's pretty fucking important.
