It was 2016. Tech jobs were uncommon then. It was like the AI scene today - most of the people running tech companies were consulting or building some kind of product that they were too inexperienced and too greedy to understand.
The term unicorn was becoming popularized. VCs were always around, but the fantasy of building a billion dollar company didn't quite exist, and nobody understood why some of these companies were raising so much money. Tech companies would hire a team of 5; over a hundred was unheard of here.
I think today, you can take it for granted that if you graduate with a CS degree, the good jobs exist, but back then you just took whatever you could. There's just cycles in the economy when it's better to pay salaries than take a salary. Even with the waves of layoffs, I don't think we'll ever get as bad as things used to be, unless you're trying to get a job in web3 or something.
I find this hard to reconcile: first job was in 2002 and except 2001, 2009 (and lets say 2022/23 USA only) it has not been hard to get a job (assume not to fussy!) in tech unless you are trying to break in as a first job.
On the business side, the odds of making a million dollars with an acquirable business is much, much higher than the US. But the odds of making a VC backable unicorn is much lower.
Jobs also tend to lean that way - just do whatever it takes to deliver. Skill capped low. Salary capped low. Expectations were low. What 99% uptime? The website has to come down for an hour a day for maintenance. There was a lot of untamed land for people who think things could be done just a little better. Also the era when some people were quitting jobs because they think things could be done better in Node.js or Rails than PHP.
