I was working in Lisbon straight out of college in a consulting company, and we were 300 people occupying 3 floors in one of the city's major office areas.
Things were already going downhill, but then 9/11 came, we had a building evacuation etc. and then in the space of 3 months we had downsized to less than 100 people and a single floor, the other two floors where closed.
A lot of people were sent back to their home offices (Spain, Poland and all over Europe) and then laid off there, as major support contracts were not renewed.
The salaries back then and even before in the late '90s were actually about the same as they are now in 2019. The same goes for the consulting rates, they have remained largely unchanged in the past 20 years or so.
If you add up 20 years of inflation, you will see that back then being a software developer was a very interesting option and a job much in demand.
A lot of people went from development into testing, production support, sys admin, business analysis, etc.
Things were already going downhill, but then 9/11 came, we had a building evacuation etc. and then in the space of 3 months we had downsized to less than 100 people and a single floor, the other two floors where closed.
A lot of people were sent back to their home offices (Spain, Poland and all over Europe) and then laid off there, as major support contracts were not renewed.
The salaries back then and even before in the late '90s were actually about the same as they are now in 2019. The same goes for the consulting rates, they have remained largely unchanged in the past 20 years or so.
If you add up 20 years of inflation, you will see that back then being a software developer was a very interesting option and a job much in demand.
A lot of people went from development into testing, production support, sys admin, business analysis, etc.