Moving from Texas to New York City, Part 1

A lot of my friends and family were rather shocked when I made the decision to move from Texas to New York City. The real spark that started the move was the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. Dallas had the benefit of being a telecom hub for the nation, and this brought a large draw for various dotComs and other nationwide IT companies. By the end of 2001, the dotCom boom was very much over and a lot of the companies who were previously demanding IT people by the truckload were either downsizing or completely out of business.

On 9/11, I was working for a local dotCom after my previous employer downsized and eventually closed their doors completely. The company had even received local recognition as receiving the largest amount of investment money that year for a dotCom company of its size in the DFW area. We all had high hopes that our jobs would allow us to weather the downsizing storm while my friends who were equally or more skilled than myself spent months out of work.

After 9/11, we were informed by our company's CEO that we would not be getting the next amount of investment capital expected in May, 2002. The reason being that no one was really sure at the time what was going to happen next, regarding possible follow-up terrorist attacks or America's response to 9/11. The company's CEO stated he was putting the company in what he called "bunker mode," in order to ride out the investment rut until things picked up again. I was one of the 80% of the company laid off, although I was given 30 days to turn my duties over to the IT personnel who were staying.