You need to frame it in terms of the times. The web was relatively new, and there was a dramatic shortage of talent. Remote work was pretty rare, and the infrastructure to support it was very nascent.
Web development wasn't very mature: just knowing HTML could net you a nice paycheck. You could go even farther with basic spaghetti-code skills in languages like PHP, ColdFusion, and ASP. Frameworks really weren't a thing. Javascript wasn't used for much more than form validation, so you could go to your favorite "DHTML" website and find scripts to copy.
Couple this with the high pay, and there were a TON of "developers" who were one- or two-trick ponies. Someone who honestly was better suited for sales or management were writing code and making big bucks, and assumed this was their life path. For many, they turned into developers. Many didn't, and left.
In my experience, if you knew more than one backend language, and were happy working in boring fields (often in boring locations) like travel or healthcare or energy, you probably didn't go without work for long. (I was at Sabre at the time, working in their HR department, and 9/11 affected me more than the dot-com bubble)
Web development wasn't very mature: just knowing HTML could net you a nice paycheck. You could go even farther with basic spaghetti-code skills in languages like PHP, ColdFusion, and ASP. Frameworks really weren't a thing. Javascript wasn't used for much more than form validation, so you could go to your favorite "DHTML" website and find scripts to copy.
Couple this with the high pay, and there were a TON of "developers" who were one- or two-trick ponies. Someone who honestly was better suited for sales or management were writing code and making big bucks, and assumed this was their life path. For many, they turned into developers. Many didn't, and left.
In my experience, if you knew more than one backend language, and were happy working in boring fields (often in boring locations) like travel or healthcare or energy, you probably didn't go without work for long. (I was at Sabre at the time, working in their HR department, and 9/11 affected me more than the dot-com bubble)