• by Jim Meskauskas , April 1, 2004

How many of you reading this column were working in the online advertising business in the late '90s? Do you remember the long hours and the hard work and the endless array of new problems needing solutions?

Like Proust's madeleine, a sip from a large Dunkin' Donuts coffee brings on fond reminiscences of the thrill and excitement of being a part of something brand-spanking-new. My mind conjured up the feelings of camaraderie we had with our fellow online advertising professionals (if you could even call us that then), and the sense that by contributing to solutions to these new problems, we were making a new and exciting world. Not to mention the parties and countless gifts lavished on low-to-moderately paid online media persons that made us feel rich in life, if not in pocket.

Every new dawn, sometimes seen from the front window of the offices, brought the hope that what we were engaged in was no less than discovering the New World.

With such discoveries, of course, came visions of grandeur and riches. A lot of people hoped that they would at once be a part of history while at the same time be able to afford to buy themselves the quality time being given up to do so.

Then along came the downturn. And suddenly, hundreds and thousands of online media workers---not all of them skilled, admittedly---were out of work. And they stayed out of work, many of them for a long, long time.

Now, the tide has begun to flow; jobs in the online advertising space are starting to once again become plentiful. What's different this time is that it used to be a job candidate could pick and choose his or her jobs based on a series of non-sequiturs such as, is there a Foosball table? Do we get bagels on Mondays? Does the company supply all-you-can-eat beef jerky? Now, there are jobs coming up all over the place yet no one seems to want to take them.

I've no doubt there are myriad stories we can tell one another about the kind of insanity that reigned when hiring during the peak, which I place at about 1999. I remember hiring college grads whose only work experience had been delivering pizzas for $40M to start. Their only qualifications were that they could fog a mirror and spell their own name.

When I started in media, you were paid crap for a year. If you proved you had the chops and the commitment (which, if around after a year of post-buys and deciphering BPA statements, you obviously were), then you began to make something resembling a living wage, which was still only that relative to the peanut-butter-on-a-spoon meals had in college. It meant that you could finally afford to put those chopped green onions and a cracked egg into your Top Ramen.

But new hires in the media space no longer have to face those kinds of austerity introductory periods. And besides, a lot of the spaces to fill are for those positions that require some solid experience. There were a lot of people who had experience that were cast adrift during the last few years. So, why is it so hard to find talent these days?

When talent was plentiful in the ad biz, typically one reached into the pool of resumes that used to stack up regularly in the HR department. Now, there is nothing but a file drawer full of crickets and tumbleweeds.

Why?

Because during the heyday of the dotcom craze, people worked like South African diamond miners only to get hit with a big, bad dotbomb; hands were chopped off and cast out at the mouth of the shaft, workers left stumbling about with bloody stumps and blank stares looking out from dusty faces. Then there were three years of famine.

Anyone with ability, drive, and an ambition to stay in this business even during such dark times has either ended up with a job, started their own practice, or found a way to make a living as a freelancer. Everyone else got the hell out and never looked back.

That latter group has found a better quality of life elsewhere and they can't imagine going back to the 60-hour or more work week just to walk away with a daily ration of gruel. Now, only the zealots are left, as well as a few people in very large companies that were able to afford to trade significant resource for time given by those individuals.

There is simply very little love left in this business. Talent has gone in search of a more meaningful life. It seems that there is a class of advertising refugees that are seeking something that stokes their fire in the way it was stoked when the sun first rose over the land of Internet advertising. No one wants to do it any more just for the money; if what you do for a living is only because of the money, it will always make you miserable because you are living an inauthentic life.

I think of the beat poet Allen Ginsberg's words when I think about the people I've known in this industry and how many of them are no longer in it:

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night ..."

HOWL