I missed working during the dot com boom, but I heard some crazy stories from older coworkers. Like showing up at 10am hungover, playing video games until the CEO came in around noon coked out of his gourd, then hitting up the strip club at 4 on the company dime.

Then one day they get there and the CEO says “sorry guys, money ran out, go home.”

I can’t imagine what it’s like at these AI startups with orders of magnitude more money to burn.

My dad worked during the heyday of the .com era - he once had a CFO who would just go on benders for like 4-5 days, wake up in some foreign country surrounded by hookers and blow (like, very literally, not as a futurama reference), then just fly back and act like nothing happened.

When I worked for Oracle I had to take yearly training to tell me in no uncertain terms that I am NOT allowed to buy hookers for customers OR potential customers. And I was an engineer.

I just wonder what the hell happened that they had to do that.

They used to have a hooker tent at CES. Seriously.
Was it a luxury tent at least?
no, but with the blow you didn’t really care.