Dottie Downturn

Dottie Downturn is further alarmed by the attitude so commonly found among programmers that assumes that turning a profit is somehow a less worthy goal than creating “decent code.” Despite the frothings of the so-called “free software” crowd (whom Dottie Downturn has always found to be a collection of the most egotistical, unkempt and bratty individuals ever before gathered together under one banner), it seems self-evident to Dottie Downturn that unless a start-up makes money, it will not be able to continue to pay programmers to write code. Microsoft, Dottie Downturn notes, has always understood that shipping mediocre code at high prices is the key to long-term success.

Finally, Dottie Downturn is revolted by your desire to achieve severance pay by volunteering to be fired — possibly at the expense of one of your colleagues who may not be able to find a job elsewhere as easily as you. Your strategy sounds far more appropriate to the “clueless middle-managers in suits” than to a programmer. Perhaps you should recompile your own moral source code.

Dear Dottie Downturn: As a lowly paid client/server programmer I was humiliated by all the stories of amazing wealth being showered upon the heads of Web programmers in the old “New Economy” of the dot-coms. Now that the bottom has dropped out on them and these newly poor Web monkeys are back to hustling tables, would it be terribly gauche of me to laugh in their faces? — Chortling in Chattanooga

Dear Chortling: Although Dottie Downturn knows all too well how hard it is to resist the temptation to be mean-spirited, sadistic and unfair, she also feels compelled to note that face-to-face mistreatment of wait-staff is a dangerous game to play. Sure, that pasty-faced 25-year-old filling up your water glass might have been pulling down 100 grand six months ago as a Perl hacker for an online pet food retailer, but right now she has personal control over the food that you are eating …

A more appropriate response might be to send the down-and-out programmer a witty greeting card expressing your condolences: “Welcome to the old economy,” you might write, “where your experience and ability will no doubt receive the compensation they so richly deserve.”

Dear Dottie Downturn: What is the proper etiquette when one has been asked to “check out” the Web site a friend works for, only to find it not ready for prime time, or simply … uninteresting? Do I giggle and say it’s great, or start sending them new job listings ASAP? — Politely Concerned in L.A.

Dear Politely Concerned: There is usually only one proper response when a friend asks you what you think of her new haircut, new boyfriend or new Web site. Lie. Think of something positive to say without seeming unconvincingly overly enthusiastic. For a Web site, it’s always best to say modestly favorable things about its “interactivity” and “stickiness.” If you’re really at a loss, mumble something about cool “pull down menus” and how fast the pages render when viewed with Internet Explorer.

But Dottie Downturn believes that desperate times call for desperate measures. It is time to put a stop to all this Web site evangelizing. Next time, try the following: Ask when her company plans to go public, how much cash reserves it has on hand, and what’s the timeline for getting finances into the black. When she starts to stutter something about “changed market circumstances,” or worse, whines that “six months ago, nobody was asking us to make a profit,” strike for the kill. In a casual tone, as if discussing the performance of the local arena football team, note that her company’s market niche is due for consolidation, and wonder idly which Web sites will come out on top.

Trust Dottie, she is unlikely to bother you again, and once word gets around, no one else will, either.

Dear Dottie Downturn: For two years I did my time at an e-commerce start-up and lived the happy dot-commer’s life: I came in during off hours to miss traffic; I binged big time on free espresso and subsidized Odwalla; I even co-opted a spare cube and turned it into a dog pen, where my puppy was potty-trained between impromptu frisbee games with my boss. The layoffs took us all by surprise two months ago — our whole content division was laid to waste in an afternoon. It didn’t take long for most of my old co-workers to find new jobs, but I’m afraid I’ll never be employed again. Suki, my Saluki, has never spent a day away from me and now her separation anxiety is so intense I can’t leave her for a half-hour job interview without sending her into fits. I certainly can’t think of working some place that won’t welcome my pooch, but I’m finding that start-up culture ain’t what it used to be and potential employers don’t seem interested in bonding over pooper-scoopers. Am I wrong to be searching for a canine-friendly recruiter? — Disheartened in Dogville

Dear Disheartened: Dottie Downturn has never smiled upon the habit of bringing dogs to the workplace. On the contrary, she is heartened to learn that the dot-com world is becoming less dog-friendly — it is one clear indicator that the online business world is finally growing up.

Don’t get Dottie wrong — she is far from anti-dog. Never mind the cold reality that dog hair and black wool pants do not mix, or that co-workers may be allergic to your Lhasa apso. Allergies are for the weak of heart, and those who suffer them do not belong in a start-up. But then again, neither do dogs. Dogs are, by nature, generally happy, given some attention, some food and a squirrel to bark at every now and then. But it is the great fallacy of dot-com life to expect that the workplace be a similarly happy place. Workplaces are for exploitation and stress, not for gamboling about with your tongue halfway down to your knees. Having dogs around is bad for morale — they either inspire an unrealistic sense that ecstatic joy is just around the corner or they remind one of just how miserable one’s own lot is. If you have to have a pet in the office, try a banana slug — no one feels that their life is worthless when comparing it to a banana slug.

If you are still intent on remaining in barking distance of your hound, Dottie Downturn suggests that you reconsider your career choice. The rush to white-collar dot-com jobs means that animal trainers, dog walkers and kennel operators are in short supply these days. Dog bites are a good deal less debilitating than repetitive stress injuries, and your long-term job security would probably be appreciably greater in the animal-care industry than it would be as a dot-com content producer. And potentially more lucrative too — think of the sky-high prices you will be able to charge other dot-commers who have also discovered that they now need dog-sitters!

Dear Dottie Downturn: Recently I jumped ship from what may be the poster child of the failed dot-com “community.” Is the doctor in? You know who I mean. I did this because (a) My stock options were worthless, (b) I have zero confidence in the (remaining) management staff to turn the company around, (c) my job duties have been reduced to meaningless busywork and (d) I sensed greater opportunity elsewhere, in particular a thriving infrastructure company that recently had their best quarter ever. You know who I mean. But I am now having pangs of guilt about leaving my friends and direct-hires behind to fend for themselves. Plus, maybe I was wrong about management — what if they get lucky and really do turn it around? Did I do the right thing? — Anxious in Austin

Dear Anxious: Relax. It’s a dot-commer eat dot-commer world out there; your friends will be able to take care of themselves. Indeed, Dottie Downturn suggests you see opportunity where the more feebleminded might be paralyzed by remorse. Don’t worry about leaving them behind; hire them away! Poach swiftly and mercilessly: they’ll be thrilled at the chance to come work for an infrastructure company with an assured future, even if their option strike prices are well above $100.

Dear Dottie Downturn: What is the polite response when my company continues to send out daily e-mail reminders about the enrollment deadline for our company’s employee stock purchase plan, when our stock is on the verge of getting delisted? — Stumped in San Francisco

Dear Stumped: A surprising number of readers have written in with the same question! If Dottie Downturn was in a cynical mood, she might be inclined to believe that dot-com companies have discovered a new and cheap strategy for that old reverse-the-slumping-stock” standby — the “stock buyback.”

In a traditional stock buyback, a public company attempts to boost its stock price by purchasing large volumes of its own stock. This is typically explained with such wafer-thin excuses as the desire to have stock available to give to employees, but everyone knows it’s simply a tactic aimed at counteracting downward pressure on a particular stock. Get those buy orders in!

Dottie Downturn can only applaud those executives who realized that an even better buyback strategy would be to get employees to purchase the stock themselves! Employees can be counted on to buy stock in their employer for such eminently unsound reasons as guilt (shouldn’t I have faith in my boss?), overweening optimism (this quarter, we’re really going to turn it around!) and stupidity (they wouldn’t offer me an opportunity to buy if it wasn’t a great deal, would they?).

But the sun is shining and the birds are singing outside today, and Dottie Downturn just isn’t feeling very cynical, so she will content herself with saying, “if the stock price fits, don’t buy it.”

Dear Dottie Downturn: My dot-com company has begun the spasmodic crawl of its spiral swim down the toilet of new capitalism. Truth be told, I don’t much care. Working on my fifth decade now, I find one job pretty much like another. Being old school, I became utterly confused trying to place a value on their (now valueless) stock options, so I ended up insisting that they pay me in real money before I hired on. My 401(k) is fine, and this has been, if nothing else, an interesting ride.

The thing is, when I first started, eyes around here were as bright as the new studs in navel piercings. Now you can imagine the dark and troubled glances in the hallway. The youth of the new economy, many of whom have cheerfully given 12 and 15 hour days for nothing more than crap wages and the paper on which their options agreement is printed, are now glum as the groupies of a band whose lead singer has OD’d and died at the ripe age of 22.

I wish something could be salvaged, something more than the company logo T-shirts and the memory of cool beer bashes. After all, there’s an opportunity for real wisdom here, something along the lines of “There is no new thing under the sun” or “Don’t take any wooden nickels.” However, I’m not so ossified that I’ve forgotten how hateful it is to the young when lessons are actually pointed out. How can I encourage them to seek the valuable insights of this experiment in misadventure capitalism without sounding like a scolding old fogey? — Daddy Wah Diddy

Dear Daddy: You can’t. And the odds are good that those dark glances mean that they’ve already figured this lesson out for themselves, despite their tender ages. Any comments you make might just draw unneeded attention to yourself. Keep your head down — during the next round of layoffs, management may wonder why they are keeping an expensive senior staffer on the payroll, when they could easily hire three fresh college grads for your salary …

Dear Dottie Downturn: My start-up just moved into this hip converted warehouse development in the Mission district of San Francisco. Lo and behold, on the first day we moved in, there was graffito on our front door that said “Die Dot-com Scum.” All over the building someone had slapped up posters telling Internet yuppies to move back to the Marina. It turns out that our spacious brick loft used to belong to a group of artists and dancers that got evicted because dot-commers like myself were willing to pay five bucks per square foot. Now, everyone in the neighborhood hates me. I think the burrito guy spit into my enchilada. And I feel kinda guilty. What should I do? — Distressed Dot-com Scumbag

Dear Distressed: Dottie Downturn sympathizes. It’s not easy being an agent of gentrification, especially when you yourself are probably fond of ethnic “color” and like to hang out in seedy bars knocking back shots of watered-down tequila. What did you do to deserve such open hostility from nostalgic, outmoded locals who haven’t yet made peace with their shrinking lot in the new economy?

Ten years ago, people your age were condemned for being “slackers” who were “above work.” But now that a whole generation of 25-year-olds is putting its nose to the grindstone, and has kick-started an economic tidal wave that is floating the boats of billions of people all over the globe, you are getting criticized for wanting to buy a home in a cool neighborhood and drive in a comfortable (if not fuel-efficient) car. The nerve of these people! No one forced these “artists” or “dancers” to pursue such a cash-poor endeavor, so why the outrage when they’re supplanted by a more lucrative enterprise, populated by knowledge-workers like yourself? Send ‘em all off packing to Santa Cruz. Dottie says good riddance!

Take heart. Over time, your situation will only improve. The neighborhood will inevitably fill with more and more people exactly like you. Then those silly stragglers still clinging to their rent-controlled apartments will begin to feel more and more like the strangers in their own neighborhood. In the meantime, avoid the burrito place, and simply order lunch online, while you bide your time.

And how about you, dear reader? Do you have qualms about proper behavior in the new dot-com economy? Please send all questions to Dottie Downturn.

Still Standing in San Luis Obispo

Dear Still Standing,

Dottie is not a fortuneteller, tarot-card reader or entrail-grubbing omen prognosticator. She does not work part time as an industry analyst, stock picker or trend spotter. But she is an etiquette specialist, and in that regard she is on firm ground when she advises you that it is bad manners to simultaneously quote impudent Elton John lyrics and disrespect venture capitalists. They might not be able to buy your privately held company, but if they get in a snit, they could wipe out your whole market sector before you could finish humming the chorus to “Crocodile Rock.”

And that doesn’t even begin to address the rudeness of asking Dottie Downturn about the possibility of an upturn. Do you want Dottie to lose this job too? Do you think this country is anywhere near ready for another giddy joy ride of hyperspeculative stock markets and IPO-a-minute madness?

Sniff. Excuse Dottie for a moment as she wipes a tear from her eye and recalls those happy days when a four-month-old start-up burning through $10 million a month could be valued at a billion after just a couple of hours on the stock market. When a degree in English lit could buy you a $90,000 director of corporate marketing position. When just the imposition of the prefix “e-” to an ordinary word would constitute a business plan worth $100 million of Kleiner-Perkins V.C. money.

Those days, Dottie fears, will never return — no matter how many people decide to do their shopping online.

Dear Dottie Downturn,

I picked up the paper today and read that Food.com had laid off 100 workers. Last week Alta Vista fired 225. Pop.com closed down before even opening, and Pseudo.com is also kaput. The article said that 7,592 people had been laid off in the dot-com sector this year!

I’m kind of curious as to when these stats are going to start showing up in the unemployment numbers. But what really blows my mind is quotes like the one from Food.com CEO Rich Frank: “Like everyone else, what we all learned on April 15 is, the game now is you have to make a profit.”

Dottie, I don’t know about Mr. Frank, but I got my first lesson in the necessity of profit when I couldn’t pay back my Dad for the lemons he fronted me when I did lemonade retail back in third grade. What is it with these dot-com dingbats? Their blithe ignorance of economic laws is an insult to all working people.

Laboring in Livermore

Dear Laboring,

What’s that sound I hear? The dull rat-a-tat of cheap shots aimed at skewering dumb dot-com excess? Or the self-revealing wheeze of hot air escaping from a collapsing gasbag? It is clear that you completely misunderstood the economic lessons offered by your early lemonade entrepreneurship. When your father “fronted” you the lemons, as you so quaintly put it, he was instructing you in the basics of what it means to be a modern businessperson. Debt is good. Deficit spending is even better.

Open your eyes, man! We are a nation of debtors. The federal deficit is more than $5 trillion. Consumer credit card debt for the entire United States was $585 billion in 1999. The monthly trade deficit is running around $30 billion. And people are now carping over a few million here and a few million there being spent by dot-com visionaries. The shame, the shame.

An insult to working people?!! Far from it. On the contrary, demanding profits too early from dot-com start-ups is the real injustice — the real insult to all people who understand how capitalism works. You know the old saw, don’t you: “You’ve got to spend money to make money.” The truth is, all you’ve really got to do is the first part — spend money. Making money is an afterthought.

If you think about it, you’ll see how much sense it makes. The more money you spend, the more money someone else is raking in, and the more vigorous the overall economy is. At least with dot-com expenditures, most of that money is staying within U.S. borders (give or take a few hundred million or so repatriated to foreign countries by programmers squeezing every penny out of their H1B visas). So Dottie begs, please, no more carping about aggrieved dot-commers complaining about having to balance their books. Until the people of this country understand, as they usually do, that making money is not the be-all and end-all of economic activity, we’ll never be able to escape the dot-com quagmire we’re stuck in and get back to the glory days of yore.

Dear Dottie Downturn,

The New Age, new-economy, “can’t make a buck.com” industry has made me lazy in getting dates. I have now resorted to responding to online personal ads and flirting with people online. I have totally forgone flirting in public. I send e-mails to total strangers with the total risk of being humiliated, sort of like what I am doing right now. Is this right?

Lost Loser in Los Altos

Dear Lost Loser,

It is not really Dottie’s responsibility to judge whether it is right or wrong for you to risk total humiliation.

Dottie does feel confident, however, in expressing her displeasure at your assumption that the “New Age, new-economy” et cetera has made you lazy. Your placement of blame reverses the actual power dynamic at work in the new economy. There would be no “can’t make a buck.com” industry if it weren’t for the fact that people are fundamentally lazy already. All of online commerce caters to this reality. It’s quite clear by now that people, by nature, don’t want to call travel agents, don’t want to go shopping for groceries and can hardly bear to walk to the post office — and God forbid that they should darken the doors of an actual bookstore.

What they can do, of course, is point and click. But as soon as voice recognition technology improves another rev or two, they will immediately forgo that arduous labor as well. But not because the technology is making them lazier but, rather, because the technology only now is finally catching up to our normal level of laziness.

Eventually, of course, our technological infrastructure will have improved to the point at which we don’t have to do anything, period, and our every wish will be served. Shortly after that point, intelligent life on the planet will expire.

Dear Dottie Downturn,

A kinder, gentler Dottie? Come now, are readers (or you) really such delicate flowers? After changing careers several times and ending up smack in the middle of this “booming” sector of the economy, I find that it’s definitely not for the squeamish. And I have yet to find a job that completely suits my subtle, sensitive, insightful and artistic nature — how difficult for me! Alas, my stock options are not worth millions, the IPO has been deferred, resignations and firings abound and I have no BMW X5. Instead of the glamour and glitter of a new granite-countertopped loft, I rent, I have an old truck and a senile miniature schnauzer and I shop at Rainbow Grocery.

How sad. My next job might be happily bussing tables or gardening, but in the meantime here I am, the envy of some of my non-dot-com friends, who are eager to jump on board this “out-of-control train wreck in the making” called online business. The grass is always greener it seems. Kinder and gentler? Oh, come on, give ‘em hell and f— ‘em if they can’t take a joke.

Greener Grass at the Rainbow Grocery

Dear Greener,

Dottie is not sure she can discern a question here. She’s also not sure if she should be heartened by what she assumes is an expression of support. And she hastens to assure you that her “kinder and gentler” turn of heart was no joke, and certainly not evidence of frail, flowerlike failure of resolve. No, the situation is far graver than that.

Dottie’s therapist has a theory. Dottie may be suffering from one of the first well-documented cases of post-dot-com downturn disorder. And as layoffs continue to spread, Dottie is confident that she will be joined by thousands of other traumatized victims of end-of-the-century dot-com dementia.

What are the symptoms, you ask? The most obvious is an inability to stop checking your stock portfolio, even when all your holdings are well below the price you bought them at. There’s also that annoying little twitch you keep making whenever you hear the word “start-up.” But worst of all is the wet blanket of depression that lands on you every morning when you finally start to fight your way back to consciousness after a night spent annihilating Ice Maidens in Diablo II. What’s left to live for when you’ve been to the other side of the digital revolution and seen that there’s nothing there except Friday afternoon beer bashes and intermittent bandwidth slowdowns?

Post-dot-com downturn disorder. Coming from California to an online outlet near you.

Dear Dottie Downturn,

I feel like I completely missed out on the pack of venture capitalist morons who couldn’t apply the “if this won’t work as a phone-based service, why the hell would it work on the Internet?” rule of thumb to their prospective investees. By the time I come up with the next dumb (and I’m talking Kozmo.com dumb here — a real louie) Internet-based business plan, are there going to be any sheep left for me to fleece?

Sincerely, e-toiletsforless.com

Dear e-toiletsforless.com,

There will always be sheep left to fleece. P.T. Barnum’s rule applies to venture capitalists just as well as it does to everyone else. If you keep your shears honed to a sharp edge, stay upwind and wait patiently for your opportunity, you will no doubt find a way to profit wildly off your dumber than dumb Internet-based business plan, just as so many others have before you.

But will we ever return to the golden age? Dottie senses in today’s batch of questions that she is not alone in her nostalgia and grief for an era that slipped away between her fingers before she hardly had time to appreciate its many wonders and joys. In the haze of her post-dot-com downturn disorder, she begins to question whether it was all just a dream. Will she wake up tomorrow and realize that the “ongoing consolidation of the online pet supply retail sector” was something she read about in the new Richard Powers novel, and not something that actually happened to real people with real lives and, theoretically, real brains?

Dottie doesn’t know. As she already has pointed out, she isn’t inclined toward staring into crystal balls or seeking portents in the guts of disemboweled sacrificial animals. (Although come to think of it, there could be a peer-to-peer e-business opportunity in virtual sacrifice networking.) And even though she’s still confident that the dot-com diaspora captured something essential about American business practices with a verve and vigor never before matched (“Debt is GOOD!” she screams silently into her pillow), she also is aware that anything so vital is like a cherry tree in midbloom — breathtakingly beautiful, and yet as ephemeral as the melting snow.

Perhaps, Dottie surmises, that’s the best way to think of the dot-com boom. Too delicate to survive the crass affections of willful accountants, too inherently true for America to be able to face every morning. It’s time to let go.

Perhaps Dottie’s bitterness dates back to that cold July day when the clerk handling claims at the unemployment office laughed out loud at her dot-com risumi, sneering, “Those stock options won’t keep you very warm during this San Francisco summer, missy!” Or perhaps it goes even deeper, to a feeling of betrayal that Dottie is certain is shared by more than one veteran of the not-so-new-anymore economy.

Where did we go wrong? Once upon a time, San Francisco loved us. Back in the days when Netscape and Yahoo and eBay were surging into prominence, the emergence of the Internet economy was widely regarded as the engine that would pull California out of a debilitating recession. We were stoking the fires of the entire world economy, and that was seen as a good thing. Before the Net came along, Californians alarmed at a shrinking economic pie organized against immigrants, whom they accused of stealing their jobs. Now dot-commers are despised for creating jobs!

But thank you for your question. Dottie feels rightfully rebuked, and hereby vows to be a kinder, gentler Dottie. She has stared into the black pit of dot-com despair and come out stronger for it. Not entirely sane, perhaps, but certainly more compassionate.

Dear Dottie Downturn,

I’ve worked for a mega-huge tech company for five years that has had both ups and downs. Recently, due to several months of poor leadership, the customer got upset and now I and my team are under house arrest just in case something goes wrong and someone needs to be found in a hurry.

It just so happened that the guy in charge himself blew the on-call page-out, and the customer went into foaming-at-the-mouth fits and shakes as things melted down in the server room.

Analysis and reports were of course done. Management has agreed that he blew it. And he’s being allowed to have all of us take the heat as well. Once a week we are under a mandatory 24-hour on-call shift to “fix” a perception problem. I have no training, career goals or willingness to fix the type of problems that may occur, but I know I have the leadership inclination to stage a coup. Any advice on how to stage a successful uprising when even a major screw-up can’t unseat El Capitan?

Stuck in the Pokey in San Ramon

Dear Stuck,

The new Dottie is filled with empathy at your plight, even if she is perplexed as to the meaning of “on-call page-out” — can’t you just say he forgot to turn on his pager? Choosing the right time and strategy for a successful coup is one of the hardest challenges an ambitious employee can face. Office politics can be messy, and it takes real courage and determination to trample across the backs of colleagues who may at one time have been your friends.

Dottie says look into your heart and choose the tactics that feel right. Are you lazy and looking for a quick fix? Hack into your boss’s computer, stuff the Netscape cache with animal porn and scream “sexual harassment.” Or are you feeling a bit more Machiavellian? Dottie’s favorite tactic in this kind of situation is to send an anonymous e-mail to your company’s venture capitalist backers, alerting them that if a certain executive’s plans are carried out, the company will actually reach profitability earlier than expected. The VCs will not be able to abide that — they want you to miss your numbers so you’ll have to borrow more money, dilute employee control and give the VCs the power to gut the company as they see fit after the IPO is a done deal. Drop the word and the VCs will have your boss locked out of his office before he can say the words “day-trading portfolio.”

Dear Dottie Downturn,

I live in Noe Valley and have been commuting down to Silicon Valley for the last 15 years. I’ve been working for boring companies that make things and have profits, stock options that I cash in for moderate amounts, etc. Soooo … how do I get into this dot-com thing and get a job back in S.F.? The traffic down 280 is starting to get obnoxious. My house is almost paid for and I cannot imagine living in Sunnyvale.

P.S. I’ve been using the Internet for about eight years and played around with Mosaic long before the term “Web” even existed. And I’m still here at a company making chips.

Sick of Commuting to Silicon Valley

Dear Sick,

Dottie had to gulp down another double mint julep — this time, hold the mint — after reading your missive. Complaints about commuting strike a raw nerve in Dottie not covered by the new 12-step pain-management plan recommended by Dottie’s online anger management advisors. Please try to gain some perspective.

Do you think laborers in Shanghai complain about the commute as they journey back and forth to Pudong to work on the latest skyscraper? No, they’re quite happy just to have real jobs — like most of the real world, excepting certain residents of Northern California who believe they were born entitled to a $250,000 product management gig that is just a stroll through the redwoods away from their faux-Japanese villa. Traffic jams are indicators of strong economic activity. Every minute stuck on Highway 101 staring at dot-com billboards is another minute during which Cisco and Sun are growing at a rate of 40 percent. You should be thankful.

Dottie has been watching a lot of movies on her VCR lately as she waits for a hot tip from Monster.com or HotJobs.com. Last night, she saw “Falling Down” — the film in which Michael Douglas, a laid-off aerospace engineer, loses his cool during a traffic jam and goes on a wild spree through Los Angeles. Dottie had a bourbon-addled epiphany during the film. Think about it — those aerospace geeks built that traffic jam. Their military-industrial-complex-funded missile boondoggles gave birth to the Southern California economic miracle — and thus eventually to Douglas’ ensuing berserk meanderings through the City of Angels.

Cheer up and enjoy the ride. Dottie hopes that you won’t be similarly twisted by your commuting woes — and not just because she doesn’t need the job-hunting competition. Dottie is saddened that you find your chip manufacturing job boring. Chips built this valley! Without chips there would be no dot-com economy. It’s time for you to buy the books-on-tape version of “The New New Thing,” turn down your air conditioning and start learning how to love a life that passes by at a languid 5 miles per hour.

Dear Dottie Downturn,

I’ve been reading a faux “advice” column (at one of my favorite Web sites) which focuses on the recent slump in the Web economy. At first it was funny, then it was just a little amusing and now it’s downright clichid. What should I do? How do I relate to the irony that the Web site hosting this answer column is soon likely to be roadkill itself?

Cruelly Ironic in Cupertino

Dear Cruelly Ironic,

It is one thing to be accused of being mean. It’s quite another to be denigrated as “faux” and “clichid.” Dottie senses that you yourself have already worked for more than a few failed dot-coms, and can’t handle the sorry truth recorded in your own C.V. Or perhaps you invested some of your own not-so-hard-earned cash in a certain Web site, and are now peeved that you may never see that money again.

Whatever the case, Dottie has always considered irony to be cheap wit that’s barely worth its price. Come back when you have a real problem, rather than some shoddily disguised schadenfreude.

Dear Dottie Downturn,

After a 10-year stint in the music business, I took a job at a fairly well-known dot-com (which is very well funded). Thinking this would be an office full of interesting, artistic and intelligent people, I remained true to myself and brought a lava lamp to the office and stuck a Rhino Records calendar on my wall.

Here’s the rub: I’ve been advised to conform. My peers are khaki-wearing MBAs with stay-at-home wives and a fetish for Excel and PowerPoint. While I’ve made an effort to wear more khaki and less denim (and have mastered PowerPoint), a small part of me feels like I’ve sold out. Have I?

Troubled in Dot-Com Maine

Dear Troubled,

Oh, for the love of crikey, who could possibly have the strength to be kinder or gentler in a world where the question of khakis — pro or con — is deemed of any significance whatsoever? Forget the mint, and forget the julep. Just leave the Maker’s Mark on the table.

Let’s see if I have this straight. You left the music business, which is infamous for being the most scum-sucking of all greedy middleman rackets, shamelessly exploiting artists and crushing all originality to feed the consumerist mass pop culture maw. And now you toil in some dorky dot-com cube-to-cube with a bunch of business school geeks who have bad fashion.

Are you a sellout? No. In fact, this new job may be the one chance you have to redeem your mortal soul. Making a few trivial minor concessions to fit into a blander corporate culture is nothing compared with looking hipper than thou while feeding off a parasitic corporate music system that sucks the art out of music and the money out of musicians.

Now, if you told me that you’d taken to demanding that your wife quit her six-figure job in order to find full-time fulfillment in Mop & Glo, then I might be worried about you. Just don’t start putting your to-do list into PowerPoint.

Dear Dottie Downturn,

I’m on the dot-com fringe at most — I teach at an Australian university — but have developed a couple of online courses that include students from all over the world and generally dabble in Web publishing. A recent newspaper article here involved a fair amount of handwringing over “cyber-bludging”: spending time shopping on the Net, browsing, sending personal e-mail and so on during work time.

Now this is my life — I spend quite large chunks of each working day doing things like, um, reading Salon religiously for a start! I subscribe to newsgroups about cyberpunk fiction and Megadeth, and e-mail lots of people for lots of reasons.

I’m still incredibly productive, however. For us academics, productivity is mostly measured in publications, and I’m sitting on about three times what’s expected of me and about 10 times what most of my colleagues are producing. The mucking about in cyberspace is time for the old subconscious to churn through ideas and input, then the papers pretty much write themselves.

So, am I a cyber-bludger? A thief? An immoral person?

Slacking Off in Sidney

Dear Slacking Off,

Oh, please. Don’t try to pull on Dottie Downturn’s jock. Your letter reads more like an excuse to brag about your overachiever tendencies than an earnest question. Boohoo. You’re doing more work than all your colleagues, but you’re worried that your Web surfing makes you a bad guy. But on the off-chance that you are sincere, let me be frank.

“Cyber-bludging” is yet another of those trumped-up phenomena that editors cook up to wring frothy stories out of nothing on dead news days. If anything, you should be spending more time trolling the Megadeth newsgroups and reading Web accounts about what happened on “Big Brother” last night, and less time attempting to show up your more lackadaisical colleagues. Think of it as your duty to your fellow worker: surf more, show off less.

Dear Dottie Downturn,

Yeah, I have a question regarding your advice to Distressed, in the Mission.

What makes you think you and your ilk can avoid “What goes around comes around”? With your attitude of screw-everyone-but-us, “Dot-com Scumbag” seems to me to be a fitting descriptive for you “Agents of Gentrification.” Bank on it, when I see you in the bread line, bitch, I’m going to cut you dead.

Murderous in the Mission

Dear Murderous,

If Dottie were feeling charitable, she might imagine that you are making a lame stab at satire as part of some feebleminded imitation of people who actually have the craft to crack jokes.

But despite her resolution to change her ways and seek a higher incarnation of Dottie-ness, Dottie is no longer feeling charitable. Perhaps it’s her premonition that tomorrow’s sunrise will bring nothing but a bad hangover and a job offer from the marketing department of an online black-market Viagra retail outlet, or perhaps it’s her regretful inability to put up with idiocy for longer than 10 minutes at a time. Whatever.

If you think that you stand a chance of getting any bread at all when Dottie stands between you and the free food, you are unfortunately mistaken. Dottie has tangled with venture capitalists and Microsoft public relations executives. She has even been to Comdex, more than once. Your petty threats — after all, you’ve probably been evicted two or three times this year already — do not frighten her.

And how about you, dear reader? Do you have qualms about proper behavior in the new dot-com economy? Please send all questions to Dottie Downturn.