Chew On This...

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday June 8, 2001

Sue Lowe

Mr Peter Lewis arrived in San Francisco as Australia's Consul General at the height of the technology boom. He recalls the up when one start-up incubator was offering stressed entrepreneurs ``professional massages at any time of the day, fresh rolled sushi and sashimi available 24 hours in quantities like it was coming from a tap and even an oxygen bar where, if you were feeling a bit jaded, you could come over, strap on the mask and take a few deep breaths of 100 per cent O2 to get you back on track".

Now there's the down. Lewis says the public float parties have become ``going out of business" wakes attended by swathes of staff. But one axe-wielding chief executive told him these are just ``normalising" the ``over-hiring exuberance of the dot com boom".

© 2001 Sydney Morning Herald

Back to News Index | Back to Home