Actually things were quite different back then -- a lot of people found themselves in the position of needing to hire programmers, who until then had almost contact with that stratum at all. Nor any familiarity with names of programming languages or other buzzwords.
And IT in general was much more slow-moving since then -- even companies with lots of technical staff couldn't (easily) find people to adapt to the crazy quilt of languages (and yes, paradigms) that burst onto the scene.
So if you had even the slightest idea how a website worked -- your were like a gift from high heaven, and treated as such.
These days -- especially in larger cities, near everyone has social contact with some of the programming persuasion; many have dabbled in some form of scripting, at least, themselves; and you can't walk into a coffeeshop or ride a subway train without being immersed in techspeak.
So things have changed quite a bit, and correspondingly, the bar has been raised.
And IT in general was much more slow-moving since then -- even companies with lots of technical staff couldn't (easily) find people to adapt to the crazy quilt of languages (and yes, paradigms) that burst onto the scene.
So if you had even the slightest idea how a website worked -- your were like a gift from high heaven, and treated as such.
These days -- especially in larger cities, near everyone has social contact with some of the programming persuasion; many have dabbled in some form of scripting, at least, themselves; and you can't walk into a coffeeshop or ride a subway train without being immersed in techspeak.
So things have changed quite a bit, and correspondingly, the bar has been raised.