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Post Magazine
This Week: After the Fall
Hosted by Greg Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 11, 2001; 1 p.m. EDT

Last year the net worth of Internet designer Rob Duckwall, 35, hit something over a million dollars. Now, in the wake of the Nasdaq plunge, much of that is gone. And he's saddled with a big house payment, an all-consuming job and the nagging sense that he could lose even more to the same force that brought him to this point in life in the first place: the new economy.

Greg Schneider, whose article "High and Dry" appeared in Sunday's Washington Post Magazine, was online Monday, June 11 at 1 p.m. EDT to field questions and comments about the article and the new economy.

Schneider is a reporter for The Post's Business section.

The transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Greg Schneider: Hi, everyone. Thanks for signing on. This is the first time I've hosted a web chat; for that matter it may be the first time I've even seen one, so if there are technical difficulties it's probably my fault. I look forward to hearing your questions and comments.

Rockville, Md.: Why did this man and the many others like him think this high life was going to last forever? Why did they think that they could skip all the hard work, the long hours that generations before them, including their own parents, had to endure, usually just to make ends meet? I am sorry but I am not sympathetic. Anyone who has been on this earth for more than 30 years should certainly learn that there are no free lunches. Plus, this man has the world's riches in front of him -- a healthy family and his own good health. Too bad he was one of the greedy.

Greg Schneider: This is a really thoughtful question. In getting to know Rob as I worked on this story, I came to see that he feels a good bit of embarrassment at having been sucked into the whole dot-com riches phenomenon. And it was part of what made him an attractive candidate to profile; he was going along, living his life, and all these opportunities starting presenting themselves that were just too good to pass up. I think a lot of people experienced the same thing, to one degree or another, in recent years.

Dupont Circle: In the last year, I've had several friends and business associates written about in the Post. In this case, I worked at Thomson with all the people mentioned in your article.

I am curious about how reporters find out about these stories. How did this story come about? How did you find these people?

Greg Schneider: The basic idea for the story came from the editors of the magazine, who wanted to write something about an ordinary person being seduced by the tech-stock phenomenon and how it changed their life. When the assignment trickled down to me, I started looking around for candidates, and asked some colleagues here at work if they had run across likely subjects in their coverage of tech issues. An editor here had met Rob while playing softball, and spent enough time with him to hear the outlines of his story and had already been thinking he could be an interesting subject for some kind of story. I found Rob to be an especially good subject because he was thoughtful about what he has gone through and was willing to open up about it. Not to mention being willing to put up with a guy with a notebook following him around for several days.

Ellicott City, Md.: This is not a question. This is a comment to Rob Duckwall: Don't worry about providing a financially carefree future for your son. You ARE providing him with an invaluable legacy through your own life example: Learn to live within your means. Sell the big, old house. Return to the basics which constitute a happy life: backyard BBQ, neighborhood softball league, quality family time. To let one's life be controlled by virtual dollar signs is to live in moral and spiritual abyss.

Greg Schneider: From what I saw, Rob has given this kind of thing a lot of thought. But everybody seems to struggle with finding the right balance between ambition and security, and turning back now would probably feel like giving up.

Alexandria, Va.: The article was very interesting -- I do have one question. Baltimore has lots of nice close in neighborhoods with affordable housing, why doesn't Rob sell his house in Guilford and buy somewhere less expensive? The article even said that he missed his old neighborhood (Homeland).

Greg Schneider: Thank you. Rob was actually pretty sensitive about his house. At first, he and his wife, Caitlin, seemed to hope I wouldn't say much about it in the story, but I had to explain that it was kind of a central symbol of what they've gone through.

Washington, D.:. Greg, I enjoyed your article, but I found the accompanying photographs annoying. All of the "after the crash" photos show the guy looking pale and malnourished. The story speaks for itself, but the photos are almost cartoonish.

I realize that you probably don't control the placement and selection of the photos--this is just my two cents. Thanks.

Greg Schneider: My guess is, Rob's wife and mother are going to have the same reaction to some of those pictures of him. They aren't exactly flattering, but they do sort of make a statement about the stress he's been under.

New York: Actually, I thought you presented "Rob" as working hard for his future AS WELL AS hoping to make it rich in tech stocks. It bears repeating, though, a diversity of tech stocks is no diversity at all. I feel rather sympathetic for Rob and his wife. They both should have been able to make a better living from their primary medical illustration skills. I can't imagine fiddling with web pages is any more satisfying than illustrating medical materials. But, at least, they still have their house, and I hope they have no debt. I enjoyed the article, even if Rob came out more of a sad sack than he is probably.

Greg Schneider: Rob's wife is continuing to do a lot of free-lance medical illustrating. I think she is somewhat mystified by his ability to find satisfaction in web design work, but the fact is he does seem to enjoy it. Or at least he can find aspects of it to enjoy. I saw one or two pages that he was working on, before and after his contributions, and he had made quite a difference. It's just a whole new field and that alone carries some excitement, I think.... I'm glad you enjoyed the article, and you're absolutely right about being diversified!

Williamsburg, Va.: Did it seem to you that Duckwall's firm was likely to survive and prosper, be acquired, or IPO? In other words, is what he and his co-founders have conceived growing, ripe or rotten?

Greg Schneider: I would never try to predict what will happen to SwapDrive, the firm where Rob works. It certainly has some well-financed competition, and it's not very clear anymore whether companies want to pay for online services like this -- data storage, in this case. They are working with one major set of investors and are in the process of handing over the CEO job to a more seasoned executive. There also seems to be some merit in the argument the founders make that they've had to be more disciplined because the venture capital quit flowing so freely. Internet companies seem to be like anything else: more likely to succeed if you build it up rationally and carefully. But nobody seems to know yet just what the business-to-business online landscape is going to look like. (Here's the place for the big flashing question mark....)

Arlington, Va.: I don't know if my perception of the family dynamic was correct, but it seems like his family is pushing the high life -- his wife isn't working, they have a very expensive home, his parents expect him to have the success they did. Is this accurate? Who is pushing him in this life? Is it all Rob, or his family's expectations of him?

Greg Schneider: My perception was that most of what pushed Rob into this situation was Rob himself. You know, this kind of thing is tricky to sort out even for somebody living through it, let alone an outsider. But I came away thinking that while Caitlin has been happy to have the extra resources for the family, she also would really value having Rob around more, and having a workplace separate from their home. She said something to me about the lack of boundaries being one of the most difficult aspects of all this; their phone rings one way for personal calls and another way for work calls. Home is no refuge, because so much work is done there. It really seems ironic to me, given how much better life is supposed to be now that we can all 'telecommute' in our pajamas. Also, as I may have already mentioned, Caitlin still does a good amount of freelance medical illustrating. Finally, Rob's parents just seem to want him to be happy. They have spent a good amount of worry over his choices for the last few years, but don't want to second-guess him.

Alexandria, Va.: Reading your article nearly ruined my Sunday afternoon (no criticism of you; it's a testament to the power of your reporting). Why? Because it hit very close to home. I never went to the same lengths your subject did -- throwing away a career he loved for the lure of quick tech riches -- but I did allow myself to get seduced by the artificial inflation of the NASDAQ last year. I put all of my 401K money into "Aggressive Growth Funds" (know by their more commen nom-de-plume, tech stocks) from 1997-2000 and monitored my portfolio with glee up until The Crash Of April 2000. Now, over the past 14 months, I've watched my portfolio shrink by more than one-third. Needless to say that I'm now putting all of my new 401K money into good ol' blue chips. Still, I feel stung by my own naivete, and your article really touched a nerve ending: I'm 33 and my wife and I want to start a family soon. But now we might be waiting until the market stabilizes.

Greg Schneider: Thank you -- or maybe I should say, I'm sorry... What I hoped was that Rob would be a real-world case that people could relate to, as opposed to these 23-year-old millionaires who still live in their parents' basement, or whatever the stereotype is at the moment... I hope you can get things sorted out. By the way, these magazine stories have a bit of lead-time built in, and I was starting to worry that the NASDAQ would come back so strong, the story wouldn't be timely anymore. But I guess it'll take everyone some time to get over what's happened in the past year.

Arlington, Va.: I enjoyed the article in part because Rob doesn't seem like a money-grubbing Internet-bandwagon jumping kind of guy (like so many I've run into over the past few years). He seems a lot more thoughtful, which is probably why he has been able to hold onto his house, and why his start-up hasn't yet failed.

Greg Schneider: Thank you. That was my impression of him.

Alexandria, Va.: After reading the story it struck me that people too quickly forget history. The mentality that Rob was suffering from was the same as investors just before the market crash in the 1920's (not to equate the two).

Was he really under the impression that people like him (i.e., working for internet start-ups) were going to be able to jump so far ahead of others on the trail to fortune and fame?

Greg Schneider: I think you're right, and I thought it was telling that someone who seemed as level-headed and traditional as Rob could get sucked into all this. Some part of his mind was scolding him for it even as it was happening, I think. But everyone around him was doing the same kind of thing, and it seemed so real for so long that it was hard not to believe in it.

Hallandale, Fla.: Why did Rob still have to make the grueling drive every day? Wasn't the Internet designed to allieveiate that problem? Did he not trust his partners, hate his wife and/or his life? Please don't say "to grow the business," not that you've ever said it. Businesses do grow but people don't "grow" them.

Good story though.

Greg Schneider: It's funny how many people have wrecked their personal lives in service to the Internet, which as you say is supposed to free us up. Actually, it's not funny, is it? But the fact is a lot of time and work goes into building these tech companies, even the ones that seem so absurdly awash in investment money and grandiose ideas. ...And thanks, I'm glad you liked the story.

Arlington, Va.: Great article, Greg. My husband and I read it and, like other chatters, did not have a shred of sympathy for Rob. I did feel sorry for Caitlin and Logan, though, who never see their husband and father. I have the sense that they will hang onto their house until after the current real estate bubble bursts and lose money on it, just as Rob hung on and lost everything in his "diversified" stock portfolio. I just hope he proves me wrong.

Greg Schneider: Thank you, I'm glad you liked the story. I feel like I missed the mark, though, if you didn't even have a SHRED of sympathy for Rob. Because I think he has sincerely been trying to make a better life for his family. You know he got caught up in this stuff, and then he basically had to either make it work or just give up. And it hasn't reached the point where surrender seems like the best option yet.

Greg Schneider: Well I think our time is about up. I really enjoyed doing this, and I want to thank everyone who wrote in. There were a few questions and comments that I wasn't able to respond to, but I appreciated hearing from everyone who read the story and had thoughts about it.

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