2008? Not much. Some hiring freezes, maybe some salary freezes, but overall quite reduced impact. Of course, this is very location dependent and domain dependent.
New grads were probably hit the hardest, as they usually are during recessions.
2000 was much worse from everything I hear, but I wasn't there at the time.
Yes, 2000/2001 was much worse generally in tech. I was pretty lucky. Was laid off but got another job through a good connection with a company still doing OK. Then not so OK but aside from a salary cut made it through.
But there was a lot of "Would you like fries with that?" in the tech sector generally.
New grads were probably hit the hardest, as they usually are during recessions.
2000 was much worse from everything I hear, but I wasn't there at the time.