(FORTUNE Magazine) – Given that tech stocks were hammered in August 31's stock selloff, you might expect people in Silicon Valley to be a little bummed out. But that, as I discovered when I went hunting for sob stories, is a pathetically Old Economy response.

On the evening of the 31st, I headed to Nola's, a Palo Alto joint popular with techno-yuppies, thinking I might find people with tales of market woe. Instead I found Geoff McDonald, an executive at Oracle, who'd lost some money in his stock options but hadn't bothered to add up how much. "Maybe several hundred dollars," he guessed. Perhaps I was just too late: The bartender told me that at 5 P.M., a group of guys in suits were talking about the market and working on their fifth round of tequila shots.

But making the rounds of tech companies made it clear that McDonald was in the majority. At Web company CNET, senior VP Fred Sotherland said he'd barely glanced at the market. "I actually bought some stocks," he confessed. Meanwhile, executives at Internet software company Inktomi were preparing to announce their $90 million acquisition of startup C2B Technologies. Was C2B at all fazed that Inktomi stock had lost 18% of its value? Nah. "We started this deal several months ago, and if the market plummets between then and now, well, those are short-term changes," said Scott Walchek, C2B's CEO.

After a long day of hunting, I was unable to find any whiners. It seems that techies prefer to take the long view. "The market takes a big hit, and you read about all the so-called experts saying the IPO market will be dead for the next six to 12 months. But when you get an up day in the market, no one is ever quoted as saying the IPO market is going to be rich and frothy," laments Ben Connors, head of business development at enterprise-software company InfoSpace. "It's just all these doomsayers." Speaking of doomsayers--those glum guys at Nola's doing the tequila shots? Turns out they were investment bankers. From New York.

--Melanie Warner