I started my first real job in 1995 after dropping out of grad school. I was paid about $40K (which seemed like SO MUCH MONEY) and worked at a tiny startup with one other full-timer and two part-timers writing Lisp on Macs for a NASA contract. We had an ISDN line for internet; I mostly remember using it for email/mailing lists and usenet (and reading macintouch.com). We had an AppleTalk LAN, and IIRC one developer workstation ran Apple's MPW Projector for source control, which Macintosh Common Lisp could integrate with.
Our office was in a Northwestern University business incubator building and our neighbors were a bunch of other tech startups. We'd get together once a month (or was it every week?) to have a drink and nerd out, talking about new technology while Akira played in the background.
It was awesome! I got to write extremely cool AI code and learn how to use cutting edge Mac OS APIs like QuickDraw 3D, Speech Recognition, and Speech Synthesis. Tech was very exciting, especially as the web took off. The company grew and changed I made great friends over the next 7 years.
(Almost 30 years later I still get to write extremely cool AI code, learn new cutting edge technologies, find tech very exciting, and work with great people.)
Our office was in a Northwestern University business incubator building and our neighbors were a bunch of other tech startups. We'd get together once a month (or was it every week?) to have a drink and nerd out, talking about new technology while Akira played in the background.
It was awesome! I got to write extremely cool AI code and learn how to use cutting edge Mac OS APIs like QuickDraw 3D, Speech Recognition, and Speech Synthesis. Tech was very exciting, especially as the web took off. The company grew and changed I made great friends over the next 7 years.
(Almost 30 years later I still get to write extremely cool AI code, learn new cutting edge technologies, find tech very exciting, and work with great people.)