I was a system engineer for SGI in 1992 working mainly with McDonnell-Douglas in St Louis. It was thrilling to be sitting in the cafeteria and have Jim Clark plop down next to me for lunch. Just one of the guys.
As an outsider--cause I didn't live and work in California--this was the go-go atmosphere of such companies back then where they thought they could do no wrong. And the after work parties were wild (how the heck do you break off half a toilet bowl?).
One of the buildings had plastic over the windows cause that's where they were working on the plugin GL card for the PC. (Ssh! No one's supposed to know that!)
Being the first system engineer in St Louis, my eyes lit up when my manager told me he had ordered an 16-core machine for my office--just for me!
I was hired as a video expert. The company re-org'ed and my new boss decided he needed a Fortran expert so that was the end of my job with SGI.