Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

Wait, how did remote first work in the 60s? Did they post in punchcards? TTYs weren't really much of a thing at that stage, were they?

Coding forms, accumulated until someone had access to a keypunch.

Turnaround time could be days, which encouraged being very scrupulous when coding.

Write the program down on paper, then type it in or punch cards.

Since I'm old, I remember writing FORTRAN -- it was all caps back then -- programs in my dorm room and then going down to the computer "room" and accessing the Dartmouth Time Sharing System to type it in and run it.

I don't know what methodology Shirley's company used. But yes, Teletype machines were very common in the mid-1960s.

For example, Tymshare, where I worked for several years, was founded in 1964. Their customers used Teletype machines at their own locations, dialing into a Tymshare mainframe and paying by the hour.

There were a number of similar timesharing companies in that era. Call Computer and Dial Data come to mind, along with Transdata where I worked in Phoenix before moving to the Bay Area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymshare

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleprinter

I had an office at Tymshare's Cupertino headquarters, and a Teletype at home to work remotely.

This proved handy one year when the company was doing some final acceptance tests on the Xerox Data Systems (XDS) Sigma 7. The problem was that all of us preferred the competing DEC PDP-10. So the company really wanted those tests to fail.

My manager called me into his office one day and said, "This conversation is strictly between you and me. You are our best Sigma 7 expert [I'd worked on the similar Sigma 5 at Transdata] and even you like the PDP-10 more. But at this point the only way we can get out of the Xerox deal is if the acceptance tests fail."

I took the hint, and the acceptance tests mysteriously started going haywire!

Eventually I failed to cover my tracks well enough, and Xerox spotted my username in a core dump.

Back to my manager's office. "Xerox figured out what you were doing, and we had to tell them we would fire you. So, you're fired. But you still have your Teletype at home? And you have plenty of other work to do on the PDP-10, right? Can you work from home unofficially and keep track of your hours? Just stay away from the Sigma 7. After this all blows over, we will re-hire you and pay you that back pay."

So I did, and they did!

I guess everything was "remote". My dad had to mail his code (punch cards) from (IIT) Madras to (IISc) Bangalore. He did say it was a pain though.

* IISc - Indian Institute of Science

* Madras, now Chennai was probably an overnight drive in the late 60s.

I tried finding a source on the work environment at the time. But nothing describing the work setup.

Might be hidden in some biography though.

Speculation: maybe they mailed in their punch cards to main office.

Or called it in over the phone.

Back when the word of your boss or manager actually meant something.

Today, have to get that in writing otherwise risk getting hung out to dry in court or worse.

I found something in German which has a little bit in it, but sadly interviewers where not tech managers and didn't ask the right questions in several interviews I've read.

https://www.manager-magazin.de/hbm/eine-firma-ohne-bueros-a-...

No, you just need a boss you can trust. You need to not be a clock puncher of an employee. You need to be present (in an office) for these conversations to happen.

This sort of thing still goes on all the time. If your not part of it your either in "Giant Corp" or the wrong company, or you have the wrong boss, or you are the wrong person.

What a great story! Hats off to your manager.

Im calling BS. Plenty of managers are in over their head. Plenty of managers are focused on their next career move. Plenty of managers will only play lip service to "culture" or worse "family" and after one slack DM from management completely fold over.

Many managers see a slightly more difficult hiring environment (for themselves) and completely fold to secure their own position.

EDIT: I've met many great managers, or at least individuals who seem great from the outside when the chips aren't on the table. But from the trenches I feel a real lack of leadership in Tech management in the current era.

I just looked up Wikipedia on teleprinters and had no idea they went back as far as 1887. My school had an ASR 33 Teletype linked to a PDP-10 in the 1970s which seemed kind of antique even then, although it worked ok.

There's a youtube interview with Shirley showing someone remote working with some sort of computer like device. A terminal maybe? https://youtu.be/d5nzJ1rQBew?t=228

We had a single apple II at our school. It was responsible for me failing most of my classes and getting into programming.

Since there was only a single machine, mostly we had to submit our code on cards. Not quite punch cards with chads but an optical equivalent when you marked the hole with a sharpie.

I remember our group of students would chip in on flowers and chocolates for the girl who was punching the cards. Every mistake meant manually cutting new holes and mask taping the extra holes to arrive at the correct character.

I’ve had (and honored) plenty of those types of conversations with subordinates I’ve never met in person in any of a number of global offices. Physical presence isn’t a prerequisite for being a good boss or worker.

Even further than that. In 1978, we used a TI Silent 700 terminal connected to a PDP-11 so we could learn BASIC.

This is true.

It is much harder to get to that level of trust when you cant break bread, when you cant read all the body language. In person does make some things easier... One week a month of hot desking can do a lot for teams.

I appreciate your experience and perspective, but it is simply not mine. If anything, I've gotten the impression that it's somewhat easier for the subordinate having a level of "abstraction" in the form of email/Teams/Zoom/etc., but of course that requires a commitment on my part as a leader to adjust my approach to that environment (and, given it's the environment I've spent the most time in as a leader and as a subordinate, that's easy).

I don't mean this as criticism of anyone, but I feel like this whole multiyear discussion has been confounding for anyone working on any kind of multi-office team because it's such a non-issue in our experience. It has similarly been fascinating to watch the teams in my company that are NOT multioffice struggle with a distributed workforce. People aren't usually good at what they don't know, but, in my experience, a distributed workforce is absolutely something a company can accommodate with the right leaders and leadership.