What Was Corporate Life Like in 90s America?

Getting a tech job was much different back then. I fell into it almost straight out of high school, and worked for a large brokerage for a while, and then for an auto manufacturer. At the brokerage, I had to wear a shirt and tie every day, even though my job was mostly fixing computers that the brokers would kick, spill coffee on, and generally find new and interesting ways to abuse. I don't think I worked with any women who weren't secretaries, assistants, or low-ranking HR people. Executive offices were kind of gross, because you could see the sheen of tar and smoke in the ceiling tiles from their cigars, even though smoking inside had been banned for people who didn't have their own offices. Lots of people around who had done well in the '80s and before who were getting nervous about the writing on the wall. Which is to say: they were becoming less necessary. People with appreciable amounts of money weren't looking at the newspaper to see how things closed the day before. They were getting their information almost in real time. And they didn't really *need* to have a broker to call for simple buy / sell transactions. The company wasn't quite on board with the whole online trading thing. Some thought it was a fad. Others thought it would never replace the personal touch of talking to someone. Broadly, people who hadn't grown up with computers didn't see it reaching critical mass. Ironically, the company pioneered discount brokerages that we're used to today. But by the end of the '90s, they were gone. The auto company was fun, in its own dysfunctional way. We were probably a frontrunner at the time, as far as building out web-based stuff like car builders, scheduling maintenance, and so on. When I saw Office Space, it seemed almost like a documentary (except for the skimming money part). Especially the part where he dismantles his cubicle to see outside. I had done the same (albeit, far less dramatically) to my cubicle. I received a talking-to about making modifications to workspaces without having unionized workers performing the labor. They put it back the way it was and denied my formal work order. Middle managers would get into all sorts of pissing matches with each other, mostly accomplishing slowing work down and jockeying for slightly higher positions. I inadvertently caused a manager to get demoted for naming him as the reason a project I was working on hadn't progressed. It was true, though. And that led to getting a reputation for being "in" with senior management, which brought this strange dynamic of hostility and fear with some co-workers. Hostility if I needed something from them, fear that they'd be blamed for not delivering it. Not so many women there, either. We had an engineer who had transitioned while I was there, and there was a lot of hand wringing over bathroom use. Mostly in the context of "should we do anything?". I'm pretty sure the managers sought input from the company's LGBT Alliance group, because there was a hush-hush "So-and-so can use whatever bathroom they want. Don't say anything." across just about everyone, kind of like we were planning a surprise party for the person in question. Anyway. The Dotcom era was much more fun.