> Fifty years ago, what is a tech company was an easy question to answer: IBM was the tech company, and everybody else was IBM’s customers. That may be a slight exaggeration, but not by much: IBM built the hardware (at that time the System/360), wrote the software, including the operating system and applications, and provided services, including training, ongoing maintenance, and custom line-of-business software.

Fifty years ago, IBM was the computer company. There were other tech companies: Xerox, Tektronix, Texas Instruments, and Western Electric to name a few. Today "tech" largely means computing, especially applied to marketing and advertising automation, but back then it meant something quite different to be working "in technology".