I had a co-op position at Nortel in the late 90s for three years. While I was in a sysadmin group maintaining 10,000 hp-ux and 10,000 sunos workstations (the servers were auspex’s in the basement in rooms with a glass wall along the hallway) other friends were working in labs full of optical spectrum analyzers and cutting edge networking gear under development. There was an old room called an aneroic (sp?) chamber or something that had giant fiberglass spikes coming out of the walls and ceiling to absorb all sound in order to test the quality of phones. The one lightbulb hanging from the ceiling by the cord sounded like a swarm of bees. If you and friend faced back to back and shouted all you could hear was a library voice.
The sysadmin group taught me to program and many other life lessons that really helped set me up for success.
It is sad that so many lost their jobs, their pensions, and that other teens don’t have the same opportunities that i did.
It is hard to believe all those buildings in Ottawa now house government workers, I believe nortel had 140,000 employees when I was there.
I am glad to see some more attention being paid to exactly how it all collapsed so quickly.