Ticketmaster in Phoenix, AZ - early times - here's a little anecdote about the bizarre culture I saw there circa 1989-90. I applied there, having an EE degree already and I was called in for an interview. The initial interview consisted of what was more or less a battery of IQ tests. There must've been 30 of us initially. Soon only a couple of us were left after everybody else was dismissed. Apparently having passed this somewhat offensive process, they took more of my time and scheduled me for a second interview another day. I don't recall any names or faces, but there they offered me a job and mentioned some "genius" guy I'd be mentored by. Before I had the honor of meeting this guy we started talking money. The "pay?" $8/hour... Even 25 years ago that was less than half what a freshly graduated engineer could easily get anywhere else in a corporate job. That alone was enough for me to politely decline the offer, but the management attitude and culture was also repulsive. I wouldn't be surprised if they were exploiting this guy at the time and he may very well have been their "genius."

In the early to mid-90s I saw a lot of strange systems building exercises. Large companies building their own email systems from scratch. Creating their own custom Windows widgets. Building their own databases from scratch.

At the time IT was more of a white-glove environment. When the only people handling it were the tools makers themselves, a lot would get done by a couple smart people in some nook or cranny of the organization.

Of course this didn't last, as state of the art enterprise software eventually over-ran them, and the experts wound up joining software firms.

Maybe he meant operating systems for automated ticket kiosks.