I used to work with Dave Sherman, who was the hardware lead on Missile Command to Dave Theurer's software lead. He joined Atari right out of Berkeley during At

I used to work with Dave Sherman, who was the hardware lead on Missile Command to Dave Theurer's software lead. He joined Atari right out of Berkeley during Atari's heyday, and he had a lot of stories about the out of control corporate culture. I'm sure this happened after Atari was bought, but Dave said the purchasing agents were driving around expensive cars, cars that he as an engineer couldn't afford, the implication that there were obvious kickbacks going on. Programmers were sometimes given coke by their supervisor during crunch time to increase work. Some of the technical talent hired agents to negotiate with Atari -- the thinking being they are in the entertainment business, just like Hollywood.