Part of the plot background is about unionization. And you don't need to be blue collar. When I was working tech support, I got in, signed in and that's when

Part of the plot background is about unionization. And you don't need to be blue collar. When I was working tech support, I got in, signed in and that's when I started. At the end of the day, I signed out and that was the end. I worked the "east" shift at SGI in '98. East covered the phones from 5am to 9am with each person taking 2h in that range (mine was 7am to 9am) and then we did callbacks from 9am to 1pm or so (depending on when you started). Central picked up the new calls at 9am and covered the new calls from 9am to 1pm and then west picked up live calls from 1pm to 5pm - I'm not sure how the different teams did their coverage. Anyways, the thing was at 3pm when I signed out I was done done. I didn't have niggling problems of tech support haunting my mind (compare to being a SDE) or trying to get ahead of the curve of technologies that management will ask about. And the "not worrying about those things" - that was my most productive personal programming time that I've ever had. I have gotten better over the decades at coding - both in the code itself and the use of larger systems... but in terms of quantity and satisfaction of things done, that was the best time.