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by dsr_ 1712 days ago
Somewhere in the late 1980s to early 1990s, business culture changed to expect everyone to be able to type and use a computer for that.

The last time I worked for a company where the upper management couldn't type, it was 1996. They all had computers, but the CEO had all email printed out and put in a physical in-tray on his desk; he would scribble comments in red ink or, if the reply was extensive, dictate into a tape recorder for his secretary to type back into an email.

1 comments

Back in the 80s it was pretty "obvious" that computers wouldn't be used by execs because none of them would type.

I remember in 1982 as a favor for a secretary I wrote a little script that printed out the CEO's email. Before that he would have her type it on letterhead; he would read it and dictate the response. Just being able to print it out in a way he would read (suppress most of the headers, put the date on the right hand edge, etc) saved her an enormous amount of time and effort.