Interesting. I also worked for a big insurance company for 9 years. Lots of Cobol, But I started working on the IBM main frames and doing a lot of an assembler language programming. When something would go wrong in the computer room they would call me in. I’d sit down at the main console and figure out what program was failing, Had to read the hexadecimal lights. That was before they had monitors that could show what was happening just one console to manage the punch card programs being run., You’ve seen those panels with all the lights on them, That’s when I used to work on the IBM $6M 360s and 370s. I then worked with at a company in the early 80s where they gave me a 4800 modem and a 32 line terminal and I could reboot the test a $6 million server from home, testing operating system changes. They got a program called visicalc on the main frame And I created spreadsheets to work out my taxes. I even hired one of the IBM support guys from the insurance company to work for me on mainframes at the other company. My boss at that company was an MIT graduate. When they moved him up, they gave me his job, I didn’t have a college degree at the time, just lots of real experience and great writing skills.

Here’s a picture of the masthead from a $6 million Computer I keep in my home office.