When I was very young, my dad worked at a place called Wang Laboratories, as a technical writer. I'm not positive on the exact date, but I must have been around 2 or 3 years old, so 1984 or 85. My earliest memories are of my mom bringing my dad lunch and the three of us sitting in the car, in an empty corner of the huge parking lot. Wang was located in Lowell, in three buildings commonly known as "The Wang Towers" (now owned by Cross Point). In 1992 Wang filed for bankruptcy and the towers were foreclosed on. The towers that originally cost $60 million to build, sold for $525,000. Two of the houses I own are worth more than that! The original Wang owners would have bought the towers back at the foreclosure, but they didn't think it would foreclose at such a low price and they missed their chance. Anyway, a few years later Wang got back on its feet and by 1999 they $3.5 billion in annual revenues. They were then bought by Getronics N.V. of The Netherlands, a $1.5 billion network services company active only in certain parts of Europe. This allowed Getronics to expand into an international company.
OK, so big deal. What's so interesting? Well, I worked at Getronics for over a year doing 3rd shift Level 1 phone support for an international bank called Deutsche Bank. You can see a few pictures of my desk at Getronics in this post. What I realized while reading the Wikipedia page on Wang, is that although I didn't work in the Wang Towers, I basically worked at the same company as my dad; 18 years later at what used to be Wang!
I was also working there when you were born (and for about 6 months afterward). I then returned there on another contract a few years later, which is the time you are referring to.