I read the book when it first came out. In 1986 I took a job at a new company and Carl Alsing, who was the manager of the microkids (and had written every bit of microcode for machines that came before that) was in the office next to my cube. In fact, he was one of the people who interviewed me for the job.
So I reread the book and my esteem for Kidder's writing went up even more. In the parts of the book where he described Alsing's appearance and demeanor were spot on and captured essential things about Alsing without using a lot of words.
One of the things I recall is Kidder said something like, "Alsing is a tall man, but his mild demeanor and hunched posture presents a much less imposing figure." Sure enough, that is exactly the experience I had with Carl.
I think my only crossing of paths with someone from Data General was actually only a few years ago. A startup was building cutting-edge phototonic computing tech for AI, and one of the key people for the electronic hardware side was a graybeard from DG. Nice mild-mannered guy, and very capable and sensible. I recall a major tapeout working the first time.
(They also had an engineering executive who had been a computer engineer from a major CPU company. In one engineering reporting meeting, when a team mentioned they needed to do something with a particular facility of the off-the-shelf CPU, the executive volunteered that he could help with that, since he designed it. Everyone laughed.)
Hardware companies are a mixed blessing for us software people, but I wonder whether hardware engineers are more likely to keep it real (old-school high-powered engineer style) than software people?
I too had a crossing of paths with one of the micro kids. She was descibed in the book as the lone female engineer on the team. She is a very sharp and talented individual and was a pleasure to work with.