A good run

Self-flagellation is a fine hobby, but at some point it becomes trite. Time for an impartial appraisal of the past eight years.

The tech you introduced will be modified, which is as you always wanted. You've always been the kind of leader who wouldn't put up with project launches delayed repeatedly, as the last ten percent towards perfection was chased. If it's safe, if it works reasonably well, get it out on the factory floor now. It ain't saving money inside a filing cabinet. So yeah, the tech was always to be modified.

The tech you did, with maybe a few exceptions, it's there to stay for the forseeable future. Partly because all the little things support the big things. Partly because it was all based on rock solid biz principles. And partly because it was well done.

Those gadgets of yours, some of them are downright novel. But they're robust too, and that's more important. The most fragile of your tech is more reliable than that wire pay-off, right? You topped it off with the one person machine.

You stayed too long, just to see that one person machine run. But the baby ran, didn't she? And it was sweet.

That's the last marquee innovation you had for those folks, wasn't it? It'd have been nothing but tweaks after that really. It was time for you to go anyway.

The tech is pretty good Dave. You've nothing left to prove really. You're a smart engineer. Iconoclastic, unorthodox, but a solid engineer.

If you never hold a calculator in your hand again, what you've already done sums up an amazing body of work. The tech is pretty good Dave.