Hi Ron:
I see you want to continue this.
To answer your questions, I've done all of that and much more. And because of that, when I do lead a team, they succeed in product delivery, every time. Which makes it very hard to retire, because its a small industry (people wise) and success breeds popularity.
I tried retirement in 2013. It didn't take - too many organizations I'd built relationships showing up at the door and calling in favors. So I went back for some light consulting, training a cadre of new technologists in subsystems engineering, radiation effects, DSP architectures for signal processing and feedback control loops, etc. Then, two years later, several demands for new systems emerged, and here I was sitting in the middle of a new team of talent ready to go. Two and a half years after that, three different prototype systems designed, delivered, and installed with customers very pleased with the results, awards and monetary incentives distributed to my teams and these teams ready to tackle new systems on their own. And this happened right through the worst of a pandemic. Not too shabby But also exhausting.
Pays well, too. And so did the benefits from earlier worldwide patents that established product lines that are now built into many 3rd parties equipment. And yes, this work included cost and schedule - I always worked directly with customers and THEIR customers at every level and this is what they required. And I did it MY way, with requirements and feasibility simulations and advanced POC brass-boards done up front, before production design work began. But I also spent many hours, every day, in labs and design centers working through issues has they came up and anticipating others before they did - the benefit of doing almost every job myself at one time or another, in a supporting or lead role. 40 years is a long time and I put this time to use. Yep, some of my exact knowledge of the lastest rev. of a Synopsys, Labview, etc. tool is out of date. But I know how it works and what it can do. The people who are now much more current and better than be do that work. With my support. It's called "delegation" and "leadership".
You should appreciate THIS metric. All of the systems I helped develop or lead the development of contained ASICs or FPGAs or CPUs or a mix of the above. The industry average for first pass ASIC success is about 50%. My teams averaged 98%, which means we did a LOT of ASICs and they were done well. 1st article delivery time for DSP processors ranged from 2-4 years, generally with massive late penalties. It required good engineering to hit these marks, and knowing what had to happen in what order to avoid many expensive re-dos later on.
In reality, this is very modest success compared to many engineers/entrepreneurs I've met and worked with (like Harold Rosen, Tom Hudspeth and many others), but it did allow me to ensure the security of my family for the foreseeable future, retiree early and live well, though I didn't count on the magnitude of demand following me out the door. And it lead to similar success for many others as well, which I also find satisfaction in.
BTW, I ran across quite a few "gadflys" in building/leading teams. Seemingly intelligent people who ultimately contributed nothing but criticism to others, blew a lot of smoke to no benefit, pretended knowledge well beyond their capability and soon found themselves on the road to a better place. Their main features were: 1. the need for constant attention, and 2. Obsession with some trivial or imaginary point of design they could never get past. Easy to spot after a while. Sound familiar?
Conversely, I was blessed to find and work with non-degreed and degreed engineers who were simply brilliant, and special needs persons (ex-Asperger's) who performed miracles reducing the complexity of nearly intractable control systems. If they had the skills and were better than me I pushed them up as high as I could, knowing we and the project would all benefit in the end.
One memorable year, after working straight through the holidays and Christmas, I was very happy to hand out many millions of dollars of bonus checks to team members myself, sitting down with each one, telling war stories and thanking them for their hard work. The bonuses were flowed directly down from a delighted customer, were NOT contractually required and are the best vote of a contract well executed that I can think of. Then it happened again. And again.
So, yes, I do lead teams, do cost and schedule, architecture, analysis and even sit with engineers and technicians as the equipment is going through temperature cycling, writing requirements and procedures, training via 1-on-1 sessions and by example and jumping in wherever I can help. Including bringing in coffee, lunch and whatever else the team needs, personally. I expect a LOT. And I give a LOT. That's what leadership is all about.
All of this consistently required very, very long work weeks and personal sacrifice. Which is why I'm TRYING to retire a 2nd time and doing my best to politely deflect the numerous phone calls that still come in every week. 2020 was a brutal year in every respect. I'm "Pooped". And STILL have open contracts, if I wish to go back, again. (XYL says "NO!")
So. Any other questions or bets? Because this is now WAY off topic and is turning into a personal showcase.
Brian - K6BRN