24 years

After my PhD studies I started my job only 3 days before the first successful autonomous landing of a spacecraft on another planet had occurred (Mars Lander’s touchdown was July 4th 1997). The autonomous landing was controlled by an RS/6000 on board computer manufactured by a company called IBM. As no interaction with control center on Earth was possible during the critical Martian atmospheric descent it was in fact the first successful robotic landing on another planet. In the same year Deep Blue computer (again an IBM RS/6000 RISK machine) won the first chess tournament of 6 games against grandmaster Garri Kasparow. For me as natural scientist it was amazing to be part of a company which supported such kind of projects.
Short time later thousands of projects were initiated to prepare computer systems worldwide for the upcoming year 2000, just to be followed by the EURO implementation projects, the European wide migration from local currencies to the new European currency.
What followed then was the hype of “e-Business”, the expansion of the young Internet in the area of business. Many of the concepts and protocols had been originally invented for military use and short time later adopted and enhanced by scientists. Even during my time at the university I was an early adopter, e.g. I wrote my first e-mails end of the 80s and established my first homepage already in the mid 90s (parts of it can still be found in the Internet Archive ;-) Who will find young Greybeard here?). But I am digressing.

The Internet enabled international real time interaction and collaboration and ultimately laid the foundation of worldwide economic growth by globalization. The negative side effect was the so called "DotCom" bubble, the rise and fall of many companies with high aspirations and unclear commercial foundation. I was happy to observe all this from a safe harbour as employee of a giant in computer industry.
Almost a decade later 2010 a computer called “Watson” won a famous Jeopardy competition against humans, another milestone in the development of intelligent machines, again marked by the company I was working with.
In 2011 my company celebrated its 100 year anniversary and I am still glad and honored I was part of it and I’ve been able to contribute my 50 cents to the success of so many projects. Though none of my projects were as famous as the ones I mentioned above, I still think the project teams I was part of made a difference and changed the world to the better.

During the last almost 24 years I’ve met thousands of people around the globe, colleagues, team members, clients and competitors. Some of them I can even call friends. I already have written some of my memories in this blog and I still plan to continue.
Now it’s time for me to say “goodbye” to this great company. I will carry many good memories, both of successes celebrated with big parties but also of little moments of happiness together with team members and good friends. So I hope it will not mean a "goodbye" to the people, maybe a "farewell", hopefully a "see you soon!"
In the future I plan to continue teaching people and mentor young professionals. I will try to convey to the next generation my experiences and also the team spirit I’ve experienced during the last almost 24 years in my company.

Thank you all who had accompanied me on my path, hope we will continue to stay in contact for some more time until we will meet again. If you are interested in reading more of my memories and what happens in my life, you're invited to follow my blog or my Instagram account greybeard.insta.