About 30 years ago, I started work for a company named Intelledex. Intelledex was a venture capital startup that was a spinoff from HP. I did not know it at the time, but my entire career would be colored by friends I made at Intelledex. Today, one of those old colleagues, Frank E. flew down to Prescott from Portland to do some consulting work with my current employer, another startup with the entire startup culture. What was great that both of us have significantly greater skills than we had when we first worked together.
Frank is now retired but the work is interesting enough and we enjoy working together enough, that he has been willing to invest some time in an effort to help people with eye problems in developing countries. In reality, this would be fun to do even if we were not getting paid and Frank has the skills necessary to take this to a new level. We are also bringing in another friend, Dr. Mark S. (Particle Physicist) with whom we both worked at a third company that bought the machine vision part of Intelledex when it was about to fail. It has been great catching up and talking about what we have done over the years.
The lesson learned is that is a VERY good thing to stay in touch with friends you make in the early part of your career, partly because they are your friends, but also because they will grow in their career and you will be able to help each others as your careers advance. It is very gratifying to work with people with whom you can speak in shorthand because your professional paths have progressed in parallel.
Betty Blonde #89 – 11/18/2008
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