I'll have to wear a suit

[DaveB]

On Friday I'll be visiting out Group H.O., just a couple of kays down the road, for a posh award ceremony to collect my 25 year long-service award.

In those 25 years I've had just six bosses and all of them were/are really good. I reckon that I've only had about 12 working days in that time that I would describe as difficult and, most important of all, I have never been ordered/expected/directed to do anything illegal or illicit or misrepresentative in carrying out my duties (nowadays I am Commercial Manager at our engineering firm). If I could rewrite any of it, I wouldn't change much at all.

 

[Rocky]

Good for you
Congrats on a steady career.

 

[DaveM]

Good for you Dave and keep up the great work.

 

[Tassie Tiger]

Well done Dave.
You are indeed lucky to have had good bosses.
I have now retired after 30 odd years in the same Company.
The last five years were most unpleasant as I had an A Hole for a boss in that time.
The previous guys had been wonderful but in the end I was pleased to take my gold watch & finish up.

 

[DaveB]

I think I realise how fortunate I've been. We belong to a Group that has very high expectations of its companies, 24 separate companies in the TMT (Telecommunications, Multi-Media & Information Technology) sector. Consequently anybody sub-standard who ends up in a management position doesn't last long. Group reporting and Group policing of its companies are very formal & strict. It's a methodology that works well IMO. The Group executives are pretty tough on us, but at the end of the day we're all on the same side and when we perform to target and produce the expected profits everybody's happy. We wouldn't still be here if we hadn't performed to target for 23 of those 25 years. I've known twenty of my current work colleagues for more than 20 years.

 

[Gromit]

Congrats Dave. Get the glad-rags out and enjoy of moment of the recognition you clearly deserve.

 

[CarlS]

Congratulations, Dave, on the length of service and in working for a good company. Your length of service says volumes about your work ethic and talent.

 

[DaveB]

I think there's another aspect to it.

In 1983 I started working for the Swiss company Brown Boveri (now part of the ABB Group) and was with them for four years and since then I worked for Alcatel, the French Telecomms market leader and for my present local company who are the South African distributors for Motorola two-way products and systems and, much more recently, also in a partnership with Huawei Technologies, the Chinese telecoms giants.

So the principals I've worked with and represented over the past 30 years have been BBC (Brown Boveri Corporation), Alcatel, Motorola and Huawei- all global leaders in their market segments and each has first rate engineering & products and very strict business ethics. If you put this in motor car terms, it would be like working for Mercedes, BMW, Range Rover & Bentley- no Daihatsus, Ladas or Ssangyongs in sight.

 

[Lucky-Les]

Well done Dave - just in case you need help:-

 

[DaveB]

Practical help- much appreciated.

 

[avion]

Dave can you get good deals on Huawei lte modems?

Seriously though, that's a good innings mate . Congrats and next breakfast is on you. Bwahahahaha

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk

 

[DaveM]

I have been working in the telecommunications business for 36 years now and the technology still blows my mind. I suppose this is why I enjoy it this much as it is forever pushing what were the previous boundaries

 

[DaveB]

I started off in the large high voltage electric motor industry. There hasn't been a meaningful technical development in that industry in the past forty years since the introduction of Class F insulation and the vacuum impregnation process. When you have a hand-built product that operates at 97% efficiency and has a design life of + 15 years, it's not hard to see why there's been no technical development.

But I made the transition into electronics in the late Eighties and thank goodness I did, because that is where all the technical development has been.

 

[hemibee]

Congrats Dave.