Once upon a time, I taught myself how to set up and manage a small VAX network. After about 2 years of that, I got a chance to go to a VAX Management class in Denver.
That was one the BEST classes I ever took. Every day, I was saying... "OH, THAT's WHY I have to do that!"
or..
"Oh no.. That's NOT how that works! "
:-)
VMS was sweet, but Ken Olsen could never give up priority operating systems. I remember at a block party around 1990 I had a neighbor who was in charge of “VMS Products” for DEC. He had 14 employees and was making about $250 million a year mailing out nine-track tapes with FORTRAN compilers on them. It’s hard to give up that kind of margin. People thought DEC had a lisence to print money, and for about a decade and a half, they did.