If you are interested in an IBM Model M I recommend the Unicomp UB4044A (http://www.pckeyboard.com/page/product/UB4044A). It's a IBM Model M with USB. I bought one over a decade ago (build date 4/20/2007).
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Hal Lasko (The Pixel Painter). Hal started using Microsoft Paint when he got a computer on his 85th birthday until his death at 99 in 2014. He made some great looking art bit by bit.
This reminded me of a passage on pilot checklists from The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande:
> Commercial pilots have been using checklists for decades. Gawande traces this back to a fly-off at Wright Field, Ohio, in 1935, when the Army Air Force was choosing its new bomber. Boeing's entry, the B-17, would later be built by the thousands, but on that first flight it took off, stalled, crashed and burned. The new airplane was complicated, and the pilot, who was highly experienced, had forgotten a routine step.
>
> From http://old.seattletimes.com/html/books/2010737113_br08checkl...
I can’t help but think having such autonomy is tied to profitability. I’m sure there are plenty of examples where an employee at a profitable company doesn’t have autonomy. But how many have autonomy where there's not profitability?
This applies to any job: work where what you do is the core discipline. At a law firm, be a lawyer. At a medical practice, be a doctor. As a software engineer, work at a company where software is the product. Don’t write software at an insurance company and expect job satisfaction. At such companies software engineers are seen as replaceable.
Another option: work where what you do is largely represented by upper management. They make the decisions and if they worked in your discipline they will empathize with you, defend you, and promote you.
> In New York City’s subway system, for instance, the travelers who gain entrance by swiping their MetroCards over 5 million times each weekday do so with the assistance of IBM’s theoretically defunct software.