In a space of about 10 days early this month, three of the best-known and longest-tenured technical lights stepped away from the HP 3000 community. While HP founder Bill Hewlett died of natural causes on January 11, Adager’s Fred White retired just a week earlier. At the same time, Robelle partner David Greer parted ways with founder Bob Green after a 21-year association.

Hewlett was mourned in a multimedia Web message from HP CEO Carly Fiorina, who called him “a great and gentle man.” The 87-year-old engineer founded the company in 1939 with Dave Packard, who died in 1996. Forbes Magazine listed him as No. 26 on its list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, with an estimated net worth of $9 billion. Hewlett’s place in the company’s heart is so secure that the firm maintains the office he worked in just as he left it, with 1960s furniture and a pile of change on the desk that grows with contributions from employees — kind of a corporate meditation shrine. When he left the company’s day-to-day affairs in 1987, he said that HP’s management style was “what I'm most proud of — the fact that we really created a way to work with employees, let them share in the profits and still keep control of it.”