Software in measurement and measurement in software [Life after Graduation]

I had an unusual path into the measurement business. After graduate school, doing robotics in a computer science department, I was hired by Hewlett Packard Laboratories to improve their mechanical CAD systems software for planning robotic and human assembly operations and feeding back to the designer estimated manufacturing costs. As is common in industry, that project was promptly cancelled, and I was assigned to work in the laboratory next door, which focused on measurement.