>He's one of 4 remaining from the "blue days" (time with Digital); I think they'd be able to pull it off if they did go this route. They're all pretty awesome.From personal experience, I want to add some long-term expectations about commanding premium consulting rates -- especially as it relates to vendor-proprietary knowledge.
I used to work for an enterprise software firm and was on their "crisis firefighting team". I'd travel to customer sites at less than 24 hours notice and fix their worst problems. These were the problems that were escalated to the CEO.
When I left the company and struck out on my own as a freelance "subject matter expert", I was able to command $300k a year for a few years. My background and rate was easy to sell: I was trained directly by the people who wrote the software.
The thing is that I always knew I was living on borrowed time because that high income was based on my previous association of being in the "inner circle" of how the software works. I had to diversify my skills away from that software because with each year that passed by, I became more of an "outsider" just like everyone else.
To relate to your dad's situation ... yes he's very good at what he does, but some of that value may also be his inside feed of information from HP. After he's separated from HP, as each new generation of server & printer hardware is released, his "aura" of HP knowledge can become outdated and less relevant value for customers. In other words, he needs to charge whatever premium rate he can, save as much as he can, all with an eye towards diversifying his income. Diversity could mean new tech skills such as learning AWS architecture or buying real estate to get income from rental properties.