It's difficult to imagine that our new COO left his great job (assuming he left of his own volition), and joined POET as second in command without one heck of a good idea who the commander in chief would be. After all, there's always a chance that the new CEO might not care for our COO, and then what?

So, to me, it makes sense that the CEO is pre-ordained. And if the CEO is waiting for the ring oscillator and the VSCEL to be proclaimed done and functioning as expected, then I gotta think our COO was pretty darn sure whatever part of the fix that remained, was a matter of when rather than if.