Boulton's engagement of Murdock was amply justified by the result.

Beginning as an ordinary mechanic, he applied himself diligently and conscientiously to his work, and gradually became trusted.

More responsible duties were confided to him, and he strove to perform them to the best of his power.

His industry, skilfulness, and steady sobriety, soon marked him for promotion, and he rose from grade to grade until he became Boulton and Watt's most trusted co-worker and adviser in all their mechanical undertakings of importance.
Watt himself had little confidence in Scotchmen as mechanics.

He told Sir Waiter Scott that though many of them sought employment at his works, he could never get any of them to become first-rate workmen.
They might be valuable as clerks and book-keepers, but they had an insuperable aversion to toiling long at any point of mechanism, so as to earn the highest wages paid to the workmen.[4] The reason no doubt was, that the working-people of Scotland were then only in course of education as practical mechanics; and now that they have had a century's discipline of work and technical training, the result is altogether different, as the engine-shops and shipbuilding-yards of the Clyde abundantly prove.