Air Cal got some of the earliest 737-300's. We were not very well trained in how it worked but got a 2 day course so since most of our ac were 200's we probably didn't fly the 300 for months so had to play catch up when we got assigned to one. They didn't have glass cockpit but had the FMC that we had never seen before. If we could have transitioned to the 300 it would have worked but we only had 7 so might fly one every two or three months.
Sometimes it was just easier to hand fly it than program a complex departure that would create major power changes multiple times to accomplish what we could do very gracefully using pilotage. The San Jose departure southbound to LAX was a good example. I got the airplane one day and was so frustrated with the way the automation would do it I hand flew half way to LAX because I would never fly the way the autopilot was going to do it. We know how to make a nice smooth departure planning crossing points etc. but the autopilot only knows how to technically make them with no thought to passenger comfort.
I always flew in a way that made everybody feel they were in their living room as a corporate pilot. I tried to carry it into airline flying.