Tales from the Engine Shed

Now you may be wondering why the blog of a SysAdmin is called ‘Tales from the Engine Shed’ - what has IT got to do with engine sheds? The answer is simple - I see many parallels between the job of a SysAdmin and that of an Engine Driver. I’m not talking about the guy who drives steam engines around the country (though that is a pretty cool job), but the person whose job it was to keep the massive stationary engines running in mills and factories around the land. The men who fueled the Industrial Revolution.

These engines were fundamental to the economy of the time, providing the power for the machines throughout huge buildings. If this engine stopped the business was not making money and there was hell to pay. The same can be said of todays IT systems - you will struggle to find a company which has not embraced IT at some level and come to rely upon it, and if that company is large enough to have a dedicated IT team (even if it is only one person) then you can be sure they will be charged with making damn sure there is no downtime. The engine driver will spend many hours oiling the wheels and ensuring everything carries on smoothly and most of this is unseen by the end users who don’t see productive output in the form of physical items and as such assume the engine driver must spend most of his time with his feet up and a mug of tea in his hand.

Of course there are going to be differences and I am not saying that all aspects of the jobs relate to each other. There are enough similarities though for it to be a valid comparison, and that is enough for me.