[Gllug] where do older sys admins end up?

[Andrew Back]

On (10:21 30/12/10), Rich Walker wrote:
> David Damerell <damerell at chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> 
> > On Wednesday, 29 Dec 2010, john maclean wrote:
> > >Where do older systems administrators end up? I don't know that many
> > >programmers in their 50/60 and it suddenly dawned on me that I don't
> > >know any sys admins in that age range.
> > 
> > I do, but partly it's just that the field has expanded. Someone
> > retiring from sysadmin at 65 today might have started as a
> > pimply-faced youth of 20 in 1965. But how many sysadmin jobs were
> > there in 1965?
> 
> I was talking to an ESA chap at Harwell the other day. They have a huge
> database of climate measurements going back many, many satellites (and
> data formats), and they are looking for someone to do data warehousing,
> visualisation work, integration and so forth. Knowing ESA, that's
> probably including data formats from 1965 that no-one else
> understands...

This is a worryingly common problem. If I were them I'd speak with the
Computer Conservation Society [1] and perhaps also ping the Classic
Computing Mailing List [2].

Via the CCS I've heard a number of amazing talks on early developments in
British computing, e.g. the, sadly, recently departed Sir Maurice Wilkes
talk casually about coming up with the idea for subroutines. Their
membership boasts a number of British computing pioneers. Worth getting to
one of their lectures at the Science Museum if you ever get a chance.

Oh, and of course there's already a link between TNMoC and Harwell, as the
TNMoC/CCS are restoring the Harwell Dekatron Computer.

ClassicCmp may be a better place to start where US computers and systems are
concerned. 

Then for documentation The National Museum of Computing has a large archive
that includes a wall of microfiche documentation for everything ICL ever
made (not sure if this covers products from the companies that were merged
into ICL). And you have bitsavers.org which provides a general archive for
software and documentation.

Getting back on topic: the old programmers/sys admins seem to now lecture or 
have retired and many can be seen in attendance at CCS meetings. Reminiscing
about things such as how they referred to the first CRT based terminal I/O
as a "glass teletype", since nobody had yet come up with the term VDU. 

Cheers,

Andrew

[1] http://www.computerconservationsociety.org/

[2] http://www.classiccmp.org/

-- 
Andrew Back
mailto:andrew at osmosoft.com
http://carrierdetect.com
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