this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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Good catch, wonder why they're so far away.
I've worked on SCADA systems. The most the keyboard was used for was logging in then then putting something heavy on it stop the computer going to sleep. System was entirely controlled by the mouse and head office didn't consider that 1 person might be monitoring 4-6 computers on their own for an 8 hour shift and enforced a 5 minute idle lockout on all of them.
To avoid accidentally fucking something up by bumping a key? Maybe they only pull them forward when they have to change something.
It's probably also highly automated and the staff's job is just to watch for irregularities and alert the necessary teams.
I mean, I'm all for giving jobs to humans and all, but isn't monitoring a bunch of numbers and sending an alert when they go wrong one of the few things computers are actually objectively better at than humans are?
Edit: Holy crap people. I understand that they're probably not there for that purpose. That was the entire point I was trying to make. You don't ALL need to point out the obvious to me.
It’s because of something actually does go wrong, it might take all of them to deal with the issue and the fallout
I would assume that these people are there mainly because they know what to do if something goes wrong, instead of sitting there for easily automatable tasks.
I also have to assume they probably do rotations, like watch/guard duty in the military, of control room and more active work, or it would get suuuuper boring real fast. Plus their skills would get rusty if nothing ever happened.
But maybe I’m overly optimistic.
Watching the same screen show the same shit all day long would be boring as hell.
Aside from redundancy being an important safety thing, I'd guess they also have a pretty good idea what to do if something goes wrong.
I think the computers do send the alert, via the screen to those people who then need to act on it.