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A role within IT, Computer operators oversee the running of computer systems, ensuring that the machine are running and physically secured. The traditional role of a computer operator was to work within mainframes which required a great detail of management day-to-day. The employment of operators has greatly decreased due to modern technology making the more traditional roles obsolete. Most of the duties that operations staff undertake is taught on-the-job as the variety of roles is unique to the system they help manage.

Logging events is also amongst the operators role, listing each backup that is run or things such as machine malfunctions. Operators assist Systems administrator and programmers in testing and debugging of new systems and programs prior to them becoming production environments.

As modern day computing has lead to a greater deal of personal computers, the role of the operator operator has changed to include these within their duties. Similar roles such as managing the backup systems, cycling tapes or other media, filling and maintaining printers, indeed anything that is monotonous or in need of legwork for the system or network administrators is handled by the operation staff.

The shifting and changing of duties for the operators has resulted due to the speed of change from older mainframe systems to newer self-managing systems but overall the operator fills in as a lower level system administrator.

A humorous look into the life of an operator was created by Simon Travaglia known as BOFH.

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