TECHNOMALIST
Mark Wilson did not plan a career in computing. In May 1980, aged 16, he was waiting to join the Royal Navy and needed a temporary job. A youth training scheme placement took him to the GKN Screw and Fasteners factory in Smethwick, near Birmingham. The site had deep industrial roots: during the First World War it produced more than half the UK’s screws, and in the Second World War it contributed to the national manufacturing effort. Wilson’s interviewer was Brian Wilson; the two shared a surname and got on well. A few days later he learned he had the placement.
As part of the scheme, Wilson spent time in different departments. One day he walked into the computer room and encountered a mainframe for the first time. He had done some computer studies at school, but this was different—quiet, important, and driving the world behind the scenes. Wilson writes that virtually no one seemed to know this. The experience felt like entering a hidden world. After four months on the scheme, an opportunity arose to join GKN as a trainee operator, and he took it, abandoning his naval plans. Within three years he had become the youngest senior operator at the site. Management considered him for shift leader, but his spiky hair and leather jacket may have counted against him; he says he does not blame them.
By 1986, Wilson had moved into contracting, working in some of the country’s largest datacentres. He describes each customer and installation as unique, with systems that evolved in their own ways. That variety kept him engaged. Friends and family struggled to understand his work, especially as desktop computers became popular. Wilson notes that whenever people withdrew cash, booked flights, paid by credit card or did the weekly shop, a mainframe was often involved—yet the platform remained hidden in plain sight.
In 1991, technology columnist Stewart Alsop predicted the last mainframe would be unplugged on 15 March 1996. Wilson disagreed with that conclusion and watched many similar predictions fail. He recalls a manager advising him to learn something else because mainframes would not last. Wilson says technology changes, and the mainframe changed too. Thirty years later, the industry discusses mainframe modernisation, cloud services, APIs and AI. For Wilson, the platform survived because it adapted, not because it resisted change.
Wilson attributes his longevity not only to technology but also to people. He says the mainframe community has been remarkably generous with time and knowledge, helping each other solve problems. He compares his work to his other passion, motorbikes: both require an engineering mindset—taking complex systems apart, diagnosing faults, and reassembling them. He writes that he has spent decades trying to understand how complicated systems fit together, whether pistons and carburettors or operating systems and security software.
Reflecting on his career, Wilson calls himself an accidental tourist. He never planned to stay in mainframes, but he never felt stuck because the technology kept changing and he kept learning. He says he has never done a day’s work in his life; instead, he has spent 46 years being curious. Mark Wilson is technical director at Vertali.
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