It refers to Plutarch's Life of Themistocles: In the title text is a similar joke placed at the top of the chain of command, this time in Ancient Greece. Themistocles, mentioned at the title text, was an Ancient Greek politician. Many managers think of themselves as being 'above' engineers and have trouble coming to grips with this concept.

Not only that, but the systems administrator is usually responsible for controlling who has access to the information - making them the most powerful person in the company (as far as the IT infrastructure is concerned). In a major corporation commercially sensitive information is generally hidden from employees at lower levels but available to management, but the systems administrator (who usually sits low on the hierarchy and doesn't manage any other employees) can access not only the sensitive information but the raw data that it's calculated from. This paradoxical situation applies in many other fields.

This button shouldn't be pressed for what is happening currently. launching all strategic nuclear capabilities.

The 'Red Button' is a simplification denoting procedures for the worst-case scenario, i.e. The President of the United States is at the top of the US Nuclear Chain of Command, but the engineer is de facto above him because the engineer is in charge of configuring how the button works, and thus could have installed an override so that they could block the President's use of the button and/or use it themself. Title text: Themistocles said his infant son ruled all Greece - 'Athens rules all Greece I control Athens my wife controls me and my infant son controls her.' Thus, nowadays the world is controlled by whoever buys advertising time on Dora the Explorer.

Nuclear red button gif