Some people unwind with meditation or nature walks. Others binge Below Deck and have startling epiphanies like: Wow, being an IT leader is basically the same as running a yacht galley under extreme pressure while trapped in a floating luxury prison with zero sunlight.
It turns out, IT and yacht chefs have more in common than you'd think. Let’s break it down:
1. If We’re Doing Our Jobs Right, You Barely Know We Exist
Chefs and IT teams thrive behind the scenes—until something goes wrong. One missed provisioning step or DNS misconfiguration and suddenly it’s a five-alarm fire. Much like serving a raw scallop, the tiniest tech issue can lead to dramatic fallout.
When everything goes smoothly, it’s quiet. Almost too quiet. That’s how you know we’re crushing it.
2. We Thrive on Chaos (But Hide the Panic Well)
Every chef on Below Deck is one delayed provisioning away from a meltdown. IT leaders? Same energy. We're juggling critical updates, security patches, and three Slack pings about a “weird thing” someone saw in SharePoint.
Underneath our calm exteriors? A controlled storm of duct-taped integrations, undocumented shortcuts, and a prayer that nobody deletes the production database.
3. The Requests Are… Unhinged
Chefs are asked to whip up a gluten-free, dairy-free, paleo-friendly croquembouche at 2 AM. We get:
“Can you just make all our systems talk to each other and send me a dashboard that updates live, but also let’s automate all approvals and tie it into our legacy access database from 2011?”
Sure. Let me just grab my wand and robe.
4. We Never See Daylight
The yacht chefs are in a windowless galley. We're in a server room lit only by the warm glow of dual monitors and unanswered Teams messages.
Sunlight? Social interaction? Nice concepts. Maybe next quarter.
5. Everyone Blames Us When the Wifi Drops
It doesn’t matter who caused it or what the root cause analysis says. If the internet goes down, or a file mysteriously vanishes, IT gets the Below Deck chef treatment:
“What do you mean we can’t access the cloud? This is a DISASTER!”
We smile, reboot a router, and internally scream.
6. But When It Matters Most, We Deliver
Just like the chef who pulls off a flawless seven-course dinner for the guests' vow renewal, we roll out secure MFA across the org, migrate entire platforms, or design an AI roadmap overnight.
Because in both worlds, failure isn’t an option.
Moral of the Story?
Your IT leadership deserves more respect—and maybe a reality show deal. Whether below deck or behind the firewall, there’s strategy, creativity, and nonstop crisis mitigation happening under the surface.
At FireOak Strategies, we are that galley: mission-aligned, unflappable, and ready to serve up practical tech strategy with a side of operational brilliance. Just don’t ask us for a last-minute vegan croquembouche. Unless you really need it.
