As an old, grizzled sysadmin who still deals with physical infrastructure and legacy systems, I can totally relate to this. I also like to think that all of O'Brien's hacks that save the day in DS9 were made possible by Ro Laren showing him the way.
I can't help but remind you that O'Brien was the one expecting redundant backups in Cardassian systems.
O'Brien was scrappy, but Rom was scrappier. He learned from lack of resources while integrating Ferengi systems with Cardassian systems.
O'Brien had resources to back him up. He may have caused a language epidemic, but Rom never caused a panic unless he was instructed to. And he did that without question
His janky experience keeping Quarks (barely) functioning lent itself well to switching careers. I'm sure he showed O'Brien a few workarounds dealing with Cardi tech.
My favorite kind of character. Competent, unconcerned with military bravado or intellectual superiority, and always knows what amount of fuckery he can get away with. It's why I liked Sgt Siler and Zelenka in Stargate.