I currently work on disaster recovery and used to do a lot of work on DBMS replication internals. Both fields have problems requiring compact, efficient solutions that work at scale. What I like about Knuth is that he treats algorithms in depth including trade-offs, which are often quite subtle.

For example, you might not think there's much to sequential search but after reading Knuth Vol 3, Section 6.1 it's clear that view is the mark of a greenhorn. ;)