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Moral of the story (and very applicable to individual HN members): don't be a cost center.
Moral of the story. Don't work at an IT department, work at software companies.
Moral of the story (and very applicable to individual HN members): don't be a cost center.
A lot of my problems with IT departments would be solved if the IT folks recognized that people with degrees in computer engineering and computer science tend to be able to take care of their own machines. Also, if they would quit telling me that I can't run VLC because it's not secure, when they have 3 year old versions of the Java Runtime Environment installed on everyone's PC.
But that's not true. I work as a developer or an admin depending on my mood and the money, I would not consider one able to do the job of the other even though I have done each with the same degree in hand.
The discipline of designing stable, maintainable systems & networks or writing code to requirements precisely and accessibly are distinct and often wildly different. Little of it comes with your degree.
That said, my current gig is quite good in that regard: "We support A, B and C. If you want to use X and Z you're on your own. Here are the guidelines on security and patching."
Now, there's some insanity with our network from time to time, but I deleted the big rant I wrote in favor of keeping the post positive about my employer.
If you undervalue your IT department, you won't be able to get good people to stay. If good people won't stay, you end up with the bad ones--their solution is always to reboot or reformat, they don't know how to actually make reasonable changes to the environment so they just maintain the status quo. There's no IE9 upgrade plan at all, because they already know how to support IE6 and aren't willing to even look at IE9. Now everyone else hates the IT department, and if any good IT employee shows up, he's either going to run screaming from the interview, or stick it out for a few months before realizing all of his co-workers are idiots.
I feel like ranting - maybe this will generate a good discussion. Most of my experiences with IT have been fine. I worked at a Texas state agency once, though, that caused me to dream about throwing IT workers out my office window. For starters, I was not allowed to use my own equipment. They rattled off some gibberish about security and support even though my mail client supports SMTP and I can read Office files jus…
I was a sysadmin for a financial services firm, and then for a Big-4 accounting firm, so I may have some perspective: 1. "For starters, I was not allowed to use my own equipment. They rattled off some gibberish about security and support even though my mail client supports SMTP and I can read Office files just fine. Also, for an agency focused on security their insistence on using Windows XP was baffling." The first…
This leaves the teir 1 and 2 support staffs in a crappy condition. The only people worth keeping are the ones jumping at the first chance to get out of the 'helpdesk' role. So the IT deparment is left with their only real interface to the rest of the company being comprised of (often) barely adequate people. An individual's experience when contacting the IT department litteraly depends on who answers the phone; will it be a person from the first, second, or third group as mentioned above?
Hopefully the trend will change in the future, but it's probably going to require higher pay while allowing those people to also do more advanced things to keep them challenged/happy (that still may not be enough, because to be honest we don't like dealing with the regular day to day helpdesk-style problems anymore than anyone else in the company likes having them). Large companies are just too compartmentalized to do that, so we may all be doomed :(
There are three big problems with IT departments (IMHO): 1. Anyone who is sufficiently skilled to be good at his or her job in the IT department is almost certainly overqualified so the system self-selects out good people; and 2. Like any other support role people only tend to notice you when things go wrong; and 3. My general experience with DBAs, sysadmins, techs and the like is that they generally resent you for a…
Then again, I was only an intern so my time there was limited.
I feel like ranting - maybe this will generate a good discussion. Most of my experiences with IT have been fine. I worked at a Texas state agency once, though, that caused me to dream about throwing IT workers out my office window. For starters, I was not allowed to use my own equipment. They rattled off some gibberish about security and support even though my mail client supports SMTP and I can read Office files jus…
I was a sysadmin for a financial services firm, and then for a Big-4 accounting firm, so I may have some perspective: 1. "For starters, I was not allowed to use my own equipment. They rattled off some gibberish about security and support even though my mail client supports SMTP and I can read Office files just fine. Also, for an agency focused on security their insistence on using Windows XP was baffling." The first…
I feel like ranting - maybe this will generate a good discussion. Most of my experiences with IT have been fine. I worked at a Texas state agency once, though, that caused me to dream about throwing IT workers out my office window. For starters, I was not allowed to use my own equipment. They rattled off some gibberish about security and support even though my mail client supports SMTP and I can read Office files jus…
I was a sysadmin for a financial services firm, and then for a Big-4 accounting firm, so I may have some perspective: 1. "For starters, I was not allowed to use my own equipment. They rattled off some gibberish about security and support even though my mail client supports SMTP and I can read Office files just fine. Also, for an agency focused on security their insistence on using Windows XP was baffling." The first…
So, are you going to try to distinguish between me using my https banking service and my VPS with sshd bound to ports 22 and 443?
In the EU you may find yourself in an legally ambiguous situation deploying the level of packet inspection required to achieve that.
I feel like ranting - maybe this will generate a good discussion. Most of my experiences with IT have been fine. I worked at a Texas state agency once, though, that caused me to dream about throwing IT workers out my office window. For starters, I was not allowed to use my own equipment. They rattled off some gibberish about security and support even though my mail client supports SMTP and I can read Office files jus…
In most law firms, government, and big finance you will likely encounter a lot of these sort of policies. Some of these policies make sense, even though the reasoning is not obvious. The policies are created because of constraints around laws and auditing and they can result in some nasty solutions. Other policies probably just don't make any sense, but that is just life.
Making IT's life hard by trying to get around the policies likely doesn't really help anyone -- it is just being an ass. Assuming a policy doesn't make sense because you can't see the reason for it is arrogant - even if you are right 95% of the time. Same goes for assuming you could come up with a better solution without knowing the constraints the IT department faces.
The solution for programmers that hate this sort of thing seems straight forward -- don't work in these sorts of businesses -- develop your chops so you can land a job in a hot startup (or a business that has that atmosphere) where you get the best gear and can do whatever you want. Or maybe start your own business or freelance. Until you get there, don't take out your frustrations on your coworkers by trying to bypass them -- that is just childish.
For people in IT, they should be aware if they are not in a business that requires these sort of frustrating policies, they should not be trying to implement them unless they really have to. Those are the IT guys people have the right to dislike. They try to turn a small fun start up into some sort of draconian government institution because of some personal insecurities or they think that is just how it is done.
In short, be aware of the sort of industry you working in, or might work in, and what to expect there.