Blackmoor Vituperative

TechRepublic has an article titled, “Five things I hate about corporate IT“. They did not list a single reason I would place in my own “top five”. So for your enjoyment, here are five things I dislike about corporate IT:

1) Micro-management of software.

A skilled worker is competent to choose her own tools. What matters is the end product, not the tool used to create it. Only in the field of IT does a man in a ill-tailored suit think he is competent to choose what tools other people are allowed to use.

2) Marching boldly into the 20th century.

If I have to use Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Office, or Lotus Notes ever again, it will be too soon. It’s 2010 — why are large companies still using office productivity software from 1990? And do not even get me started on people who intentionally use Windows servers, or web applications that only work with Internet Explorer.

3) Security through stupidity.

Controlling what web sites I visit has almost nothing to do with security. Preventing me from using SSH or sudo is the opposite of security. If I gamble on company time, fire me. If I sit and look at porn instead of doing my job, fire me. Crippling my internet access has only one consequence — it makes it more difficult to do the job you are paying me to do.

4) If they can’t see you working, you aren’t.

It’s 2010. Gasoline is expensive. Pollution is bad. Even the notoriously inefficient Federal government has policies in place to encourage telecommuting. So why do federal organizations like DECA and otherwise reasonably well-run companies like Royall & Company forbid Unix systems administrators from telecommuting? I will tell you why. In both cases, it is because management thinks that if they can’t SEE you working, then you aren’t working. Welcome to 1950.

5) Responsibility without authority.

As Information Technology has become a commodity, the people who support that commodity get less and less respect. We used to be experts. Now, we are just a line item in the budget next to “janitorial services”. We have responsibility without authority. We aren’t permitted to make decisions to ensure that systems are reliable (that exalted status belongs to the well-paid men in the ill-fitting suits), but we are held accountable when things break. We are told what we need to deliver when, after it has already been promised, even though no one ever asked us if that was a reasonable thing to promise. We are burdened with minimizing the consequences of the bad decisions made by others, trying to make silk purses out of sow’s ears.