There are more constructive ways to handle workplace problems when one has root access to everything... If people from marketing, accounts, sales or wherever e

There are more constructive ways to handle workplace problems when one has root access to everything... If people from marketing, accounts, sales or wherever else are giving you problems then you can sometimes automate them out of existence. This is particularly so in ecommerce where the gig is with one of those regular small businesses that haven't quite realised that they need to be an internet company. What you can do is automate all the accounting, doing it right with decent database schemas and everything the server has to offer. The accounts can then be a live thing and not some dead Excel export from some 90's era accounts package. Then that guy in accounts who spends 48 hours a week to get to those reports is redundant. He does not bother you any more and the managers are pleased they can see their charts online whenever they want without someone having to prepare them specially. Meanwhile in customer service, let's automate all of those procedures and put the process in code. Put up some forms that work and make it so easy for everyone that the customer service team no longer need to be the size that they are. Then there is the non technical web team, the layer of cruft that collects with non-web companies after the 'webmaster' in the corner of the room is deemed to need 'help'. These people are like Chinese whisperers (no offence, just turn of phrase, sadly...) in that they liaise between those making content 90's style in places like the graphics/print department and then mangle those assets for the web. Again, put them out of a job, put procedures in place so the guys in graphics are aware of this web thing and create content first and foremost for that. Simple things like file naming procedures can be all that is required and the guy that collects 'assets' from one part of the company to then upload them is no longer needed, neither are those pointless meetings that were needed. Have a problem with the actual graphics department and their print media tendencies? Move the requirements on to responsive SVG instead of the legacy PSD/PDF exported to blurry jpeg they love. Automate all that processing of 'assets' with some imagemagick. Take all the design layout out of 'design' and into UX with everything 'aria' tagged. Then there is HR. Put in place the tools for them to manage recruitment in a modern online way and get rid of the need to have people copying and pasting stuff out of Word/Excel/Email. Do that right and you can erase the need for there to be an H.R. assistant running around doing this stuff. Distribution and warehouse stuff is also similar, why use those in-house legacy systems when you can go XML SOAP to the distribution center? Get rid of the heart of the existing company - the legacy IT systems - piece by piece and the people that go with it. If you dislike someone and you can automate them out of existence then that is a very good incentive to get on with that aspect of the overall project. Having done this, the company is even more reliant on IT as there is now no Excel spreadsheet solution. Note that the above is reverse empire building, it is doing the right thing and making a company a web company rather than a 90's SME built on Outlook and Excel. Also it is a different exercising of power to going for the jugular, 'rm -fr' stuff. You also don't have to strictly automate people out of existence, you could make their job massively easier with less repetition and difficult sums done and have it so that no managers know that a tedious hard job is now coastable, even making it so that managers don't have the shortcuts that the staff do.