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Entitlement that the rules put in place don't apply to you, because you are some sort of prima-donna superstar. I find that worrisome. It can bloom into pretty

Entitlement that the rules put in place don't apply to you, because you are some sort of prima-donna superstar. I find that worrisome. It can bloom into pretty ugly (and moderately damaging) behavior. I've worked for clients who have certain divisions which are the super-stars. I think the better approach is to evaluate why you have all these policies, and if they are actually doing what you think they're doing. edit: Rereading this makes it sound like I'm calling the parent a prima-donna, which isn't what I mean (I'm referring to the people within an enterprise who decide that because they feel more productive on a Mac, they can just bring one in from home to do their work and circumvent all of the policies of IT.) At the risk of forcing a square metaphor into a round analogy, it's really important in the Army that people follow orders. Even if a small group of them think they can be totally more productive by doing things their own way. Enterprises aren't really set up to optimize for increased employee productivity, they're more likely to be set up to limit decreased productivity. I think this is one reason that people seem to like working at a startup, because you get to not have all that dogmatic bureaucracy. If these HEROES in four or five years now suddenly decide that they'd be even more productive if they lugged in SGI O2 workstations from home to do their work, an enterprise has to be able to say "yeah, sorry, you can't do that." But as to more Macs being deployed in enterprises, I'm all for it. It'd give me new things to break into.

famousactress 15y ago
No worries about it sounding like the prima-donna comment was aimed at me. I've certainly fallen into the category of people you've applied it to. At this point I'm sure I'm not remotely fit for The Enterprise, though I've worked in plenty of them. It's not that I've ever thought that the rules put in place don't apply to me.. it's that I've placed a higher priority on other objectives of the company (like getting work done). IT policy at most corporations I've worked at is completely inarguable. In my experience it's very difficult to get a reasonable accounting of cost/benefit when it comes to making almost any change in policy... in part because productivity benefits like the ones I feel I get from my choice of tools are hard to measure, and in part because I don't think I've had the experience of working anyplace where the IT department charged themselves with making other people's jobs easier/better. I think job function matters too. Programming is a craft. Good craftspeople are ridiculously passionate about their tools. If you walk into a nice auto-mechanic shop, the racks of tools against the wall are owned and paid for by the mechanics. I imagine that's not the case at the Jiffy-Lube, but you're we're probably talking about people at a different skill level. Good craftspeople in any industry end up in a relationship that's closer to independent contractor, or even peer with the organization they work for. That's happening in our industry, and I think it makes sense to look at functions that provide friction for those people, because it will become much harder to hire them.
- m0nastic 15y ago
  For what it's worth, I totally agree with you. I'm presently trying to extricate myself from a large enterprise. I'm not necessarily a gung-ho "startup good/big company bad" kind of person, but purely from an "asymmetric effectiveness" standpoint, it's easy to see why people think large enterprises are a relic of last century. In many ways, it seems like they're designed to just continue treading water until the lake evaporates, rather than trying to swim to the other side.
  - famousactress 15y ago
    Totally. I'm not on one side or the other from an idealogical standpoint.. it seems like there are some large organizations that do enough good with their size to make up for the downfalls that come along with it.. I just haven't been at one of those. With respect to functions like IT, I'd imagine the department needs to do what other functions in a large organization do in order to remain effective and useful... decompose. It seems like distributing things like risk management, and the security of assets among parts of the organization effectively gets the organization closer to looking like a bunch of smaller, more effective organizations who collaborate... and mitigates risk. The idea of a monolithic IT function in a giant organization providing more safety than a distributed version of the same idea seems on it's face a misplaced comfort. Then again, I'm really not someone who knows enough about what it takes to run an IT department to be suggesting such a thing.
gaius 15y ago
Even if a small group of them think they can be totally more productive by doing things their own way. Hence the proliferation of units under the "special forces" banner. How many do they have in the US now, regular SEALs, SEAL team 6, Rangers, Green Berets, Delta Force, Marine Recon, those guys in the boats (SWIK or something), the USAF has like 10 special forces units too. Productivity trumps protocol, every day.

famousactress 15y ago

No worries about it sounding like the prima-donna comment was aimed at me. I've certainly fallen into the category of people you've applied it to. At this point I'm sure I'm not remotely fit for The Enterprise, though I've worked in plenty of them. It's not that I've ever thought that the rules put in place don't apply to me.. it's that I've placed a higher priority on other objectives of the company (like getting work done). IT policy at most corporations I've worked at is completely inarguable. In my experience it's very difficult to get a reasonable accounting of cost/benefit when it comes to making almost any change in policy... in part because productivity benefits like the ones I feel I get from my choice of tools are hard to measure, and in part because I don't think I've had the experience of working anyplace where the IT department charged themselves with making other people's jobs easier/better. I think job function matters too. Programming is a craft. Good craftspeople are ridiculously passionate about their tools. If you walk into a nice auto-mechanic shop, the racks of tools against the wall are owned and paid for by the mechanics. I imagine that's not the case at the Jiffy-Lube, but you're we're probably talking about people at a different skill level. Good craftspeople in any industry end up in a relationship that's closer to independent contractor, or even peer with the organization they work for. That's happening in our industry, and I think it makes sense to look at functions that provide friction for those people, because it will become much harder to hire them.

m0nastic 15y ago
For what it's worth, I totally agree with you. I'm presently trying to extricate myself from a large enterprise. I'm not necessarily a gung-ho "startup good/big company bad" kind of person, but purely from an "asymmetric effectiveness" standpoint, it's easy to see why people think large enterprises are a relic of last century. In many ways, it seems like they're designed to just continue treading water until the lake evaporates, rather than trying to swim to the other side.
- famousactress 15y ago
  Totally. I'm not on one side or the other from an idealogical standpoint.. it seems like there are some large organizations that do enough good with their size to make up for the downfalls that come along with it.. I just haven't been at one of those. With respect to functions like IT, I'd imagine the department needs to do what other functions in a large organization do in order to remain effective and useful... decompose. It seems like distributing things like risk management, and the security of assets among parts of the organization effectively gets the organization closer to looking like a bunch of smaller, more effective organizations who collaborate... and mitigates risk. The idea of a monolithic IT function in a giant organization providing more safety than a distributed version of the same idea seems on it's face a misplaced comfort. Then again, I'm really not someone who knows enough about what it takes to run an IT department to be suggesting such a thing.

gaius 15y ago

Even if a small group of them think they can be totally more productive by doing things their own way. Hence the proliferation of units under the "special forces" banner. How many do they have in the US now, regular SEALs, SEAL team 6, Rangers, Green Berets, Delta Force, Marine Recon, those guys in the boats (SWIK or something), the USAF has like 10 special forces units too. Productivity trumps protocol, every day.