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This attitude might be ok for managing the average office worker's machine but when it comes to jobs like programming that are not highly regimented, it's just

This attitude might be ok for managing the average office worker's machine but when it comes to jobs like programming that are not highly regimented, it's just not good enough. Get out of my way and let me do my job. I'm glad I'm at a company that lets us do whatever we want to our machines (we use a VM for the few things that require IE).

oz 15y ago
I'm also a programmer, and agree completely - I think devs should have admin rights on their boxes, and at the very least access to VMs for testing Ultimately, it's an issue of trade-offs: I guarantee that since you're allowed to go wild on your machine, the IT cost to support devs is higher. It's not right or wrong, simply a matter of trade-offs. It's up to an individual organization to determine an acceptable trade-off. Edit: Grammar
- mkopinsky 15y ago
  OTOH, the IT cost to support competent users is lower, since they don't come crying to you every time the printer needs paper. In the scheme of things, I wonder which effect predominates.
- bdunbar 15y ago
  I think devs should have admin rights on their boxes I no longer support dev desktops, but I do admin the systems they use - servers, databases. I'm cool with what you say in principle. If we're talking your own desktop, sure, no problem. As long as you're responsible for cleaning up your own mess. But root on 'my' dev servers - no way, Jose. Those guys don't know unix, don't know what they're doing with root. They get shell accounts, they can do what they need to do. Maybe it's the way we're setup. Typically 'the' box they're using is shared with other devs and applications. One fubared 'rm' as root and they've taken down great chunks of our development environment.
  - oz 15y ago
    That's why I preach VMs. They can go wild on those - just teach them how to create and revert to snapshots. They'll love you forever :)
    - bdunbar 15y ago
      I use VMs myself - invaluable for the stuff I've done with RoR. One problem with VMs is they would not work very well with the dev environments I support: JDE and ancillary applications.
samirageb 15y ago
As someone that programs as well, giving admin access to programmers generally makes sense. In a perfect world however, I'd rather give you your own sandbox to mess up and not your desktop so that when the next wave of patches get pushed out, I don't have to worry about your box not being like everyone else's because you altered the 'expected' state of the desktop the patches / configs were designed for. Sans perfect world, as long as set ground rules are in place, any reasonable IT person should be ok with this request.

oz 15y ago

I'm also a programmer, and agree completely - I think devs should have admin rights on their boxes, and at the very least access to VMs for testing Ultimately, it's an issue of trade-offs: I guarantee that since you're allowed to go wild on your machine, the IT cost to support devs is higher. It's not right or wrong, simply a matter of trade-offs. It's up to an individual organization to determine an acceptable trade-off. Edit: Grammar

mkopinsky 15y ago
OTOH, the IT cost to support competent users is lower, since they don't come crying to you every time the printer needs paper. In the scheme of things, I wonder which effect predominates.
bdunbar 15y ago
I think devs should have admin rights on their boxes I no longer support dev desktops, but I do admin the systems they use - servers, databases. I'm cool with what you say in principle. If we're talking your own desktop, sure, no problem. As long as you're responsible for cleaning up your own mess. But root on 'my' dev servers - no way, Jose. Those guys don't know unix, don't know what they're doing with root. They get shell accounts, they can do what they need to do. Maybe it's the way we're setup. Typically 'the' box they're using is shared with other devs and applications. One fubared 'rm' as root and they've taken down great chunks of our development environment.
- oz 15y ago
  That's why I preach VMs. They can go wild on those - just teach them how to create and revert to snapshots. They'll love you forever :)
  - bdunbar 15y ago
    I use VMs myself - invaluable for the stuff I've done with RoR. One problem with VMs is they would not work very well with the dev environments I support: JDE and ancillary applications.

samirageb 15y ago

As someone that programs as well, giving admin access to programmers generally makes sense. In a perfect world however, I'd rather give you your own sandbox to mess up and not your desktop so that when the next wave of patches get pushed out, I don't have to worry about your box not being like everyone else's because you altered the 'expected' state of the desktop the patches / configs were designed for. Sans perfect world, as long as set ground rules are in place, any reasonable IT person should be ok with this request.