I've been on both sides of this. I spent a few years doing IT support and I know how much of a difference a good IT team can make. On the other hand, I've als

I've been on both sides of this. I spent a few years doing IT support and I know how much of a difference a good IT team can make. On the other hand, I've also seen how much damage a bad IT department can do. In a previous job, I was writing device drivers, but IT only allowed general user access. If I needed software installed (e.g. compiler, text editor), I could submit a support ticket and they'd get back to me in 48 hours. That's 48 hours per program. Once I'd written a driver, I could send another support ticket to have the driver installed. After 48 hours, I could then test it. Just as a pointless side not, but I heard that, as of last year, the IT department was still maintaining the requirement that everyone use Firefox 3.0 for their browser. A good IT team is invaluable, but a bad IT department can be worse than having no IT department. When you have 50 people doing 50 different things, probably half of them are wasting their time. However, when you have 3 IT people headed down the wrong path, then EVERYONE is wasting their time.