An open letter to IT departments

Dear IT Guys

I have a problem with you.

Yes, I mean you. You people ostensibly providing information technology services. Especially those of you in government organisations.

What exactly are you playing at?

You've become an impediment to human productivity.

How did this happen? IT was meant to be the shining future of humanity. It was meant to give us offices free of paper, instantaneous communication, systems that would know what we want and when we want it, machines that would do all the crappy stuff and leave us free to innovate and live a little. IT was meant to liberate us so we could achieve our goals without tedious, mind-numbing drudgery.

What went wrong?

Steve Jobs died this week. A man who, every few months, would stand up in front of an audience, hold up a piece of metal and plastic and silicon wafer, and inspire us with how it would make our lives better. And we'd believe him, and those like him, with all our hearts. We would look and we'd know that this was something that would make our lives better. 

And then we'd go back to our jobs and struggle with outdated software, underpowered hardware and lockdown policies that leave us unable to get our jobs done. Because of YOU.

You are what went wrong.

What excuse have you got?

Steve is dead, and you're spending your time crafting group policies and startup scripts that stop your users opening their My Documents folder. That mean they need to log a service request to correct their computer's clock. That pop up an error message every time a program opens a common dialog. Have you no sense of decency?

You actually spend your time putting systems into place to disable the run prompt on my work PC, so that instead of simply hitting Windows+R and quickly typing mstsc I have to hunt through four levels of menu to find a shortcut that reads "Remote Desktop Connection". And I can't merely create a new shortcut on my quicklaunch, because you've disabled that, too, along with the ability to expand my taskbar or rearrange my system tray icons.

Have you no shame? No shred of integrity? That you'd bow to an ill-thought out policy, that you'd gladly implement these absurd restrictions, making the lives of your colleagues that much harder, just because that's your job? You expect us to think you blameless because you're only obeying orders? You quislings. You collaborators. You scum.

Why, why in the name of all that's good in the world, have you got all the powerstrips locked up in a cupboard, so I can't keep my actually well configured laptop next to me all day to do all the little things I can't do on the PC you provided? Why do I have to log a helpdesk ticket to get a powerstrip? And if I bring my own, you ask where I got it from?

Seriously?

Within a week or two, I'll be able to ask my iPhone if I'll need an umbrella today. It seems so trivial, so frivulous a question. But to get a weather report on my work PC, I first have to find a website with a decent local weather report that isn't blocked by your absurd filtering proxy. The same filtering proxy that classifies this blog's image upload facility as "blocked;games" while leaving the rest untouched? It'd be laughable were it not so tragically banal.

The day we get a system on which I can verbally request and receive "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot", you'll be the one removing the tea leaves and turning the water temperature down because that's what you do.

There are visonaries out there creating hardware and software that makes life easier, makes the world better, and you spend your time stripping out all the useful features from that software and leaving it broken, battered, and unusable. For what? Why are you doing this?

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?

No, I'm not angry. I'm just tired. Tired and depressed that nothing has changed. That after all this time, after all the advances we've made as an industry and as a species, after all the product releases and new features and magical digital toys that are offered to us to make our lives better, now, in October 2011, you still think that deploying a broken SOE of Windows XP is a job well done.

 Fuck you. Come the revolution, you're getting it in the throat.

 

 [Update 31/10/11. Removed a c-bomb by request of a reader]

posted @ Friday, October 7, 2011 2:33 PM

 
 
 

Comments on this entry:

# re: An open letter to IT departments

Left by BastardSheep at 10/7/2011 3:05 PM
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Those kinds of lock-downs/limitations sound like what you'd expect from some pimply 18yo who's just discovered group policy, and everyone else is too lazy to go about reversing the clusterfuck put in place by this kid.

It's not a fun job going through figuring out which policies still apply, which ones are actually *needed*, and recreating it all from scratch so it's neat, manageable, and makes sense. I've done this numerous times though. IT staff and non-IT staff were all VERY happy with the results though.

# re: An open letter to IT departments

Left by shellity at 10/7/2011 3:52 PM
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I'm sorry I can't write a better comment. I'm busy saving my client's files to Word 2003 format.

# re: An open letter to IT departments

Left by Jason at 10/7/2011 3:57 PM
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It's a joke. I have an "administrator" account. It still can't do a fucking thing.

The content manager for the intranet just had a gripe to me that her team also bring their own laptops in to accomplish basic tasks.

I just had to transfer a set of images to my laptop via thumbdrive so I could edit them, transfer them back and upload them to the intranet, because the SOE is so badly locked. MSPaint doesn't exactly give a fine level of control over PNG transparency. SIGH

Fuck 'em. I'm a contractor. They're paying through the nose for me to sit around complain about the SOE. That's fine.

# re: An open letter to IT departments

Left by Beau Fabry at 10/31/2011 2:05 PM
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As a developer (software engineer, programmer, whatever) yes I can confirm. The IT dept is, and always has been, The Enemy.

# re: An open letter to IT departments

Left by Anon at 10/31/2011 2:52 PM
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I had to un-post this from our company Yammer feed because of the last word. Sad :-(

# re: An open letter to IT departments

Left by Jason at 10/31/2011 2:56 PM
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Hmmmm... quandary....

Do I remove the last word or leave it there?

I'm going to have to leave it, aren't I?

# re: An open letter to IT departments

Left by Anon at 10/31/2011 3:02 PM
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I'd really appreciate you nixing it.. I want to repost. It's a good rant and relevant to my colleagues

# re: An open letter to IT departments

Left by Jason at 10/31/2011 3:08 PM
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Done, though I've left tactful evidence that it was there

J

# re: An open letter to IT departments

Left by Anon at 10/31/2011 3:18 PM
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Champion. Thanks

# re: An open letter to IT departments

Left by Steevo at 10/31/2011 7:00 PM
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When I start a business, you will be it's IT department, and it will rock.

;)

# re: An open letter to IT departments

Left by arthwollipot at 11/1/2011 7:36 PM
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I think you might work for the department I used to do IT Support for.

# re: An open letter to IT departments

Left by Rantz at 11/1/2011 9:44 PM
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My oh my... I found this today whilst unable to access my work computer.

Perfect.

If only the work situation were the same...

# re: An open letter to IT departments

Left by Talia Johnson at 11/1/2011 11:49 PM
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I have some clients where group policies have been used to lock down the local workstations. Usually lock downs are limited to those machines where they connect to Remote Desktop Services for their daily work. RDS isn't locked down for shortcuts, quick launch etc.

When the lock-downs limit the productivity they ought to be scrapped, otherwise users, and those of us who come in to fix things on occasion, are tempted to defenstrate the computer.

# re: An open letter to IT departments

Left by Jason at 11/2/2011 10:46 AM
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Here's the latest. IT spun me up a few new VMs to provision a SharePoint test farm.

They're managed via a browser, and IT sent me a link. The link told me Flash Player is required. Flash player isn't installed with the SOE on my desktop, and the download site is blocked.

WTF?

So I either install it by downloading over 3G on my personal laptop, or I put in a helpdesk request for someone else to install it for me. Even though I'm an admin on my own machine. Or I could also install Chrome over 3G, but that's just option #1 all over again.

Agh
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