Should IT Shops Let Users Manage Their Own PCs? 559
An anonymous reader writes "Is letting users manage their own PCs an IT time-saver or time bomb waiting to happen? 'In this Web 2.0 self-service approach, IT knights employees with the responsibility for their own PC's life cycle. That's right: Workers select, configure, manage, and ultimately support their own systems, choosing the hardware and software they need to best perform their jobs.'" Do any of you do something similar to this in your workplace? Anyone think this is a spectacularly bad idea?
in the perfect world... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your shop may be small enough to avoid attention, but allowing users to install their own software could put a company in hot water fast.
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:5, Funny)
Users are required to change their password every login. Only approved software is allowed on the machines and access to our intranet is strictly controlled by a hypervisor proxy installed on each and every machine.
Our one and only security breach was when my wife slapped me and choked the common network and local admin password out of me after she demoted me to assistant adjutant information technician.
She will pay for her insolence. I have already connected together the velcro-like fasteners on several of the baby's size 5 disposable diapers, creating a low cost darknet to create a denial-of-diaper attack on the server I used to control.
She will pay
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But it wasn't the companies profile (Score:4, Insightful)
C:\Documents and Settings\John User\Documents\My Music\Lita Ford
I think John User must have done it. I am pretty sure if you spell it out as policy against such actions, that the company would divert *.aa to the actual user that comitted the infraction. No amount of hand holding can really prevent this sort of thing. If they have access to the box, they have root right? That's what we say all the time here.
They will do stuff like this. It'll get worse as the younger generation grows into working age.
That's why I don't store too much personal data on my work computer, but access my own music via streams from orb.com
However, I guess we could just make it illegal to use workstations at work, and make everyone access company infrastructure via a terminal. Yeah GREAT IDEA...
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But it wasn't the companies profile that stored the music. It's pretty reasonable to assume that well, lets see the music is stored under C:\Documents and Settings\John User\Documents\My Music\Lita Ford
Doesn't matter one single bit. Possession is 9/10s of the law. Your file server now has d:\backup\sales_force\docs\John User\Documents\My Music\Lita Ford and so do your tapes. So now, YOU have copied it twice. Not him, YOU. It's bad to let people make their own decisions with your network and hardware when your ass on the line. It always has been and always will be.
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Re:in the perfect world... (Score:4, Interesting)
What happens if your employee copies a bunch of MP3's to the PC, since they like to listen to music.
Most employees can probably do that unless it's locked down so tight they don't have access to windows media. Most companies don't do that because they may have their own company programs and training videos they want the employees to view. And then, if the employee has a USB drive you'd better remove the sound card because there are certainly portable apps [portableapps.com] that can just run it from there.
It's called personal responsiblity. I don't think most people are saying let the users go wild and install any software they want. But if they're dumb enough to install something illegal (MP3s, last time I looked, are not inherently illegal) they should be held responsible. When companies are proscuted is when BSA comes in and finds MS Office on EVERYONE's computer and they can only produce a license for one. (I don't think the RIAA would even bother with this as most companies DO restrict usage of P2P applications so no sharing would be available.)
But it does remind me of an BOFH (true story) that had the computers so locked down (Win95 days) you could not access Windows Explorer (aka File Explorer then) to try and keep users from installing or using rogue programs. (In fact I seem to remember, Win95 was actually on a server and his users had to log in to it.) Thank goodness I wasn't under his section. But my section taught department computer classes to get employees up to speed which is how we heard about what he was doing. Of course it made the computers unstable as hell....
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Why not let them use their own headphones? They probably sound better than $20 speakers. Also, they can turn the volume up louder. Unless all your employees have offices?
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You have a written policy against that kind of thing. You tell employees to remove suchlike should you ever become aware of it, and the responsibility lies with whomever actually did the illegal thing. What a concept !
You're inventing problems that simply don't exist. It's not as if there's any technical barrier to a employee speeding in a company car, calling in bomb-threats from company-phones, hitting someone over the head with a company-owned chair etc etc etc.
Yet in all these cases, the company as
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Then someone should immediately report me to the BSA. Quite contrary to company policy, and without the express written consent of the IT department, I've installed a whole host of questionable software with no auditable license paper trail.
Unfortunately, I'd have a much harder time doing my job without Vim, Firefox, GIMP, OpenOffice.org, MySQL, and Scribus. I also run a very questionable program called VLC, but that's more of a time waster than a
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We already run this way at where I work. We're a small place and there's no in-house IT department. If one of us in development needs more ram or a new harddrive, the procedure is to go buy it and install it yourself and give management the bill. Nearly everyone is savvy enough to handle this on their own, and if you aren't its easy enough to ask someone to help you.
You my friend are working for an enlightened organization. If more companies adopted this they would save trillions. I/T today now has beco
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I work in an 'IT shop' (what the hell does that mean anyway) in so far as most of my lusers are savvy, and the remote ones..... anyhow, giving my users the chance to have free reign of what they install would be LETHAL to the business. As it is they can install almost any software they want. Two things apply here: first, if I catch them with pirated software nothing short of 4 chocolate doughnuts will stop me from exacting my ret
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:5, Insightful)
Piracy has nothing to do with the fondness of IT departments for locking down user computers. Really, it's a response to nitwits who fancy themselves experts and know just enough to get them into trouble. Of course, it's pretty frustrating for those of us who really do know what they're doing, but face it, we're a tiny minority.
I worked as a site tech in one place... (Score:5, Interesting)
And then they teach kids that "crime doesn't pay". Talk about hypocrisy.
Another reason to pick up homeschooling.
Re:I worked as a site tech in one place... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, this was a SCHOOL... these are the people teaching your kids what to think...
I like to let the TV teach my kid what to think
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Yes indeed, I had cultivated a few contacts at ITS dept, who later told me that the department heads and my local administrati had lined up a way to have me "removed" for not being "cooperative" with the principal and a few teachers and office staff.
While I couldn't stop the administrative staff from using my workstation or any computer (they outranked me) to pirate software, I did resist mightily... legal and bureaucratic repercussions were explained to them... (a
Run it for an imperfect world (Score:5, Informative)
License compliance is one detail were you can't offer any wiggle room. There are a number of good auditing software (including some free ones!) that will report on the installed software. That will keep you out of legal trouble.
How do you handle the following issues? (Score:4, Insightful)
2. User just deleted an OS directory and their computer will not run.
3. User kept everything on his/her local drive and it just caught fire.
4. User wants an email from 3 years ago that user had deleted from his/her last computer 2 years ago.
5. The legal department wants all email to/from Mr.X, Mr.Y and Mr.Z.
6. User keeps getting infected with viruses.
With centralized control, all of those are simple. Once you start allowing users to choose what to run, how to configure it and so forth, all of those become major issues.
Re:How do you handle the following issues? (Score:4, Insightful)
backups exist.
2. User just deleted an OS directory and their computer will not run.
backups exist.
3. User kept everything on his/her local drive and it just caught fire.
backups exist.
4. User wants an email from 3 years ago that user had deleted from his/her last computer 2 years ago.
see 5. (anyway, even many "managed/locked down" setup (like in small companies) don't have this one solved so, not a huge deal.
5. The legal department wants all email to/from Mr.X, Mr.Y and Mr.Z.
email archived server side, without any implication on the client side
6. User keeps getting infected with viruses.
enforce running AV
Letting the users do some stuff doesn't mean not running AV / backup. Of course, one can hack the machine to disable all of this.. but honestly.. these people can be fired too
I'm not saying it is the way to go, but your points are not really proving it one way or another.
They are valid ONLY for centralized operations. (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying that "backups exist" does not address the question of HOW the backups are made when the user can put any file anywhere on their system.
With a centralized system, the users can be restricted to ONLY saving files on their TEMP directory and the servers. Those are MUCH easier to backup and lots of packages exist for that exact purpose.
Re:How do you handle the following issues? (Score:4, Insightful)
1) You design your processes so that important files are centralized. Don't make it possible to do 'work' locally. Backup is handled on the network. Now the user has, at best, deleted something that was important to them (not your business) locally.
2) Reimage. See #1 in terms of what the user loses.
3) See #1.
4) everything using mail protocols recorded on the network.
5) see 4.
6) reimage, reimage, reimage until the user learns. have virus checker in the image (I guess user can possibly uninstall, but if you have a user with this chronic problem, respond to them more and more slowly / report them).
Giving the user control over their pc doesn't mean the same thing as giving up centralized services.
Re:How do you handle the following issues? (Score:5, Insightful)
So you want to pay desktop support techs to re-image users' computers all the time? In our company re-image takes about 8 hours due to hard drive encryption, which translates into lost productivity of the user.
I've worked as a desktop support tech both in my college where users had admin rights to their PCs, and for a company that had locked-down environment with packaged software where almost nobody had admin rights and no non-approved software could be installed. I'd say on average I spent 3 times longer to put the users in the college back online, and to restore their data. Of course there's the whole issue of weatherbug/toolbars/ActiveX/other crapware that the users installed on a regular basis.
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How silly. TFS said the users got to manage their own PCs, not the routers or switches
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:5, Insightful)
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1) They REALLY need it to do their job.
2) It has potential to really screw things up for more then just themselves.
3) They have the brains to deal with typical issues themselves,
4) They have the brains to know when they are really about to screw the pooch, and stop before that happens.
Then, as long as I am comfortable with the answer to question (2), I make my suggestions, and inform them that if they wish to install so
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:5, Funny)
Can those people really manage their own machines?
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Works for me.
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That would be something that they would need to explain to their bosses of why they no longer have a network connection. Chances are it wouldn't be permanent, just long enough to make sure the person's superior is made well aware of it and why he was disconnecte
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:5, Insightful)
The easiest way is to break your users into four groups:
1. The hopeless. The nice ones are actually thrilled when you can take some of your very busy time to deal with their problem.
2. The middle of the road. Many of these people are more than capable to turn into power users, they simply are too busy or just not interested. They are usually good about cooperating with IT because they see these problems as a distraction from whatever their job happens to be.
3. The ones that think that they are power users. These are more dangerous than a real computer illiterate moron. They know everything and will not hesitate to wipe their asses with your IT procedures under general principles. They also work behind your back, giving your users contradicting advice that creates confusion and resentment later. You'll spend an afternoon carefully crafting your business case for buying four brand new whatevers, for example, Mac Book Pros. At the same time, these idiots go behind your back and whisper into the right ear that Mac Book Pros are overpriced, that Mac Books will do fine. The purchase goes for the cheaper item, and when bad things happen, they will blame you regardless, while the weasela keep a low profile.
4. The real power users. These are the only ones that you can trust to do most of the management, more because not only they display the knowledge and experience, but also a healthy level of restraint. This is the kind of guy that knows what he is doing but won't mess with the equipment simply because he is bored. After all, he is busy enough doing his own job, no time to do yours unless he understands it to be a honest emergency.
The best combination I have seen so far was at a previous job during the dot com years. They didn't trust anyone, but once they figured out if you were not dangerous, they would yield control little by little. I was running all of the programmers in the company, and from early programmers and IT got along like thieves. As each new programmer got hired, we pretty much threatened to kick their asses if they did anything to antagonize the IT folks. It worked, as a norm my team's IT requests were handled faster and with less hassle than some other group full of prima donnas that treated the IT folks as if they were scum.
You CAN Do It.... (Score:2)
mixed feelings (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
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Sure (Score:5, Funny)
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Tagging? (Score:5, Funny)
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One Size Cannot Fit All (Score:5, Insightful)
So the answer is basically, "it depends".
For security reasons its always important to manage the AV, updates, etc. on the machine.
If you have important IP on laptops, it becomes even more important to have a good policy to manage machine health, rather than leaving it to individual discretion.
And finally, if you have well-defined and relatively narrow roles for which machines are required, again it makes sense to lock them down.
So depending on how much of the above is true, the answer will vary, but in general IT shops should not trust users to manage their own machines especially because users really don't know much when it comes to keeping a machine secure.
I should be so lucky (Score:5, Insightful)
If I went through IT at work, I would still be using Photoshop 5.0 and some ancient version of Pagemaker. They're so slow (and this is a true story, honest to God) that the last time they approved any work software for me, the company had stopped making the version they approved before they finally approved it.
Re: (Score:2)
What was the response from management regarding your complaints?
Re:I should be so lucky (Score:4, Insightful)
I also wonder how well your "big boss" knows the work required and whether or not micro-managing his staff's PC configuration might be a bad use of his time. It certainly speaks volumes of what your company thinks of its employees.
Re:I should be so lucky (Score:5, Insightful)
The vast majority of auto mechanics are expected to provide their own hand tools, and a well-stocked toolbox can run tens of thousands of dollars. Why not have users provide their own computer (cheap by comparison) if they support it?
I'd be happy to provide my own PC anywhere I worked if it were permitted. I bring my own peripherals anyway.
Re:I should be so lucky (Score:4, Interesting)
It certainly is. Toolkits have historically been provided by the mechanic (I've been a mechanic for many years), as the selection reflects personal preference. I found the link below by Googling the common phrase in want ads for mechanics "Must have own tools". The reason it is used is that only extreme newbs (or screwups who pawned their gear!) DON'T have their own tools. Mechanics often start their careers by buying tools as students (hence the vendor student discounts on basic sets) and will buy tools throughout their careers. Tool vendors visit shops and sell toolkits to mechanics on payment plans. It is common for tools to be insured because they are so expensive.
http://www.careeroverview.com/auto-mechanic-careers.html [careeroverview.com]
"The most important instruments a technician or mechanic uses are hand tools. Typically workers will use their own tools, and a lot of experienced technicians and mechanics own tool sets worth thousands of dollars."
http://www.calmis.ca.gov/file/occguide/MECHAUTO.HTM [ca.gov] (note the date, the price figures are low)
"Most mechanics have to buy their own tools. As an apprentice, the mechanic
may have to spend up to $500 or more on tools. By the time they reach journey-
level, a mechanic may have spent up to $10,000 on tools. Mechanics with a
specialty like those who work on foreign cars may spend even more on tools
because foreign cars need metric tools."
I can choose hardware!? (Score:2)
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Fuck no (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe for the better sort of user, but gods no for the unwashed masses.
Middle ground is a good place for me (Score:3, Insightful)
I have expressed the philosophy to various departmental management people that it doesn't matter whose 'responsibility' it is to get things fixed. It matters that things get broken. The amount of down time suffered happens regardless of who owns the responsibility, but can be avoided with more responsible behavior by the users.
I express that "these are your work tools. you mess them up and you're losing money until I can fix it again. There is nothing more I can offer."
I think that hits home with a lot of intelligent leaders.
So yes, give users control over their machines... but make sure they know that even though you're there to clean up the mess, the mess's fall-out is still on them. They will then take better care of their tool... their source of productivity and income.
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For the cases where user meddling with the work
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As far as I'm concerned, IT is a glorified janitorial service... at least where PC systems service is concerned
Well, it should be better than *that*. A good IT guy, to me, is a critical team member who helps us keep running smoothly and gets us out of jams. To go with your analogy, the good IT guy isn't like the janitor who routinely sweeps the floor, he's like the good plumber who fixes your overflowing toilet before you're swimming in crap. Can't put a price on that. Unfortunately, most of our IT g
The answer is yes (Score:5, Insightful)
For those in IT who think this is not the case, consider your power users. Many really can function - even if not to corporate standards of security or conformity - with very little help. They probably will spend an extra $200-$400 per machine for stuff that has marginal use, but they'll feel better about it and be productive. The problem is that there's that one guy - and everyone in IT know who he is - that is way out of his depth and just doesn't know it. You spend a lot of time praying he doesn't screw up more than his own workstation. The good thing is that considerably more than half of modern staffs will likely just want you to set it all up and keep it running.
In the case for users managing their own PCs, NASA used to be this way where I worked in the 90s. We ordered our own PCs, set them up, installed all software. The IT staff would help get us on the network and keep the network running. There were exceptionally few problems. This was, however, before most people had access to the internet, and predominantly before the web existed.
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You're out of your mind (Score:4, Informative)
And we do try to install software in time for our users. We would try to allocate the right software in time, and if there's no reasonable way to do it (i.e. the user can't get the funding), we try to offer alternatives. In the past, yes, the IT department had been sluggish, but the majority of them have left, and we do try to provide good service.
Apparently, in a bioinformatics research facility, most of the staff who do research don't know jack about computers, or how to maintain them. If the users are allowed to manage their own machine, I would spend so much time fixing machines, I would want to jump off the building.
Thank god I left that place. It was bad enough with the existing setup. To think that most users can maintain their machines is pure folly.
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If this is really such a huge problem, let them manage their own PC's and put the apps on a Citrix/TS type environment.
We have both. Locked down & not locked down. The locked down one's see viruses, but are defended against them. The non locked down ones get infected. The locked down ones usually just work, while the non-locked down ones r
Academia (Score:2)
Could work if the users are technical enough (Score:3, Interesting)
What it isn't going to do is reduce your costs. You might have a very minimal help desk and no specialized staff installing those desktops but that knowledge, time and effort must be spread through the organization. You may also find it harder to get good deals on bulk purchasing depending on how you do it.
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I started in end-user support. Developers might be able to write their own mail client, but they're just as helpless when Outlook cheeses itself. The only difference between a developer and an accounts payable clerk in that situation is that the developer (in some of my experiences) can be insufferably arrogant.
Case by case. (Score:2)
For small companies only (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just a bad idea... (Score:2)
In better run companies a centralized IT department can improve efficiency and keep employees focused. It's a waste of money to have some high-paid sales rep, doctor, lawyer, lab tech or financial analyst spend 2 or 3 hours fixing a PC where a trained, less expensive person could do it in a few minutes.
T
Goose versus Gander (Score:5, Interesting)
But of course they had no appreciation of how bad it was to be in the trenches. Their computers performed so much better than the equivalent computers of the end users that they often did not realize how hard it was to get work done on a standard image.
When I reached the point where I ran one of the departments, I kept an old standard-image computer as my main computer and made sure I was always at the end of the upgrade queue. My view was that if something worked well on my computer, it would work on anyone's. And if something didn't work well on my computer, then it meant some of my users were having a bad experience.
So maybe if the IT department would just use the same image and hardware as the end users, they'd know enough to provide a decent standard image, which would solve a lot of user complaints.
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Users in control? (Score:2, Insightful)
madness!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:madness!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Alternatively, if there's one already there, have you put coasters on it, as a hint?
And if it's got coasters already, have you considered purchasing a cheap mug, drinking coffee out of it just once so it'll have an authentic ring-stain in the bottom, and then setting it on one of those coasters permanently as an added hint?
Failing that, have you taken a bunch of tennis balls, cut them in half, duct taped them to the top of the copier and spray painted them the same beige as the rest so there's no flat place to put drinks?
Further, have you considered sneaking into their cubicles by dead of night and supergluing their cups and mugs to the desk?
If all else fails, have you considered supergluing your coworkers themselves to their desks? I bet their productivity would go up. The smell might get bad after a while, though
great idea, but will be mostly pooh-poohed. (Score:2)
I don't; and if I had management of my box, I would literally have saved weeks of wasted time last year. I'm still doing some crap manually because I don't have the administrative ability to install a perl interpreter on my machine. Every few weeks somebody from IT tinkers with it for an hour, fails to get it working, I report it as a problem, then wait a few
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Most incompetent people won't want to mess with their settings in the first place.
Whooo, that's priceless.
Did web 2.0 magically make end users not stupid? (Score:5, Insightful)
Letting end users choose their own machines and apps sounds like a lovely and empowering idea, right up until the point where they need to call tech support. And find out that it might be days before IT can fix whatever is broken, since they are starting with zero idea what is wrong because of the wacky config. Those days of lost productivity can be hugely expensive compared to the costs of testing a few specific configs that can be easily and quickly supported. Some tech hours of advance testing and some possible minor losses of productivity from using applications that aren't the user's favorite choices are far cheaper than having an employee turn in no billable hours for several days because his computer is down.
well... (Score:4, Informative)
It depends on the organization. I used to work in a 20 or so person division of a software company in which the technical staff were allowed to configure and maintain their machines, within certain constraints. The funny thing is that the primary development team ended up with the same software on their machines, the consulting engineers ended up with their own tool suite, and the marketing guys just relied on the support staff to keep them running. There were a few differences as far as text editor and debugging tool preferences, but generally you could sit down at any machine and expect it to have everything you needed - a virgin install contained our core tools and network stuff anyway. That said, it was *really* nice to be able to install a necessary program or utility without having to go through layers of bureaucracy.
However, I've also done stints at telcos and other massive organizations where things were incredibly locked down out of necessity/paranoia. I never had too much difficulty getting tools/permissions that I needed, but that was probably because of my role within the IT group. Had I been a marketing guy trying to install some sort of whacky video software, things might not have gone so smoothly.
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The question is too broad (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a good idea if your users have a clue. It's a bad idea if they don't. It entirely depends on the users.
In my shop we're all coders, so that plan would work. In fact it's vital to our work. Originally we were locked down and had to have an admin install pretty much anything we wanted to use. IT became an inhibitor rather than a helper. They eventually had to lift the ban. The policy was in the way.
On the other side of the coin, I've also held IT positions managing users. Giving some of my former customers the keys would have been an immediate disaster. In that case a lockdown was a lifesaver.
We do that... (Score:2)
And it works great! But I should add that I work for a software house - you'd expect decent knowledge and strong opinions in such a situation anyway. I wouldn't advise the same strategy to pl
Standard practice for Mac users (Score:3, Interesting)
Then another place I worked, the one time the tech support people touched my Mac, they screwed it up...
On the other side, I watched an employee of a Fortune 50 company visit another company's location, where the latter would assign you a specific IP address to use. This guy didn't have enough privileges on his Windows box to configure the IP address on it, and of course his corporate help(less) desk's attitude was that they had to have the machine hooked up to the internet to remotely administer it. Catch-22...
Dilbert's "Mordac, Preventer of Information Services" is unfortunately the way of life for most corporate IT departments. When I'm King, every CIO will provide each employee with a charge number against the CIO's budget, when an IT problem prevents that employee from doing productive work.
dave
Our company - not a good example though (Score:2)
Limited superpowers (Score:2, Insightful)
Clueful, Clueless and those in-between (Score:4, Insightful)
Depends on how technically savvy the users are.
Technically clueless users wouldn't know what to do anyway.
Technically savvy users need little more than an IP address and a beer to do the right thing. Hell, our sysadmins consult with me to help figure out how to do things right.
The middle ground is the one that makes me nervous. The nouveau-techie little bit of knowledge types are the ones that scare me.
I've installed and configured everything in my cubicle, and have root/admin access as well, because I need it. This is as it should be. I do not have root access to our main file server, because I do not need it. This is also as it should be.
...laura
Sure, if it's not one of the 5 users... from Hell (Score:2)
1. The Know-It-All
2. The Know-Nothing
3. Mr. Entitlement
4. The Finger-Pointer
5. The Twentysomething Whiz Kid
Given that there are more of these than there are "Dream Users", a "Web 2.0" approach may not be the best idea.
However, speaking from the lips of one of the "Dream Users", I'd
Power Users (Score:2)
I have something like that. (Score:2)
At my workplace we can do pretty much whatever we want with our computers as long as it's legal. I take my machine home and play games on it all the time. (My work laptop is actually a faster gaming machine than my desktop.)
It seems to work out pretty well. I haven't seen any big problems from it.
Which question? (Score:2)
As for everyone else, the percentage of people in an office setting that are competent enough to be trusted is much, much lower. Also, given that corporate environments have a heavy emphasis on conformat
Our company does! (Score:2)
Obviously this doesn't work in ever environment. You can't have the kid at the register at WalMart saying that he wants to use a different embedded OS in his cash
My $0.02 worth (Score:2)
Depends on the company (Score:3, Informative)
I work at a Linux-based network security startup. Engineers maintain our own Linux boxen, IT maintains the Windows boxes given to non-engineers. Most employees, engineers included, have Windows laptops assigned to them as well; those laptops are maintained by IT. Of course, we're a small company...IT consists of one person in our US office and one person in our India office.
Not much piracy concerns with Linux; we don't run any commercial distros on our desktops (we run a hodgepodge of Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora), and none of us have any use for Linux commercial software.
In IT, they should, and they must (Score:4, Insightful)
Like most slashdotters, I'm in IT.
The last couple of companies I've worked in, have made the decision to allow us -employees- to admin. our PCs. We are mostly semi-senior developers: we have the knowledge to make our computers perform their best, and we know what we want -and need- from them. No one else -not even support dept.- can know what service, application or tool is best for us and, being highly trained, we're the best admins. these computers could have.
-- For instance, even though we need to use Windows XP, no one uses IE --
And last (but definetely not least), this is what we *do*. Most of us could hack through the security policies if they were there. I don't think that having over a hundreed skilled developers trying to bring down your security infrastructure is the best way to go.
Whenever I start my own company (that's right, I still like to daydream), I'll make sure I hire talented, trustworthy people, and grant them admin. rights of their PCs.
PS: Note that admin. of PCs != network admin. Everyone here should appreciate the difference
Yes, we do this (Score:3, Informative)
Techy people - yes with caveats. Other people? NO! (Score:3, Insightful)
However other people? Noooooo! Not even with a course in basic computer management.
I'd still get the former group to take a course in acceptable computer use, of course. Too many universities don't have a proper ethics course on their CS courses these days - then again, too many CS courses are glorified "programming" courses.
NOOOoooo (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, there are special cases out there. But they are special cases. By default, the only policy that works is to lock down a machine and grant access as needed. Too many people treat an unrestricted machine like a "rental." They abuse it. They don't take simple precautions because, hey, it's the company's machine. Given a chance, they will treat it as a personal plaything.
To deny these truths is to deny basic sociology. And as I said, 10 years of first hand experience that is amplified by every competent admin I know.
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Re:Select own software? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think he knows the difference between a 401K and lottery tickets either.
Re:Select own software? (Score:4, Insightful)
He didn't need the money, but did it so he wouldn't get bored. I have another friend who is 63 has 4 seasonal jobs to keep himself busy and gives him just enough extra cash to play. he doesn't need the work, but he works to keep himself going.
You don't have to stop hard when you retire, you just change priorities.
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That's true for a lot of younger people, too...
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We ended up putting them on their own network and cutting them off the WAN fairly often because they couldn't patch, protect or resuist opening every random attachment
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If you let them install whatever they want, then you almost always have more services running; most users won't install IIS, for example, on their windows machine, but the IT masta will, on a whim, but then he'll stop using (and patching) it and it'll get exploited a year later. This kinda stuff happens a lot.
Then there is the whole "standardization" th
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Let me know how you get on when your job description includes "Keep the company from running illegal software and keep the network secure".
It may work in tech-savvy companies and departments, and it may work if the real work is done on a managed system (say a web application or even something like Terminal Server) but there are plenty of examples where it probably wouldn't.
To me, it sounds more like an excuse to cut IT depart