Neverending Management WTFery



  • At our weekly staff meeting yesterday, we received word from on high that "all developers are required to take their laptops home every night".  I mentioned some time ago that all of the devs here are saddled with shitty business-class Dell Latitude laptops.  Now we're expected to be shackled to the laptop every night.

    Their reason for handing down this directive?  It's their "Business Recovery Plan" in the event of a major earthquake.  That's right; on the off chance that a mega-quake sinks the floating bridges here (I work on an island in the middle of a lake), the devs are expected to be armed and ready to write crappy insurance software from home.  Nevermind that the same quake that sinks the bridges will also likely decimate all of our homes.

    My buddy and I have reached the conclusion that this entire office is a cruel, tragic social experiment being conducted by sociopathic foreigners.  Canadians maybe.  It's that ridiculous here.



  • @Smitty said:

    all of the devs here are saddled with shitty business-class Dell Latitude laptops.

     

     Our company does this to, the elite devs use the same shitty laptop as the drones in HR. It pisses me off to no end !



  • What good is your work laptop when the source control software is under a heap of rubble?

     @Smitty said:

    My buddy and I have reached the conclusion that this entire office is a cruel, tragic social experiment being conducted by sociopathic foreigners.  Canadians maybe.  It's that ridiculous here.
      Canadians don't have the guts.  Probably Hungarians; they're ruthless.  But if it were really an experiment, there would only be one bridge, and it would be perputually closed for repairs.



  • @CnC said:

    the elite devs use the same shitty laptop as the drones in HR
     

    The director who oversees hardware purchases believes that "The company needs to save money and IT will lead by example.  We will work with less than every other department.".  I had to fight with this clown for 4 weeks to get a new $40 keyboard, because hardware not sanctioned by the company is a "huge security risk".  Damn those virus-infected keyboards!  They were probably built by Hungarians.



  • @Smitty said:

    "all developers are required to take their laptops home every night"

    meh. Just shove it in your trunk and forget it about it.

    As for the developer-using-a-laptop thing, you're on your own.



  • @Smitty said:

    The director who oversees hardware purchases believes that "The company needs to save money and IT will lead by example.  We will work with less than every other department.". 
    Was there really a pressing need (other than floating bridge collapse or Godzilla attack) for devs to have laptops?  Couldn't they have bought more powerful desktops and still saved money?



  •  Your assuming they don't have a 1 device policy so he doesnt get a desktop either ;/



  • @Smitty said:

    I had to fight with this clown for 4 weeks to get a new $40 keyboard

    Well, given that the new keyboard would last for at least 3 years, divide that $40 by 3 years and explain to him that it's peanuts especially compared to your salary (hell, most people's salaries). He'll realize that he's literally saving pennies and come to his senses. Then a utopia will slowly emerge at your company and you will be named the grand poobah.

    Or not.



  • @SuperAnalyst said:

    Just shove it in your trunk and forget it about it.
     

    And forget to bring it back to work two days a week and the policy may quickly change



  • @bstorer said:

    Couldn't they have bought more powerful desktops and still saved money?
     

    They can save a fuckton of money that way.  We're under contract, so it has to be Dell.  As an exercise I priced out a new Dell laptop with the specs we want and it came to about $3300.  I then priced out a new desktop which was better in all respects, and it cost around $1200.  I took the results to management and was shot down in seconds.  "Developers MUST be able to work from home in case of emergencies".  In their eyes, giving us an $800 shitty laptop kills two birds with one stone.

    For the record, after almost five years working here, I've yet to hear about (let alone participate in) any kind of glaring insurance emergency that required immediate dev support from home.



  •  So surely that means that the developers are now technically working while they travel to and from the office each day and will be compensated per kilometer at the usual rate for business-related travel.  And since their homes are being used as disaster recovery sites then there must be a contract detailing fees paid by the company for use of same, and naturally there are additional costs involved with providing adequite physical security for sensitive data.

     Not having that kind of agreement in place would expose the company to serious regulatory problems if it were to get out.  It is clear that you have a duty to the company to prevent this kind of problem by leaving that piece of cr-- lovely egalitarian technology on your desk at night.

     



  • @DCRoss said:

    It is clear that you have a duty to the company to prevent this kind of problem by leaving that piece of cr-- lovely egalitarian technology on your desk at night.
     

     My feelings exactly. I'm planning to leave it here every night (as I have been for 5 years) until a manager calls me out on it; then the argument will start.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Smitty said:

    Now we're expected to be shackled to the laptop every night.

    Their reason for handing down this directive?  It's their "Business Recovery Plan" in the event of a major earthquake. 

    And of course, you're being paid 24x7 for this contingency plan? Bit like 'taking the pager' in days of yore.

    On a more reasonable note, can you not set up (e.g.) ssh tunnels to/from the relevant servers to your home PC? I set up a tunnel from my work laptop (behind a firewall) to my home PC and am quite able to make it into the office notwork from home with little problem, without resorting to using the office VPN.


  • @PJH said:

    On a more reasonable note, can you not set up (e.g.) ssh tunnels to/from the relevant servers to your home PC? I set up a tunnel from my work laptop (behind a firewall) to my home PC and am quite able to make it into the office notwork from home with little problem, without resorting to using the office VPN.
     

    That too is forbidden.  Connecting to the company network from non-company equipment is a termination offense.  We're expected to use our laptops via the office VPN and nothing else.  Our spiffy VPN client is a Nortel product from 2001.  It doesn't run on any OS newer than XP.  Using it feels like you're on dial-up.  As a bonus WTF, our VPN servers are here in the office in a closet, while all other servers are in a data center in Los Angeles (including our source control).  That little hop makes for 30-second right-clicks.  Checking files in and out makes me want to open a vein.



  • @Smitty said:

     

    They can save a fuckton of money that way.  We're under contract, so it has to be Dell.  As an exercise I priced out a new Dell laptop with the specs we want and it came to about $3300.  I then priced out a new desktop which was better in all respects, and it cost around $1200.  I took the results to management and was shot down in seconds.  "Developers MUST be able to work from home in case of emergencies".  In their eyes, giving us an $800 shitty laptop kills two birds with one stone.

    A stupid manager buys the $800 laptops, a smart manager convinces them that they're saving money by buying a home and work desktop for each developer, but a wise manager just buys the desktops for the office without approval and deflects the eventual shitstorm by blaming another department.


  • @Smitty said:

    "Developers MUST be able to work from home in case of emergencies".

     

    For suitably small values of "work".



  • @PJH said:

     And of course, you're being paid 24x7 for this contingency plan? Bit like 'taking the pager' in days of yore.

     

    days of yore... we still rotate a pager!

    plus we are all unofficially expected to be on call indefinitely.  we're also capped at 40 hrs... so.. if you work 45 hrs, you get paid for 40, get called on sunday to fix some stupid non-critical issue, takes 15 min to fix and 2 hrs to tell all affected and non-affected parties what the resolution was, go to work monday and work another 40 hrs, you put in 7.25 hrs of unpaid time in.  it's awesome.  

    I was offered the choice of a laptop vs desktop when i started here i chose a desktop because laptops are always crappy ancient dells that are slow as hell. I figured the desktop HAD to be better.  How wrong could i have been... this thing is 6 years old! it's slower than the hot-rod T60 lappers everyone else has and now i can't change. 

    but remember i'm on-call right?  However, I can't take my desktop home with me due to strangly written company policies.  those same policies restrict me from having VPN access... because it's a dekstop and isn't allowed to leave the building.  the VPN client cannot be installed on non-company hardware.  

    I use logmeinto get to my ancient desktop and work that way.



  • Yeah I love the salaried plus on-call combo.  I don't know about you, but we rotate on-call responsibilities so each dev has it for a week at a time.  With as many people as we have, each dev is on call about four weeks out of a year.  Unfortunately, on-call really means "IT bitch for a week".  When anything, and I mean anything, is going wrong, the on-call person gets to deal with it.  Even in the middle of the day during the week, even if the problem is with systems the dev has never seen and someone much more qualified is sitting next to him.  Project deadline looming?  Too bad, have to be on a conference call with the data center in LA because the mainframe suffered some turbo snaps or something.  What the fuck is a turbo snap anyway?

    I like to joke all the time that it'll be the high point of my career to see someone truly crack, but now and again I fear it will be me who loses it.



  • To contrast, I have actually been fighting for my team to get laptops to take home instead of using our home PCs to connect to work.  However, I'm a project manager/installer, not a developer, and because we need to maintain PCI 1.2 compliance, we shouldn't be connecting in with equipment that can't be easily audited.  I do have to say that even in your situation, I would prefer using company equipment to do any work from home because I don't want to worry about maintaining it or having some piece of junk software I stupidly installed cause a problem.  I suppose my point is that they should probably throw you a frickin' bone by at least letting you work from home on your craptops one or two days a week.  They can spin it as a "green" initiative if they want.

     Oh, and we get paid for being on call.  Everyone should.  If you're charging customers for after-hours support, obviously it has value and must be compensated for.



  • @operagost said:

    I suppose my point is that they should probably throw you a frickin' bone by at least letting you work from home on your craptops one or two days a week. 
     

     Ironically, working from home when we haven't suffered the 2012 mega-quake is also strictly forbidden.  The head of IT (dude is like 60) believes in the open floor plan and that if he can't see your head, you must be slacking off.

     edit: working from home during the "core hours" (8-4:30) is strictly forbidden.  If you want to work unpaid in the evenings using your craptop, then by all means....



  • My last job you were offered a laptop or a PC, and you got to choose it yourself. Just email the web link to your manager and it's bought. Its then yours until you leave or it literally falls apart and can't be made to work or held together using duct-tape. There was a price limit too of £400, and the company must already have a purchase agreement with said company. Most people bought laptop that cost £399 and then the next month bought a RAM and HD upgrade.

    Meanwhile, managers spent over £400 (each) on iPhones for themselves because they "needed to look professional in front of customers".  I don't know about you, but when someone is checking there email whilst I'm talking to them, I feel like punching them in the face and stamping on there phone. They also had the side effect that every email they read on there phone was marked as read, so they didn't bother to read it when back at base, and all replies were complete garbage that no one understood (thanks to auto-correct)



  • This policy should last about as long as it takes for the weather to turn nice enough to leave your car windows open in the supermarket carpark, with your laptop on the passenger seat, inside the standard laptop bag that screams "laptop inside."

    As insurance, make sure that the power supply isn't in the laptop bag when it gets stolen so that when you get a replacement you have two power supplies and you can leave one permanently plugged in at your desk and you don't need to crawl under the desk each night to take it home too.  (This is only necesary if you suspect that the stupid policy might survive a data-loss event such as this.)



  • You think that's bad: my last place made all of us developers use laptops that we were required to take hom.  The thing is, we worked in an "ethnic" neighborhood which means my boss was paranoid about theft so he had the laptops encased in lead.  He was also a born-again, evangelical Christian and was afraid the Second Coming of Jesus would corrupt the hard drives without radiation protection.  All of us took the train and walked, so we had to lug these 120 pound monstrosities on our backs through the dangerous streets and crowded subways.

     

    Anyway, we were allowed to configure our own systems, but we had to order them from some obscure Hungarian OEM and had a budget limit of $90.  So most of us ended up with rebranded Osbornes and shit like that.  Seems the Hungarians were too cheap to install password-based login software so the only security was a nest of angry vipers stuffed into the case.  Sometimes you'd open it up only to have venom shot in your eyes or get bitten on the neck.  Also, you had to feed the snakes or else they would die and smell really bad.  We weren't given any money for viper food, but our boss did give us a net for catching rats.  Which came in handy because our office building was infested with the little buggers.

     

    So.. not a great place to work, but not the worst place I've worked, either.



  • If you give a developer a beefy machine, next thing you know he doesn't give a shit about performance or memory usage. Back when I worked on high-speed print language rendering software, I deliberately did my development testing on a particularly crappy box.



  • @Smitty said:

    For the record, after almost five years working here, I've yet to hear about (let alone participate in) any kind of glaring insurance emergency that required immediate dev support from home.
    Ah, the attitude that writes most DR plans.



  • @smxlong said:

    If you give a developer a beefy machine, next thing you know he doesn't give a shit about performance or memory usage. Back when I worked on high-speed print language rendering software, I deliberately did my development testing on a particularly crappy box.

    They'll just use the extra cycles to watch stream porn, anyway.  At least, I know I do.

     

    I don't understand this anti-laptop sentiment.  I've developed solely on laptop for 6 years now.  Maybe it's just because I do web apps and server-side software so there's never much need for horsepower on the client, but I prefer the mobility a laptop affords.  Haven't any of you people worked in a startup?  It's MacBook Pros all around.  The MBP is the perfect tool whether you're writing code at the local independent coffee shop, in the office, at a trendy Web 2.0 seminar or in the locker room of a gay bath house.



  • Rotating a pager?  Where I work we have a cheap old cell phone that gets SMS messages emailed to it.  One guy carries it around all the time because he voulunteered.  He has done it for over a year.  Every single thing that comes up, he calls whoever the lead tech is over that client.  Thankfully, I am not lead tech over many clients that pay for after hours monitoring.

     

    Now we have brought on an overseas company that has a name that is the same as an old electronics manufacturer that starts with a Z.  Instead of emails to the phone, he now gets phone calls about even more simple shit.

     

     Is this normal?

     

    Edit:
    I should add that this guy that carries the phone is a hell of a nice guy.  I've never heard him say it, but I'm sure he volunteers to carry the phone to shield the rest of us from the responsibility.

    Edit:  How the fuck do you edit posts?

     

    Fixed yo' shit. -TheShadowMod



  • @pauly said:

    Edit:  How the fuck do you edit posts?

    Click "Edit".  Change the text that appears in the little box.  Click "Post".

     

    Don't do whatever it is you did that caused all sorts of escaped HTML entities to show up in your post.



  • @TheShadowMod said:

    Fixed yo' shit. -TheShadowMod

    Thank you, mysterious, handsome, masked stranger!   *swoons*



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @pauly said:

    Edit:  How the fuck do you edit posts?

    Click "Edit".  Change the text that appears in the little box.  Click "Post".

     

    Don't do whatever it is you did that caused all sorts of escaped HTML entities to show up in your post.

     

     

    What I did was a WTF in itself.  You don't want to know...



  • @pauly said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @pauly said:

    Edit:  How the fuck do you edit posts?

    Click "Edit".  Change the text that appears in the little box.  Click "Post".

    Don't do whatever it is you did that caused all sorts of escaped HTML entities to show up in your post.

     

    What I did was a WTF in itself.  You don't want to know...

    It's okay, ShadowMod was there to rescue you from yourself.  Just sink into his big, burly (yet startlingly tender) arms and let yourself be carried away...



  • @CaptainCaveman said:

    days of yore... we still rotate a pager!

     

    "We have a call! Quick! Turn the pager around its own axis!"

     

    How does that help?



  •  And how do they assume that if an earthquake hits, the connections to the office will still be working?

    Also I'd immediately  start billing them for my ADSL/cable conection at home, if I was required to be using it. They don't want to pay? Tell them you can't work from home because you don't have internet. Dail-in is their answer, then bill them for the phone line.

    Next to that, if your home is now a workplace. Does it adhere to all workplace regulations?

    And how about data security, is anything you work on or have access to sensitive data that is regulated by law?

    I wouldn't want to work at such a place anyway. You Americans put up with a lot of abuse from your employers. Unpaid overtime? Work from home without compensation?

     As for having to develop on crappy hardware, I've been there on my first job. I just started timing how much time I was waiting for this old PIII to compile the software. It came out to about 12 hours a week. I then estimated how much quicker a fast P4 would be and calculated the money that would be saved assuming my hourly rate. I think the numbers were that within two months my increased producivity would have made up for the investment in the faster machine. I then got the faster machine.

    ---------

    On a different note: I have to concur with MobiusWriter (that's a first): Macbook Pro's are in the right environment all you need for developement work. But then they usually have hardware specs (and a price tag), that makes even a lot of desktops pale in comparison. It's way over spec for posting on Daily WTF though, even though that's what I'm doing right now ;-)


  • :belt_onion:

    @RogerWilco said:

    Also I'd immediately  start billing them for my ADSL/cable connection at home, if I was required to be using it. They don't want to pay? Tell them you can't work from home because you don't have internet. Dail-in is their answer, then bill them for the phone line.
    When I was on call for my first employer (between 1999 and 2005), the company provide me with a desktop at the office, a company paid desktop (locked down) at home and a company paid ISDN line. The "on call" guy for the week had to carry around the team mobile phone. In my opinion that's the way to do it. A few years ago however I heard they switched to using laptops.

    @RogerWilco said:

    I just started timing how much time I was waiting for this old PIII to compile the software. It came out to about 12 hours a week. I then estimated how much quicker a fast P4 would be and calculated the money that would be saved assuming my hourly rate. I think the numbers were that within two months my increased producivity would have made up for the investment in the faster machine. I then got the faster machine.
    My second employer bought 20 licenses of IncrediBuild. Compilation became lightning fast without changing any of the machines



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    I don't understand this anti-laptop sentiment.  I've developed solely on laptop for 6 years now.  Maybe it's just because I do web apps and server-side software so there's never much need for horsepower on the client, but I prefer the mobility a laptop affords.
    I'm not actually anti-laptop.  I use a laptop exclusively and wouldn't have it any other way.  Of course, I am on the move a fair amount, so it makes sense.  But some of the laptops in this company have never been removed from their docking stations.  So what the hell was the point?



  • @bstorer said:

    But some of the laptops in this company have never been removed from their docking stations.  So what the hell was the point?
     

    Exactly.  My laptop only leaves the docking station during the four weeks a year that I'm on call.  A desktop just makes more sense.

    Our standard laptop build comes with a 40GB HDD and 512 MB of RAM.  Devs who demonstrate a need (i.e. write a nice flowery business case) get bumped to 2 GB of RAM, which is still insufficient.  We're required to keep Lotus Notes open at all times so we can swiftly respond to email / IMs (more WTFery).  Notes is a memory pig by itself, then throw in Visual Studio and the other tools we need to do our jobs and the machine just fails to keep up.  Good times.



  • @Smitty said:

    Our standard laptop build comes with a 40GB HDD and 512 MB of RAM. 
    Good Lord.



  • @RogerWilco said:

    On a different note: I have to concur with MobiusWriter (that's a first): Macbook Pro's are in the right environment all you need for developement work. But then they usually have hardware specs (and a price tag), that makes even a lot of desktops pale in comparison. It's way over spec for posting on Daily WTF though, even though that's what I'm doing right now ;-)

    I was being sarcastic.  Note the comment about gay bath houses.  Although, as a Mac user, maybe that just sounded natural to you.



  • @Smitty said:

    At our weekly staff meeting yesterday, we received word from on high that "all developers are required to take their laptops home every night".  I mentioned some time ago that all of the devs here are saddled with shitty business-class Dell Latitude laptops.  Now we're expected to be shackled to the laptop every night.

    Their reason for handing down this directive?  It's their "Business Recovery Plan" in the event of a major earthquake.  That's right; on the off chance that a mega-quake sinks the floating bridges here (I work on an island in the middle of a lake), the devs are expected to be armed and ready to write crappy insurance software from home.  Nevermind that the same quake that sinks the bridges will also likely decimate all of our homes.

    My buddy and I have reached the conclusion that this entire office is a cruel, tragic social experiment being conducted by sociopathic foreigners.  Canadians maybe.  It's that ridiculous here.

     

    I would assume someone wrote a report that the business recovery plan opportunity cost outweighs the cost from increased insurance following claims of:
    - Staff laptop get stolen from crack house home.
    - Occasional golden shower on the keyboard.  Assuming your partner (or for Morbs: “Tuesday duty regular dime hooker”)  is into that kind of thing.



  • @RogerWilco said:

    I wouldn't want to work at such a place anyway. You Americans put up with a lot of abuse from your employers. Unpaid overtime? Work from home without compensation?

    And you Europeans are such whiny, retarded, knee-jerk, entitled, prissy, worthless little faggots.  The guy's work asks him to toss a laptop in his trunk and drive home with it.  He even admits he has never had to work from home and that it's only a precaution in case of an emergency.  But, OMG, it's like 21st century slavery!  It's such an injustice to possibly have to work under the oppressive, dangerous conditions of your own living room!

     

    This is why Europe is a worthless shitstain on the world.  Go back to gassing Jews and inbreeding with each other, you pussies.  The smart people all left Europe decades ago.  All that's left are the people who are too stupid, ugly and cowardly to get out*.

     

    * And dhromed, whom I love.  He is a God amongst men and a man amongst Europussies.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @RogerWilco said:

    On a different note: I have to concur with MobiusWriter (that's a first): Macbook Pro's are in the right environment all you need for developement work. But then they usually have hardware specs (and a price tag), that makes even a lot of desktops pale in comparison. It's way over spec for posting on Daily WTF though, even though that's what I'm doing right now ;-)

    I was being sarcastic.  Note the comment about gay bath houses.  Although, as a Mac user, maybe that just sounded natural to you.

    Just you wait until all his comrades mooching wifi at the trendy coffee shop finish up their latest tweets about how SXSW has gone too corporate.  They'll be all over you like an idiot's thumbs on an iPad when he tells them about this!


  • Man, you guys think you got it rough? Let me tell you about where I work. 

    I have a desktop AND a laptop.  The other day, I had to send in my laptop for repairs and you know what the tech did?  He noticed that my laptop didn't meet company spec for RAM on a dev laptop and double my RAM without even asking my permission!

     And my boss?  Let me tell you about this guy.  He let's me work from home, but honestly, I live so close that between the dual monitor setup, free coffee and lack of distractions, I work out of the office 99% of the time. I don't even get a company issued cell phone or pager for them to get ahold of me during off duty hours, can you believe that shit?  Not that it really matters, in the almost 2 years I've worked here, he's only bothered to call me at home 3 or 4 times.  And, at least five or six times, there was some big project and he made work until 8 or 9 AT NIGHT.  Plus, if I have a doctor's appointment, he won't even let me enter the time off into our time and labor system unless I miss at least half a day.  Can you believe this guy?

     I tell you, with all that, plus the crappy 401(k) (100% match of 5% with NO vesting period, what's THAT shit?) and sorry insurance (almost NINETY bucks a month for my whole family), I'm not sure why I still work at this place.

     So, to sum up . . . yeah, sucks to be you guys.

    Typo fix --Ling



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    All that's left are the people who are too stupid, ugly and cowardly to get out*.

     

    * And dhromed, whom I love.  He is a God amongst men and a man amongst Europussies.

    What about ammoQ, whose firey essence often looms high in the night skies of Europe, blazing a trail to wisdom for the filthy vagabonds that inhabit those lands, if only they had the sense to follow it?


  •  Earthquake-prone, floating bridges... lemme guess, Mercer Island?

    Considering that wind storm knocked out power to Mercer Island for, what, 3 solid weeks... not as much a WTF as you think. Apparently all the infrastructure there (including the power grid) was hacked together our of spare parts and hope.



  •  I'm with you, man. I work in a company with good IT too. *sniff* it's so beautiful.

    My only gripe is that their (apparently only) OS image is 32-bit, so my desktop (Optiplex 960) and laptop (Latitude E6400) are both running a 32-bit OS on a 64-bit chip. Natch, they don't bother to put more than 4 GB in either...

    I can't complain, they actually made the Vista image just for me because I didn't want XP installed on my work computer after upgrading to Vista at home-- for some reason, even though it had been out something like a full year, nobody else ever requested Vista. :)

    Another department of our company full of developers got taken over by a huge WTF firm. They have to downgrade their Windows Server 2008 workstations back to XP, and install Lotus Notes. Thank God I didn't move to that department when I had the chance.



  • @campkev said:

     So, to sum up . . . yeah, sucks to be you guys.
    Fellow moderators: I say we ban campkev.  Clearly he does not belong here, and also I hate him.  All in favor?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @bstorer said:

    @campkev said:

     So, to sum up . . . yeah, sucks to be you guys.
    Fellow moderators: I say we ban campkev.  Clearly he does not belong here, and also I hate him.  All in favor?

    Uhhh, wot?



  • @bstorer said:

    @campkev said:

     So, to sum up . . . yeah, sucks to be you guys.
    Fellow moderators: I say we ban campkev.  Clearly he does not belong here, and also I hate him.  All in favor?

    I'm not a moderator, but I say it's the banhammer for this clown.  I hate him too.



  • @blakeyrat said:

     Earthquake-prone, floating bridges... lemme guess, Mercer Island?

    Considering that wind storm knocked out power to Mercer Island for, what, 3 solid weeks... not as much a WTF as you think. Apparently all the infrastructure there (including the power grid) was hacked together our of spare parts and hope.

     Yep, Mercer Island.  As I previously mentioned, our VPN servers are in a closet here in the office, while everything else is in the LA datacenter.  So if the island's power grid goes down, so does our VPN connection.  In short, their DR plan is fully craptastic.  It's just a flimsy excuse to saddle us with $800 laptops.

    On a related note, in addition to crappy hardware, we recently learned that upper management has decreed that developers are to be saddled with the standard image used by all other computers in the company (for security purposes).  The standard image boasts several great features, such as forbidding access to the C:\ root on your own machine.  The Internet Explorer options menu is rendered inaccessible with Javascript disabled, so testing changes to our website should prove exciting.  The desktop is fixed with the spiffy green hill image that you get on a fresh XP install, and the screensaver is an animated company logo.  It has a neat little internally-developed client for receiving various patches, which is always running and can't be killed via task manager.  Corporate loves to push out patches during the day and the client forces a reboot as soon as the patch is installed.  No 'remind me later' option for us.

    Our first-level managers are pushing back against the decision, but since they're just glorified drones I doubt their resistance will be effective.

     



  • @campkev said:

    Typo fix --Ling

    The power has gone to his head.


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