Life as a tech-nomad

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Cochrane's bitter grudge against IT departments

"Choose technology you can maintain and support yourself--corporate IT and security departments are a complete blight on productivity."

This type of shrill complaint is a constant, recurring theme throughout Cochrane's articles. While I commend him on his efforts to be self-sufficient in terms of supporting his own gadgets, its obvious that this is because he has expected IT departments in the past to support whatever products he's decided to bring into the office based on his own whims and not company policies. The letdown when told "No" is apparently still resounding in Cochrane's mind.

Contrary to Cochrane's juvenile gripes, IT departments are not there to ruin his fun or impede his productivity. They're there to create and maintain corporate standards so the business can interface with technology in a documented, reliable and secure fashion. They're there to support a user population of hundreds or thousands of people, all of whom have needs. They're there to try to protect data and systems so the business can function. They're there to balance functionality with privacy as best they can, while trying not to trod upon the toes of the prima donnas who feel it's OK to burden other folks with their needs but refuse to be "burdened" in return with compliance to the "unfair" procedures or regulations they don't agree with. Ever hear of quid pro quo, Mr. Cochrane?

Having worked in an IT department for some time, I'm all too familiar with the self-envisioned "power users" who get a Palm or Blackberry for Christmas and want us to set it up and train them on it (the very next business day!). And then ask for our home telephone numbers so they can contact us on a Saturday night if they can't get their e-mail. All too often I have been asked to support someone's home laptop/PC because they feel if they used it to work on an company's Excel document at one point, somehow that makes it our area of responsibility to support and maintain, including Windows upgrades, new Office software, antivirus, etc. On occasion I've been asked to reduce or negate security measures in order to make things more convenient for a user (i.e. "I'd like to reuse my dog Spot's name for my password but the system won't let me! Can you take care of that?")

However, the difference between these individuals and Peter Cochrane is that when patiently told why outside devices/systems aren't our area of responsibility (because we already have plenty of in-house systems that need our support, and thanks to the tough years IT has had it's usually one network admin/support guy for dozens if not hundreds of users), or that security on our systems is in place for a reason and we can't compromise on those policies, the users don't stomp off to write a whiny diatribe about us being a "blight" on their productivity.

With this kind of attitude, I hope Mr. Cochrane owns and supports his own domain and e-mail server. I hope he performs his own backups, writes his own code, and maintains his own cell towers. Somehow I doubt that is the case, so like it or not, he's enjoying the services of an IT department somewhere, who despite his biases to the contrary nevertheless enable him to be so very productive as to write these columns on the road.

Posted by: mreilly19   Posted on: 01/11/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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