The Rise and Rise of IT Administrators

maffstephens writes "Have you noticed how difficult it's become to develop software? Not because software is more complex, but because there seems to be an army of administrators standing in your way - sys admins, network admins, database admins, runtime admins - the list is endless. They should be there to help us, to make our lives easier, but the reality is often very different. This thought-provoking article from Software Reality is all about the emerging culture of spiteful, dog-in-the-manger prevention amongst corporate IT administrators. Software development has become so inefficient as a result, it's no wonder so many companies are outsourcing."

Comments

Re:Nice mindset. Here's the flip side.

[infinite9]

You can either work with us, and clearly communicate to OUR supervisors(not just us) what your needs are...or you can make us the enemy, always try to do things half-assed, and get nothing done.

As a developer and consultant, I've worked in a lot of environments for a lot of companies, all falling at different points on the admin nazi scale. I've worked in environments were I was expected to do microsoft development without having an admin account on my own machine. I have no problem when admins come to me and say, "You can use that machine you found in the closet for an extra test box, but we're not going to support it." It's when they try to protect me from myself to the point of ridiculousness that I take exception. In those cases, I simply document the obstruction and keep billing.

Re:We need more planning and less coding.

[0WaitState]

You, sir, are a BOFH (google for it). Get a clue, before you get thrown out on your ass. Your bugaboo about developers having (gasp) root access on dev/testing boxes is costing your company serious money while developers contort their architecture to cope with your control fantasies. Grow up.

If you're trolling, then congratulations, but I've dealt with sysnazis before.