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IT Turf Wars: the Most Common Feuds In Tech
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Dan Tynan reports on the most common feuds in tech: turf wars in the IT department. 'IT pros do battle every day — with cyber attackers, stubborn hardware, buggy software, clueless users, and the endless demands of other departments within their organization. But few can compare to the conflicts raging within IT itself.' Dev vs. ops, staff vs. management — taking flak from fellow IT pros has become all too common in today's highly territorial IT organizations."
it's the best.
Disagree != mod troll.
Or is that just a California thing?
To quote Lincoln Spector and sung to the tune of the Jets song from West Side Story.
When you use DOS you use DOS all the way
From your first data loss 'til you format drive A:.
When you use DOS, why your confidence grows;
For your keys there's commands, for your mouse there's Windows.
It's DOS that's sublime; it's used by all go-getters.
At file-namin' time, we're never locked in fetters--
We choose eight letters.
When you use DOS, old hardware you can swap.
You can buy something new, next month prices will drop.
When you use DOS, why, you're never a stooge,
If your 640's low, well, there's always a cludge.
DOS users: On clones we can run, with brand-names we're the choosers.
The Macs'll buy none, cause all the Apple users
Are mouse abusers.
We're using DOS, yeah! and we're gonna fix
Every last system that's not something eighty-six--
Not something eighty, very weighty, six.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Luckly we have the equivalent of Sun Tzu's Art of War for the IT crowd.
B.O.F.H
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
DBAs always seem to want root for some reason or other... with apologies to A Few Good Men:
SysAdmin: You want the authority?
DBA: I think I'm entitled.
SysAdmin: You want the authority?!
DBA: I want the root!
SysAdmin: You can't handle the root!
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Got a great idea and want to get it past security without trouble? that's simple... simply get buy-in from a senior executive. get him to adopt it as his pet project and get it working on the Dev servers. now when he announces it Security cant do anything but say yes and do your bidding because they do not dare tell the Senior VP of marketing that they wont let his project run. Do I make enemies withing security? yup. Every one of them hated me because my default approach to them was an end run. And it was simply because the security guys were incapable of thought outside of the "lock it all down" OMG OMG! DANGER DANGER! WE got a iphone/ipod app launched for use in the company and made every one of the security guys froth at the mouth and fall on the floor convulsing when I end ran them to a VP who loved it and wanted every sales person to have it. They lost their mind at allowing 190 non company locked up iphones and ipods connected to the holy internal wifi.
Just wait when my ipad system for sales forecasting get's greenlighted and they have to allow 200+ ipads on it as well...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Have you tried no being a dick yet?
Remember that the network switches / hubs / routers are part of "the network".
So when there REALLY is a problem on the network, the network admins usually hear about it because EVERYONE is having problems with ALL of their apps.
If one workstation or one server is having a problem (but the others are working) then it probably isn't a problem with "the network".
It may be that the network is not configured the way you'd like it to be for whatever you're trying to do ... but remember that the network admins have to keep the network configured to support all the OTHER items that were on it before yours.
At least be able to tell them what you want to do protocol-wise.
I admit: my first reaction is that if I worked security at your company, I'd want to kick your ass. I mean, I like you, but they probably have a very valid point about not wanting untrusted apps popping up all over the place.
But my second reaction was that you're right. There's no valid reason why you can't have unsecured guests on the holy internal wifi. We have an open WLAN here at the office, but it's firewalled away from anything we actually care about, with exceptions on a case-by-case basis. You don't get open access to the database server just because you're connecting to our corporate wifi. If your security guys can't handle that, then, well, sucks to be them. Good for you for finding away to make people actually do their jobs.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Sigh.
Daily life around here.
Marketing wants what marketing wants. To hell if it has a positive cost/benefit ratio. "Nice and shiny and uses lots of Flash ... and runs on my iPhone ... drool"
Devs dev what marketing wants. Dev only wants to dev in production. As Administrator/root/qsecofr (or ALLOBJ).
IT Management, but especially Finance Magement skimp of every possible detail until they end up spending more time AND money patching it until it would have been cheaper to do it the way joint Ops/Securty said it would.
Ops/Security is handed a dogs breakfast of non-working, insecure code that produces amiguous, and often wrong results. Last to find out or provide input. But it's our fault when it doesn't work, or opens all security doors, or breaches laws in several countries. (The last ones to touch it must have broken it).
Classic way NOT to do it.
Q:I was listening to a CD in Grip and it sounded horrible! What's up? A:Perhaps you are listening to country music
Got a great idea and want to get it past security without trouble? that's simple... simply get buy-in from a senior executive.
One of the best environments I ever worked security for allowed for senior managers to take personal responsibility for these kinds of decisions. The business unit would announce their Big Idea. InfoSec would look at it, analyze risks / security issues, and (often missing from many InfoSec groups) work out ways to allow the same functionality while mitigating any discovered risks, and ultimately document those risks. If the business unit didn't want to follow InfoSec's recommendations, they could take their Big Idea to their boss and make the business case for it so that their boss can take personal responsibility for the decision. InfoSec would provide the risk assessment. Senior management would then decide if the business case overcame the risk and everyone would press on accordingly. The process did wonders for enforcing open communication. Management wanted good information before they put their own butts on the line. Business units couldn't get away with just grousing or avoiding InfoSec and InfoSec couldn't get away with arbitrarily dismissing any new ideas. I should point out that this system is seeped in conflict. And that's good. Conflict is fundamental to security and, in many ways, any pursuit that has many options guided by creative thinking - something that all good IT environments should be encouraging. The key is to ensure that conflict can drive a constructive process. Too many IT environments pretend conflict doesn't exist and has no proper outlet for it.
Paint one half of the cable blue and the other half white, and hide the switch point in a mass of cables somewhere.
I always found it fun when OTHERS found net send, decided to "have some fun", and as a result I showed them the consequences of mixing 1. batch scripting, 2. net send, and 3. infinite loops. And not one of them knew how to turn the service off... One of them even started to cry..
Good times :)
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
I think the conflict here is between reasonable people and assholes. You sound like a reasonable person, Lumpy sounds like a bit of an asshole, but that may be the fault of working with assholes. It's quite possible that if you were Lumpy's security guy, and he knew he *could* come to you and open a reasonable dialog that would result in a mutually acceptable solution, he would. Since he works with obstructionist asshats, he bypasses them whenever possible. It's also possible he's just an asshole who always wants to get his way. Hard to tell under the circumstances. Personally my policy is to never say "no" without at least trying to come up with an alternative.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.