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Workers Will Smash Their PCs To Get an Upgrade
An anonymous reader writes "One in four office workers reckon that the best way to get a new work computer is to smash up the one they have — either that or to take it down to the junk shop themselves. Some 40 per cent of office workers complain that their aging workplace PC hurts their productivity and many are tempted to resort to extreme measures to get an upgrade, including taking a hammer to the aging beast on the desktop. Some ten per cent of UK workers said they'd even resort to buying new parts for their work devices themselves to perform their own upgrade; particularly those who work in smaller organizations."
It's funny how many people point to their monitor and call it their computer. I can imagine a lot of people smash up their monitor expecting that it will result in their getting a new computer.
What I'd really like to know is how many people do that; get a replacement monitor; and say, "Wow, this new computer is so much faster!"
The reason most office workers are unproductive has nothing to do with their hardware.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
we try to show business owners that 10 year old computers really are a problem, even when they still work.
If they still perform the task for which they were intended 10 years ago, why are they a problem?
The real problem isn't old computers, it's new software. New software comes out which doesn't really do anything better than your old software. But people you do business with upgraded, so now you have to upgrade your software to interoperate with them. But the new software runs more slowly, and now you need new hardware to do the same task you were doing just fine 6 months ago.
For a stand-alone application, there's nothing wrong with 10 year old computers. Or 20 year old computers, for that matter. DOS still works as well as it ever did.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
"Can I get a monitor with a display resolution larger than 1400x900?" "No." "But...but...I can't even see a page of schematics at a time, and the code I'm maintaining is a hundred thousand lines split in to dozens of files!" "The budget is tight, can't do it."
You're asking for the wrong reasons... With a bigger monitor you can show the new brand image more clearly, you can use the extra space to display the image of the new mission statement... You'll always be on track that way, you'll know the schematic you can't see clearly on the screen is driving customer satisfaction and global leadership and all that...
Try working in most actual business environments.
The argument always goes back and forth like this:
IT Side - we have the following reasons that normal users shouldn't be installing programs themselves.
- Security risk of adware/malware/bundleware
- Number of incidents where machines have been compromised.
- Number of incidents where complaints of "my machine is slow" turn out to be the result of user filling drive up with crap
User side -
- "But it takes more than 5 minutes for them to come down and install (program X that's actually work related) for me." Nevermind that these installs happen maybe once per year and if they would bother SCHEDULING with us...
- "But I want to try out (program y) to see if we can use it in the business..."
- User happens to be the PHB's son or is fucking the PHB on the side.
Brain-dead PHB side-
- "My employees are complaining that you IT guys are getting in the way of their work! Fix it so they can install things!"
- One month later: "Megan's machine got infected again. Why the hell aren't you IT guys stopping this from happening? Do whatever it takes to stop this from happening again!"
- One more month later: "Megan's complaining you took away her install rights! I need her to be working as best as possible, give them back to her! She can't possibly cause problems with that!"
Now add in that you might be working in an EDUCATION environment - where every tenured faculty member is also a brain-dead PHB.
Wow. What a horrible idea. Never, ever, donate money to your employer. And even if you take it with you when you quit, you have donated money to your employer.
As a manager, it is MY job to give you the tools to make you more productive. If I am not making the right trade-offs, then I am not doing my job. And if I am not doing my job, you shouldn't make me look good by donating from your own pocket.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I don't doubt that what you say is accurate, but I'm amazed it's still socially acceptable for people to be unable to use the basic technology we interact with every day. A person who needs to drive a company vehicle as part of their job would be out pretty quickly if they kept crashing into trees - sure, the occasional genuine accident happens, and will be overlooked, but negligence/stupidity/repeated incompetence will (rightly) get you fired. There's absolutely no reason that the same shouldn't apply to people using company computers.
Here let's flip that around a bit, just as another example.
IT Side - we made up the following reasons that normal users shouldn't be installing programs themselves.
- Microsoft gave us a document that says we should configure it like this so we did just that.
- We are too lazy or overworked or underpaid to think too hard about our user's needs
- We never bothered to ask what user's requirements were, we just assumed it.
- IT person happens to be PHB's son or fucking PHB on the side.
User side -
- I have to be able to do work that my boss has required me to do which is core to the business making money!
- I need to be able to test certain situations in order to come up with a new means to be more productive and save the company money!
- Arbitrary restrictions are stifling users for the sake of making IT look good.
Brain-dead PHB of IT side-
- "We have a policy and we stick too it and we can't change it."
- One month later: "We have a policy and we stick to it and we can't change it."
- One more month later: PHB is out of the office playing golf with someone while you fume over missing yet another deadline.
Now add in that you might be working in a software development environment, where every IT rep treats you like an office temp and tries to give you access to MS office and internet explorer and nothing else and does absolutely nothing to understand how your own company's software works nor tries to understand what it takes to create, test, and support said software when your own customers have admin rights to their own machine and, funny, you don't, so you can't possibly figure out what their problem is!
This is just a counter example to your stereotype. People in general are idiots, sometimes they are in IT, sometimes they are in the user base, and sometimes it's both. You can't paint one side with a broad brush and completely blame things like this on them.
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