The Department of NO

[Fash]

Do you know what I hate? Corporate IT departments.

The whole notion of what it means to work in IT is lost in todays world. When I worked in IT, the users were priority #2 behind my own ass. I went out of my way to make their lives easier and to teach them something at the same time. If there was some way to make something more efficient, I was on it. I grew to hate working in IT, not because of the users, but because of management.

I know I was the exception to the rule, however... Most IT departments are full of people who consider their users morons incapable of operating the machine in front of them.

I started in January at my current employer and quickly realized I would be dealing with another IT department whose rabid control issues are only rivaled by their stupidity. Say you have tough security, and give everyone the same password. Set up a restrictive Web Proxy while threatening that all web traffic is monitored, and then allow users to uncheck the 'use proxy' option and bypass all the security. Say you want to help, and then say No.

I am a Business Analyst, but the processors in the billing department were tasked with data-entry of over 50,000 items into an unfriendly graphical system... Using a completely free and open-source program, AutoHotkey (http://www.autohotkey.com), I created a macro script that eliminated 60 keystrokes per form.. Thats 3,000,000 keystrokes on 50,000 forms.. At 200 keystrokes per minute, that is 250 man-hours of labor. I demonstrated it for the manager of the billing department, and he directed me to set it up on the 18 processor machines. Weeks go by and just as another large batch arrives, he tells me that even though he had mentioned it to IT three times already, they threw a shit-fit this time because they had not approved it, and demanded it be removed from all systems immediately. I thought *I* was pissed, until I started going to the processors to uninstall it...

I've been operating under the radar ever since. I have developed in a programming language called PHP for over 6 years, and I find it to be absolutely invaluable as a command-line text processor/data manipulator. Almost every day I'm asked to do something, or a problem is brought to my attention, that I could do faster, or actually have a solution for, by using a PHP script... but I knew getting approval, or even trying, would be futile.

I was working with a VP in the company on an issue, and had to drive to our other building with him... I took the opportunity to bring up the topic. He advised me to email the head IT person and CC him on it. I did just that, explaining exactly what I wanted to use it for, that it was free and open-source, and listed 3 specific examples of situations it *could* have been a tremendous help (it was!).

The response included one of the strangest things I've ever heard of... a policy against open-source. What?! Other than that I was not surprised they responded in the negative. The reasons included not wanting to become responsible for maintaining development created outside of their 'life cycle' if I were to resign or post for another job, and that open-source software has no structured support.

I responded professionally while negating all reasons. I'll be more blunt here though. I don't need any fucking support for PHP, and if I were to leave or move up in the company, other people would just do it their own way, using fucking Access or something in the corporate handbook.

The response was simply, "Application and process develop belongs in IT. The open source policy stands as is.", or, "No, just because, now get lost."

The VP and Manager that were CC'd on the whole chain will now discuss a way around this cockblock. Meanwhile, I risk getting fired everyday.

Go team go!