But now we're not a 20-person company. We're up around 120 people and growing quickly. And we're going through growing pains. This is not unusual. We don't do business the same way we did 9 years ago because we can't. In an tightly regulated industry and a world that is concerned about high-tech security, our clients expect more. And they deserve more. This makes it more crucial to have a good IT staff that can have policies in place to assure those clients that you are, indeed, a world-class global company capable to meeting their security needs.
But there's a fine line between being a responsible company and being over-controlling Type-A jerks.
We've endured a lot in the last few months. A new password policy that makes us change them every 90 days and meet certain criteria. Fine. Limits on email retention. Okay. No installing unauthorized software without permission. Great. Don't connect personal computing equipment (laptops, iPods, hard drives, etc.) to the corporate network. Okay. These things I can deal with, because I can see a real reason for them.
I even limited the grumbling when we started using a web filter to block access to certain categories of web sites. After all, who really needs to read porn or gamble at work? But last week, the tiniest thing happened; something you wouldn't think would set me off, but it did.
They changed my web browser home page - and I can't change it back.
My home page used to be my department's portal on our Intranet. This was useful to me. That portal contains files, tools, and resources I need to do my job on a daily basis.
The new home page is the main page of the Intranet. Not nearly so useful. It's cluttered. It's filled with information I don't need. I think it's lovely that somebody won the close-to-the-pin contest at the company golf outing, but I simply don't care. I don't even want to have to bypass this crap on my way to the important stuff. I subscribe to the page so that I get an email alert when a new announcement is posted. This email subject let's me decide if I want to go read the whole story and that is good for me.
At first, I thought maybe IE was malfunctioning (because that's not exactly an unheard of phenomena you know). After four days of struggling to reset the home page, I finally emailed the Intranet administrator. "Oh, that's a new policy from eServices. You can't change the page. But you're only one click away from your old page."
"Only one click"? WTF?
I pressed for a reason for this seemingly unnecessary policy change. I also said it would have been nice to hear about it before it went live. "I don't need to announce policies," our CIO told me. Oh really? You don't think changing my work environment, even in a small way, warrants an announcement? I'm not asking that you put it up for a vote, I'm asking that you have the common courtesy (there's that word again) to frickin' tell me you're an anal-retentive control freak who needs to control my web browser.
But even more inane is the reason for the change. At first, they tried to tell me this was so everybody could have better access to information and we'd all be standard. But what it came down to was that they didn't think people were reading all the emails they've been sending out on various things. So now they are posting everything to the main page of the Intranet and forcing people there when they open IE to "make" us read their crap.
I'll give you all a moment to stop laughing.
But it's no joke, it's the truth. "We send out emails and only 8 people read them, and then people complain they don't know what's going on." Tough shit.
- If somebody decides not to read an email, and misses important info, that's their problem. They are an adult and they should deal with the consequences of their decisions.
- If IT thinks every piece of communication they put out is of "critical importance," they have an over-inflated sense of importance.
Just so you don't think I'm crazy, the last two emails I received from the CIO were about a change to the company cell phone policy and a notice about storing copyrighted materials (like movies and music) on corporate computers - or attaching hard drives containing such materials to corporate computers. I read neither email, and for two very good reasons. One, I don't have a company cell phone so I really couldn't care less about the changing cell phone policy. Two, I don't store any personal files on my work computer, nor do I listen to my iPod through the computer.
When I politely pointed out that merely changing someone's browser home page was not going to guarantee reading the information, the CIO said, "For your information, hits on that home page have doubled since we implemented this."
No shit, Sherlock. In a company of 120 people, all of whom open a web browser at least once a day, you are bound to see a dramatic increase on hits! Duh! For cripe's sake - our time sheet application is web-based and 3/4 of the company has to use it! Just because somebody hit the page doesn't mean they spent any time reading what was there! I'm just a project manager and I know this.
Another member of the IT department said, "Well, we could make the announcement the first page you see and you have to click OK to get to the rest of the Intranet." Well first, that doesn't guarantee I'll read anything either. It just means I'll click OK to get you off my ass. It does, however, guarantee that I will be in the COO or the CEO's office to complain vociferously.
And to add insult to injury, when accused of "tampering" with the system I replied I had done no such thing. I had sent an email to the CIO voicing my dislike of the policy. The next day, my home page reverted to the department portal page. I assumed the CIO had modified something. "Not me," he said. Okay, whatever. Point is, there's the home page, and the box to change it in IE is completely inactive. I point this out.
"Well, probably some smart-ass developer hacking the system instead of doing his job," snipes the CIO.
Excuse me???? Now you're going to insult the members of my team? I'm sorry, but no way buddy. I hope and believe I enjoy a good working relationship with every developer we employ. I do not think so much of myself that I believe these folks would hack our IT infrastructure just for my personal gratification.
The thing that torques me off completely is this: I am our IT department's customer. Part of their job is to ensure that I have the hardware and software necessary to do my job. This policy does not help me - it gets in my way by taking the information I need most and moving it one layer away from me. And they just don't friggin' get it.
They also apparently think I'm stupid, because I can think of at least three ways around this. The simplest are just typing the direct URL in the Address bar of the Windows task bar or creating a short-cut on my desktop. Yeah, I can't use the little Quick Start menu button any more, but hey, I'll deal with it.
I won't win this battle. I don't expect to do so. But I will not sit by quietly and let some Type-A control freak take over the company that I helped create. And to the extent that I can exercise a little corporate "civil disobedience," I will. Because I'm a non-conformist, at least to policies I consider about as useful as a frontal lobotomy.
So, IT department, stick that in your floppy drive and smoke it.
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