Interregnum And Attitude

Wow, left this blogg to fester for a while didn't I? A couple of simple reasons - I just didn't get round to it. The second reason is corperate desktop stupidity. My previous blogg posting practice was to edit the blogg entries during the evening then quickly upload them at work the following morning, meaning I always got to sleep on what I'd said before exposing it to the world. But late March all our work machines were migrated to the corperate standard, and this blogg became invisible to me. Now they've fixed all this and we're looking at a firewall configuration appropriate to developers rather than call centre workers I can continue my occasional early morning uploads.

How do you regulate a corperate desktop for a developer ? Everywhere else I've ever worked my desktop machine has been my own space - I install what I need to keep working as effectively as I can. I've had to ensure I don't break licensing agreements and manage the IP side on my own but that was part of the job. If I need something that costs then the company should pay for it, if I don't need it then I don't install it.

But now it's different , they keep telling me its not "my" machine but it belongs to the company. Yes, that's always been the case but now it's more emphasised. There's an approved software list, you see websites blocked, and there's tray icons for system services that restrict my machine or log things. I can't even turn off the screensaver or change the damn wallpaper - even though a I'm not a salesman who constantly shows his screen to customers.

It feels like I'm not trusted, and thats a bad feeling to work under. As the economy picks up and developer jobs become plentiful again I'm sure we'll see developers leaving. I'll probably be one of them, this job is fast losing what little shine it had.