Case in point: company I worked at took all administrator privileges from developers. They implemented an elevation system that would allow certain apps to run elevated.
Totally unrelated, IDEs have terminals and they run escalated when the IDE itself is escalated. Also, you can do pretty much everything from an escalated terminal.
All we needed was a reason to argue why our IDE needed escalation, and that is not hard to find a BS explanation for.
I worked with a faculty member who worked his way up to a Dean after someone retired earlier this year. When replacing his PC he had Baldur’s Gate 3 installed lmao
My dad let me install Darkstone on his work laptop on the early 2000s (the laptop was better spec'd than the family PC). Anyways, his work wasn't happy when they found out.
If your security department is indeed functioning (even if barely), they definitely knew.
We (security) just mostly let it slide because it can still be argued that the terminal comes in package with the IDE, and we believe you are competent enough to not make a mess of your laptop. I would definitely not let any desk clerk/non IT function get even remotely close.
Tbh it’s pretty asinine not to give developers admin on their own machine. If there’s something genuinely dangerous they could do with local admin, you should probably secure that flaw instead.
Sometimes its more about the people. Something like clickfix captcha phishing still caught a lot of people off guard.
Other times, its just company policies decided by some random guy who knows computer, that the founder knew 30 years ago. I definitely can help you bend some legal wording, or "interpret" things differently, but i will never approve anything that outright crosses the policy no matter how stupid it is.
Of course this is different if you worked in highly secured/regulated environment like banks. They are a lot more stricter.
My boss just lost local admin on his PC, you should have heard him whinging about it to IT 😂 None of us other bioinformaticians have local admin privileges in our org. He had a janky old computer that he'd managed to keep out of their management systems for years. I agree it's annoying, but I couldn't help find it a little funny.
Never understood why companies give administration rights to developers, I assume because the setup requires it.
Because there are enough random bespoke things I'm going to try and do that aren't covered by normal processes or behaviors for basic users. It's not worth pissing off the computer-inclined people to force them to write justifications every time they need to install new software or make some configuration change, wait a week for it to go through appropriate channels, and then have it implemented incorrectly anyway.
The only job I haven't started out with admin privileges was my last one. Within a month or two I was granted admin rights because I kept making requests and then making noise when my work was delayed due to IT being slow. The easier solution is just give me admin rights. There's also the idea that devs are the ones most likely to find holes in your system. If you block them, they'll still find a solution, but probably not the one you want.
At my first job out of grad school I needed to set up a static intranet IP for a new desktop workstation. Tried the proper channels, and after weeks of waiting, I gave up. Started probing the network for an unused IP, found it, set it, moved on. Three weeks later two guys from IT show up in a tizzy. Apparently the IP I used was dedicated for some server cluster monthly backup job, but not reserved outside of that process. Because I had it assigned their whole pipeline broke.
What'd'ya know, I had a safe static IP within two days (and they changed network policy to not allow clients to set static IPs themselves...).
That sounds miserable and likely not a place I'd like to work in.
I appreciate that my employer trusts me to do what I need with my own machine. I can install whatever I want on it and have full sudo/admin privileges. I'm definitely more productive because I can make my workstation mine
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u/Flater420 8d ago
Case in point: company I worked at took all administrator privileges from developers. They implemented an elevation system that would allow certain apps to run elevated.
Totally unrelated, IDEs have terminals and they run escalated when the IDE itself is escalated. Also, you can do pretty much everything from an escalated terminal.
All we needed was a reason to argue why our IDE needed escalation, and that is not hard to find a BS explanation for.