That's a question that a faithful reader asked me to pose. Plus, I'll throw in one for the devil: What IT policies improve your work?[Image: the famous 1980s computer screen saver, Flying Toasters]
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Mail | How do 'absurd IT policies' slow your work?
That's a question that a faithful reader asked me to pose. Plus, I'll throw in one for the devil: What IT policies improve your work?[Image: the famous 1980s computer screen saver, Flying Toasters]
26 comments:
Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."
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Who has an IT department??? We laid all ours off and hired new ones with no idea of newspaper work. They don't answer the phone after hours, and don't have a clue what we're doing here.
ReplyDeleteIT Dept? are you kidding? it's that combo with Finance that rule. ever try to follow their instructions to submit anything online? or better yet - let's train you and show you how well it doesn't work yet.
ReplyDeleteI could cure cancer with the time I'd save not having to type a password to unlock my blackberry 20 times a day.
ReplyDeleteEver since e-mail was centralized, it takes my computer 20+ minutes to churn through everything when I boot up.
ReplyDeleteOur local IT people are terrific, though.
Centralization. That's the word. As IT functions get more and more centralized, and that's the trend, we'll all have to jump through Gannett hoops. Corporate IT will call the tune and local IT people will just have to cope and pass those weird, arcane, ridiculous policies on to the users. And as local people have less and less control, you will start hearing more and more "I'll have to file a ticket with corporate." And as more centralization happens, you'll see smaller and smaller IT groups.
ReplyDeletethere are a few good IT departments (I'm part of one) but our hands are tied since so much is being done at corporate. Of course, those on the corporate helpdesk are even more clueless. Anyone who was any good in IT at corporate has moved on to bigger and better things. Not to mention the "new and improved" helpdesk website. The old one sucked, but it wasn't as bad as the new one.
ReplyDeleteIn Broadcast, we have an engineering team and one IT guy -- which is to say, the legacy engineers, the ones who've been here forever, do ONE thing and that's it. Then we have the chief engineer and the newsroom engineer, who do EVERYTHING, and the IT guy, who unlocks passwords and stuff.
ReplyDeleteMost of the computers in the building are low-permission machines. I have admin access, as does the rest of the web team, but for the most part employees are not even allowed to install new browsers like Firefox.
Then we have the FIREWALL OF DOOM which means our editing machines can't reach the internet except through some arcane technology called Citrix, which means we can't export a picture from video and attach it to a news story on the web, not without jumping through three hoops. (Wait, news people actually post to the web? Not in the broadcast wing!)
Also, nothing around here works, least of all the live trucks. Makes it fun to cover news.
Most newsroom people are IT-ignorant, so they have little credibility in this area.
ReplyDeleteMy corporate mail has been crippled since the email was centralized. I have to open webmail instead of Outlook to send an email attachment. My incoming email arrives in spurts throughout the day, sometimes 10 at a time. That's a common problem in our building, and neither our local IT people nor Corporate has a solution.
ReplyDeleteProbably one of the biggest complaints I hear is how long it takes for new employees to get set up in the various systems.
ReplyDeleteSince everything starts with the HR paperwork, it does add time to that process.
Since the centralized mail doesn't support anything but Outlook (because they didn't want to, not because they couldn't) we had to write a program to download our messages and forward them to a different server that allows proper e-mail access. With that e-mail works fine.
ReplyDelete8:57, I hear ya!
ReplyDeleteThe new corporate helpdesk app sucks!
Unfortunately, one of the last things considered in all the consolidations is BANDWIDTH!
E-mail problems? Try more memory in your computer. It's dirt cheap!
IT Word of the Day? Virtualization!
7:51 AM:
ReplyDeleteyou need a password on your blackberry because there can be company confidential information on it and they are very easy to lose.
One of the biggest complaints IT gets is about security - "why do I need a password" or "why do I need a firewall"
Well, as much as you would like to live back in the days of lead typesetting, we don't. I'm sure you've seen articles written about various computers that have been compromised, web sites defaced, etc....
If the company's networks were compromised, and we had our AVID systems out in the open, it would be trivial to alter video coming from those systems without any detection until it went on the air.
Our security policies are actually fairly lax compared to other large companies I have worked in.
We spend a lot of time debating the pros and cons of the various security policies we have, and every policy is reviewed by people outside the IT department (legal, newspaper division, etc...) before they are approved.
Now of course, you'd say "why didn't you ask me" - well, you don't want to worry about security, you want everything open, and you don't really care what the potential business impact to your decisions might be.
Of course, if the payroll system were compromised and you didn't get paid, I'm sure you'd care at that point.
So - grow up and realize that you live in the 21st century. If you don't want to deal with technology, then quit and go live out in the woods.
9:02 . . .
ReplyDeleteOUCH!
@8:11PM
ReplyDeleteFirst off, corporate email does support more than Outlook. The fact that your program to pull mail works (via POP or IMAP, perhaps?) proves it.
It's not a matter of "not wanting" to support more email clients. You seem to be under the impression that there's a ton of folks at Corporate IT that run the email system.
Just like in the field, the ratio of people to systems is pretty tight. I'm sure your IT folks would agree with me that they don't have the resources to support 5 different classified systems in the same newspaper. It's the same at corporate. We just don't have the headcount to officially support the literally dozens of different mail clients that are out there.
I can't tell you the number of times that a newspaper IT department told me that they would support application "X" by themselves, and yet somehow, I end up getting called (usually at 3AM) when that application craps out and the local IT department can't figure it out.
You people act like us corporate IT folks sit around all day to figure out ways to screw with you. We bend over backwards to accommodate as many local technology decisions as possible, but sometimes, decisions need to be made centrally.
What's a 'newspaper IT department'?
ReplyDelete@8:13 -
ReplyDeleteBandwidth is considered first in every centralization discussion - in fact, over the years, we stopped a number of centralization proposals from the various divisions because there wasn't enough bandwidth to support those applications and the business would be damaged. We made sure that those projects included bandwidth upgrades.
BUT - if you actually knew what you were talking about, you would know that bandwidth has much less to do with it than latency.
A perfect example of this is Outlook - compare how well it works in Offline mode as compared to Online mode.
In fact, I suspect that for some of you who are having outlook performance problems, some of it may be incorrectly configured outlook.
As for virtualization, Gannett has been a leader in using the technology. One of the guys who used to work at the Maryland Operations Center pushed VMware into the company back around 2003. There are now several thousand VMs running all over the company.
@9:02 - you sound suspiciously like someone who actually knows something. that's pretty bad form on this blog.
ReplyDeleteI believe Offline Mode is now being forced via group policy.
ReplyDeleteAlso, when it comes to capital projects, bandwidth is NOT first and foremost consideration. It's ROI above all.
Should have stopped the WAN from coming to our site when we had a chance. If they had kept those routers out, we'd still have a newspaper. IT has become the master of this company.
ReplyDeleteThis is 9:02
ReplyDeleteFirst @9:30 - I am, and I'm just tired of all the crap and whining. I'm not a newsroom person, so I don't pretend to be an expert in that area, but it drives me nuts when people who don't have a clue about IT complain all the time but won't bother to learn how to even send an email attachment.
Second @9:30 - If you want to split hairs, I meant Bandwidth is the first from a technical perspective on IT consolidation projects (capital or otherwise), when determining if the current IT environment is capable of supporting the consolidation effort that the business has proposed.
In every capital project, There are only two possible considerations: ROI or risk to the business.
Some capital projects have no ROI, but have to be done because the business impact of not doing it is worse.
But for projects that have an ROI, that ROI has to be based on the total capital and expense cost of the project over the book life of that project (typically 5 years for IT, 7 years for "production systems"). If the company is going to spend money on "X" but not upgrade the network so "X" will work, then it's a waste of money. The corporate IT folks who review capital proposals will always make sure that what is being proposed is appropriate and that the related expense items are included. If that brings the ROI down to an unacceptable level, then the project won't get approved.
It's as simple as that.
Really? It was the WAN that screwed your newspaper?
ReplyDeleteNot the dumbass executives who never saw the internet coming?
Yes, it's true - the horseless carriage ruined the horse and buggy industry.
I really think that your newspaper would be in great shape if you stayed on lead typesetting and typewriters instead of using those new-fangled computer thingies.
@9:02 from first 9:30 - talk to you at the office tomorrow...
ReplyDelete@10:45PM -
ReplyDeleteI'm not who you think.
My newspaper IT department bought no-name RAM to save a few bucks.
ReplyDeleteThe money they saved by buying cheap RAM was lost in the first month in wages paid to me while I didn't produce, due to my computer crashing constantly.
@7:51 AM:
ReplyDelete"If the company's networks were compromised, and we had our AVID systems out in the open, it would be trivial to alter video coming from those systems without any detection until it went on the air."
Dude, have you ever used Avid?