I understand that the IT department does their best to help people solve problems and offer services that improve…

You’re asleep already, aren’t you?

Okay, the short version: The company IT department is a good thing, and what they do is meant to help. I’m totally on board with that. I used to be in the IT department. We weren’t out to screw you, I promise.

Here’s the deal, though:

There are a certain quantity of problems that need to be solved, and your computer has a fixed amount of capacity to solve them in. Your disk isn’t getting any faster, your CPU isn’t going to magically process at an extra gigahertz faster. You’ve got what you’ve got. With that, besides getting work done, you probably also want to:

• Back things up - It’d be a shame if you lost your work.
• Stop the spread of viruses - You don’t want to get infected, now, do you?
• Keep company data secure - If someone breaks into your car and steals your laptop while you’re picking up donuts for the morning meeting at the store, they shouldn’t get access to your proprietary data

Each of those things are valuable, but they also eat resources on your system. In some cases, not a trivial amount, either.

I have a 1.7GHz processor and 1.5GB of RAM. It’s not a super powerhouse, but it should be enough to get the job done. It took me eight full minutes to boot up and log in this morning, and my machine is still tanked. Why?

Say you’re getting ready to ride in a bike race. Your computer is your bike. “We got you a pretty decent bike,” says IT, “This bike will definitely get you over the finish line.” You look the bike over, check the specs, and take it out for a spin. Hell, yeah, that bike will do the trick.

“Now, it’s a long race, so you’re going to need some supplies. We’re here to help you,” says IT. And they are - it is a long race, and you do need some supplies. You’re thinking maybe a couple of energy bars and some water.

“First we’re going to strap this 30 gallon drum of water on your back. Yeah, it’s pretty heavy, but you have a fast bike. Oh, and in the event you need to take a break and get off the bike, you don’t want the bike rolling away (?!) so here’s an anvil. It’s okay, though, you have a fast bike. Oh, and we know the first leg of the race is basically a huge hill, but later in the race you’ll want more high gears, so we replaced all of the low gears with high gears so you don’t have to pedal as hard later on. But you have a pretty fast bike, so it should be okay.”

You struggle onto your bike and it barely moves. No one seems to be terribly concerned about this, though, because, crap, man, you have a fast stinking bike so it has to be you causing the issue. And if you complain?

“Yeah, um, I need some water, but I really don’t think I need a drum of water - I only need a water bottle.”

“Well, you can give us back the drum of water, then.”

“Can you give me a water bottle? I do need water, just not a drum.”

“Um, no - all we have is a full drum of water. If you only want a bottle, you’re on your own.”

Thanks.

The cumulative effect of the daily incremental backup, real-time virus scanner, real-time disk encryption, and everything else that runs in the background to help me out is killing me. I booted up this morning and with the startup cost of all of these services, I’m surprised they don’t send someone downstairs to personally punch me in the junk every morning, too. I mean, think about it - whenever I read or write a file, it goes through both a real-time AES 256 encryption and the real-time virus scanner, neither of which I have control to configure because it’s all centrally administered “for us.” I look sideways at this thing and the CPU is pegged and the disk light is on solid for three minutes.

But, hey, if I don’t want to suffer the cost of the incremental backup software (that runs for probably an hour each morning), I can uninstall it. Is there any other backup mechanism? No - if I uninstall it, I’m on my own. Or I could set it to run when I’m not at work… but, oh, wait, you need to be connected to the network to have it run, and the whole point of my having a laptop is so I can take it home with me at night and work disconnected if I need to. There’s no time when I’m not working on my computer that it’s connected to the corporate network. (Not that it matters; I only have about a 30 - 50% success rate on completing a backup at any given point anyway.)

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate what the IT department does for me and they’re a necessary piece of the puzzle. I just feel a little anchored down lately by all the help, is all, and I don’t think folks consider the overhead of all of these helpful-but-necessary services before rolling them out.