Pleasing Google's Tech-Savvy Staff 142
An anonymous reader writes "Douglas Merrill, Google Inc.'s chief information officer, is charged with answering that question. His job is to give Google workers the technology they need, and to keep them safe — without imposing too many restrictions on how they do their job. So the 37-year-old has taken an unorthodox approach. Unlike many IT departments that try to control the technology their workers use, Mr. Merrill's group lets Google employees download software on their own, choose between several types of computers and operating systems, and use internal software built by the company's engineers. Lately, he has also spent time evangelizing to outside clients about Google's own enterprise-software products — such as Google Apps, an enterprise version of Google's Web-based services including e-mail, word processing and a calendar."
All Credit to Him (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not actually a big deal (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:All Credit to Him (Score:5, Interesting)
Even smart people can make errors of ignorance or naivetè with regards to their computers. It's nice that they've cordoned off the system to prevent them from torpedoing the whole network at once, but you still have a mess on the other side of the wall to clean up. Most of the important stuff is probably saved where they're regularly backed up(Google sure as hell isn't going to have problems with storage space) but there's definitely going to be downtime involved.
It's probably not worth the cost and risk for most companies. If someone wants or needs something on their system, just having them ask first is a reasonable approach.
Re:I wish our IT was like this. (Score:5, Interesting)
Beware of any job where IT support calls the shots. That is an incredibly inane and inefficient business model. IT support is exactly that: They are there to support development efforts, not to hinder them with brain-damaged policies usually written and enforced by CTOs that don't have a clue and administered by low-paying drones who substitute authority for what they lack on the pay scale.
Why even bother working for a company like that? With the upswing in IT, you sound like you've got way more than enough experience to find a job elsewhere.
Quick Story (Score:5, Interesting)
I moved from my job in NY as a System Admin for an ISP. I won't name names, but our major tech we used was Cisco, Solaris, Linux and VMware ESX.
My family and I moved to SC for the nicer weather
But I setup a few smallish vmware servers and I'm happy. I have my Linux-in-a-box. I've done a bunch of grepping and typing and scripting and such this morning, and I found some new issues that I didn't see before without seeing the "big picture".
So back to my point. I'm very picky about the apps I use and whatnot, so it's hard for me to "conform" to an IT ruleset about what can and cannot be run on company machines. The ISP I worked at was very flexible in this manner, for some reason I expect this out of the new job.
Our business model is we sell these published apps and hosting to our customers. We run a large private MPLS network and connect many smaller places to us. They can run Office 2007 from a website.
Then it hit me. Things have been getting really optimized in the last year or two, so we're using our own stuff. My office apps "live" in a website. The revelation came that now, when it comes to my laptop (or desktop), I can do whatever I want. Notice this is typically a nightmare for common IT shops, but many of our smaller customers think IT is a pain and will be happy with published apps and thinclients. For someone like me, who is tech-savvy, I can format my machine and install Linux (some of the other guys have already done so). Because there's a Citrix web client for Linux (I use it at home). Involve virtualization in the mix, and our datacenter becomes one giant network, one giant machine that we manage and the apps are just floating around inside. We manage all the security and whatnot, and keep it running.
So in a way, you really can have it both ways. We're not a Web 2.0 shop, but our method is definitely Another Way to Do It.
Re:Nice approach (Score:3, Interesting)
Or how about an employee who downloads a piece of software that is only to be installed on the employee's personal computer. The employee installs it on a work computer, thinking that it is the employee's computer and is only using it for personal use. That's wrong and suddenly Google gets audited and sued for illegal software usage.
Or even better, the software manufacturer makes the legal venue the laws of Lichtensteinavania, where the user has no rights at all.
I know, I know, the slashdot response is switch to gpl, but that isn't always an option.
I've actually run into all of these software licensing issues at my job.
Re:All Credit to Him (Score:2, Interesting)
Exactly. IT security at most companies is designed around the belief that the average clueless user will find a way to screw something up if given too much freedom. So we lock them down in order to minimize the damage that they can do.
That's less of a problem with more technically inclined users. At my organization, we keep most of our users locked down but give our development group freedom similar to what is described in the article. They're a competent lot, fairly trustworthy and they're right across the hall. So we let them do whatever they want on their workstations, within reasonable limits.
Re:All Credit to Him (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nice approach (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nice approach (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a great theory, but more often than not, that *isn't* the way things really work. I've seen sys admins really bork config files that were using RCS. I've seen a virus take a network down for two days despite updated and running A/V and firewalls. Anyone who has worked in IT for very long is forced to admit that you can make it really, really difficult for your users to shoot themselves in the foot, but nothing you can do can guarantee security. The best firewall, the best anti-virus and the best revision/version control will give you some measure of protection, but it won't be 100% effective. Ever.
Re:I wish our IT was like this. (Score:3, Interesting)
One large factor that keeps the war burning brightly is that the relative skills between various user communities and an administration community is also all over the map. I've seen developer groups who were purely code-monkeys, and made some very bad calls on software that they would then have thrown over the fence for an admin group to support, no matter the (large) impact on that support group, if someone from an admin group hadn't been able to do some basic sanity checking. OTOH, I've seen groups of users thrashing about trying to accomplish even the simplest thing, because some bit of software they needed had been wedged in the IT approval loop for several months.
Another factor is that admins often have little concept of what the developer has to deal with on a daily basis, and vice-versa. In my experience, this one doesn't get enough attention, and it often leads to people from different groups talking past each other, instead of helping each other.
Better communications, and a bit of experience on both sides of the fence, often helps people find some commonality of experience. I know I've usually had buddies (and people I didn't were too clueful) in both broad groups, in any org I've worked with. If nothing else, you can always band together with admins in mutual hatred of Roving Bands of Managers, thereby moving the religious wars to a different level.
I don't mean to deprive anyone of the pleasures of a religious war. If the two groups could somehow band together, but somehow not against Roving Bands of Managers, all is not lost. Developers can always fight other developers in the language wars, etc. Well, actually *both* sides can do that, so never mind. But admins can always fight the MTA wars, or similar, amongst themselves, while developers can argue about the One True Way to do IPC, etc.
As far as I can tell, it's turtles all the way down.