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Comment by teekert | Hacker News Reader

I hate this attitude by clients/employers. "I have a job for you, here are the tools you may use" ... Gives me a Windows 10 laptop and the only way to get into the network is some Windows only Cisco vpn app. So here I am, expressing all my enthusiasm, all my creativity through Windows on an HP (1280x768 display :S) which I consider to be a very narrow channel for my creativity and it kills my enthusiasm. I want a self chosen laptop that runs Linux and a distro chosen by me. And I want a nice Logitech keyboard/mouse. I want my tools to serve me, not the IT department.

I mean, even my friend the electrician gets money ech year to buy tools. And he buys Makita and DeWalt, not that 10 euro for 50 tools package at Ikea.

Yeah I'm not forced to work there, anyone saying that is right. And I dream of starting my own business just because of this.

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I work in an environment that is actively hostile to us. We've got McAfee agents crippling our machines, IBM management software doing periodic forced reboots with no warning, MITM proxies decrypting and capturing all TLS traffic, self signed CAs with a misconfigured keychain on our machines and no access to fix it, random policy changes that screw with our browsers, web filters that prevent us from accessing common websites, netskope agents that crash multiple times a day, etc. I'm sure there are more. If there's a way to spy on us, our machines have it. Obviously, we can't install any unapproved software, so I am grateful for the built in tools MacOS provides. Of course, if you need to reach out to the internet, you've gotta do a dance with certificates and proxies...

I think about quitting a lot, but I am pretty numb to it. I'm sure it could be worse, too.

What's keeping you from looking for somewhere else? Despair?

I like the people I work with, I am still growing despite the environment, and I am in the middle of a major project and don't want to quit before it is done.

Are you me or a fellow worker at my office? \s

Seriously, that kinda bs is time consuming and soul deadening.

While I agree up to a certain level, this opinion needs to stay within its limits.

I like the analogy of a photographer: Talents aside, a pro will always make better pictures using a cheap low-budget camera than any amateur will be able to do with the newest and best camera available.

IMHO the same holds true for any IT related job.

> Talents aside, a pro will always make better pictures using a cheap low-budget camera than any amateur will be able to do with the newest and best camera available.

Unfortunately it doesn't work like this.

Photography, as a low threshold occupation has tons of professional hacks who are bad with any equipment. At the same time there are countless amateurs who are top talent.

And it's not just a recent trend. Aside from photojournalism, formal portraiture and weddings, photography was always dominated and advanced by talented amateurs. There's no such thing as "professional landscape photographer" for example, even if some of them are able to make a modest living off their works after years of effort. Ansel Adams is a great example.

Also, no professional photographer would use a toy camera for anything other than a gag/vanity/show-off project. They infallibly use reliable, quality equipment day in day out.

> Me: "Talents aside, [...]

> You: "It doesn't work like this. [...] talented amateurs [...]

Uhm, okay.

Well, anyway, my point is pretty valid. If photography is not as much dependent on skills from your perspective (I wasn't talking about weddings and landscapes anyway) take something else. It really applies to everything.

Maybe music is a better fit? As someone that even actively plays piano I am still 100% confident that someone like Beethoven would run a better show on a $40 Casio keyboard than I would on a Yamaha C5.

I can see how he totally would. On the other hand, given a choice, he would likely prefer a better instrument.

The point is that a "consumer" camera in the hands of a talented photographer can easily produce better images than the "best camera in existence" in the hands of a lousy photographer.

Yes but that's quite a truism. An average developer on an $300 720p laptop would outdo someone who can't code, but they still would be more productive with something better.

I spent a few summers making a living photographing weddings. It was really hard.

For what it's worth, a lot of the best photos out there are from amateurs (probably the vast majority, there's just more amateur photographers).

The pro, however, should _always_ be able to at least get _good_ photos, while an amateur might, or might not, who knows? This is why people hire a pro for a wedding - you know that there's exactly one chance to get that first kiss, etc. and need to have someone reliable. My favourite wedding photos are from weddings I didn't get paid for but attended as a guest, though I wasn't worrying about running through a standard shot list (and the group portraits, which I never liked compared to photos of people having fun at the reception)

But if you want to utilize the pro to her/his full ability... Why would you for the sake of "security" rob an IT pro of the freedom to choose the tools she/he wants?

Small confession: I'm currently working from home, Win10 laptop runs out of juice, I forgot the charger. Managed to set up a reverse SSH tunnel from our company cluster to my home server, proceed to work via SSH and SSHFS but now on my personal Arch Linux laptop. Loving it, feeling a bit unethical though.

> But if you want to utilize the pro to her/his full ability... Why would you for the sake of "security" rob an IT pro of the freedom to choose the tools she/he wants?

An "IT pro" should know about general risk management in IT departments or reasons why you don't give everyone full admin rights or every software they demand or everyone a machine with totally different specs from the other ones (read as: their favorite one). It becomes an unmanageable chaos at some point, too.

Who will be responsible if anything bad happens? Do you even want to be that one? (Note: bad can really be anything on a scale from 0 to hell and beyond in IT)

I don't know, why would you want to give a specialist different tools from people who do a different job? Why would you let a carpenter handle a power drill, or let your electrician access the fuse box?

I'd say there's a fundamental difference I think between the examples. Windows and the software that comes with it isn't undesirable because it's cheap, but because it's locked down.

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