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Comment by GTP | Hacker News Reader

Put like this, could sound like malicious compliance. But, if you disable whatever security product your company mandates on your company laptop and then you somehow get a malware, they will point the finger at you. Saying "I wouldn't have been able to work otherwise" will probably not work. Reboot your company laptop, let it install any patches it likes to, then complain to your manager. It is their resposibility to figure this out. If you work around this, you risk getting in trouble.

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> It is their resposibility to figure this out.

You're responsible for your own career.

During the next calibration call, your manager can't be like, "well he spent 8 hours each week resetting up his machine after a reboot, so we need to give him credit for that too."

Your job is to deliver impact, not fight system configurations.

Indeed. The configuration isn't your responsibility, but it becomes so if you try to circumvent it and something goes wrong. What would the manager say during the calibration call if a ransomware infection started from this employee's laptop, after they disabled the company-mandated security software? They probably wouldn't even care to figure it out if the security product in question would've been able to stop that specific ransomware.

If your boss is not able to back you up for something like this, it's time to change job.

During the compensation calibration meetings, there is no boss in the world that would be able to argue anything to your benefit

This has to be the most depressing comment I've read this week. I assure you, not all places are like this. Especially mid-smalll, but even some pockets inside large-mega.

What company will promote you for rebooting your machine?

Maybe you’re not gonna get fired, but I can’t imagine someone hitting staff level because they spent a third of their week recovering from a weekly reboot

I can't believe the level of pushback we're getting on this point. Most of these people have probably never been in those meetings.

Person A: Not able to accomplish anything because security blocked essential... Person B: Shipped product F, look at this impact to our KPI. Saved costs by retiring service C. Mentored little jimothy.

Who get the base salary bump and bonus allocation in that scenario

If you think so you've only ever worked in a trash org. If my productivity was hurt by things outside my control I'd expect (and have had) managers to fight for me.

There are two critical conversations during this meetings:

Do we promote this guy? Do we fire this guy?

It doesn’t matter what the excuse is or the size of the company, if you don’t have impact for the next level you’re not promoted. Put simply, you’re not getting promoted rebooting your machine.

Maybe your boss can defend you from a conversation, especially if the problem is systematic (impacting the whole team).

Ideally you’d just leave a shithole company like this (of course these days it might be exactly feasible..)

I suppose filling out a ticker or two every day and constantly bothering IT non-stop might be rhetorical best option (assumings one has enough energy for that)

If only it took as long to close a ticket as to open one.

Ah yes of this we are well aware. Don’t tell anyone!

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