macOS and Chrome..?

I am familiar with this kind of decision making at my current employer, but I have also come to the acceptance part of the process...

Yes

:hugging_face:

Time to read “Seeing like a state”? (which I have listened to about half way…)

@U04V5VAUN once you recognize it, it's hard to not see it crop up everywhere

@UK0810AQ2 How big a company is it? (although it's often about the mentality of the C-level folks who oversee IT than size)

Big enough, but not big corp I do get the impression the security team is both strict and has great fascination with Industry Standards

We had two hires at Ardoq that I was really worried about. Our CISO and our Head of People and Org. Both of those roles kind’a benefit from “Seeing like a state”, luckily they are both very humble and focussed on the productivity of the individual rather than making their own jobs as easy as possible

Out of curiosity, what did they make you change from?

Brave

And I presume a Linux for os?

Used to, forced to use a Mac now

It’s not the worst of fates I guess, but being forced to change my tools isn’t something that would increase my job satisfaction.

precisely

On my last contract I was, in theory, forced to use a Mac but on investigation the only thing I actually needed the Mac to log in to was Jira.

I also have these obstreperous positions about free software etc which mean I not only prefer Linux technically, but principally as well

Using macs for dev caused loads of problems, because the architecture that was being deployed to was Linux / intel and node requires c libs for the correct arch. It made no sense to me to enforce macs on people.

I would quit.

Don’t know if that’s enough to make me quit, since I don’t know the industry @UK0810AQ2 is in, but I would expect such a directive come with very convincing arguments as for why that is the best course of action.

@U0P0TMEFJ - It may not have made sense from a development productivity perspective, but from an IT Governance perspective I promise you it will have been a no-brainer. I've been the former Engineer forced to look at the liability issues, and the legal implications of not having proper control and oversight of the Endpoints utilised within the body corporate and Linux is by far the hardest needle to thread, particularly if the overwhelming majority of your employees actively want Windows or Mac and thus you need to find a solution that will accommodate those AND your Linux users. We were a company of around 200 with around 50 M$ Win users (who would not countenance changing for broadly valid productivity reasons), around 80 dyed-in-the-wool Mac users who similarly would not countenance change, around 50 technical users who did not care but were perfectly happy to accept a Mac (and in a couple fo cases a Windows machine) and 20 or so Linux users some of whom openly threatened to resign if they were forced to adopt macOS or Window$. From a corporate governance perspective it was a lot less costly, a lot less risky and a LOT simpler to risk losing a handful of frankly very inflexible and snarky Linux users and retain the other dissenters as they grumbled into their new MacBook Pros than it was to appease a tiny minority of the workforce. In organisations any larger than that one was, particularly organisations that are publicly traded and / or working for governments or supra-governmental bodies this would not even be a discussion (with the obvious exception of scientific organisations that are prepared to withold rare / irreplaceable talent unless their desire for Linux workstations is met).

I am not saying this does not suck for @UK0810AQ2 - it Objectively does suck - but the upside is a wage, and the rest is the calculus of "how bad do I want this job" versus "can I get a job I like as much that meets my needs in a little start up where no one is going to tell me what OS to run for at least 2-3 years?"

Ardoq is the same size, and we have total freedom in what OS/browser to use, and we’re a b2b SaaS company. What is required is that we have encrypted discs and that Carbon Black (or probs something similar) be installed on your machine.

I don’t like the Carbon Black thingy, but I understand that from a sales perspective it’s mandatory because some potential customers have quite high expectations as to what kind of IT governance to expect.

@U04V5VAUN - Based on the work I did three years ago on this and assuming that the legal frameworks are at best unchanged but more likely more complex now (there's been a lot of legislation lately) I would posit that your company (Ardoq) is doing what they think they can get away with, or worse still they've had some bad advice. Either way, I would be happy to work there as a developer, I would not want to work there in InfoSec, based on what you've told me here ^^

What I would say, is that there is definitely a place in the market for a flexible and effective Endpoint Protection and Mobile device Management environment / suite that will actually run on all three platforms - better still if its Linux flavour will allow the neckbeard in R&D to run NixOS as well as the dilettante Full Stacks to run Ubuntu or Fedora and the proper Linux users to run Arch 😉

In eight months of market research and testing I couldn't find a single solution that allowed me to MDM and protect machines running all 3 and I've kept an eye on the market since and I could not say that I have seen that change. I will admit that there may be ways of running different command / control solutions for the different platforms, but making that scalable and economically viable is not a circle I was able to square - so to speak.

I’ve quit a job over shit like this. It’s unacceptable to me.

I was close to quitting over this, I'm still annoyed It's a purely economic decision (mixed with skill issues)

@U0ETXRFEW - As is your prerogative; we all sell our time and expertise for money, you aren't compelled to sell it to someone whose values do not meet your own.

Yeah, I’m not offering advice here. 😀

@UK0810AQ2 - I am genuinely sorry that you're being forced to do things / work in ways that you don't feel happy or comfortable with, but on the other hand if you like the other stuff about the job, your colleagues, the work etc. then as long as the balance is still in your favour, I guess my advice would be to stay put, because you will encounter this bullshit in a lot of places and increasingly so.

It was an easy calculus for me when I was in that position - I loved the company and the company was telling me that I had to make some hard choices within a financial and temporal framework, so I held my nose and did what needed to be done. Would I have rather we didn't eliminate Linux on the desktop for our workforce - absolutely, but we had no other achievable choice to reach goals that the company put a great deal of importance in / on.

I've worked at one place that insisted on total control over any software used on your (corp-approved) Windows desktop. I was only there five months -- as long as it took me to implement the "interesting project" I had specifically joined to work on! I've worked some places that had very tight controls over hardware/software with exceptions to varying degrees for IT staff, on the grounds that "developers are going to want/need all sorts of esoteric stuff" and corp standards would often get in the way. And I've worked mostly in places that just "don't care" and will buy you whatever desktop/laptop you want and let you configure it however you want. As a developer, I want a fair bit of freedom to select the tooling for my dev stack but as long as I have a *nix-like base to work on, I don't really care much about the native O/S (I wouldn't work anywhere that uses Windows servers for QA/production -- that's the hill I would choose to die on). For a long time, that meant a Mac (I don't like the Linux desktop experience enough to demand that but I also wouldn't have complained if Linux desktop were mandated). When WSL became available, I started to switch over to Windows and that is my preference now (Windows 11 + WSL2) -- I consider Macs to be too much of a walled garden to use it by choice (but, again, I wouldn't complain if work mandated Macs since there's *nix-like goodness underneath).

I enjoyed Win11 + WSL2 quite a lot when I worked somewhere that had pick your own between Windows and Mac and I realised I could get Linux in by the back door 😉 (albeit not Arch, but you know, you takes what you can get 😉 )

@U08ABGP70 I think that you implement MDM for at least two reasons. One is to check the box that you are doing it so you can get whatever certification you’re after, the other is if you really, really need it. Call me a simpleton or whatever, but in my close to thirty years as a dev, I’ve never needed to have my computer remotely wiped or disabled.

@U04V5VAUN I am sure you haven’t, but there is no guarantee for the future and your employer may not feel able to make an exception for you.

Your house can always get broken into :man-shrugging:

Sure, my point was that you might be in a situation where MDM is crucial for your business, I guess if you deal in superduper secret stuff where any leak is a catastrophe, but then you sort of know what you signed up for as an employee, or you just need MDM to be able to tick that box on the security questionaire from your customers.

That's why I keep a pile of old laptops lying around, misdirection

And to that extent, my critique of the InfoSec field in general is that they as us, know the value of everything and the price of nothing.

It doesn’t have to be super secret stuff, just leaking PII is legally worrying and there are valid reasons why and engineers may have PII on their workstation from time to time.

I think that the point is you can whatboutism your position all you like, if an employer has a motive that transcends your presence on their payroll to ignore / reject your preferences they will.

Most definitively, and as @U0ETXRFEW, I would probs resign if I found it too unreasonable. There is something about the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and at some point the scale tips.

We all pick our respective "hills" 🙂

Indeed, and contrary to what anyone reading this thread may think, I have genuine respect for anyone who is able to maintain the level of hill defence required to quit a job over this issue, I think it shows a level of commitment to principles that I have never been able to muster about my work. I would quit over racism or sexism or homophobia or transphobia or ableism, but the ethics of what operating system I use doesn’t move the needle for me, even though I do recognise the arguments, they just don’t carry the same weight with me as they do with others.

I’m not that noble. I just need a really good reason to not work with the tools I prefer. I’m also wary about all the “good” things that one by one don’t do much harm, but together make your workday a dystopian hell.

Fair enough

To me it isn’t about any ethics. And not about OS. I am a Mac user. To me it is about that I can’t stand an environment where someone else but me decides what tools I should use. I’ve suffered enough of those places. I’m too old to suffer it again.

Many years ago, I refused to interview with ICL because they required a security clearance -- even tho' the actual job itself did not, to get to the 4th floor to work, you had to pass through the 3rd floor which was a secure area. Stupid bureaucracy showing up that early in the process (pre-interview) is a giant red flag for the actual job itself later... The same place that had the very restrictive IT policy I mentioned above, also decided to implement a "clean desk" policy (imposed by management outside IT) and that nearly caused a couple of devs to quit. We "fixed" that by getting management to buy a 6" screen/wall for each desk so management could no longer see our (not clean) desks from the main lobby. More stupid bureaucracy.

@U0ETXRFEW - I can see that, just can’t feel it. They pay I use the tools they let me use for preference, or tell me to use if that’s the way it’s gotta be.

> I am a Mac user. To me it is about that I can’t stand an environment where someone else but me decides what tools I should use. There's a bit of irony here, given how controlling Apple is about things 😉

The hill's height is proportional to how much you like your job

And I’d guess what other options exist.

An employment is a mutual agreement. I get to choose who I am willing to work for and employers get to choose if they want me to work for them. The terms need to fit both parties or we do not have a deal. That’s how value is created.

@U0ETXRFEW Absolutely agree, I just don’t care what tools I use to write code for other people who are paying me for it. If I think that the tools they mandate are costing me productivity I will let them know and make suggestions but other than that point me to the crippled Windows box with the outdated copy of Netbeans 😊

Wow, I could never do that.

I’ve done it, more than once and learned interesting things and made great friends amongst my colleagues.

Like @U04V70XH6 said we all have our own hills, this is just not mine 😊

When working with mobile apps the days are full of ick with tool-chains and horrible devices and whatnot. It’s the nature of the job. I have no problem with that.

It’s certainly not my hill either. I just walk away.

I could maybe accept a deal like “double my salary and I will accept it” 😃

Me: You couldn't pay me enough to deploy applications to Windows Servers! Them: doubles the salary Me: cracks open a Windows Server for Dummies book 🙂

I’m sure none of the Clojure people would suffer the forced MDM stuff, but if you see the dumbshit so called “senior developers” do at an org with 100+ employees, you’ll give them “dumb terminals” with jail shells and/or citrix desktop