Develop hacker's mindset. Don't anyone tell you how to use your computer. Especially don't let your computer to dictate you the rules. Always remain in charge.
When I started at my current job, they gave me a laptop that came installed with crap called ABR - Admin By Request. Basically, for anything that required sudo, they'd force me to run it, then click a prompt: "yes, I need the [fucking] access," then another little prompt comes up, asking for "reasons," and you're supposed to type it, to which everyone on my team types some random number of letters (because there's a minimum), then press Ok to get three-hour access.
I dealt with it for exactly three days. After that I just wrote a script that periodically checks if I have the admin rights, and then waits for me to get idle (so no sudden focus stealing), then runs the sucker, sends the request, etc. I don't even see it anymore - just happens. I'm not playing their stupid games, their "security theater", I have a job to do.
[–] kleiba2 23 hours ago
[–] iLemming 13 hours ago
I just gave you an actual, practical example, not a theoretical one.
Here's another one. I wanted to try eca-emacs, the documentation website sits at https://eca.dev, Cisco Umbrella, for whatever stupid reason, blocks the entire .dev domain, and every corporate laptop comes pre-installed with Cisco Secure Client that you can't remove. I submitted a ticket, and then wasted my time on a ridiculous exchange with the "big security guy," who decided to take a power trip and refused to have the website whitelisted. Despite it being absolutely harmless. I don't know where the fuck he's purchased that condescending tone and posture. In the end, I said: "thank you for your time," and hoped to never ever have to talk to him. Then I set up a SOCKS tunnel through my local Linux box, installed the FoxyProxy extension, and voila - I'm never ever going to have to complain about a blocked website.
> sysadmins had the final say
And you can always find workarounds. Those who want to do something look for a way, not excuses. You're a goddamn computer programmer. Maybe act like one.
That would be nice in theory. I've worked in many different places throughout my career and in almost all of them, the sysadmins had the final say in what software was okay to install on your machine and which one wasn't.... because "security".