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I have spent the first five years of my career as a mechanical engineer working for a relatively large engineering company. The company gives me quite a bit of personal freedom, including flex time and generous amounts of vacation. The pay is relatively good and I'm treated well by my peers and superiors.
The problem is that when it comes to the work I was hired to do, corporate policy leaves very little room for innovation and creative problem solving. Engineers are treated as though they can't be trusted with computers, which means that we're left to work in a completely locked down environment. If I want to have Python installed on my corporate machine, which has zero administrative rights, it takes weeks of explaining to the IT department why this tool is needed. If I want to install a third party Python library like scipy or matplatlib, forget it, we're told we don't need it. The problems we work on are highly technical, and tools like this have an enormous potential to improve our efficiency and quality, but because of fears about security, we're never able to improve our methods.
This environment has become extremely frustrating for me to work in, and I'm curious what other people's experiences are in the corporate world. Am I a fool to complain about something so petty when everything else about my job is quite nice?
The problem is that when it comes to the work I was hired to do, corporate policy leaves very little room for innovation and creative problem solving. Engineers are treated as though they can't be trusted with computers, which means that we're left to work in a completely locked down environment. If I want to have Python installed on my corporate machine, which has zero administrative rights, it takes weeks of explaining to the IT department why this tool is needed. If I want to install a third party Python library like scipy or matplatlib, forget it, we're told we don't need it. The problems we work on are highly technical, and tools like this have an enormous potential to improve our efficiency and quality, but because of fears about security, we're never able to improve our methods.
This environment has become extremely frustrating for me to work in, and I'm curious what other people's experiences are in the corporate world. Am I a fool to complain about something so petty when everything else about my job is quite nice?