<< (You laugh? I did this at a Java shop. The one-off Ruby project made the company $30,000. My boss was, predictably, quite happy and never even asked what produced the deliverable.)
Oh boy. Ask for forgiveness later may work at a smaller joint, but willfully and knowingly bypassing existing policies can land you in a heap of trouble at a bigger corporate. The boss may be happy, because he is an idiot with no concern other than getting a bonus all the while security of the product ( and possibly the company itself ) is undermined by one coder.
And I am saying all this as I am trying to convince my boss that Python may be better suited for some tasks than Excel ( long story, some stuff is kinda locked, but not completely ).
Bottom line is.. some rules exist for a reason. Break those only if you understand why they can be broken ( and you are comfortable with explaining stuff should it fail in your lap ).
Edit: Honestly, that one piece of advice makes me really start to appreciate why some things are the way they are.
> Ask for forgiveness later may work at a smaller joint, but willfully and knowingly bypassing existing policies can land you in a heap of trouble at a bigger corporate.
Interesting. I've found that the bigger the company the more I need to do that. In a small company I can actually discuss things with people and a motivated decision rolls out. In big companies I ran into one of two problems.
1. Many people dare to say no, but few dare say yes. I have seen discussions about spending half a day engineering time kicked up three management layers because it wasn't a pre-approved task. It was obvious to everyone that it needed to be done too.
2. People just not deciding. If you don't keep chasing a decision, nothing will happen.
The political cost of a bad decision grows the higher up it goes. Make a bad decision as a grunt and you get chewed out a bit. As long as you were genuinely trying to help the company, it's nothing you can't get out of with a bit of charm and a willingness to learn. Make a bad decision a bit higher up and people start sharpening their knives. Sometimes it's better to just decide for your manager and give them plausible deniability.
> Sometimes it's better to just decide for your manager and give them plausible deniability.
Exactly! I don't mind saying sorry. And as long as you get the results, it turns out that most people that matter don't really care about all the bogus policies you ignored.
Oh boy. Ask for forgiveness later may work at a smaller joint, but willfully and knowingly bypassing existing policies can land you in a heap of trouble at a bigger corporate. The boss may be happy, because he is an idiot with no concern other than getting a bonus all the while security of the product ( and possibly the company itself ) is undermined by one coder.
And I am saying all this as I am trying to convince my boss that Python may be better suited for some tasks than Excel ( long story, some stuff is kinda locked, but not completely ).
Bottom line is.. some rules exist for a reason. Break those only if you understand why they can be broken ( and you are comfortable with explaining stuff should it fail in your lap ).
Edit: Honestly, that one piece of advice makes me really start to appreciate why some things are the way they are.