Does that sound familiar to you? Nearly all of us do agree that it's a good idea having some versed guys around dedicated to keep all system components going: database-servers, application-servers, network-components, workstations and all the other devices and system components software-developers need to get their job done. However, every now and then they mistake their job with that of a police officer, reminding - sometimes even threatening - innocent developers to stick to some dated rules being laid out more than 10 years ago. Joel Spolsky has that telling story:
At my last job, the system administrator kept sending me automated spam complaining that I was using more than ... get this ... 220 megabytes of hard drive space on the server. I pointed out that given the price of hard drives these days, the cost of this space was significantly less than the cost of the toilet paper I used. Spending even 10 minutes cleaning up my directory would be a fabulous waste of productivity.