When a manager wants something, he doesn't care about the rules, he just wants the result.
Or when IT wants something...
Many years ago, I was in a project to consolidate a number of systems onto a much smaller number of servers and deploy them to production.
I was working alongside two fellow greybeards who really knew their stuff, (and to whom I am very grateful for their advice and help on an OS of which I had far less knowledge).
FWIW, the multiple builds in production included some for which we simply had no test/dev systems so we had to build them and get them working in place.
Of course, *much* data had to be transferred between the firewalled test/dev and production networks - and we were given a DAT based system to do it by the client.
So it was tedious and introduced a lot of delay. We were very clear the project deadline (tight as per usual) was unachievable but shrugged our shoulders and just got on with it.
Until greybeard1 found by accident that he could ssh from a single test/dev server to the live system(!)
... and in the twinkling of an eye had installed a software distribution server.
... and had organised the addition of a LOT of disk to the server for the distributions and database backups etc etc
... and then told us.
Needless to say, our portion of the project's deadlines were met...
I wonder if that hole in the network is still there?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
