Monsters—from the Id!

For the past five years at my job, I’ve used a plain-text editor that I’ve used since the early 2000s. I recommended it because I have a personal license for the program on my home computer. It’s got heavy-duty macro and scripting functionality and does a great job of multi-file find-and-replace, among other things. I used it at my last job, and when I started at my current job in 2020, we went through a rather extensive set of hoops to get a subscription license. The next year, and every year since, Purchasing kept telling us to buy it with our own money and expense it, because it’s a $100 license.

This past year, I got a new laptop for my job. IT increased security, so I couldn’t install the editor on the new laptop without submitting a ticket to have someone from the help desk connect remotely to run the installation and later upgrades for me. Not a huge deal, but I wished I could just get it added to a list of other programs that IT pushes out updates for (Zoom, Slack, Microsoft 365, etc.). One of the IT people DMed me and said I could submit a request to get that done, so I did.

And that’s when it all went haywire.

IT guy DMs me: “who’s paying for the licensing on that? all software purchasing is supposed to be approved by person X as of last year.”

I explain that this is what Purchasing said to do. I’d even gone through it the year before.

“we need to consolidate all the plain-text editors so that everyone’s using the same one because we have to control our laptops. we won’t use yours because it has to be a free one.”

Next thing I know, the IT director’s closing the request and saying, “Nope, not gonna do it.” When I ask why, I get “It’s got an AI component that we haven’t evaluated.” Guess who brought that up. If you said “the same IT guy who was asking you all the questions before,” you’d be right.

Funny how that never came up.

On top of that, I didn’t even know about these AI components because they’re optional plugins I’ve never installed (neither on my home machine nor my work laptop), since the plugins are marketed toward programmers and I’m working with HTML files. I don’t need AI to help me tag an HTML file, and I’ve been working with the program’s macro language long enough that I wouldn’t need AI even if I could use it on their macros, thank you very much.

Original IT guy’s response, when I point out I’m not using the AI plugin: “but you can still install it if you want it” (which ignores that IT watches over my shoulder while I’m running upgrades and that no one at the company will ever use the plugin if I don’t use it, since they don’t want to make the program available to everyone anyway). Then the kicker: “the issue all started with finance telling users to buy their own stuff instead of using proper channels.” So the real problem is that Purchasing didn’t do their job the way the IT guy wanted them to do it, I guess, though it seems to me Purchasing is within their rights to tell us we can pay for it and expense it, when you consider that Finance has to approve expenses, too.

So I ran the program past the group that assesses AI in our software. They say, “What’s the problem if you aren’t using the AI plugin anyway?” Good question. I’ll send you back to the IT guy to get an answer.

Now it’s time to submit a PR, this time for a perpetual license, so that I never again have to deal with, “But you didn’t go through the proper channels that I decided you need to go through!” Here’s the catch: I work remotely, and the cost center I would’ve used closed last year as part of (you guessed it) cost-cutting measures. I see the old cost center is still there, so I figure it’s just a reference point, and I use it. But no, I get back, “We need to close this PR and submit a new one because that cost center’s closed, and we don’t have to use that one anymore.” I play the semantics game and point out that “have to” implies it’s up to the person in Purchasing whether to allow it through instead of sending it back, and I win a pyrrhic victory because the person in Purchasing says, “Okay, I’ll make an exception,” only as soon as I send the PO, the software company comes back with, “We can’t put this license under the same person’s name, because we have a different address for that person. Oh, and by the way, we need you to change the net terms on the PO.”

While I can’t do anything about net terms on a PO, I can (and do) point out that I’m the same person on both licenses. I explain the situation (hell, I haven’t been at the address they listed since 2020, since my job transitioned to remote at the start of the pandemic and has never gone back). Still waiting on the reply. We’ll see how that goes.

Their response, BTW, begs the question of why I can have multiple licenses (two perpetual and one annual subscription) under my own name for my home computers (I use them for PJ’s and my computers), but the company can’t use my name for the perpetual license that’s replacing the annual subscription. I’m giving the software company the benefit of the doubt and presuming they mean they can’t have the same name associated with two addresses.

All for a $150 perpetual license for a piece of software that at least one person in the IT department seems to hate.