Oh Boy! Another developer. After years of supporting such individuals I can attest to this fact: They are the source of most trouble tickets. They "need" administrative rights. Both on their machine and the network. A seperate network? Too much trouble.

Personally I LOVE the idea of locking down the developers workstations. Maybe then these developers would find ways to run their code WITHOUT administrator privilege. I can't count the number of applications that we use that require elevated privilege. Giving most users (even developers) elevated privilege is just giving various pieces of malware free reign.

I agree with YA Bob - Developers whine that they 'need' admin rights to everything. This has been an ongoing battle with our developers, or at least it was - IT finally won - our developers are locked down just like other users. IT must install all software. Everything works great AND we have many fewer support calls, etc.

Suboptimized, and YA Bob,
I have worked both sides of the fence on this, as enterprise security manager and a developer. The problem you are experiencing is from people focusing on the wrong thing. The reason for the developer to have free access is to maximize productivity (not to make life difficult in operations). The reason for the security lock down is to protect assets, including the code and data the developer is working on (not to make developers less productive). The reason for a test environment is to discover the gotchas that happen as a result of most of us, not all, being human. This is true of ops folks, and developers. Test systems are there to prove you have done it right; and to save your butt if something went wrong. It is common, and short sighted, for companies to skip this step.

I venture to guess that the BIG BOSS (pointy hair excluded) really doesnt want to prevent you from doing your job, or put the corporate assets in unprotected space. If something did happen, how could he defend his position? He is going through the motions without actually achieving success.

So, Suboptimized, you seem to have the right attitude. I am not sure where you are in the corporate hierarchy, but I suggest a frank discussion up the chain, or across if necessary. It might be risky from a career perpective, or you could be a hero; that part is up to you.

YA Bob, get off your high horse. If developers weren't writing software, you would have no one paying your salary. And no network to play with. Get over it and learn how to work together to create something better than you are used to. Your "oh boy another developer" attitude demonstrates you are more a part of the problem, in spite of your great technical skill. I dare you to rise up and be part of the best solution; stop complaining, use your talent, and start suggesting a better way.

A parallel development environment is expensive but so are the corrective fixes when developmental software is introduced to the live environment. Remember, the development network doesn't have to be full-scale.

I'll agree with YA Bob though about applications that require administrative privilege. It annoys me to no end to find so many Windows programs (even games) that "require" administrative privileges to run. Why should I need to be root to do photo-editing or play a game? That's just inviting trouble ...