how to convince manager to allow stack overflow

Question

At my company we have strict limits on internet use. I often must use the poor mobile interface only for StackOverflow. However, the site is very useful for work.

How do I convince a manager to un-block StackOverflow? Is there a summary of benefits available online for managers to look at?

Answer 1

You could get them to pay for Experts Exchange instead.

I guess one thing to avoid mentioning is chat :)

Answer 2

Put it politely that it is in his best interests to let you access the crucial information concerning what you do.

Without it you would be cut off from the global knowledge and will have to research things in deep every time you're stuck with a problem. Depending on an issue the research might take from weeks up to months. Of course, if you had access to Stack Overflow the issue would be resolved in minutes/hours.

Force him to give you a formal reply (better in written) that he is informed of the consequences of having access to the vital information blocked to you and that you will not be reprimanded for bugs in your code and missed deadlines on a regular basis.

Then observe his reaction and enjoy. :)

Answer 3

I don't know if he ever asks you programming questions, but a quick way to convince the people who "don't believe in google coding" (not reliable, makes you a bad programmer, WWLTD (What Would Linus Torvalds Do), makes you go blind; the reasons are stupid and endless), is when they shoot you an email with a code question, put it up on SO. When there are 5 answers to it about 2 seconds later, send them the link to the answered question.

Answer 4

Tell him one thing:

Its like a hundred cheap slaves that work for you and they are really really cheap and extremely qualified.

Answer 5

If the manager is a reasonable person, the best tactic might be to ask them if they have been in a similar situation and to think about how hard it would've been if they had the same restrictions placed on them as they are placing on you.

Putting someone else in your shoes can sometimes make them think about the problem from your perspective and see what may not have been clear to them before.

Answer 6

A good way to make him realize how useful stack overflow may be for your work is to elaborate a list of issues you often come across at work, search for them with google, and see how many times one of the right answers is found with these sites.

That's precisely the way (and I think I'm not the only one) I knew of stack overflow some months ago. It was a page I usually visited after a google search and the place where I got some of the answers I was looking for.

Answer 7

If the company is preventing you from doing your job, then it's their problem, not yours. They're the ones who are losing money because their workers are not as productive as they could be.

In other words, don't worry about it too much. Tell your boss that you need SO access - if he doesn't give it to you, then at least you'll know that you've held up your end. And if possible, get this conversation in writing.

Answer 8

Its sad to know that stackoverflow is blocked at your company. This made me wonder if you were able to google and move on to other Q&A sites (hope atleast MSDN would be open for you)

Nonetheless its not a better alternative to SO, but i think you should look upto to the Network guys as to why the site is being blocked might be something to do with Careers shown on SO at times (sick but companies wouldn't like you looking out for jobs on their own network..but thats the truth).

Maybe at your company you can raise an exception for allowing such sites. The best bet would be too update your Manager on how useful SO is and more important how reliable the solutions you find in there (Hey do you know Jon Skeet, Marc Gravell?). i bet if he has been into development the odds that he would be overwhelmed on knowing this is very high (May be he hasn't heard of StackExchange at all).

Answer 9

General rule when I deal with management : They want paper and numbers. So I give them a decently put together report on the benefits, and an estimate of the win. I add some figures and tables, and keep it maximum 4 pages (more they won't read anyway) with a concise summary on the first half page. You might check the general procedures and office culture at your own work place before going on.

In this case, I'd add :

• a concise description of the concept of SO.
• a table with key programmers on SO, with the amount of answers they give.
• an estimate of how often SO is among the top hits when searching in Google.
• some estimate of the average answering time
• a comparison between the quality of the answers on relevant! questions compared to the ones found in the sources you have available
• if possible, an estimate of the win in time based on the figures mentioned above

A key question I ask myself is : why is it blocked? Is it because a) the decision has been made it is not suitable for work, or b) because everything gets blocked that is not completely approved for work? That's quite an important difference.

If a) it should be not too difficult to convince people that it is suitable for work, given the fact you can easily show a few questions of your own that got answered pretty fast, and show some of the FAQ questions or other more interesting ones that solve important coding problems. Add to this the amount of stackoverflow answers found by simply googling a question, and management will have a tough time defending the decision it is not suitable for work. Tough one in this case is the fact you have to go directly against a decision of management, so somebody might end up with sore toes.

If b), you could actually just check first what the procedure is to get a website approved. I can't see why in this case there should be any trouble in getting SO approved if you follow the right office procedure.