Kris Mandemaker Freelance Senior Workspace Consultant & DevOps Engineer

Alkmaar, the Netherlands · remote and on-site across NL

Since 2021 I work as Mand-IT for organisations that take their workplace seriously: from SMB to enterprise and central government. Half consultant, half engineer: I assess existing environments and fix what hurts — on my own or together with your team — and build what's missing as code, with the pipelines that roll it out. Before that, seven years in MSP and at a safety region — so I know what it's like to get the call at night.

My approach in four letters:

• KI also say no. Especially to tooling nobody needs.
• RNo three-year roadmap; something that runs next month.
• II stay an engineer. Hands-on, down to the logs and the pipeline.
• SIf your team can't explain it, it's too complex.

How I work

• Listen first and look at what's there. No solution without a problem.
• Fix what hurts, on my own or together with your team. Not every problem is a project.
• As code where it counts: Intune, Azure, pipelines. Clicking is not a strategy.
• Document and hand over, so your team can run it without me.
• Hands-on down to the logs. I don't send slides, I deliver.

Settings

Recycle Bin

Things I throw in the bin at clients:

• Click-opsClicking around the portal by hand and hoping you'll remember it next time.
• Golden images from 2014Autopilot exists. Use it.
• PowerPoint architecturePretty pictures, no pipeline.
• "Just a quick GPO"Nothing has ever been quick with a GPO.
• Excel as CMDBTab 3 is the truth. Or was it tab 4?
• "Works on my machine"Your machine isn't going to production.
• Admin rights for everyoneConvenient. Until the first phishing mail.
• 47 Conditional Access policies without namingCA policy (3) (copy) (new) (final).
• "We've always done it this way"Not an argument, but a warning.
• Knowledge in one headEven when that head is mine: I document and hand over.
• Passwords in an Excel sheetTab "Passwords", right next to tab "CMDB".
• Service account with Global AdminPassword never expires. That is not a feature.
• "We'll do MFA later"Later is a date that never comes. Phishing does not wait.