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I've been there. This is not an easy problem to solve - they do have vetting procedures and sometimes reject bids because they think the contractor can't do th

I've been there. This is not an easy problem to solve - they do have vetting procedures and sometimes reject bids because they think the contractor can't do the job. But companies are pretty good at making sure the boxes are all checked during the bidding process. I had a relative in the Air Force, and his group was in charge of salvaging programs that failed because the contractor couldn't deliver. They would get half-finished satellites and boxes of parts arriving at the loading dock and then try to figure out what to do. Is someone criminally culpable? Can we do a contract to finish this, or do we need to start over? According to him you could just never tell - sometimes the contractors you were sure would fail actually delivered, and sometimes the old reliables went belly up or just kept asking for more money.

scottLobster 9y ago
Yeah I'd say the issue there is that traditional defense contractors are highly silo-ed, quality can vary drastically from program to program. I've worked on programs that I'd pit against Google and programs where the culture was a bunch of math majors who learned to code in the 70s and haven't updated since the 90s. Just last year I had to review a 500 line FUNCTION in NEW CODE. Thankfully I'm no longer attached to that program, had to continuously bite my tongue and pick my battles in code reviews to avoid getting a reputation. Even nicely telling people 15-20 years my senior "go spend two days refactoring this crap" was a non-starter. To be fair the code did work, I doubt a user would ever notice. But I felt bad signing off on the review all the same. I sdhould point out that not all the old-timers are a problem. I'm currently working with some 20-year guys who are VERY up to date and open to new ideas; and the company is trying to modernize from the top-down, but some programs have taken to it better than others and some have outright resisted. Given that these programs are only staffed after a bid is won, I'm not sure what kind of vetting process could catch these kinds of inefficiencies.

scottLobster 9y ago

Yeah I'd say the issue there is that traditional defense contractors are highly silo-ed, quality can vary drastically from program to program. I've worked on programs that I'd pit against Google and programs where the culture was a bunch of math majors who learned to code in the 70s and haven't updated since the 90s. Just last year I had to review a 500 line FUNCTION in NEW CODE. Thankfully I'm no longer attached to that program, had to continuously bite my tongue and pick my battles in code reviews to avoid getting a reputation. Even nicely telling people 15-20 years my senior "go spend two days refactoring this crap" was a non-starter. To be fair the code did work, I doubt a user would ever notice. But I felt bad signing off on the review all the same. I sdhould point out that not all the old-timers are a problem. I'm currently working with some 20-year guys who are VERY up to date and open to new ideas; and the company is trying to modernize from the top-down, but some programs have taken to it better than others and some have outright resisted. Given that these programs are only staffed after a bid is won, I'm not sure what kind of vetting process could catch these kinds of inefficiencies.