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If the underlying assumption is that you can mainly attract top talent through high salaries / compensation. I think we need to acknowledge that "top talent" i

If the underlying assumption is that you can mainly attract top talent through high salaries / compensation. I think we need to acknowledge that "top talent" is going to go other places, driven by other incentives. The academic world is filled with "top talent" that work for a measly salary, compared to the industry, because they have more freedom - and can work on what they want. Or you have the military, which operate with a caped base salary for around $180k for their 4 star generals / admiral. It's hard to argue that the top 0.1% talent in the military are any worse than their peers at high-paying companies. People choose different jobs / industries based on their own incentives. The smartest and most driven person I know is currently a post-doc earning $70k while doing cutting edge research in Deep Learning. He could easily be making 5-6 times that, if he just joined the industry...but he's content. /anecdote

Aunche 7y ago
Something is clearly going wrong if the NSA thinks it's worth it to pay for $700/hr consultants from McKinsey. All the three-letter-agencies think Palantir is cutting edge, yet anecdotally, I hear that they're charging millions of dollars for some fancy charts and rudimentary data science. Of course, there will always be some hyper-dedicated public servant types who are top of the line, and I'm sure that the director of the NSA is one of them. However, I doubt that the average rank and file senior engineer at the NSA is as competent their counterpart at Palantir because otherwise, they could just do all their work in house.
- TrackerFF 7y ago
  I can only say, based on my own short experience as purchase manager, that the process looks something like this: 1. The company needs to expand / upgrade / whatever, and there's a meeting on how this should be tackled. More often than not, in large companies, this part is also delegated to some consulting firm. 2. Report from said firm comes in, you have a meeting, and either go with their recommendations, or something else which has come up internally. 3. Upper management is convinced that using outside consultants / contractors is the way to go, because it's lighter on the company (no hiring, etc.) 4. Upper management gets wined and dined by the largest players, and are convinced its better to go with the most establishes firms. Often times they have good relationships with these firms from beforehand, and don't even bother checking out their competition. I've been myself in the situation where we spent months on coming up with the best deal possible, only to get steamrolled by executives, because they wanted to go with someone they knew - and pay many multiples extra. In the end, it's the tax-payers or shareholders that are paying for this kind of stuff.

Aunche 7y ago

Something is clearly going wrong if the NSA thinks it's worth it to pay for $700/hr consultants from McKinsey. All the three-letter-agencies think Palantir is cutting edge, yet anecdotally, I hear that they're charging millions of dollars for some fancy charts and rudimentary data science. Of course, there will always be some hyper-dedicated public servant types who are top of the line, and I'm sure that the director of the NSA is one of them. However, I doubt that the average rank and file senior engineer at the NSA is as competent their counterpart at Palantir because otherwise, they could just do all their work in house.

TrackerFF 7y ago
I can only say, based on my own short experience as purchase manager, that the process looks something like this: 1. The company needs to expand / upgrade / whatever, and there's a meeting on how this should be tackled. More often than not, in large companies, this part is also delegated to some consulting firm. 2. Report from said firm comes in, you have a meeting, and either go with their recommendations, or something else which has come up internally. 3. Upper management is convinced that using outside consultants / contractors is the way to go, because it's lighter on the company (no hiring, etc.) 4. Upper management gets wined and dined by the largest players, and are convinced its better to go with the most establishes firms. Often times they have good relationships with these firms from beforehand, and don't even bother checking out their competition. I've been myself in the situation where we spent months on coming up with the best deal possible, only to get steamrolled by executives, because they wanted to go with someone they knew - and pay many multiples extra. In the end, it's the tax-payers or shareholders that are paying for this kind of stuff.