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This should really be getting more attention, here is an alternative breakdown: https://imgur.com/gallery/ycOC0HX https://imgur.com/gallery/ycOC0HX. The jest o
by tmpz22 7y ago
This should really be getting more attention, here is an alternative breakdown: https://imgur.com/gallery/ycOC0HX https://imgur.com/gallery/ycOC0HX.
The jest of it is one of the most important institutions in the United States (the Democratic National Committee) uses a highly nepotistic and incompetent system for managing IT which leads to colossal failures in marketing, canvassing, and security. Not to mention massive PII violates as millions of emails, phone numbers and SSNs, are passed around in plain-text via CSV files.
The reason this happens is because hundreds of millions of dollars are lit on fire during election season and all the sharks, including former Google employees, come out to swim. Even well intentioned projects get slammed by the crunch of the election season (seriously trying shipping a well scaled app in < 2 months with terrible product direction) and ultimately fail - failing the needs of the entire citizenship of the country.
After the success of Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaigns even more money was funneled into IT as a sort of perceived silver bullet. But in 2016 it wasn't, and yet no analysis was done to correct the problems for the 2020 cycle - because the decision makers (all these "CTOs") are clueless fucks who are just there for the money and could care less about the integrity of our democratic system.
- in 2016 I worked for one of the companies in this niche and saw the bidding/sales/engineering processes first hand. FWIW I am a life long democratic voter and this makes me sick to my stomach.
- dang 7y agoPlease don't post duplicate comments to HN. In addition to lowering the signal/noise ratio of the site, it creates a big pain when we go to merge threads (as happened here). If you want to refer to something you said elsewhere, please use a link.
- tmpz22 7y agoMy bad, I got emotional over the content discussed and just copy-pasted the content because it seemed like the original thread would be eclipsed. I'll make sure not to do it in the future and in general have a great appreciation for the work you do moderating HN - I imagine it is quite stressful at times.
- dang 7y agoMuch appreciated! And no worries—similar things happen to everyone and we're all learning.