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Having worked at a company in public procurement I would say that matches my experience. I would say we were relatively honest compared to some of our competito
by jeltz 7y ago
Having worked at a company in public procurement I would say that matches my experience. I would say we were relatively honest compared to some of our competitors, but there were almost no incentives for us developers to do a good job other than our personal morals and everyone including us were more or less gaming the system.
I hated working there because I felt like a parasite just making the world worse. The in-hosue IT of our customer would probably have done a better job if they had just been allowed to hire some guys instead of having to go through an easily gameable procurement procedure. Not because they would have been more competent, but because they would have not have had perverse incentives.
- j7ake 7y agoThis story is fascinating, do you know where I can read more about public procurement?
- iudqnolq 7y agoFor a semi-fictional humorous take on American military procurement watch the movie The Pentagon Wars
- MrMorden 7y agoIs that one more accurate than "Joint Session" (Veep S4E1)?
- iudqnolq 7y agoNever saw that Veep episode. It's based on a book with the same title by a whistleblower, and my understanding is they dramatize the specifics but the fundamentals gist is true if a little more complicated. For example, in the movie the main character thinks for a while and then decides to use the military rules against his opponents so he asks his secretary to get him the rulebook and figures out a rule with a loophole. I think in reality he used a generally similar loophole to get the word out in combination with a lot of other strategies, but he didn't figure it out from staring at "the rulebook" for a few hours one night.