5 ms·

> Engineering in the traditional sense plays very little role in modern defense systems. The overriding concern is profit: How can we extract the most money fro

> Engineering in the traditional sense plays very little role in modern defense systems. The overriding concern is profit: How can we extract the most money from the DoD? Good engineering that avoids recurring costs is discouraged in favor of gee-whiz technology that's easy to sell but expensive to build and maintain. The icing on the cake is that bids no longer matter; the largest contractors always underbid to get the contract then send bills that are 2x, 4x or 10x the bid, knowing they have the DoD over a barrel. As a government contractor, I agree and fully endorse this. > The solution for this nonsense is competition. Real, honest, open, transparent competition. Combined with laws that dictate refusal to pay in excess of the bid, instant scrapping of programs that exceed cost estimates, and a 10-year timeout window between when people in DoD leadership can transition out and get jobs with DoD contractors. ...And I disagree with this fully. The solution is for the government to return to in-housing, relax the rules they hold themselves to, and aggressively expand their own capabilities. The things the government makes are far and away superior to anything in the private sector. At its best, the government does it better, cheaper, and longer-lasting than anyone else. Real competition for the things the government needs done is just not possible. Roughly 50% of contracts are based on just flat-out lies, and it's even worse for shitty contracts like SBIRs. I'll tell you, I have seen some real dumb shit. The BUYER needs technical expertise in order to not get ripped off, and if you already have expertise it makes much more sense to go the extra miles and build it yourself. The market for government contracts would need to be way more lucrative to allow companies to fail honestly, and even then, why would they when lying is more profitable? Plus, this doesn't even cover the worst part of large contracts, which is that they're effectively negotiated by politics, either congress itself or inter-DoD factionalism. That, more than anything else, creates large-scale rot.

dreamcompiler 7y ago
I have tried many times to break into government contracting and always failed. It's always one of two problems: The award is too small to cover the cost of the proposal and reporting paperwork (e.g. SBIR) or the award is huge and you need a full-time team whose sole job is to navigate all the red tape. And like you said, the people evaluating proposals often have no background in the field, so proxies for competence are used like slickness of marketing materials, whom you know in the organization, or how good-looking you are (not kidding). After I graduated I thought I wanted to work for NASA. Then I found out most NASA employees spend most of their day not inventing or building things, but managing contractors who did the actual work. I guess I'm saying I like your suggestion better than mine.
didericis 7y ago
> At its best, the government does it better, cheaper, and longer-lasting than anyone else Can you cite examples and explain factors that you think lead to the government working at its best? As much as I like free market competition, I think you’re probably right, at least when it comes to projects/pieces of projects where the only customer is the government. But when there’s a problem not well suited for competition to solve efficiently, that doesn’t guarantee a good government result: there’s a ton of variability in the quality of government responses. My basic theory is this: the success of large government engineering projects depends primarily on whether or not everyone involved in the project believe it to be of existential importance (military projects during the cold war), whether its something that they will personally use and want to feel pride in (golden gate bridge), or whether or not the problem has some novel/interesting element that attracts the best and brightest.
- hwillis 7y ago
  USPS delivers packages much faster, more efficiently (fewer stops), significantly more cheaply, and with better employee pay and benefits. Medicare negotiates far more effectively than private insurance (although obviously that isn't a simple comparison) and has dramatically lower overheads. Government and even locally-owned infrastructure is cheaper than commercial infrastructure like roads or communications. Government-owned health services are cheaper and higher quality. Government engineering projects are superior. The GAO and IRS are extremely effective financial institutions. > But when there’s a problem not well suited for competition to solve efficiently, that doesn’t guarantee a good government result: there’s a ton of variability in the quality of government responses. Can you find me an example? By and large, the idea that the government is inefficient is a myth. There are boondoggles like Star Wars, but those are failures independent of government implementation. There are "failures" like Amtrak that are unprofitable, but they are kept running to offer services at a given price point because we want that regardless of what the market says. Government projects are generally subject to the exact same motivations as private projects. They make profits. Employees can be fired and promoted. Innovation is rewarded, at the individual level. Underperforming projects are cut, often much more aggressively than in the free market. Much more important than a sense of patriotism is the fact that governments are subject to intense internal and external scrutiny. Literally the most powerful people in the country are constantly looking, specifically to cut individual programs. There is no safe position in the government and institutional rot is constantly being gutted even when it's unwise, eg CDC, EPA, IRS lately. You will not find that pressure at IBM.

dreamcompiler 7y ago

I have tried many times to break into government contracting and always failed. It's always one of two problems: The award is too small to cover the cost of the proposal and reporting paperwork (e.g. SBIR) or the award is huge and you need a full-time team whose sole job is to navigate all the red tape. And like you said, the people evaluating proposals often have no background in the field, so proxies for competence are used like slickness of marketing materials, whom you know in the organization, or how good-looking you are (not kidding). After I graduated I thought I wanted to work for NASA. Then I found out most NASA employees spend most of their day not inventing or building things, but managing contractors who did the actual work. I guess I'm saying I like your suggestion better than mine.

didericis 7y ago

> At its best, the government does it better, cheaper, and longer-lasting than anyone else Can you cite examples and explain factors that you think lead to the government working at its best? As much as I like free market competition, I think you’re probably right, at least when it comes to projects/pieces of projects where the only customer is the government. But when there’s a problem not well suited for competition to solve efficiently, that doesn’t guarantee a good government result: there’s a ton of variability in the quality of government responses. My basic theory is this: the success of large government engineering projects depends primarily on whether or not everyone involved in the project believe it to be of existential importance (military projects during the cold war), whether its something that they will personally use and want to feel pride in (golden gate bridge), or whether or not the problem has some novel/interesting element that attracts the best and brightest.

hwillis 7y ago
USPS delivers packages much faster, more efficiently (fewer stops), significantly more cheaply, and with better employee pay and benefits. Medicare negotiates far more effectively than private insurance (although obviously that isn't a simple comparison) and has dramatically lower overheads. Government and even locally-owned infrastructure is cheaper than commercial infrastructure like roads or communications. Government-owned health services are cheaper and higher quality. Government engineering projects are superior. The GAO and IRS are extremely effective financial institutions. > But when there’s a problem not well suited for competition to solve efficiently, that doesn’t guarantee a good government result: there’s a ton of variability in the quality of government responses. Can you find me an example? By and large, the idea that the government is inefficient is a myth. There are boondoggles like Star Wars, but those are failures independent of government implementation. There are "failures" like Amtrak that are unprofitable, but they are kept running to offer services at a given price point because we want that regardless of what the market says. Government projects are generally subject to the exact same motivations as private projects. They make profits. Employees can be fired and promoted. Innovation is rewarded, at the individual level. Underperforming projects are cut, often much more aggressively than in the free market. Much more important than a sense of patriotism is the fact that governments are subject to intense internal and external scrutiny. Literally the most powerful people in the country are constantly looking, specifically to cut individual programs. There is no safe position in the government and institutional rot is constantly being gutted even when it's unwise, eg CDC, EPA, IRS lately. You will not find that pressure at IBM.