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As someone who worked in defense consulting/IT contracting many moons ago, let me clue you in on a simple fact: there is an INSANE amount of money wasted on the
by exogeny 6y ago
As someone who worked in defense consulting/IT contracting many moons ago, let me clue you in on a simple fact: there is an INSANE amount of money wasted on these contracts.
The project that we were working on was projected to maybe go live in ten years (when the tech would be laughably outdated), and we were the sub-sub-sub-contractor of the massive company at the top. It was nothing more than a vaporware webapp built by 22 year olds right out of college who were white/American enough to get clearance immediately, and our team got $100 million for it.
The money in these DoD contracts is truly nuts. And it never gets slashed because how politically terrible slashing defense is, and it never gets audited because too many people are making money.
So as it relates to Palantir, sure, they're scammy and unethical as all hell, but they certainly know where the bread is buttered in America. Even in a (likely) Democratic adminstration.
- runawaybottle 6y agoWhat’s the best path to get on this gravy train?
- xenihn 6y agoA master's degree. Body shops can bill more for contractors if they have one. This often means they make it a requirement.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- anonu 6y agohttps://beta.sam.gov/ https://beta.sam.gov/
- cheschire 6y agohttps://www.usa.gov/become-government-contractor https://www.usa.gov/become-government-contractor
- blaser-waffle 6y agoGet a security clearance. Higher the better. Military is a common way to get one, but plenty of civilian jobs will sponsor, too. Clearances cost a bunch of money to do though, so they usually pre-screen heavily.
- coronadisaster 6y agoyes, democrats and republicans are very much alike (only their speech differs)
- ceejayoz 6y agoI understand somewhat people saying this in 2015. I do not understand people who say it in 2020.
- coronadisaster 6y agoMaybe you don't understand anything... just wait and see when Biden gets the seat. (only look at actions, and not at what they say)
- runawaybottle 6y agoHe/she means it in the sense of holy grail budgeting with respect to Defense (and Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid (Holy Trinity?)), no one would dare cut it regardless of party. It’s important to note since it’s one of the largest beneficiaries of tax money allocation.
- harryh 6y agoSocial Security spending is significantly larger than defense spending.
- runawaybottle 6y agoThanks, you’re right. Still standing by my point, no one touches that stuff.
- ceejayoz 6y agoThat's not true, though. The current administration is attempting to get the ACA struck down, which would boot millions off Medicaid.
- 6y ago
- haolez 6y agoWhat a racist remark.
- anonu 6y ago> (likely) Democratic adminstration I am not taking any sides here... but don't count your chickens until they hatch.
- who_ex 6y agoim absolutely astounded by this thread. why are HNers so confident that we will have a democratic govt this november? im not trying to be snarky but i genuinely want to know. ill bet every single dollar i have to my name that we are getting 4 more years.
- DaniloDias 6y agoThese comments are a useful tool for confirming the dominant bias of the HN community. It is frustrating to see smart people downvoting intelligent observations because they would be miserable if the observations came to pass. The downvote button should not be an indicator of your personal annoyance.
- gguevaraa 6y agoI'd argue HN shouldn't have a downvote button at all. I can understand when using it to downvote misinformation or comments that break guidelines, however, in discussions it often is used to quietly say "I don't like your opinion, period". Then again, not having a downvote button would probably lead to more flamewars but I'm just speculating. It's a shame seeing Reddit-like behavior on HN (I understand comparing HN to Reddit is blaspheme).
- 0xy 6y agoNearly 100% of the time I've seen "dead" comments, it's because they said something that goes against the grain. This feature is pretty much pure abuse by power users. Same for downvotes.
- pfarrell 6y agoAgreed. The downvote should be used to indicate a comment is off topic or doesn’t add to the discussion, not whether it aligns with your opinion. In this particular case, however, I’d agree it’s off topic (but I personally didn’t downvote it because it’s not that out of bounds).
- TeeMassive 6y ago> As someone who worked in defense consulting/IT contracting many moons ago, let me clue you in on a simple fact: there is an INSANE amount of money wasted on these contracts. I've always wondered, considering massive amount of waste in Western military budgets, it makes me wonder what the real amount of money being invested compared to other military powers such as Russia and China.
- thefounder 6y agoRussia has its own "leaks"(money wise).
- hangonhn 6y agoThe Chinese military is historically beset by corruption and "leaks". The "Century of Humiliation" started when the Chinese navy was utterly destroyed by a newbie regional power Japan at the Battle of Yalu River partly because corruption had deprived the Chinese of enough ammunition for gunnery practices. Also, take any figures coming out of the current Chinese military with a grain of salt. The Chinese military budget is likely to be much, much bigger. Part of Xi's reform is to get rid of the fat in the Chinese military. It may be a while be China sees the fruits of those reforms.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y agoBut is there real reform? I know they're "killing chickens to scare monkeys" (杀鸡儆猴), but the incentives for corruption remain unchanged. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_the_chicken_to_scare_the_monkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_the_chicken_to_scare_the_...
- hangonhn 6y agoYeah I'm pretty skeptical as well but I've learned that just because someone is a competitor, we shouldn't deprive them of the virtues that we like to believe we have. It is very possible and I would argue probable that Xi is a genuine Chinese patriot (likewise I would say for Putin). Being a patriot, however, doesn't mean one can't also accept some amount of corruption if that furthers the long term goals. As people have already pointed out, even the US defense industry has some level of corruption too but no one can reasonably doubt the superiority of the US military. If we are frank with ourselves, the US is somewhat corrupt too yet it's always managed to cope with that.
- apta 6y agoIt seems that the military complex in the US is a country-wide employment program paid by taxes.
- 1propionyl 6y agoThis is true, and goes back to the settling of the Western territories. Amusingly, many of them allied with Southern Democrats (this was in the 19th century before the party platform switch) in proclaiming their desire for independence from the oppressive government, while in reality their livelihoods were entirely dependent on the government paying out money (railroad subsidies, agricultural subsidies, homesteading programs, etc). It also had a lot to do with for the anti-black sentiment of the South aligning with the anti-native and anti-Chinese sentiment of the west. This is also true in particular of the rise of California, which at one point accounted for nearly half of the country's military spending. If California were a startup, it's angel investors were the military and those seeking gold (or more precisely, those seeking to establish railheads to ship it back East).
- staticautomatic 6y agoAround that same time, something like 80 percent of all federal jobs were at the Postal Service.
- athriren 6y agoThis is quite literally true given the amount of money and jobs the defense base (not just direct contractors but the entire supply chain) injects into local economies. Most of American manufacturing has been off-shored. Regulations prevent defense base procurement of even raw materials (such as aluminum, titanium, and steel) not made in the US. Presentations are made to congresspeople of the first, second, and third order economic effects this has particular to their district down to supplier street address (dealing with .shp files will one day kill me) with heat maps of surrounding economic activity driven by the location of these businesses. These four lunch places entirely sustained by this job site, those jobs helping drive a couple service industry jobs, etc. I’ve come to view the defense contractor space as pretty much a 1:1 economic response to the hollowing out of American industry during the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Onshoring back the dollars in the only mutually politically viable way. Social spending has become verboten for Republicans. “Big business” is the same for Democrats. But they both know they need this massive injection of cash into the American economy to avoid the political situation becoming factually untenable. I think Americans probably need significantly more discontent and mistreatment by the state in order to become politically incoherent but if this spending (which is essentially welfare due to its excess post Cold War) disappeared it would be guaranteed.
- Trias11 6y agoMoney sharing with corp. decision makers.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- galacticaactual 6y agoYour judgment of an entire industry using an anecdotal sample size of 1 is poor form to say the least.
- ta17711771 6y agoThis is not an uncommon, or new criticism. We've heard it from everyone from Eisenhower[0] to our own colleagues who have seen it firsthand. Perhaps you have a bias involved? [0] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp
- grosswait 6y agoI've worked on more than one contract supporting numerous others and I concur with OP. I guarantee you'll get the same answer from most people that have been in the contracting trenches.
- enraged_camel 6y agoDo you have anything more substantial to add than "you are generalizing!"
- lvs 6y agoI work with a number of contractors who say exactly the same thing as GP. There is so much cash that is just going down the drain with no accountability. That being said, venture capital is pissing away huge amounts of capital with no measurable output either. Capital allocation is bad across the board.
- blaser-waffle 6y agoThe difference is that venture capital getting pissed away is on the VCs; they took a risk and maybe they lose out or win big, but it's on them. The out of control DoD spending is your tax dollars, which could go to fixing bridges or to schools or hospitals, etc.
- exogeny 6y agoI mean, I think the personal sharing of any story implies that someone else's views or experiences may vary, no? The fact that it concerned you to the extent that you called it out is certainly notable. Other people may have had different experiences. But that is absolutely not what I saw, not from my colleagues, not from my friends at other firms, and not from the general consensus around DC at the time.
- 6nf 6y agoIt doesn't matter who is in office, both the democrats and the republicans agree that the DoD needs more money. Always more.
- 0xy 6y agoThat's because the DoD pork barrelling rains infinite cash on every state whether red, blue or purple. To vote against it is to vote against free money and jobs for your state.
- empath75 6y agoConsider the possibility that the entire point of many of these projects is spending money and not what you think you’re trying to build.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y agoAs someone in defense software I agree. I always joke that I make Google salary since I'm paid $1,200+ for 5 lines of bash that takes a week of testing / verification.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago> As someone who worked in defense consulting/IT contracting many moons ago, let me clue you in on a simple fact: there is an INSANE amount of money wasted on these contracts. Am orginally from NoVA, prior military, and did contractor work for a while. Totally agree with OP. I recall being in a bar in Reston, VA while a bunch of drunk-ass contractors were mouthing off about how much overtime and bonus pay they were getting, and if they bumped up to a role with TS/Lifestyle-Poly it would double. Meanwhile a friend of mine was in the FBI and got hurt at work, while working for a comparitively unimpressive yearly salary. Was already pretty burnt out but that's one of the moments that made me head to the other coast (and, eventually, leave the country).