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It makes me think of military contracting as a parallel example. (at least in the USA) The rules required to develop, build, and deliver military equipment to t

It makes me think of military contracting as a parallel example. (at least in the USA) The rules required to develop, build, and deliver military equipment to the US is exceedingly complex. And it isn't necessarily a benefit for the Pentagon, as much as it is for the established defense contractors. The barriers to entry in that industry are huge, purely based on the contracting requirements. So complexity (in tools and process) do not necessarily serve the individual developer the way they serve larger organizations.

Gibbon1 6y ago
My first boss (rip) had a internship with a defense contractor his junior year in college. They gave him one project. Design a cover for the air intake for an APC or some such. Easy!!! No not actually easy because of all the constraints. It had to be stowable. So a hard cover was out. It couldn't produce toxic fumes if it caught fire. So most plastics were out. Cloth was a problem because it couldn't get sucked into the intake if someone tried starting the engine without removing the cover. He designed heavy canvas cover with metal stiffeners. And snaps. And then had to switch to a draw string because the snaps failed at -40F. And tended to get clogged with snow. Whole thing took him three months. Then there was the friend at college who worked on a VCR to record gun camera footage. Also a bunch of requirements. Higher video quality. And can't lose lock when the pilot does a hard pullout after firing his munitions. And the total production run? Well exactly how many fighters does the airforce have? Couple of thousand? I think military tech has a problem that it's trying to keep up with commercial driven tech which operates on a scale that's a 1000 timers larger. Military produces a few thousand artifacts to commercials few million artifacts.
- giantrobot 6y ago
  > I think military tech has a problem that it's trying to keep out with commercial drive tech which operates on a scale that a 1000 timers larger. Military produces a few thousand artifacts to commercials few million artifacts. Not to excuse military contracting pork and cost padding, but this is a good point that a lot of people seem to miss. There's also the fact a military contract will be for a production run and follow on support. So they buy a thousand full units and parts/tools to fix and maintain them up front. You can't just go to Autozone and pick up a new tank tread or parts for a jet turbine.
  - thesuperbigfrog 6y ago
    Another huge factor is the service lifetime of military equipment. There are aircraft that were designed and created in the 1970s that are still in use today. Sure, many of the components and internal systems have been modified and upgraded, but much of the original design is still there and operating. >> a military contract will be for a production run and follow on support. When "follow-on support" has to last for 50 years or more, it makes a big difference.
    - Gibbon1 6y ago
      B-52 First flight: 15 April 1952; 68 years ago Introduction: February 1955 Status: In service
- sfgweilr4f 6y ago
  Those constraints seem a lot more reasonable than what I've seen in other aspects of the business world. At least they are grounded in the realities of the actual purpose. Well, mostly anyway. I'll leave justifications for the $1000 left-handed hammers as an exercise for later. I've seen (and removed) plenty of requirements that were put in the specification just because. Because someone needed X amount of Y technology in their projects for the year. Because it seemed cool. Because other people were doing it. Because they wanted it on their resume. Because. But not because it was appropriate to the project or its purpose. I'd say the majority of the work I do now is pruning these nonsense "just because" clauses out. Its entertaining at least. I regularly shake my head in disbelief as I go through a specification and wonder, "who hired these people?" or "Why is the person who hired them still working?" Fortunately for me I also get to hand these questions back, much like the good uncle who only needs to uncle and not actually parent: "Here, have them back!" I say at the end of the visit. All is well. Go pleasantly amid the wastes.
  - wisty 6y ago
    As I remember the actual story: The the hammer was waaaaay more than $1000. But that's because the military said "We'll pay you a total sum of X, but to make it easier to fund the project we'll let you break it into n parts and pay X/n per part". The contractor decided that to make their cashflow smoother, they'd include "manual impulse force generator" as one of the deliverable parts.
    - mattkrause 6y ago
      The hammer was "only" $435 and that price is really a reporting artifact. The hammer was part of a larger contract that included spare parts and R&D effort linked to those parts. When the spending was reported, the same absolute amount of R&D ($420) was allocated to every item, inflating the apparent price of a $15 hammer to $435. By the same token, the engineering work on more complicated systems (e.g., an engine) was an absolute steal at $420 and since the total amount of R&D spending was fixed, nobody really got ripped off.
  - fatbird 6y ago
Twirrim 6y ago
> And it isn't necessarily a benefit for the Pentagon, as much as it is for the established defense contractors. As with many government related procurement systems, there is so much paranoia about abuse, and desire not to repeat various disasters from the past, that the system has by perceived necessity become complicated. Of course it makes it frightfully expensive to the degree that few companies can actually throw the resources at it to be able to navigate it. The lack of competition can result in projects costing a large amount of money, and the buyers in the agencies having no real options to look elsewhere. At an e-government company I worked for, we a service for the state that helped companies navigate the state's procurement system. We created a centralised place for all data to be gathered by the applicant, generating all the forms they needed, and provided a way for the applicant to track the state of their application. It introduced quite a change for the state, dramatically widening the potential pool of companies that could bid for contracts. Also pissed off quite a few of the already entrenched ones :)
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  It's like a macro version of the story told in Capt. David Marquet's book Turn the Ship Around! Huge piles of bureaucracy, complexity, and waste build up in an organization risk avoidance is allowed to become the primary goal.
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  If you don't mind sharing, what was the company you worked for?
  - Twirrim 6y ago
    Hawaii Information Consortium (I guess it's now, NIC Hawaii, https://nichawaii.egov.com/ https://nichawaii.egov.com/), which is a subsidiary of NIC. HIC was a great company to work for, as was NIC from the limited interactions I had with the larger corporate powers that be. Most websites/services were provided for free to the state / state agencies, instead relying on small fees per transaction on some of the stuff we did, to fund the work that didn't have transactions (I forget the amount, but we're talking something like 50c per transaction). Being free was a key incentive to getting various agencies to come on-line.

Gibbon1 6y ago

My first boss (rip) had a internship with a defense contractor his junior year in college. They gave him one project. Design a cover for the air intake for an APC or some such. Easy!!! No not actually easy because of all the constraints. It had to be stowable. So a hard cover was out. It couldn't produce toxic fumes if it caught fire. So most plastics were out. Cloth was a problem because it couldn't get sucked into the intake if someone tried starting the engine without removing the cover. He designed heavy canvas cover with metal stiffeners. And snaps. And then had to switch to a draw string because the snaps failed at -40F. And tended to get clogged with snow. Whole thing took him three months. Then there was the friend at college who worked on a VCR to record gun camera footage. Also a bunch of requirements. Higher video quality. And can't lose lock when the pilot does a hard pullout after firing his munitions. And the total production run? Well exactly how many fighters does the airforce have? Couple of thousand? I think military tech has a problem that it's trying to keep up with commercial driven tech which operates on a scale that's a 1000 timers larger. Military produces a few thousand artifacts to commercials few million artifacts.

giantrobot 6y ago
> I think military tech has a problem that it's trying to keep out with commercial drive tech which operates on a scale that a 1000 timers larger. Military produces a few thousand artifacts to commercials few million artifacts. Not to excuse military contracting pork and cost padding, but this is a good point that a lot of people seem to miss. There's also the fact a military contract will be for a production run and follow on support. So they buy a thousand full units and parts/tools to fix and maintain them up front. You can't just go to Autozone and pick up a new tank tread or parts for a jet turbine.
- thesuperbigfrog 6y ago
  Another huge factor is the service lifetime of military equipment. There are aircraft that were designed and created in the 1970s that are still in use today. Sure, many of the components and internal systems have been modified and upgraded, but much of the original design is still there and operating. >> a military contract will be for a production run and follow on support. When "follow-on support" has to last for 50 years or more, it makes a big difference.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    B-52 First flight: 15 April 1952; 68 years ago Introduction: February 1955 Status: In service
sfgweilr4f 6y ago
Those constraints seem a lot more reasonable than what I've seen in other aspects of the business world. At least they are grounded in the realities of the actual purpose. Well, mostly anyway. I'll leave justifications for the $1000 left-handed hammers as an exercise for later. I've seen (and removed) plenty of requirements that were put in the specification just because. Because someone needed X amount of Y technology in their projects for the year. Because it seemed cool. Because other people were doing it. Because they wanted it on their resume. Because. But not because it was appropriate to the project or its purpose. I'd say the majority of the work I do now is pruning these nonsense "just because" clauses out. Its entertaining at least. I regularly shake my head in disbelief as I go through a specification and wonder, "who hired these people?" or "Why is the person who hired them still working?" Fortunately for me I also get to hand these questions back, much like the good uncle who only needs to uncle and not actually parent: "Here, have them back!" I say at the end of the visit. All is well. Go pleasantly amid the wastes.
- wisty 6y ago
  As I remember the actual story: The the hammer was waaaaay more than $1000. But that's because the military said "We'll pay you a total sum of X, but to make it easier to fund the project we'll let you break it into n parts and pay X/n per part". The contractor decided that to make their cashflow smoother, they'd include "manual impulse force generator" as one of the deliverable parts.
  - mattkrause 6y ago
    The hammer was "only" $435 and that price is really a reporting artifact. The hammer was part of a larger contract that included spare parts and R&D effort linked to those parts. When the spending was reported, the same absolute amount of R&D ($420) was allocated to every item, inflating the apparent price of a $15 hammer to $435. By the same token, the engineering work on more complicated systems (e.g., an engine) was an absolute steal at $420 and since the total amount of R&D spending was fixed, nobody really got ripped off.
- fatbird 6y ago

Twirrim 6y ago

> And it isn't necessarily a benefit for the Pentagon, as much as it is for the established defense contractors. As with many government related procurement systems, there is so much paranoia about abuse, and desire not to repeat various disasters from the past, that the system has by perceived necessity become complicated. Of course it makes it frightfully expensive to the degree that few companies can actually throw the resources at it to be able to navigate it. The lack of competition can result in projects costing a large amount of money, and the buyers in the agencies having no real options to look elsewhere. At an e-government company I worked for, we a service for the state that helped companies navigate the state's procurement system. We created a centralised place for all data to be gathered by the applicant, generating all the forms they needed, and provided a way for the applicant to track the state of their application. It introduced quite a change for the state, dramatically widening the potential pool of companies that could bid for contracts. Also pissed off quite a few of the already entrenched ones :)

mumblemumble 6y ago
It's like a macro version of the story told in Capt. David Marquet's book Turn the Ship Around! Huge piles of bureaucracy, complexity, and waste build up in an organization risk avoidance is allowed to become the primary goal.
HideousKojima 6y ago
If you don't mind sharing, what was the company you worked for?
- Twirrim 6y ago
  Hawaii Information Consortium (I guess it's now, NIC Hawaii, https://nichawaii.egov.com/ https://nichawaii.egov.com/), which is a subsidiary of NIC. HIC was a great company to work for, as was NIC from the limited interactions I had with the larger corporate powers that be. Most websites/services were provided for free to the state / state agencies, instead relying on small fees per transaction on some of the stuff we did, to fund the work that didn't have transactions (I forget the amount, but we're talking something like 50c per transaction). Being free was a key incentive to getting various agencies to come on-line.