5 ms·

> I had one organization offer me 25k, fully remote to work there Per year? That is $12.50 / hr

the_only_law 5y ago
I worked for state government, in a very red state (read, does not like to spend on government) for my first “real” job at around $37k, circa 5-6 years ago.
- toomanyrichies 5y ago
  This gets to the heart of a contradiction in red state philosophy which is actually quite hard to solve, at least in my mind. On the one hand, it's understandable if someone doesn't trust the government to spend their money wisely, and if they use that as a justification for voting for smaller government budgets. I get that part completely. Governments have little if any internal motivation to spend your money wisely. If anything, they have a vested interest in spending 100% of their budgets, regardless of whether it's spent wisely, so that their budgets don't decrease in the following fiscal year. At the same time, "if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys". If red states don't pay competitive salaries in competitive fields, their citizens shouldn't be surprised if they end up scraping the bottom of the barrel to source their public servants. The service they experience while interfacing with this dreck then further reduces their faith in government, and the whole thing becomes a vicious circle. Again, this is a hard problem to solve. I don't know what the answer is, but it seems to be rooted in a mis-alignment of incentives in government spending.
  - UweSchmidt 5y ago
    The actual "philosophy" is the privatization of government functions. Concepts like "libertarianism" and "government is inefficient" are constructed to push this agenda. In the US this force can be so destructive that it willingly starves the government to prove its inefficiency and pushes services to the private sector, which is oh-so-well-alligned with its incentives (healthcare, owning infrastructure and other natural monopolies). If the Digital Corps can't get it done with people who can only make 25k a year, I guess we need some free market consultants for 200$/hour!
    - pc86 5y ago
      Why do you assume that these ideologies are "constructed" in order to support a pre-existing agenda, rather than the (imo) much more likely possibility that the ideology is legitimately held and the "agenda" flows naturally from that belief?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - asiachick 5y ago
    Yes, I don't know what would work. I often like to bring up Japanese trains/subways which are privately owned and AFAIK the reason it works is because the train companies own buildings and land around their stations so they have a positive feedback loop, the more people ride their trains, the more their buildings get used, the more their land is worth, and visa versa. ~10 or so of the famous buildings in Shibuya are owned by the Tokyu Corp including the famous one with the giant screen, the 109 building (10 + To, 9 = Kyu), and the new 50+ story one directly over the station. The also own the building Google moved to. They own grocery stores at probably around 50% of the stations on their lines. Other examples include any building you see named Atre (https://www.atre.co.jp/ https://www.atre.co.jp/) which are shopping centers above JR train stations owned by JR. I have no idea what the equivalent would be for government IT, nor am I saying all government services should be privatized. I do agree though that it's about incentives. Even in Japan people complain about government construction projects where the incentive is always to spend all the money so near the end of the fiscal period a bunch of random unneeded projects start to make sure all the money is spent for fear that budgets might be lower the next year if they don't use all the money.
  - zippergz 5y ago
    I agree that this is a problem, but I don't think it is that simple in practice. My personal observation moving from a blue state to a red state a few years ago is that the quality of the service I get from the state and local government is drastically better in the red state. I don't think I can read very much into that, since it's a minuscule sample size and every state and municipality is different. But it's striking to me how much nicer the employees are, how much better the services are, and how much less apathetic everyone seems to be, despite what I assume has to be lower pay. I don't agree with the policies of most of the local elected officials where I live now, but that is more about bigger picture items. As far as day-to-day operation of the government, I can't say with a straight face that my old, deep blue, west coast community did things anywhere near as well as my new red home state.
    - georgeburdell 5y ago
      Given that you don't like the policies of your elected officials, but you enjoy the higher quality of services you seem to be getting, and appear to be drawing a relationship between the two, how will you be voting next election?
    - gammarator 5y ago
      How do the populations compare? I think lots of folks overindex on blue vs red when the more relevant variable may be scale/density.
  - avgcorrection 5y ago
    I don’t think it’s a contradiction. It’s a cogent and coherent philosophy. Claim that government doesn’t work → defund it in the name of it being bad → government works even worse → repeat.
    - bl0b 5y ago
      Reminds me of the PJ O'Rourke quote: "The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."
    - rvba 5y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
  - roenxi 5y ago
    That isn't a contradiction. The philosophical position is that the government shouldn't be sucking good employees out of the private sector. The strategy that follows is coherent and consistent - there won't be an attempt to hire great employees, the government won't have great employees and will be run appropriately for those realities. The 'contradiction' only appears if you assume that secretly people believe that they can find good politicians and public servants even if their political opponents can't.
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    The real reason is that don't want to pay a lowly programmer more than a lofted manager and they have a stack of 15 managers on the project with the most junior one making 40k. Its a cultural thing within the government itself.
tempestn 5y ago
Given the tone of the quoted comment, I expect that was a typo for 250k. IE. They offered me 250k fully remote, but I turned it down anyway because it would be so much work.

I worked for state government, in a very red state (read, does not like to spend on government) for my first “real” job at around $37k, circa 5-6 years ago.

toomanyrichies 5y ago
This gets to the heart of a contradiction in red state philosophy which is actually quite hard to solve, at least in my mind. On the one hand, it's understandable if someone doesn't trust the government to spend their money wisely, and if they use that as a justification for voting for smaller government budgets. I get that part completely. Governments have little if any internal motivation to spend your money wisely. If anything, they have a vested interest in spending 100% of their budgets, regardless of whether it's spent wisely, so that their budgets don't decrease in the following fiscal year. At the same time, "if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys". If red states don't pay competitive salaries in competitive fields, their citizens shouldn't be surprised if they end up scraping the bottom of the barrel to source their public servants. The service they experience while interfacing with this dreck then further reduces their faith in government, and the whole thing becomes a vicious circle. Again, this is a hard problem to solve. I don't know what the answer is, but it seems to be rooted in a mis-alignment of incentives in government spending.
- UweSchmidt 5y ago
  The actual "philosophy" is the privatization of government functions. Concepts like "libertarianism" and "government is inefficient" are constructed to push this agenda. In the US this force can be so destructive that it willingly starves the government to prove its inefficiency and pushes services to the private sector, which is oh-so-well-alligned with its incentives (healthcare, owning infrastructure and other natural monopolies). If the Digital Corps can't get it done with people who can only make 25k a year, I guess we need some free market consultants for 200$/hour!
  - pc86 5y ago
    Why do you assume that these ideologies are "constructed" in order to support a pre-existing agenda, rather than the (imo) much more likely possibility that the ideology is legitimately held and the "agenda" flows naturally from that belief?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- asiachick 5y ago
  Yes, I don't know what would work. I often like to bring up Japanese trains/subways which are privately owned and AFAIK the reason it works is because the train companies own buildings and land around their stations so they have a positive feedback loop, the more people ride their trains, the more their buildings get used, the more their land is worth, and visa versa. ~10 or so of the famous buildings in Shibuya are owned by the Tokyu Corp including the famous one with the giant screen, the 109 building (10 + To, 9 = Kyu), and the new 50+ story one directly over the station. The also own the building Google moved to. They own grocery stores at probably around 50% of the stations on their lines. Other examples include any building you see named Atre (https://www.atre.co.jp/ https://www.atre.co.jp/) which are shopping centers above JR train stations owned by JR. I have no idea what the equivalent would be for government IT, nor am I saying all government services should be privatized. I do agree though that it's about incentives. Even in Japan people complain about government construction projects where the incentive is always to spend all the money so near the end of the fiscal period a bunch of random unneeded projects start to make sure all the money is spent for fear that budgets might be lower the next year if they don't use all the money.
- zippergz 5y ago
  I agree that this is a problem, but I don't think it is that simple in practice. My personal observation moving from a blue state to a red state a few years ago is that the quality of the service I get from the state and local government is drastically better in the red state. I don't think I can read very much into that, since it's a minuscule sample size and every state and municipality is different. But it's striking to me how much nicer the employees are, how much better the services are, and how much less apathetic everyone seems to be, despite what I assume has to be lower pay. I don't agree with the policies of most of the local elected officials where I live now, but that is more about bigger picture items. As far as day-to-day operation of the government, I can't say with a straight face that my old, deep blue, west coast community did things anywhere near as well as my new red home state.
  - georgeburdell 5y ago
    Given that you don't like the policies of your elected officials, but you enjoy the higher quality of services you seem to be getting, and appear to be drawing a relationship between the two, how will you be voting next election?
  - gammarator 5y ago
    How do the populations compare? I think lots of folks overindex on blue vs red when the more relevant variable may be scale/density.
- avgcorrection 5y ago
  I don’t think it’s a contradiction. It’s a cogent and coherent philosophy. Claim that government doesn’t work → defund it in the name of it being bad → government works even worse → repeat.
  - bl0b 5y ago
    Reminds me of the PJ O'Rourke quote: "The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."
  - rvba 5y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
- roenxi 5y ago
  That isn't a contradiction. The philosophical position is that the government shouldn't be sucking good employees out of the private sector. The strategy that follows is coherent and consistent - there won't be an attempt to hire great employees, the government won't have great employees and will be run appropriately for those realities. The 'contradiction' only appears if you assume that secretly people believe that they can find good politicians and public servants even if their political opponents can't.
- willcipriano 5y ago
  The real reason is that don't want to pay a lowly programmer more than a lofted manager and they have a stack of 15 managers on the project with the most junior one making 40k. Its a cultural thing within the government itself.

tempestn 5y ago

Given the tone of the quoted comment, I expect that was a typo for 250k. IE. They offered me 250k fully remote, but I turned it down anyway because it would be so much work.