13 ms·

I want the government to have the in-house expertise to just do things, especially things that can't be specified in a contract by a KO making $53k per year wit

I want the government to have the in-house expertise to just do things, especially things that can't be specified in a contract by a KO making $53k per year with no real-life experience.

ajmurmann 5y ago
I've read (need to dig up the source again) that high infrastructure costs in the US are in part due to the same problem. The government doesn't even have experts anymore who could write the request to take offers on. Maybe in some cases a slightly larger government can be a leaner government.
- ragebol 5y ago
  I think the issue with a lot of governments is: expertise and competence is expensive. If you don't want to pay for that because the government is then expensive, fine, but eventually you'll have an incompetent government that is slow and still expensive due to the mishaps it leads to, for itself and it's constituents.
  - soco 5y ago
    So option 1 is expensive and gets stuff done, and option 2 is expensive and shitty. And we have to go the way of option 2 because...
    - null0ranje 5y ago
      Congress, mostly.
    - ragebol 5y ago
      Well, option 2 is cheaper at first. Then everything breaks down eventually and that is costly, but later. Kind of like technical debt, but for a whole government. Also, there will be hell from the public when the govt. makes a mistake. So, there's all sorts of bureaucracy, checklists etc, to keep that from happening or to at least have people accountable. Which also slows stuff down.
  - namelessoracle 5y ago
    The idea that the federal government cant hire "competent engineers" is kind of odd to me. Federal government can pay enough to get software engineers. FAANG salaries are an outlier. They could easily target some midwestern state, put the headquarters for federal software agency there, find a feeder school, and get employees fed to an agency making a comfortable 6 figures in a low cost of living area. Will there be some attrition? Sure. But plenty will stay cause thats where family is, and where they have their house, and thats where there kids go to school and etc. I can guarantee you that the contractors they hire from Accenture and IBM are using devs that arent making FAANG salaries. Its kind of a meme how bad some of the government contractors are, its pretty well known you can just be a body that sits at a desk if you can get a security clearance and make easy money just manually running an SQL script once a week on some of these government contracts. The real reason nothing gets fixed is because the federal workers get free salaries and benefits packages that far outstrip their value that oversee these projects, and the contracting firms get easy money.
    - mywittyname 5y ago
      > They could easily target some midwestern state, put the headquarters for federal software agency there, find a feeder school, and get employees fed to an agency making a comfortable 6 figures in a low cost of living area. They have this already: midwestern schools which have affiliations to the military and act as feeder schools for technical people into the military industrial complex. These people still make more than the GS schedule cap by mid career with TS clearance. It surely doesn't pay faang salaries, but $150-200k with 25% bonus/profit sharing, and totally paid family health care, and <asks someone> 320 hours of pto. Plus, these places often have nice company events, like corporate retreats to nice locales (including family), etc.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- Symmetry 5y ago
  When Alon Levy was comparing transit construction costs in various places around the world they found that having in house experts was one of the biggest causes of low costs. Though see also this critique[1] of Boeing's massive outsourcing and compare to SpaceX. [1]https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/69746/hart-smith-on-outsourcing.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/6974...
- formerkrogemp 5y ago
  Raise taxes, close loopholes, fund and modernize the IRS, incentivize R&D and entrepreneurship, increase government spending and expertise, improve government auditing, cut defense spending graft, refill positions left vacant during the 2016-2020 state department staffing fiasco, fund childcare, expand Pre-K schooling, subsidize critical infrastructure build out, and nationalize some right of way land for infrastructure to start with. Sounds easy.
  - pc86 5y ago
    It's like the people commenting here have never been through even a single election cycle.
    - formerkrogemp 5y ago
      Nah, it's just wishful thinking. I've knocked on doors, done the calling campaigns, ran the emails and texts. I don't think it'll happen, and I don't try so much anymore. I just vote nowadays.
thorin 5y ago
Obviously this used to the the case in most developed countries, but then more and more stuff started getting outsourced and pushed into the private sector to drive shareholder value. Suddenly, space, research, military, healthcare, education are all getting outsourced, so we can make more of a profit off it.
- soco 5y ago
  Define "we".
  - thorin 5y ago
    OK "they", but remember if you have a pension or any investments, you're also in on it!
- throwaway09223 5y ago
  There are other problems. Currently, the US Federal government cannot hire most competent software engineers at all due to salary/comp caps. The maximum amount any federal employee can earn is $170k, with zero equity.
  - thorin 5y ago
    Agreed, but this is largely an American problem. In Europe and where I am in the UK, salary isn't the problem, but there is still a drive to outsource. When I've been a contract developer, I've probably been making more than board members in some countries, but that seemed to be accepted over the short term. There's also an issue where enterprise companies wouldn't trust their IT departments, for historical reasons so the good people left or they got consulting businesses in and that made everything worse...
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    While it's true that the government (obviously) cannot supply equity and is capped at 174k (by law capped at a senators salary), they can try to make it up other ways. Providing free room and board (or funds for the same), paying higher education costs and providing free healthcare. Also, allowing those benefits (and a healthy percentage of your income salary) to continue into retirement. There is also the fact that they have more take home pay then you might expect, because government salaries are exempt from FICA taxes
jvanderbot 5y ago
You say that, but some senator will make his career talking about the 300k salaries paid to these teams and their managers during times when their expertise is not saving lives in a war zone. Now I agree the airforce or some branch could do this, but that would be a military intervention.
vsareto 5y ago
Tech's churn and rapid rate of change prevent a slow government from making solid long-term choices in technologies that are both reliable and cutting edge. You used to hear a lot about how you'd become un-hireable if you didn't keep learning new things (not so much these days), so there's not a great incentive for experts to stick with older technologies and build years-to-decades long solutions.
jvanderbot 5y ago
I'm responsible for hiring exactly the kind of engineers we're talking about. We can't pay as much on gov dime, and equity is nonexistent, but we have some of the best, domestic engineering teams around doing amazing things. Our people go on to work at (eg) SpaceX and to found exactly the kind of startups that we're all dog whistling about. (Lars Blackmore?). Lean, focused, fast and providing valuable services to gov and private industries. This discussion about how 'the government' cannot 'do this' is a vague rorschach blot that reveals people's own motivations only, and ignores the completely different priorities gov has. Do you believe the deep technical expertise that gov-funded experts are surely providing to Ukraine would be posted on Twitter?
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  > We can't pay as much on gov dime It's just taxes, we definitely could. The fact that we don't has a lot more to do with government culture and a post-Reagan idea that the government should be a thin and highly reactive operation than the money not being there.
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    I know several people working as engineers for government contractors and they all make well over the top of the GS Pay Scale, and that's before other benefits like profit sharing. Even if Congress corrected for that, they'd still be locked into slow moving pay raises, and they'd probably become a political target at some point, when some anti-spending congressperson begins harping on how there are so many federal employees make a quarter million dollars a year. Being a military contractor, for better or worse, inoculates you from a lot of politics. So, yes, the government could pay competitively, but I would be leery about accepting such a position.
    - madamelic 5y ago
      Contract =/= gov't. The way to make money working for the gov't is to get an established company to price gouge them through contracts so you can make a living wage. The gov't is wasting a huge amount of money paying a 100% premium for engineers because they aren't allowed to pay what the market demands. A "data entry specialist" and PhD scientist are paid off the same pay scale at different levels, which is great for equality but kind of difficult when you are trying to pay $31k (which is what someone with a BS in CompSci would get, GS-5) for someone who is going for $150k. If you have experience or a master's, they'll pay you $51k. It's absurdist. The GS scale caps out at $143k at GS-15 and requires a PhD and probably decades of work.
IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
The government fields a very well trained, powerful military. This is arguably within the mandate of government. Provide for the people's defense. However, the same military has been unable to complete its stated objectives in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc. 10 times out of 10, the situation has remained exactly as it was before, or worse. If the military fails at a core mandate that we mostly agree to be a reasonable one... what makes you think they could maintain complex code?
- greedo 5y ago
  I would argue that for the military to complete the stated objectives (which shift almost as much as a software project often does), is far more complex than maintaining complex code.
- fifticon 5y ago
  That is a false argument. Usually US military solves their military targets quite effectively. The failing parts are usually tied to the flawed logic in the political goals they are activated to accomplish. I say this as a foreigner observing them for 50 years. The US military cannot compensate for flawed US political goals, eg bombing some democracy into appearing. And they dont set those goals. E.g. the balkan conflict in the 90s was not handled until the US bombed the serbs, and it worked.
- chasd00 5y ago
  > However, the same military has been unable to complete its stated objectives in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan the military is under civilian control. The US military is very very good at killing people and breaking things. I have no doubt, given the orders, the US military could kill everyone and break everything they've been ordered to kill and break. Politicians direct the military, if objectives were failed to be met then politicians determined those objectives were no longer politically viable.
dylan604 5y ago
No equity, but gov't could offer tax free jobs. That's like at least an instant 20% bump in salary.
edgyquant 5y ago
IMO the government shouldn’t be doing most things in house, they should have a handful of regulated contractors who they can delegate these things to.

I want the government to have the in-house expertise to just do things, especially things that can't be specified in a contract by a KO making $53k per year with no real-life experience.

ajmurmann 5y ago

I've read (need to dig up the source again) that high infrastructure costs in the US are in part due to the same problem. The government doesn't even have experts anymore who could write the request to take offers on. Maybe in some cases a slightly larger government can be a leaner government.

ragebol 5y ago
I think the issue with a lot of governments is: expertise and competence is expensive. If you don't want to pay for that because the government is then expensive, fine, but eventually you'll have an incompetent government that is slow and still expensive due to the mishaps it leads to, for itself and it's constituents.
- soco 5y ago
  So option 1 is expensive and gets stuff done, and option 2 is expensive and shitty. And we have to go the way of option 2 because...
  - null0ranje 5y ago
    Congress, mostly.
  - ragebol 5y ago
    Well, option 2 is cheaper at first. Then everything breaks down eventually and that is costly, but later. Kind of like technical debt, but for a whole government. Also, there will be hell from the public when the govt. makes a mistake. So, there's all sorts of bureaucracy, checklists etc, to keep that from happening or to at least have people accountable. Which also slows stuff down.
- namelessoracle 5y ago
  The idea that the federal government cant hire "competent engineers" is kind of odd to me. Federal government can pay enough to get software engineers. FAANG salaries are an outlier. They could easily target some midwestern state, put the headquarters for federal software agency there, find a feeder school, and get employees fed to an agency making a comfortable 6 figures in a low cost of living area. Will there be some attrition? Sure. But plenty will stay cause thats where family is, and where they have their house, and thats where there kids go to school and etc. I can guarantee you that the contractors they hire from Accenture and IBM are using devs that arent making FAANG salaries. Its kind of a meme how bad some of the government contractors are, its pretty well known you can just be a body that sits at a desk if you can get a security clearance and make easy money just manually running an SQL script once a week on some of these government contracts. The real reason nothing gets fixed is because the federal workers get free salaries and benefits packages that far outstrip their value that oversee these projects, and the contracting firms get easy money.
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    > They could easily target some midwestern state, put the headquarters for federal software agency there, find a feeder school, and get employees fed to an agency making a comfortable 6 figures in a low cost of living area. They have this already: midwestern schools which have affiliations to the military and act as feeder schools for technical people into the military industrial complex. These people still make more than the GS schedule cap by mid career with TS clearance. It surely doesn't pay faang salaries, but $150-200k with 25% bonus/profit sharing, and totally paid family health care, and <asks someone> 320 hours of pto. Plus, these places often have nice company events, like corporate retreats to nice locales (including family), etc.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
Symmetry 5y ago
When Alon Levy was comparing transit construction costs in various places around the world they found that having in house experts was one of the biggest causes of low costs. Though see also this critique[1] of Boeing's massive outsourcing and compare to SpaceX. [1]https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/69746/hart-smith-on-outsourcing.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/6974...
formerkrogemp 5y ago
Raise taxes, close loopholes, fund and modernize the IRS, incentivize R&D and entrepreneurship, increase government spending and expertise, improve government auditing, cut defense spending graft, refill positions left vacant during the 2016-2020 state department staffing fiasco, fund childcare, expand Pre-K schooling, subsidize critical infrastructure build out, and nationalize some right of way land for infrastructure to start with. Sounds easy.
- pc86 5y ago
  It's like the people commenting here have never been through even a single election cycle.
  - formerkrogemp 5y ago
    Nah, it's just wishful thinking. I've knocked on doors, done the calling campaigns, ran the emails and texts. I don't think it'll happen, and I don't try so much anymore. I just vote nowadays.

thorin 5y ago

Obviously this used to the the case in most developed countries, but then more and more stuff started getting outsourced and pushed into the private sector to drive shareholder value. Suddenly, space, research, military, healthcare, education are all getting outsourced, so we can make more of a profit off it.

soco 5y ago
Define "we".
- thorin 5y ago
  OK "they", but remember if you have a pension or any investments, you're also in on it!
throwaway09223 5y ago
There are other problems. Currently, the US Federal government cannot hire most competent software engineers at all due to salary/comp caps. The maximum amount any federal employee can earn is $170k, with zero equity.
- thorin 5y ago
  Agreed, but this is largely an American problem. In Europe and where I am in the UK, salary isn't the problem, but there is still a drive to outsource. When I've been a contract developer, I've probably been making more than board members in some countries, but that seemed to be accepted over the short term. There's also an issue where enterprise companies wouldn't trust their IT departments, for historical reasons so the good people left or they got consulting businesses in and that made everything worse...
- HWR_14 5y ago
  While it's true that the government (obviously) cannot supply equity and is capped at 174k (by law capped at a senators salary), they can try to make it up other ways. Providing free room and board (or funds for the same), paying higher education costs and providing free healthcare. Also, allowing those benefits (and a healthy percentage of your income salary) to continue into retirement. There is also the fact that they have more take home pay then you might expect, because government salaries are exempt from FICA taxes

jvanderbot 5y ago

You say that, but some senator will make his career talking about the 300k salaries paid to these teams and their managers during times when their expertise is not saving lives in a war zone. Now I agree the airforce or some branch could do this, but that would be a military intervention.

vsareto 5y ago

Tech's churn and rapid rate of change prevent a slow government from making solid long-term choices in technologies that are both reliable and cutting edge. You used to hear a lot about how you'd become un-hireable if you didn't keep learning new things (not so much these days), so there's not a great incentive for experts to stick with older technologies and build years-to-decades long solutions.

jvanderbot 5y ago

I'm responsible for hiring exactly the kind of engineers we're talking about. We can't pay as much on gov dime, and equity is nonexistent, but we have some of the best, domestic engineering teams around doing amazing things. Our people go on to work at (eg) SpaceX and to found exactly the kind of startups that we're all dog whistling about. (Lars Blackmore?). Lean, focused, fast and providing valuable services to gov and private industries. This discussion about how 'the government' cannot 'do this' is a vague rorschach blot that reveals people's own motivations only, and ignores the completely different priorities gov has. Do you believe the deep technical expertise that gov-funded experts are surely providing to Ukraine would be posted on Twitter?

shadowgovt 5y ago
> We can't pay as much on gov dime It's just taxes, we definitely could. The fact that we don't has a lot more to do with government culture and a post-Reagan idea that the government should be a thin and highly reactive operation than the money not being there.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  I know several people working as engineers for government contractors and they all make well over the top of the GS Pay Scale, and that's before other benefits like profit sharing. Even if Congress corrected for that, they'd still be locked into slow moving pay raises, and they'd probably become a political target at some point, when some anti-spending congressperson begins harping on how there are so many federal employees make a quarter million dollars a year. Being a military contractor, for better or worse, inoculates you from a lot of politics. So, yes, the government could pay competitively, but I would be leery about accepting such a position.
  - madamelic 5y ago
    Contract =/= gov't. The way to make money working for the gov't is to get an established company to price gouge them through contracts so you can make a living wage. The gov't is wasting a huge amount of money paying a 100% premium for engineers because they aren't allowed to pay what the market demands. A "data entry specialist" and PhD scientist are paid off the same pay scale at different levels, which is great for equality but kind of difficult when you are trying to pay $31k (which is what someone with a BS in CompSci would get, GS-5) for someone who is going for $150k. If you have experience or a master's, they'll pay you $51k. It's absurdist. The GS scale caps out at $143k at GS-15 and requires a PhD and probably decades of work.

IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago

The government fields a very well trained, powerful military. This is arguably within the mandate of government. Provide for the people's defense. However, the same military has been unable to complete its stated objectives in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc. 10 times out of 10, the situation has remained exactly as it was before, or worse. If the military fails at a core mandate that we mostly agree to be a reasonable one... what makes you think they could maintain complex code?

greedo 5y ago
I would argue that for the military to complete the stated objectives (which shift almost as much as a software project often does), is far more complex than maintaining complex code.
fifticon 5y ago
That is a false argument. Usually US military solves their military targets quite effectively. The failing parts are usually tied to the flawed logic in the political goals they are activated to accomplish. I say this as a foreigner observing them for 50 years. The US military cannot compensate for flawed US political goals, eg bombing some democracy into appearing. And they dont set those goals. E.g. the balkan conflict in the 90s was not handled until the US bombed the serbs, and it worked.
chasd00 5y ago
> However, the same military has been unable to complete its stated objectives in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan the military is under civilian control. The US military is very very good at killing people and breaking things. I have no doubt, given the orders, the US military could kill everyone and break everything they've been ordered to kill and break. Politicians direct the military, if objectives were failed to be met then politicians determined those objectives were no longer politically viable.

dylan604 5y ago

No equity, but gov't could offer tax free jobs. That's like at least an instant 20% bump in salary.

edgyquant 5y ago

IMO the government shouldn’t be doing most things in house, they should have a handful of regulated contractors who they can delegate these things to.