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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 expensi

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]

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]