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I think it's a combination of a few things. - Government jobs don't pay well relative to the private sector, especially in software, so the government talent p
by gamegoblin 4y ago
I think it's a combination of a few things.
- Government jobs don't pay well relative to the private sector, especially in software, so the government talent pool is lower quality than industry.
- For most government activities, government essentially has a monopoly on their implementation, e.g. infrastructure building. So people don't have as much of a comparison to know how good or badly government is doing. With software, people use government software and use privately developed software and the difference is obvious.
- Software, perhaps even more than many endeavors, benefits from having a single decision-maker in charge of the project who has a clear vision of what needs to be done and strong conviction on how to do it. Design-by-committee is not a great way to design good software. Most government projects wind up being some form of design-by-committee, either implicitly or explicitly. Even when the government has software built by private contractors, the requirements are written by committee, the contractors chosen by committee, etc. Very few of the best of anything is designed by committee, but the effects are much more obvious with software than say, a park.
- emodendroket 4y agoI think government could offer software engineers the same thing it offers others: not the best pay, but stable employment with a good pension package and a predictable workload. Not for everyone, but it could certainly appeal to some people.
- tengbretson 4y agoAnother thing to consider is that the fundamental goal of most software is to automate tasks that are done by humans. Having this development take place inside the organization already doing those tasks is going to be met with hostility, and will likely cause projects to settle into non-optimal solutions that typically look identical to the clunky workflows they are replacing, but with an electronic medium of exchange rather than a paper one.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mjhay 4y agoHealthcare.gov was farmed out to well-connected contractors, much like most other similar boondoggles (SLS, F-34, Bradley fighting vehicle, delayed road projects, etc). It says a lot more about corrupt and inefficient procurement (e.g. cost-plus) than it does about rank-and-file government employees. Using many contractors in many different congressional districts, all of whom have little incentive to deliver on time and on budget, or cooperate effectively with each other.
- crooked-v 4y agoI feel it still says something about government employees because one can pretty much take it as a given that the standard employee pool is basically incapable of building relatively basic e-commerce websites.
- medellin 4y agoBeing someone who just happened into a government job for my first one out of college that holds true in my experience. No good employee stayed in the job more than two years and most only one before they got so sick of the politics and bike shedding. The government gets good employees it just loses them all very quickly when it fails to compensate them as well as provide them with meaningful work.
- mjhay 4y agoWell yeah, what do you expect when Congress and the GSA sets pay for pay for developers at levels far below the private sector? I've worked for two different federal agencies in the past, and both were more efficient and lower BS than most private-sector jobs I've worked at. This wasn't IT or development, of course. It's just taken as a truism that government is always inefficient and bureaucratic, but the average ossified corporation such as Google is wildly inefficient and bureaucratic just the same. They also aren't necessarily that bad to interact with. I'd much rather go to the DMV than interact with Comcast.
- giaour 4y agoThe standard government employee is a project manager whose main job is overseeing contractor work. Funding cycles make it nearly impossible to hire in house staff to actually do work, and there is firm political opposition to the federal government doing anything on its own.
- Klonoar 4y ago>- Government jobs don't pay well relative to the private sector, especially in software, so the government talent pool is lower quality than industry. If we're discussing the USA, sure. If we're discussing other countries this isn't always necessarily true, and as the person you responded to has noted, this happens worldwide.
- gamegoblin 4y agoThat is just one of the three points I made (and I personally think the final point is the most salient here). Though I'm curious, do you know of any countries where government software jobs pay market rate? I would be interested to see if their government websites are decent.