7 ms·

> The space shuttle had a million competing goals - from the airforce who wanted a certain glide slope You missed the one goal that was in the forefront of all

by tjic 15y ago

> The space shuttle had a million competing goals - from the airforce who wanted a certain glide slope You missed the one goal that was in the forefront of all others: Justify a large budget / keep the permanent bureaucracy employed. Elon doesn't care about this. In the government sector labor force size is a BENEFIT. In the private sector it's a COST. That is why private sectors of the economy deliver more and more value relative to the number of people employed over time (farming, publishing, software, hardware) and why government dominated sectors move in the opposite direction (the only sectors to gain headcount in the recession are education, healthcare, and government).

Klinky 15y ago
I hope you don't really view the world in a black & white narrative pitting the evil bloated government against sprightly nimble innovative companies. Bureaucracy, bloat, waste & failure exists in both the public & private sector. Heck a lot of people are driven to startups because of the dysfunction they've found in other private sector jobs. It's also silly to think this way when you realize that most large government programs involve private contractors doing some, most or all of the actual work. As far as delivering more value, a lot of economies of scale are thanks to technological advances. A lot of technological advances can be credited to expensive governmental programs that were springboards the private sector was later able to launch off of.
- tjic 15y ago
  > I hope you don't really view the world in a black & white narrative pitting the evil bloated government against sprightly nimble innovative companies. You read a WHOLE lot in there. Look at the point that I actually made, and JUST that point: In Government, headcount is a (political, organization, etc.) benefit. In industry it is a cost.
  - excuse-me 15y ago
    >In industry it is a cost. It's a cost to the shareholder. To every layer of management from the shopfloor foreman to the board it's a benefit.
    - ekianjo 15y ago
      More employees are not necessarily a good thing. You need more management to frame them and so on. It's a cost for everyone. That's why you don't see many companies with more than 100 000 employees: after a certain level it becomes difficult to sustain, and they usually cut back on headcount to remain relatively efficient.
      - fbailey 15y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_by_revenue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_by_revenue There are actually a lot of companies with more than 100.000 employees... I think it's just natural that there aren't more... you need a very big market for them
        ekianjo 15y ago
        Are you talking in absolute terms or in % ? In % of total companies worlwide, companies with more than 100 000 are clear, small minority. Of course you can probably find a hundred of them or more worldwide, it still does not make them "common" versus the hundred of millions of small-sized companies around.
      - jonnathanson 15y ago
        At the macro level, yes, the size of the company's payroll is a cost. But very few members of large companies have any incentive to bear that cost. The CEO, the Board, and that's about it. Almost nobody below the C-level has any direct incentive to keep payroll costs manageable. At the management level, the manager -- who bears no personal cost for managing N+1 workers instead of just N workers, will almost always choose N+1 if given the option. He doesn't pay their salaries, after all, and to him, the increased headcount is a status symbol. It's also something he will convince himself he actually needs. (You never hear middle managers complaining that their divisons are overstaffed, but the opposite complaint is almost universal). This is what's known as an "agency problem." Many (most?) of the agents of the greater whole (the company) have personal incentives that work at odds with the company's greater incentives. This clash of incentives leads to waste, bloat, inefficiency, and so forth, because almost nobody is personally on the hook for the company's total health in the long run. (Sure, they're indirectly on the hook. If the company starts doing poorly, they could risk losing their jobs. But people tend to externalize failure, and don't hold themselves personally responsible).
  - robotresearcher 15y ago
    > In Government, headcount is a (political, organization, etc.) benefit. I don't understand this claim. You state it like it's well-known fact. In what (evidenced) ways is headcount advantageous in government and not in business? Using headcount as a proxy for importance/value when rewarding middle managers is common in many organizations.
    - geori 15y ago
      In government your budget is based on last years budget. If you don't spend it all then you get cut next year because, presumably, you don't need that much money. Agencies spend a ton of money at the end of the year just to spend the money so that they won't get cut next year. This is also one reason why they have little reason to fire people and lots of reasons to beef up the size of the workforce. Yes, there is always the risk that you will get cut, even though you spend all of your money. But that's a safer bet for an agency president than voluntarily cutting your budget by not spending every penny.
      - ori_b 15y ago
        > In government your budget is based on last years budget. And it's the same in private industry.
  - Klinky 15y ago
    >In Government, headcount is a (political, organization, etc.) benefit. Can be said for the private sector as well. Unless you think the private sector is growth averse. >In industry it is a cost. Governmental employees are not free. You also made other points as well such as the #1 goal of the Space Shuttle program was to keep bureaucrats employed & that the private sector is more efficient regarding the value it creates per employee.
    - gaius 15y ago
      I've never seen a corporation with "full employment" as an actual, stated, strategic goal. http://www.dwp.gov.uk/policy/welfare-reform/legislation-and-key-documents/building-britains-recovery/ http://www.dwp.gov.uk/policy/welfare-reform/legislation-and-... "Building Britain’s Recovery: Achieving Full Employment", published on 15 December 2009, restates the Government’s response to the recession and signals the start of the programme to return to full employment.
      - Klinky 15y ago
        What is your point? I am not seeing the problem with a government having a national employment goal & I am not shocked to find that private industry has no interest in making a national employment goal.
      - anigbrowl 15y ago
        But you see businesses aiming for improved productivity all the time. A desire for full employment is just the national version of that. It's not like a country can easily or ethically fire or cut adrift swathes of its citizenry at once.
        gaius 15y ago
        Not really. Let me give you an example. In the 1980s, it was costing £70/ton to mine coal worth £40/ton. Labour party policy was that jobs for their supporters were more important than creating wealth for the whole country. In the end, raw economics forced a resolution - the country couldn't afford to double everyone's energy bill just to score some ideological points.
hef19898 15y ago
That's what always comes out when you want too much in one thing too fast. You usually end up with too less too expansive too late and have to start a second thing for the rest (probably adding something that did get into the original spec). Sometimes it seams to be the ways enterprise software is written and implemented.
gammarator 15y ago
You do realize that many of the launch vehicles NASA uses are provided by private companies?
- excuse-me 15y ago
  United Launch Alliance - a consortium of the two biggest US defense companies, that due to a series of mergers own all the other US defense companies, who make the only launchers that are used in the US. It's about as 'commercial' as Ariane
_delirium 15y ago
I would be surprised if someone who read much of the relevant history could honestly conclude that bureaucratic imperatives had a bigger distorting role in how the space program progressed than the Cold War did. The Cold War, and the resulting influence on NASA's decisions from the military, was an extremely large factor up through at least the late 1980s. Everything we did in space had one eye looking over at the possibility of space-based weapons, space-based missile defense, space-based surveillance, etc., and it often resulted in surprisingly detailed requirements that a program be done one way or another.
- hef19898 15y ago
  The bureaucracy was, for me, the result ofthe cold war. From a certain point on it bacame a self reinforcing system. While that was just fine during the cold war when money was cheap as long as it helped protect against the sowjets, and developments were less costly it urned into a nightmare when organisation (government AND industry) failed to realize when it was time to change that. Maybe bureaucracy and all that already had to much an impact by then. NASAs project management wasn't that bad in the beginning, Apollowas pretty successfull, wasn't it? Afterwards it somewhat declined. Not that the Europeans are any better as of late, Ariane for example is not a landmark of efficiency.
guelo 15y ago
> (the only sectors to gain headcount in the recession are education, healthcare, and government). This is not true, at least for government which has cut jobs in the last four years.

by tjic 15y ago

Klinky 15y ago

I hope you don't really view the world in a black & white narrative pitting the evil bloated government against sprightly nimble innovative companies. Bureaucracy, bloat, waste & failure exists in both the public & private sector. Heck a lot of people are driven to startups because of the dysfunction they've found in other private sector jobs. It's also silly to think this way when you realize that most large government programs involve private contractors doing some, most or all of the actual work. As far as delivering more value, a lot of economies of scale are thanks to technological advances. A lot of technological advances can be credited to expensive governmental programs that were springboards the private sector was later able to launch off of.

tjic 15y ago
> I hope you don't really view the world in a black & white narrative pitting the evil bloated government against sprightly nimble innovative companies. You read a WHOLE lot in there. Look at the point that I actually made, and JUST that point: In Government, headcount is a (political, organization, etc.) benefit. In industry it is a cost.
- excuse-me 15y ago
  >In industry it is a cost. It's a cost to the shareholder. To every layer of management from the shopfloor foreman to the board it's a benefit.
  - ekianjo 15y ago
    More employees are not necessarily a good thing. You need more management to frame them and so on. It's a cost for everyone. That's why you don't see many companies with more than 100 000 employees: after a certain level it becomes difficult to sustain, and they usually cut back on headcount to remain relatively efficient.
    - fbailey 15y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_by_revenue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_by_revenue There are actually a lot of companies with more than 100.000 employees... I think it's just natural that there aren't more... you need a very big market for them
      - ekianjo 15y ago
        Are you talking in absolute terms or in % ? In % of total companies worlwide, companies with more than 100 000 are clear, small minority. Of course you can probably find a hundred of them or more worldwide, it still does not make them "common" versus the hundred of millions of small-sized companies around.
    - jonnathanson 15y ago
      At the macro level, yes, the size of the company's payroll is a cost. But very few members of large companies have any incentive to bear that cost. The CEO, the Board, and that's about it. Almost nobody below the C-level has any direct incentive to keep payroll costs manageable. At the management level, the manager -- who bears no personal cost for managing N+1 workers instead of just N workers, will almost always choose N+1 if given the option. He doesn't pay their salaries, after all, and to him, the increased headcount is a status symbol. It's also something he will convince himself he actually needs. (You never hear middle managers complaining that their divisons are overstaffed, but the opposite complaint is almost universal). This is what's known as an "agency problem." Many (most?) of the agents of the greater whole (the company) have personal incentives that work at odds with the company's greater incentives. This clash of incentives leads to waste, bloat, inefficiency, and so forth, because almost nobody is personally on the hook for the company's total health in the long run. (Sure, they're indirectly on the hook. If the company starts doing poorly, they could risk losing their jobs. But people tend to externalize failure, and don't hold themselves personally responsible).
- robotresearcher 15y ago
  > In Government, headcount is a (political, organization, etc.) benefit. I don't understand this claim. You state it like it's well-known fact. In what (evidenced) ways is headcount advantageous in government and not in business? Using headcount as a proxy for importance/value when rewarding middle managers is common in many organizations.
  - geori 15y ago
    In government your budget is based on last years budget. If you don't spend it all then you get cut next year because, presumably, you don't need that much money. Agencies spend a ton of money at the end of the year just to spend the money so that they won't get cut next year. This is also one reason why they have little reason to fire people and lots of reasons to beef up the size of the workforce. Yes, there is always the risk that you will get cut, even though you spend all of your money. But that's a safer bet for an agency president than voluntarily cutting your budget by not spending every penny.
    - ori_b 15y ago
      > In government your budget is based on last years budget. And it's the same in private industry.
- Klinky 15y ago
  >In Government, headcount is a (political, organization, etc.) benefit. Can be said for the private sector as well. Unless you think the private sector is growth averse. >In industry it is a cost. Governmental employees are not free. You also made other points as well such as the #1 goal of the Space Shuttle program was to keep bureaucrats employed & that the private sector is more efficient regarding the value it creates per employee.
  - gaius 15y ago
    I've never seen a corporation with "full employment" as an actual, stated, strategic goal. http://www.dwp.gov.uk/policy/welfare-reform/legislation-and-key-documents/building-britains-recovery/ http://www.dwp.gov.uk/policy/welfare-reform/legislation-and-... "Building Britain’s Recovery: Achieving Full Employment", published on 15 December 2009, restates the Government’s response to the recession and signals the start of the programme to return to full employment.
    - Klinky 15y ago
      What is your point? I am not seeing the problem with a government having a national employment goal & I am not shocked to find that private industry has no interest in making a national employment goal.
    - anigbrowl 15y ago
      But you see businesses aiming for improved productivity all the time. A desire for full employment is just the national version of that. It's not like a country can easily or ethically fire or cut adrift swathes of its citizenry at once.
      - gaius 15y ago
        Not really. Let me give you an example. In the 1980s, it was costing £70/ton to mine coal worth £40/ton. Labour party policy was that jobs for their supporters were more important than creating wealth for the whole country. In the end, raw economics forced a resolution - the country couldn't afford to double everyone's energy bill just to score some ideological points.

hef19898 15y ago

That's what always comes out when you want too much in one thing too fast. You usually end up with too less too expansive too late and have to start a second thing for the rest (probably adding something that did get into the original spec). Sometimes it seams to be the ways enterprise software is written and implemented.

gammarator 15y ago

You do realize that many of the launch vehicles NASA uses are provided by private companies?

excuse-me 15y ago
United Launch Alliance - a consortium of the two biggest US defense companies, that due to a series of mergers own all the other US defense companies, who make the only launchers that are used in the US. It's about as 'commercial' as Ariane

_delirium 15y ago

I would be surprised if someone who read much of the relevant history could honestly conclude that bureaucratic imperatives had a bigger distorting role in how the space program progressed than the Cold War did. The Cold War, and the resulting influence on NASA's decisions from the military, was an extremely large factor up through at least the late 1980s. Everything we did in space had one eye looking over at the possibility of space-based weapons, space-based missile defense, space-based surveillance, etc., and it often resulted in surprisingly detailed requirements that a program be done one way or another.

hef19898 15y ago
The bureaucracy was, for me, the result ofthe cold war. From a certain point on it bacame a self reinforcing system. While that was just fine during the cold war when money was cheap as long as it helped protect against the sowjets, and developments were less costly it urned into a nightmare when organisation (government AND industry) failed to realize when it was time to change that. Maybe bureaucracy and all that already had to much an impact by then. NASAs project management wasn't that bad in the beginning, Apollowas pretty successfull, wasn't it? Afterwards it somewhat declined. Not that the Europeans are any better as of late, Ariane for example is not a landmark of efficiency.

guelo 15y ago

> (the only sectors to gain headcount in the recession are education, healthcare, and government). This is not true, at least for government which has cut jobs in the last four years.