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I don't understand why DEFCON deserves the benefit of the doubt, but Entropic and dmitry don't. Here's Entropic's response: > We were clear as early as our fir
by Sakos 2y ago
I don't understand why DEFCON deserves the benefit of the doubt, but Entropic and dmitry don't. Here's Entropic's response:
> We were clear as early as our first conversation in January that the risk in trying to push to mass production of this size and on this timeline was immense, even advocating for a DEFCON 2025 release of this particular badge. DEFCON’s Badge Team remained confident that they could meet and mitigate this risk.
> Once a month, we billed for our work and submitted an updated estimated per badge final cost - committing as costs built to discount our work as necessary in order to hit DEFCON’s per unit cost targets.
> In June, after 5 months of late night work, badges were fully designed, prototypes were working, and mass production was ongoing with the manufacturers we contracted on behalf of DEFCON. We billed DEFCON for our most recent work, discounting our labor by 25% in order to meet the agreed upon targets. Unfortunately, we were instead met with a work stoppage request and informed we would no longer be paid for services already rendered.
https://www.entropicengineering.com/defcon-32-statement https://www.entropicengineering.com/defcon-32-statement
It feels to me like DEFCON is relying on being able to say "well, we're DEFCON" when defending themselves, and people like you are just blindly trusting their word. How many times have big organizations like this screwed their suppliers? And yet DEFCON is "clearly" innocent? You must be joking.
At least wait until we get a better picture of everything before deciding on a judgment of any of the parties involved. It's going to take time before we find out what actually happened.
- tptacek 2y agoDEF CON is making a falsifiable claim, that Entropic blew their budget and billed outside the SOW. Entropic is handwaving (who gives a shit what RPi hardware they had access to?). I'm not in DEF CON's corner generally but my priors as a consultant lock in pretty solidly on this being a consultant fuckup.
- debugnik 2y agoEntropic says their bills were discounted to still meet the per unit cost target. Isn't that a falsifiable statement that contradicts Defcon?
- tptacek 2y agoNo, that statement doesn't contradict DEF CON's. Both things could easily be true.
- kelnos 2y agoIf both statements are true, then why would DEFCON order them to stop work? Unless I misunderstood their statement, Entropic claims they were willing to be paid only what was agreed to up-front, and not for any over-budget work they'd been doing. This doesn't really add up to me. Ultimately we'll never know for sure. Personally I'm inclined to believe Entropic more on this one (though I'm sure neither party is blame-free, regardless of where the bulk of fault lies), but I can see why you'd be more inclined to trust DEFCON's response. (I just don't consider "DEFCON made a falsifiable claim and Entropic didn't" to be strong evidence either way.)
- tptacek 2y agoPeople keep talking about this "stop work" thing. DEF CON fired their contractor. That's all that means. There's no particular ceremony to "stop work".
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mvdtnz 2y agoEntropic's statements have been really vague but I don't think they "discounted" anything. They couldn't charge their full labour cost because they had a signed SOW. So they may have put in more hours than estimated and weren't able to bill their usual hourly rate, but that's why we have SOWs - to protect the clients in the case of overages. If they wanted a time and materials style contract they could have bid that.
- Aeolun 2y agoThey also said they didn’t take into account anything outside the board, because only Defcon had access to that data. It’s perfectly possible for Entropic to be calculating to a $100k total cost (for the board), while Defcon is calculating the cost for everything (case/lanyard, etc.), and gets to $160k for the entire project, then says they’re 60% over budget. I imagine Entropic was discounting their bills to say within the 100K, while Defcon already felt they were over. (Numbers made up)
- TheCleric 2y ago> We were clear as early as our first conversation in January that the risk in trying to push to mass production of this size and on this timeline was immense, even advocating for a DEFCON 2025 release of this particular badge. DEFCON’s Badge Team remained confident that they could meet and mitigate this risk. Assuming this is true it’s simple: you walk away. If you’re being contracted to do something you don’t think you can do, you don’t sign the contract. Anything else is a recipe for pain.
- kelnos 2y agoSure, but I can understand why they'd want to do this. If they could have pulled it off (and honestly it sounds like they did; the badges ended up in the hands of conference attendees in working order), it would have been amazing publicity. Arguably it still is amazing publicity, at least for the people who will end up believing Entropic's version of events. Maybe not a good look when it comes to people who side with DEFCON on this.