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Why people think it’s a good idea to put this wealthy dickwad in charge of one of the most (allegedly) important projects in the current admin is beyond me. Mov

Why people think it’s a good idea to put this wealthy dickwad in charge of one of the most (allegedly) important projects in the current admin is beyond me. Move fast and break things is a stupid policy to apply to public policy.

scarab92 2y ago
[flagged]
- CogitoCogito 2y ago
  What do you mean when you say "it's an effective strategy"? It's hard to say for certain since Twitter is now private, but it certainly seems to have lost value since Musk took over. What would "work in the public sector" entail for you?
  - ty6853 2y ago
    The value wasn't lost, it was consumed. You're looking at what it was consumed to achieve, in the election results.
    - CogitoCogito 2y ago
      I would actually agree with you on that in the case of Twitter, but in what sense is that comparable to the current situation? Unless you mean that Musk is succeeding by destroying a bunch of American assets (i.e. the agencies) and then being lauded for this destruction. I could see that value once again going to Musk (and Trump), but in what sense would that value not be lost by your average US citizen? It's not like Musk bought these agencies before destroying them, he's just destroying them. He's no longer burning his own house down for life insurance, he's burning your house down for life insurance.
  - scarab92 2y ago
    Operationally, Twitter is performing better than it did when it had 5x the headcount. According to reports, revenue is down, but that's more due to advertisers objecting to Musk content moderation decisions (plus politics no doubt).
    - dralley 2y ago
      They are objectively in a worse financial position. I wasn't getting advertisements for female sex toys (I'm male) on Twitter before Musk took over. That's a long way to fall.
      - scarab92 2y ago
        Neither of us really know Twitter's financial position, given it's now private. The rumours I'm hearing are that EBITDA is now above pre-acquistion. The fact that debt is trading hands without a haircut suggests that's probably accurate. There was a lot of waste at Twitter. Given that headcount was cut by 80%, and advertisers are returning, I'd suggest it's doing fine.
        JKCalhoun 2y ago
        It's wild — people that look at employment of the citizens of this country as just data to feed into some kind of profit/waste equation that needs to maximize profit, discard any hint of waste. It's not waste when those employed have paychecks to spend in the economy. What would Corporate think if half the population of the U.S. were unemployed and/or homeless? I guess that's fine as long as profits have been maximized.
        _dark_matter_ 2y ago
        Right? I am astounded by these takes. If every corp and every job was this way, our country would be a high-stress, unemployed wasteland. Any org will drop thousands in a heartbeat. Your family would never be safe. We work so hard already. We already have such high stress. I do not believe we need to eke out the last %s of profit to pass to shareholders and create crushing stress and work on those remaining.
- Cyph0n 2y ago
  > and it's usually easily undone Because employees are automatons that have no feelings and won’t hold a grudge.
  - joshstrange 2y ago
    Also, all employees are just cogs in the machine. You can totally lay off that grizzled senior dev and hire a kid fresh out of college, what’s the difference? It’s not like there was any institutional logic locked up in the senior’s head right? /s if it wasn’t painfully obvious.
    - dralley 2y ago
      Not to mention the externality of having extra people floating around who know intimate details of the nations nuclear weapons secrets, who you have now pissed off. I'm sure anyone who has been entrusted with such a position is fairly responsible, but it still seems like a bad idea. Plus our adversaries would know we're hiring, and this bunch doesn't seem to care so much about proper vetting.
  - scarab92 2y ago
    A grudge? They've just been put into a strong negotiating position, because now both parties acknowledge that these are key employees.
    - ruszki 2y ago
      I would never go back under a boss who thinks even for a second that I’m easily replaceable. It would immediately indicate to me, that I can’t trust in my boss at all. Nobody really can work effectively without trust. That’s the base of our whole society.
      - intelVISA 2y ago
        If you're not easily replaceable then the company has failed on some level. This is why I think current org structures, and incentives, don't map properly to SWE and fuels this employment theater of "trust me I'm not a cog" => "trust me you are". Don't know what an ideal arrangement would be, maybe SaaS is closer. Even then, still have to convince some 'cogs' to build your SaaS corp while you recoup 90% margins off their labor which is a fast path to class consciousness and we're back at square one!
- daghamm 2y ago
  You are wrong on two accounts. There are plenty of ways for getting rid of underperformers in a goverment organisation. I've seen entire teams being sacked, and also some of the hardest working people I know work for goverment organisations. Also, you cannot run the goverment like an startup that is always running on the edge. A majority of startups fail and that's fine, but one goverment organisation failing could cause problems for the entire country.
  - scarab92 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - drawkward 2y ago
      >this problem What problem? The problem of how people are fired? You dont fix that specific problem by firing everyone! Somw other problem? Show us evidence that there was a problem, before you fire. That's how you do it in a democracy.
      - scarab92 2y ago
        [flagged]
        drawkward 2y ago
        >The lack of effective performance management in the federal workforce. >Resulting in poor service provision and wasteful allocation of taxpayer funds. Alleged. Not proven, alleged. >No large private sector workforce would have gotten away with such broken processes. What broken processes? You havent shown them to exist. Large companies are built to maximixe profit. Governments are not, so why should their organizational choices be similar?
        scarab92 2y ago
        Performance management is important in both public and private sector organisations.
- akudha 2y ago
  I can’t say if you’re serious or just trolling. It is beyond stupid to compare government institutions with private sector. Let’s say (just for discussion purposes) that some government agency (USAID, for example) is wasting 100% of their budget on parties (again, just for discussion purposes). What is the right way to fix it? Step one - you hire an auditor and collect proof of any misconduct or wrongdoing. Step 2 - find out the people who did wrong. Ask for an explanation. Show the public your proof. And so on. You don’t shut down departments without a shred of evidence, overnight. It is just cruel and stupid. But then, cruelty seems to be the point here. You don’t set fire to your entire face because you got a pimple on your nose. You just treat the pimple
- rainsford 2y ago
  Whether or not it's a good strategy for either companies or the government, this particular case involved randomly firing a bunch of folks who build and maintain nuclear weapons and then almost immediately trying to un-fire them. There wasn't enough time to see if anything broke (not that you'd see that with nuclear weapons until it was way, way too late) but now you've managed to piss off a bunch of people who are likely only going to come back long enough to find a new job, if they come back at all, and you've probably also damaged your ability to retain even the people you didn't fire or attract new prospective employees. It's basically all damage with zero value and it certainly isn't going to fix any performance management problems. I think it's a questionable strategy anyways, especially when applied to government, but carrying out the strategy in such a ham-fisted way seems unlikely to be the secret to making it successful.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  >it's objective (did anything break? Did you even try to read the article? >The US government is trying to rehire nuclear safety employees it had fired on Thursday, after concerns grew that their dismissal could jeopardise national security, US media reported. It hasn't even been one business day. We don't know how much this will break. The titanic took 4 hours to sink; these things don't instantly show its aftereffects. Clearly, the administration thinks something will break if they are reversing course. > usually easily undone. article: >A memo sent to NNSA employees on Friday and obtained by NBC News read: "The termination letters for some NNSA probationary employees are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel." We are definitely in unusual times. You also responded 2 coments downstream to another story where this strategy cost a company an entire division and utterly missed its goals.
- b_davis_ 2y ago
  perhaps effective, but not efficient. shouldn't there be some due diligence on selecting people and departments from dismissal? some kind of measurement and analysis.
ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
Whether or not it's a good idea depends on what outcome you desire. If the aim is to weaken the U.S. then putting a foolish unelected billionaire in charge of things that he has no idea about is a great idea.
- zimpenfish 2y ago
  > If the aim is to weaken the U.S. Say if you're China and Russia... > then putting a foolish unelected billionaire With ties to both...
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  I don't think Trump's aim is to weaken the US. I don't think here's some big secret Russia conspiracy. I think the situation is much simpler. Trump wants to be king. What happens to America in the future is immaterial. And a king needs a kingmaker, who in this case also wants to be MOTU.
  - cutemonster 2y ago
    Putin and Xi know this too, and help out making it happen - good for them with a clown begin the king of the US. (Not sure if any help was needed this time though.)
  - Sabinus 2y ago
    >I don't think Trump's aim is to weaken the US. I don't think here's some big secret Russia conspiracy. That's not really the claim these days. The Stelle Dossier accusations haven't really been substantiated. He's more likely to be just a useful idiot. Far more easy to manipulate than politically educated stable people, and with less connection to the institutions of State.

scarab92 2y ago

[flagged]

CogitoCogito 2y ago
What do you mean when you say "it's an effective strategy"? It's hard to say for certain since Twitter is now private, but it certainly seems to have lost value since Musk took over. What would "work in the public sector" entail for you?
- ty6853 2y ago
  The value wasn't lost, it was consumed. You're looking at what it was consumed to achieve, in the election results.
  - CogitoCogito 2y ago
    I would actually agree with you on that in the case of Twitter, but in what sense is that comparable to the current situation? Unless you mean that Musk is succeeding by destroying a bunch of American assets (i.e. the agencies) and then being lauded for this destruction. I could see that value once again going to Musk (and Trump), but in what sense would that value not be lost by your average US citizen? It's not like Musk bought these agencies before destroying them, he's just destroying them. He's no longer burning his own house down for life insurance, he's burning your house down for life insurance.
- scarab92 2y ago
  Operationally, Twitter is performing better than it did when it had 5x the headcount. According to reports, revenue is down, but that's more due to advertisers objecting to Musk content moderation decisions (plus politics no doubt).
  - dralley 2y ago
    They are objectively in a worse financial position. I wasn't getting advertisements for female sex toys (I'm male) on Twitter before Musk took over. That's a long way to fall.
    - scarab92 2y ago
      Neither of us really know Twitter's financial position, given it's now private. The rumours I'm hearing are that EBITDA is now above pre-acquistion. The fact that debt is trading hands without a haircut suggests that's probably accurate. There was a lot of waste at Twitter. Given that headcount was cut by 80%, and advertisers are returning, I'd suggest it's doing fine.
      - JKCalhoun 2y ago
        It's wild — people that look at employment of the citizens of this country as just data to feed into some kind of profit/waste equation that needs to maximize profit, discard any hint of waste. It's not waste when those employed have paychecks to spend in the economy. What would Corporate think if half the population of the U.S. were unemployed and/or homeless? I guess that's fine as long as profits have been maximized.
        _dark_matter_ 2y ago
        Right? I am astounded by these takes. If every corp and every job was this way, our country would be a high-stress, unemployed wasteland. Any org will drop thousands in a heartbeat. Your family would never be safe. We work so hard already. We already have such high stress. I do not believe we need to eke out the last %s of profit to pass to shareholders and create crushing stress and work on those remaining.
Cyph0n 2y ago
> and it's usually easily undone Because employees are automatons that have no feelings and won’t hold a grudge.
- joshstrange 2y ago
  Also, all employees are just cogs in the machine. You can totally lay off that grizzled senior dev and hire a kid fresh out of college, what’s the difference? It’s not like there was any institutional logic locked up in the senior’s head right? /s if it wasn’t painfully obvious.
  - dralley 2y ago
    Not to mention the externality of having extra people floating around who know intimate details of the nations nuclear weapons secrets, who you have now pissed off. I'm sure anyone who has been entrusted with such a position is fairly responsible, but it still seems like a bad idea. Plus our adversaries would know we're hiring, and this bunch doesn't seem to care so much about proper vetting.
- scarab92 2y ago
  A grudge? They've just been put into a strong negotiating position, because now both parties acknowledge that these are key employees.
  - ruszki 2y ago
    I would never go back under a boss who thinks even for a second that I’m easily replaceable. It would immediately indicate to me, that I can’t trust in my boss at all. Nobody really can work effectively without trust. That’s the base of our whole society.
    - intelVISA 2y ago
      If you're not easily replaceable then the company has failed on some level. This is why I think current org structures, and incentives, don't map properly to SWE and fuels this employment theater of "trust me I'm not a cog" => "trust me you are". Don't know what an ideal arrangement would be, maybe SaaS is closer. Even then, still have to convince some 'cogs' to build your SaaS corp while you recoup 90% margins off their labor which is a fast path to class consciousness and we're back at square one!
daghamm 2y ago
You are wrong on two accounts. There are plenty of ways for getting rid of underperformers in a goverment organisation. I've seen entire teams being sacked, and also some of the hardest working people I know work for goverment organisations. Also, you cannot run the goverment like an startup that is always running on the edge. A majority of startups fail and that's fine, but one goverment organisation failing could cause problems for the entire country.
- scarab92 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - drawkward 2y ago
    >this problem What problem? The problem of how people are fired? You dont fix that specific problem by firing everyone! Somw other problem? Show us evidence that there was a problem, before you fire. That's how you do it in a democracy.
    - scarab92 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - drawkward 2y ago
        >The lack of effective performance management in the federal workforce. >Resulting in poor service provision and wasteful allocation of taxpayer funds. Alleged. Not proven, alleged. >No large private sector workforce would have gotten away with such broken processes. What broken processes? You havent shown them to exist. Large companies are built to maximixe profit. Governments are not, so why should their organizational choices be similar?
        scarab92 2y ago
        Performance management is important in both public and private sector organisations.
akudha 2y ago
I can’t say if you’re serious or just trolling. It is beyond stupid to compare government institutions with private sector. Let’s say (just for discussion purposes) that some government agency (USAID, for example) is wasting 100% of their budget on parties (again, just for discussion purposes). What is the right way to fix it? Step one - you hire an auditor and collect proof of any misconduct or wrongdoing. Step 2 - find out the people who did wrong. Ask for an explanation. Show the public your proof. And so on. You don’t shut down departments without a shred of evidence, overnight. It is just cruel and stupid. But then, cruelty seems to be the point here. You don’t set fire to your entire face because you got a pimple on your nose. You just treat the pimple
rainsford 2y ago
Whether or not it's a good strategy for either companies or the government, this particular case involved randomly firing a bunch of folks who build and maintain nuclear weapons and then almost immediately trying to un-fire them. There wasn't enough time to see if anything broke (not that you'd see that with nuclear weapons until it was way, way too late) but now you've managed to piss off a bunch of people who are likely only going to come back long enough to find a new job, if they come back at all, and you've probably also damaged your ability to retain even the people you didn't fire or attract new prospective employees. It's basically all damage with zero value and it certainly isn't going to fix any performance management problems. I think it's a questionable strategy anyways, especially when applied to government, but carrying out the strategy in such a ham-fisted way seems unlikely to be the secret to making it successful.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
>it's objective (did anything break? Did you even try to read the article? >The US government is trying to rehire nuclear safety employees it had fired on Thursday, after concerns grew that their dismissal could jeopardise national security, US media reported. It hasn't even been one business day. We don't know how much this will break. The titanic took 4 hours to sink; these things don't instantly show its aftereffects. Clearly, the administration thinks something will break if they are reversing course. > usually easily undone. article: >A memo sent to NNSA employees on Friday and obtained by NBC News read: "The termination letters for some NNSA probationary employees are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel." We are definitely in unusual times. You also responded 2 coments downstream to another story where this strategy cost a company an entire division and utterly missed its goals.
b_davis_ 2y ago
perhaps effective, but not efficient. shouldn't there be some due diligence on selecting people and departments from dismissal? some kind of measurement and analysis.

ndsipa_pomu 2y ago

Whether or not it's a good idea depends on what outcome you desire. If the aim is to weaken the U.S. then putting a foolish unelected billionaire in charge of things that he has no idea about is a great idea.

zimpenfish 2y ago
> If the aim is to weaken the U.S. Say if you're China and Russia... > then putting a foolish unelected billionaire With ties to both...
insane_dreamer 2y ago
I don't think Trump's aim is to weaken the US. I don't think here's some big secret Russia conspiracy. I think the situation is much simpler. Trump wants to be king. What happens to America in the future is immaterial. And a king needs a kingmaker, who in this case also wants to be MOTU.
- cutemonster 2y ago
  Putin and Xi know this too, and help out making it happen - good for them with a clown begin the king of the US. (Not sure if any help was needed this time though.)
- Sabinus 2y ago
  >I don't think Trump's aim is to weaken the US. I don't think here's some big secret Russia conspiracy. That's not really the claim these days. The Stelle Dossier accusations haven't really been substantiated. He's more likely to be just a useful idiot. Far more easy to manipulate than politically educated stable people, and with less connection to the institutions of State.