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Consultants are misused if employed on a constant basis instead of employing enough senior staff directly. There are well known drivers on both sides that tend

Consultants are misused if employed on a constant basis instead of employing enough senior staff directly. There are well known drivers on both sides that tend to promote such an unhealthy setup. What is concerning at the US government is not cutting consulting but at the same time cutting staff and on top creating a hostile environment for senior staff. This is unprecedented and is not something one would do in the private sector except the most dire circumstances.

tw04 2y ago
The ONLY time this occurs in the private sector is when corporate raiders are trying to extract every last penny from a business they plan on killing. Unsurprisingly this follows directly with project 2025s goal of dismantling the federal government and privatizing what departments aren’t filled with party loyalists at the expense of the average US citizen.
- QuantumGood 2y ago
  96 of 301 projects complete, 58 in progress • https://www.project2025.observer/ https://www.project2025.observer/
  - wonderwonder 2y ago
    Whether you support it or not, for government, that's really some incredible efficiency. almost 1/3 complete in 100 days
    - michaelbuckbee 2y ago
      Easier to destroy than create.
      - eru 2y ago
        Not usually for government departments.
    - starkparker 2y ago
      I mean, let's not act like firing people and cancelling contracts without caring if you get sued or break things is substantially more difficult than, say, closing browser tabs
    - dleeftink 2y ago
      The most efficient system is the one that is none. But it also ceases to be a system.
    - miltonlost 2y ago
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      - wonderwonder 2y ago
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    - throwaway29812 2y ago
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    - Spooky23 2y ago
      It’s amazing that people so committed to constitutional principles were able to enact the largest tax increase in history without the advice and consent of congress. Impressive even for tax and spend republicans. In democracy loving areas of the British Empire, that type of arbitrary action led to revolutions.
      - monero-xmr 2y ago
        Huh? Trump won the popular vote. Maybe make better arguments in the next election if you don't like the current leader, rather than a violent revolution to overturn a democratically elected leader
        immibis 2y ago
        Adolf Hitler was also democratically elected.
        wonderwonder 2y ago
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        const_cast 2y ago
        [dead]
        Spooky23 2y ago
        Trump is President, not king or Caesar.
      - wonderwonder 2y ago
        They absolutely have the consent of Congress. Congress can stop this at any time. They elect not to. Their silence is consent in this case. You can attribute that silence to active support or cowardice but either way they can stop it and don't so they approve of it. "In democracy loving areas of the British Empire, that type of arbitrary action led to revolutions." Not sure if you have taken a look at Britain lately but they absolutely don't care about what the citizens want.
    - karaterobot 2y ago
      I'll join you in getting downvoted for absolutely no reason. It's a shitty thing they're doing, but your observation is correct. My job working on NIH-funded research projects is directly in their path, so I wish they weren't stomping a mudhole across science and technology. But they are, and, as you note, they're doing it very effectively and with incredible speed. If it's outside our capability as a community to even acknowledge that they're moving fast, how can we note that they're moving way too fast to be doing it right?
      - lazide 2y ago
        But they are doing it right - by their metric. Which is not the one others want them to be using.
        karaterobot 2y ago
        By their own metrics, sure, maybe. I don't actually know what the real measurement of success is for them. But, to clarify, I didn't mean doing it right by their metric, I meant in my estimation, or [gestures broadly] our estimation.
        lazide 2y ago
        The crux of the issue IMO, is to quote, ‘what do you mean “we” kemo sabe?’ I bet on any particular issue you can find 3-4 major groups with conflicting opinions.
    - mywittyname 2y ago
      It's easy to destroy things - especially when no heed is paid to laws or down stream effects. I mean, carpet bombing New York City would demonstrate "incredible efficiency" - as it would probably take much less time than demolishing a single building in the city following the laws.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    Promises made, promises kept.
- CityOfThrowaway 2y ago
  The data on hostile takeovers by "corporate raiders" very much does not support the characterization here. The category of PE firms you're talking about buy companies that are deeply troubled. Generally due to the management's unwillingness to accept reality and make change, the company is heading towards oblivion one way or another. Perhaps surprisingly, the vast majority of takeover targets wind up as net job creators on a 5-10 year time horizons. That's despite the fact that they do usually start by divesting assets that don't make sense and laying off non-productive employees. But divested assets aren't generally killed – they are usually sold to somebody else who often does something better with it. Also, companies conduct massive downsizing and rationalization all the time when in distress, and not only when they are taken over by a "corporate raider". In the private markets, these actors are definitely distasteful. They do cleanup work that feels bad, and they often get rich doing it. But they also serve a necessary role in the markets. Companies that are egregiously misusing capital and resources are a drag on the economy. It's a bad thing for there to be a bunch of zombie companies holding onto assets that could be used in better ways. A more generous framing would be something like a home flipper. They buy properties that are a mess, clean it up real good, throw out the old stuff for recycling, install some modern appliances, and sell it to somebody else. One of my laments is that there is no automatic equivalent force in the government. Agencies grow and grow, projects grow and grow, all totally decoupled from whether they are achieving any progress whatsoever towards the agency's mission. I'm not defending the specific actions of this administration (for which I simply don't know enough), but it is refreshing to see the government rummaging through its mess and cutting stuff that is irrational, corrupt, and not serving the mission.
  - miltonlost 2y ago
    > One of my laments is that there is no automatic equivalent force in the government. Agencies grow and grow, projects grow and grow, all totally decoupled from whether they are achieving any progress whatsoever towards the agency's mission. There was. It's the GAO and the inspectors general of the agencies, both of which have been gutted by this administration. > I'm not defending the specific actions of this administration (for which I simply don't know enough), but it is refreshing to see the government rummaging through its mess and cutting stuff that is irrational, corrupt, and not serving the mission. LMAO, you're not defending the specific actions, but you know enough about the actions to know that they are "cutting stuff that is irrational". This is a defense of DOGE but with the "no, i'm NOT defending Musk" veneer that doesn't pass muster. You're giving this administration the benefit of the doubt and a large amount of good faith that they have not earned.
- umvi 2y ago
  Maybe the federal government needs a reset/dismantling/pruning/whatever you want to call it. With any "normal" president (including Kamala Harris), the federal government would likely be expanding spending and gov't programs right now even though the debt is so huge that interest payments on the debt now eclipse the defense budget, which itself exceeds the next 9 defense budgets in the world combined.
  - tomrod 2y ago
    Current budget is set to expand deficit spending due to tax cuts and certain spending increases, in spite of project cuts to social safety nets and entitlements.
  - ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
    > With any "normal" president (including Kamala Harris), the federal government would likely be expanding spending and gov't programs right now Perhaps, and in such a case, the american economy would not be cratering like it has been lately, and americans would be suffering less, and america would be stronger on the international stage. In fact, all things considered, more spending would have been better for america than the current state of things. > the debt is so huge that interest payments on the debt now eclipse the defense budget There's always taxing the rich, but the plan by the american ruling elites in the republican party currently seems to be to increase the debt sky-high via tax cuts for rich americans, only partially paid for via increased taxes on non-rich americans, with the rest piled onto the american debt burden.
    - umvi 2y ago
      You can't just spend your troubles away forever. It might temporarily alleviate things, but long term it will collapse the entire system. At some point there need to be painful austerity measures - budget cuts, increased taxes, and the like. It's unpopular to do painful things, but it's necessary for survival.
      - tinyplanets 2y ago
        But you also can't just cut taxes forever. The tax cuts being proposed by the current Republican budget are projected to add even more to the deficit.
- jcims 2y ago
  This is also true for 'big bets' that a company makes that gain enough momentum to stick around but haven't fully been realized or financially reconciled with the corporate strategy. Source: cloud engineering lead at a large financial.
- saelthavron 2y ago
  Sorry, but it does occur in the private. I recently worked at a company which pretty much did this. They fired all of the contractors and a bunch of employees because they decided change their focus. It is far from dying.
- Spooky23 2y ago
  Uh, no. I can name a half dozen people who are in roles like this for F500 companies. Hell, my wife was zoning SANs for $300/hr for like 6 years at a big bank. Another friend is essentially a pimp for a bunch of companies providing logistics staff. He takes a vig from the work of like 10k people.
  - fallingknife 2y ago
    Why should I care? It has no effect on me. That's between the shareholders and management. Government bloat comes out of my paycheck.
    - spwa4 2y ago
      But ... Trump will increase spending. Musk's financial future is dependent on increasing spending. They want to INCREASE the load on your paycheck, not decrease it.
      - fallingknife 2y ago
        Not really. Trump has cut the budget of NASA which is the part of the government that is the biggest customer of Spacex. They have also want to get rid of EV tax credits which are a huge source of income for Musk. Financially he would be much better off under a Harris administration. I think these are both extremely stupid policies, but its just not correct to say that the Trump administration is increasing spending to benefit Musk.
        spwa4 2y ago
        The last data is from the previous month. Trump had already started "cutting costs", and requested a budget ... 8% higher than Biden's last budget. Same week data came out, showing Trump has overspent by about 10%. This combines to Trump outspending Biden by about 15% so far. So Trump is increasing spending already. One might also comment this is hardly surprising since he did the same in his previous term, when he overspent by 4.6 trillion (meaning he enacted policies that would cost the US that amount over 10 years), and that was because congress stopped him from doing more damage. Trump is responsible for 20-25% of the entire US public debt in 2025 (Biden at most 5%, and a lot of that was Trump policy, mainly the tax "reduction") Does this benefit Musk? Well, the pentagon announced they're paying about 6 billion to SpaceX, so in one announcement about 3% of their Trump-announced budget increase is going to Musk. They're also buying from Tesla, against just about everyone's advice, but are unwilling to say how much. They're also paying a lot for Starlink and even Xai, but also not known how much.
- rayiner 2y ago
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  - notahacker 2y ago
    tbf, unlike the US government employees selected on the basis of being sufficiently immune to reality to assert that Trump won the 2020 election in their "fidelity to the Dear Leader" tests, those who think that endorsement of such views is "deplorable" might have a point...
    - rayiner 2y ago
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- dvdhnt 2y ago
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  - stonogo 2y ago
    Why has nobody been prosecuted, then? Why was USAID's detailed budget website removed by the current administration? If crimes were being committed, why has there been no accountability? I keep hearing about all this corruption, but nobody seems to be in jail about it.
    - dvdhnt 2y ago
      Accountability is shutting down the agency and shuttering the programs. They did that. The point of a slush fund is that the funds weren't allocated for specific programs by law, they were discretionary. So, while technically not illegal, they are frivolous and unethical. Not to mention, how would half the country and most of the world react if Trump's DOJ started arresting the people involved? They'd call him a tyrant and burn more Teslas.
      - phonon 2y ago
        What exactly do think the Federal Budget is? Discretionary budgeting within USAID is a tiny, tiny amount. Even the items they cherry picked as being wasteful, many were from the State Department (Ambassadors has some discretionary funds to support the local arts.) Congress decides how taxes are spent, not the Executive Branch, and certainly not the accountable to no-one DOGE. https://apnews.com/article/usaid-funding-trump-musk-misinformation-c544a5fa1fe788da10ec714f462883d1 https://apnews.com/article/usaid-funding-trump-musk-misinfor...
      - stonogo 2y ago
        No, if a project does not work then you shut it down. If someone is stealing money then you prosecute them for theft. That's what the DOJ is for. There are plenty of instances of the DOJ prosecuting government employees for crimes. So now, instead, we just have to take some rando's word for it that bad stuff was happening but nobody's going to jail over it because it was "technically not illegal"? And you call that accountability?
varispeed 2y ago
"unhealthy" it's simple profiteering. In the UK that's got especially interesting. When more consultants started quitting these big firms to go independent (offering cheaper services to public sector and often better quality), these corporations lobbied for something called IR35 - basically means if company is worker owned, then it cannot make profit. Now big consultancies have very much a monopoly on making profit from some else's work and charge public sector - tax payer handsomely. You would think that such setup is ultimately corrupt.
- notahacker 2y ago
  That's nonsense. IR35 basically makes it more difficult for companies to treat an individual like an employee whilst paying them as a "consultant" (saving themselves various obligations and allowing the "consultant" much more flexibility in avoiding tax). Accenture actually used to hire a lot of people that way themselves... Individual consultants never were competing particularly closely with Accenture or Deloitte or McKinsey and their mass of bodies, brand and board level access, and IR35 really doesn't change their competitive position, or affect small boutique consultancies composed of people who quit Big Consultancy to do better at all. (sure, if you want to spend your next 6 months contracting as an individual on site for one employer you might now need to enlist the support of a specialist umbrella company to assure IR35 compliance, but if you're in that position you're not really competing with expensive big consultants selling massive projects at C level on brand rather than their own capabilities to departments based on individual skillset)
  - varispeed 2y ago
    You're missing how IR35 actually reshaped the ecosystem - not just in terms of tax compliance, but in terms of who's allowed to profit from delivering services. It's not about preventing companies from treating people like employees. In fact, post-IR35, it enabled exactly that - but with fewer rights. Now, individuals can still be engaged for long-term, full-time work, as long as they go through an umbrella company and give up both autonomy and the ability to run a business. The result is employment in all but name, with none of the legal protections, and often less pay due to umbrella fees and unreimbursed business costs. You're also wrong to suggest that independents weren't competing with the likes of Accenture or Deloitte. In practice, they absolutely were - especially in the public sector. Individual consultants and small firms were frequently: - Delivering the same work at lower cost and higher quality - Auditing or overseeing work delivered by big firms - Winning smaller-scale, high-trust engagements directly with departments that didn't need an army of suits and a 200-page PowerPoint. This did threaten the margin-heavy model of large consultancies, and they did lobby for IR35 and the subsequent reforms to de-risk their position. What IR35 achieved was to push out small, agile operators by making them legally and commercially "difficult" to work with - not because they were "tax dodging", but because they lacked the compliance resources and political access to fight back. Meanwhile, large firms were exempt from these concerns. They can place workers with clients indefinitely without IR35 scrutiny, because the worker is not the owner of the delivery company. That's the loophole. The exact same working pattern is treated as fine if the profit flows to Deloitte, and suspicious if it flows to a one-person or small, workers owned limited company. This isn't about "6-month gigs needing umbrellas" - it's about eliminating small, independent service providers from public sector procurement pipelines. It's about monopolising access to taxpayer money. And calling that "ensuring proper employment classification" is naive at best, and disingenuous at worst. IR35 didn't restore fairness. It restructured the market to favour large corporations and removed one of the few viable routes working professionals had to operate independently and build something of their own.
leguminous 2y ago
Part of the reason the US government needs to use consultants is because they can't actually pay enough to hire senior developers directly due to the constraints imposed by the GS pay scales. Often times the top levels of the pay scale aren't even available because there is some rule about how people can't be paid more than someone else. So instead they pay for consultants and all of their overhead. (Of course there are more reasons as well, but this is a popular one that some of my friends in government agencies complain about.)
- red_admiral 2y ago
  That was Edward Snowden's explanation as well, for why he was technically employed by Booz Allen Hamilton while doing sysadmin work for his former employer, the NSA.
- mellosouls 2y ago
  They still don't generally need to use consultants. Even at the poor rates of pay in many government teams, there are still some decent technical staff who don't just chase the dollar. Bear in mind the salary standard is normal market, not FAANG/SV. Consultants are nearly always used so that managers can say "we went with BigCo, its their fault" when things go wrong. ie. they are generally a political choice rather than technical.
  - cgannett 2y ago
    And that is one of the more charitable political reasons that exist. I'm guessing Dolette and the like didnt drop enough campaign contributions. Betting in a couple months Tesla is gonna get a big fat contract.
  - LunaSea 2y ago
    > there are still some decent technical staff who don't just chase the dollar They are probably not chasing the job security either.
    - mjevans 2y ago
netbioserror 2y ago
I hope senior government staff face hostility exactly proportionate to the salaries and budgets they've extracted from the US populace through taxation and inflation, alongside the foreign influence far too many of them are responsible for peddling. The government is not a jobs program, and they owe the people, not the other way around.
FloorEgg 2y ago
I'm not paying close attention to all the noise, so forgive me if I am way off base. But aren't they effectively doing a values purge/refinement/reset? Similar to what Elon did with twitter and what few companies have managed to do to transform themselves? My point is (in an effort to maintain a most respectful interpretation) that I imagine the environment is becoming more hostile to people with certain values while becoming less hostile to people with other values. And while there's a good chance I'm wrong, my generous assumption would be they are making a hostile environment for people who value process over outcome and making it less hostile to people who value outcome over process. (Replacing bureaucrats and risk-averse money wasters with problem solvers, innovators and cowboys)
- Vegenoid 2y ago
  Even if this is the case, “process” is immensely more important in government and military than in companies because government has the authority, the prerogative even, to use violence, ruin lives, and kill people. The onerous processes are in place to protect civilians. When you shoot from the hip at a tech company, the bad outcome is that a lot of money gets wasted and people lose their jobs. When the federal government shoots from the hip, trust in the institution erodes and people die. Not that there is no room for streamlining and reducing bureaucratic and IT bloat, but it is very important to remember that the government is not a business, and in many ways should be run very differently from a business.
  - anon84873628 2y ago
    Plus, many of the laws government has to follow are exactly about the process by which things are done. That is what helps ensure it is fair, effective, transparent, etc.
    - FloorEgg 2y ago
      I agree, but what was fair and effective in 1970 might not be anymore, right? Do you agree that these processes need to evolve over time? And if so, what if they haven't been evolving as fast as the rest of the world and have fallen behind? What is a leader to do, when many processes no longer are in anyone's best interest other than the people who maintain them and those have learned to exploit them? The government doesn't seem like a machine to me, more like society's nervous system. It's a very scary idea that it has become so rigid and so outdated that a massive overhaul is necessary. It does seem like an opening for extremism (fascism, tyranny), which I'm sure we both fear. I just find it very hard to tell whether disrupting the system or letting it continue will lead to a better outcome for Americans.
dughnut 2y ago
I feel the appeal of your argument, but people just aren’t fungible, and the incentives in a public in private identity are completely different. I work at a consulting firm, and, trust me, you want state employees doing the absolute minimum amount of work necessary. Ideally, you just have enough people to administer the funds and then all work anyone cares about should be routed to private entities through a competitive process (market discipline for consultants is key here). My experience is that the people at the state are highly likable, but in terms of productivity are close to worthless or are a major obstacle to productive work. I work for a department of transportation where the leadership in the materials division does not actually know what density is or that it is measurable. I would expect someone with good grades in high school to understand this. Every single construction contract for highways has about a 15% overage on crushed rock. The weight to the material is determined by a “50% compaction factor“ and if you’re thinking “that sounds like a made up concept“ you would be correct. This has been happening for years and nobody is allowed to use the correct number because that would embarrass someone with a long tenure. The state Congress needs to liquidate the whole agency.
PeterStuer 2y ago
You have to understand consultancies in IT are just brokers. They buy in "inventory" of "profiles" at as low a cost as possible, and sell that inventory to their customers for as much as possible. So you've got your CS graduate which you recruit and pay $40/hr, slap a badge on them and rent them out for $120/hr. Once in a while you fall short and need to hire some freelancers for $60/hr. That's it. As your gov agency is capped on paying it's own recruits $25/hr for the position, very few will end up as 'native' gov workers, and the once that do will get poached swiftly by the consultancies. Now these juicy contracts are not sold piecemeal, but in huge bulk. Not 3 guys for 2 months for a project, but an umbrella contract for delivering 2.000 full time profiles over the next 2 years. Very few consultancies can credibly fulfill on such commitments making the market fairly small and not too competitive. The few that participate have no incentive to spoil the roost and derail the gravy train. No explicit collusion is required. It's an iterative prissoners dilemma situation where the few players all know each other and frequently switch sides.
- abakker 2y ago
  I think it is important to distinguish between Consulting, Staff Augmentation, and Managed Services. Many of the large integrators/consultancies do all of these options, but the objectives, contract sizes, and durations of the contracts are all expected to be different. Consulting - best though of projects, governance, and on-demand expertise. There are definitely junior resources in play, but the objective is to build on the IP of the consulting firm and to create a external channel for problem solving or delivery that is not dependent on or hampered by internal inertia. Staff Augmentation - a lot of time this is just billed hourly, and you really are looking at paying a premium for a non-committed spend - if FTEs are "reserved instances" then staff aug contracts are the opposite. You pay a premium for the lack of long-term commitment and to make this look like variable OpEx. my opinion is that this model is over used in most businesses. Managed Services - longer term commitments to deliver services. Generally the good advice is to contract on "what you want done" rather than the detailed "how you want it done", though that is more philosophical than practical. The expectation is that the service delivery will improve, and that those process improvements, automations, training, and provider IP/Tools will deliver decreasing unit prices for "resource units" over time. Thinking of consultancies as pure brokers is certainly a mental model you can use, but is not the most nuanced model. I think it tends to be better to acknowledge that there are structural reasons why all of these models are present in organizations and rather to think about how they should be governed. (disclaimer, my employer is an advisor on how to contract for these kinds of services. My work is not related to contracting, but research about this market)
ljm 2y ago
In the UK, the preference for consultants and contractors was always because it’s accounted for differently on the balance sheet. The consultants would actually cost more money overall, especially since they could be engaged longer than the average tenure of a full time engineer. But it wasn’t on the wage bill so it was fine. In reality it was just really unfair to the full time engineers who, while they did get some benefits for being on board, did not get anything approaching equal compensation. Even being outside IR35, which is the legislation that stops employees masquerading as contractors to lower their tax burden, they would fundamentally just be better-paid employees. Of course, this is more on the individual level but even bringing in an agency… they could charge 1200 a day while the person on the job takes home about 400 of it if they’re lucky.
frogperson 2y ago
Their actions are actively hostile to the US government and its citizens. You'll never convince me otherwise. Republicans act as if US citizens are the enemy and they want to destroy the country. It's the only way of looking at it that makes sense. The enemies are in the gates and no one is fighting.
m463 2y ago
> in the private sector yet it happens. The problem in any case is when the consultants/contractors/temp workers become entrenched. It's really easy to do it - just put people who know less next to people who know more but are paid less. Then you can't keep your normal employees and have to keep hiring from outside.
theropost 2y ago
There are consultants who bring real value. They’re experts at the top of their fields, offering skills not available in-house. They help upskill staff, deliver results, and provide knowledge transfer that has long-term benefits. Those people deserve to be paid well for what they bring. But too often, consultants are brought in to do work that existing staff could already handle or to maintain systems that should’ve been fixed years ago. It’s not always outright corruption, but it props up managers who rely on outside help to get by. And many of these consultants aren’t adding value — they’re just billing for work that could be automated or easily solved. One example involved consultants paid to babysit an outdated system. It was generating massive reports, and instead of fixing the root issue, someone had to manually delete files every few hours. Thousands per week were spent when a simple script or hardware upgrade could have fixed it. It’s wasteful and completely unnecessary. This isn’t rare. It’s everywhere. And while it’s not always illegal, it’s driven by self-interest, favoritism, and comfort. That’s where the real waste is, and that’s where the cuts should happen. Consulting used to be about value. It was a profession grounded in skill, purpose, and a drive to contribute. Now, it’s often about milking the system. People leave the public service knowing they can return as consultants and get paid two or three times as much, just because of who they know. We’ve replaced public service and merit with opportunism. Instead of building better systems and serving the country, we’re incentivizing people to exploit it. And the worst part is, it’s become normal. But it shouldn’t be. This is structural corruption — accepted, embedded, and everywhere.

tw04 2y ago

The ONLY time this occurs in the private sector is when corporate raiders are trying to extract every last penny from a business they plan on killing. Unsurprisingly this follows directly with project 2025s goal of dismantling the federal government and privatizing what departments aren’t filled with party loyalists at the expense of the average US citizen.

QuantumGood 2y ago
96 of 301 projects complete, 58 in progress • https://www.project2025.observer/ https://www.project2025.observer/
- wonderwonder 2y ago
  Whether you support it or not, for government, that's really some incredible efficiency. almost 1/3 complete in 100 days
  - michaelbuckbee 2y ago
    Easier to destroy than create.
    - eru 2y ago
      Not usually for government departments.
  - starkparker 2y ago
    I mean, let's not act like firing people and cancelling contracts without caring if you get sued or break things is substantially more difficult than, say, closing browser tabs
  - dleeftink 2y ago
    The most efficient system is the one that is none. But it also ceases to be a system.
  - miltonlost 2y ago
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    - wonderwonder 2y ago
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  - throwaway29812 2y ago
    [dead]
  - Spooky23 2y ago
    It’s amazing that people so committed to constitutional principles were able to enact the largest tax increase in history without the advice and consent of congress. Impressive even for tax and spend republicans. In democracy loving areas of the British Empire, that type of arbitrary action led to revolutions.
    - monero-xmr 2y ago
      Huh? Trump won the popular vote. Maybe make better arguments in the next election if you don't like the current leader, rather than a violent revolution to overturn a democratically elected leader
      - immibis 2y ago
        Adolf Hitler was also democratically elected.
        wonderwonder 2y ago
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        const_cast 2y ago
        [dead]
      - Spooky23 2y ago
        Trump is President, not king or Caesar.
    - wonderwonder 2y ago
      They absolutely have the consent of Congress. Congress can stop this at any time. They elect not to. Their silence is consent in this case. You can attribute that silence to active support or cowardice but either way they can stop it and don't so they approve of it. "In democracy loving areas of the British Empire, that type of arbitrary action led to revolutions." Not sure if you have taken a look at Britain lately but they absolutely don't care about what the citizens want.
  - karaterobot 2y ago
    I'll join you in getting downvoted for absolutely no reason. It's a shitty thing they're doing, but your observation is correct. My job working on NIH-funded research projects is directly in their path, so I wish they weren't stomping a mudhole across science and technology. But they are, and, as you note, they're doing it very effectively and with incredible speed. If it's outside our capability as a community to even acknowledge that they're moving fast, how can we note that they're moving way too fast to be doing it right?
    - lazide 2y ago
      But they are doing it right - by their metric. Which is not the one others want them to be using.
      - karaterobot 2y ago
        By their own metrics, sure, maybe. I don't actually know what the real measurement of success is for them. But, to clarify, I didn't mean doing it right by their metric, I meant in my estimation, or [gestures broadly] our estimation.
        lazide 2y ago
        The crux of the issue IMO, is to quote, ‘what do you mean “we” kemo sabe?’ I bet on any particular issue you can find 3-4 major groups with conflicting opinions.
  - mywittyname 2y ago
    It's easy to destroy things - especially when no heed is paid to laws or down stream effects. I mean, carpet bombing New York City would demonstrate "incredible efficiency" - as it would probably take much less time than demolishing a single building in the city following the laws.
- rayiner 2y ago
  Promises made, promises kept.
CityOfThrowaway 2y ago
The data on hostile takeovers by "corporate raiders" very much does not support the characterization here. The category of PE firms you're talking about buy companies that are deeply troubled. Generally due to the management's unwillingness to accept reality and make change, the company is heading towards oblivion one way or another. Perhaps surprisingly, the vast majority of takeover targets wind up as net job creators on a 5-10 year time horizons. That's despite the fact that they do usually start by divesting assets that don't make sense and laying off non-productive employees. But divested assets aren't generally killed – they are usually sold to somebody else who often does something better with it. Also, companies conduct massive downsizing and rationalization all the time when in distress, and not only when they are taken over by a "corporate raider". In the private markets, these actors are definitely distasteful. They do cleanup work that feels bad, and they often get rich doing it. But they also serve a necessary role in the markets. Companies that are egregiously misusing capital and resources are a drag on the economy. It's a bad thing for there to be a bunch of zombie companies holding onto assets that could be used in better ways. A more generous framing would be something like a home flipper. They buy properties that are a mess, clean it up real good, throw out the old stuff for recycling, install some modern appliances, and sell it to somebody else. One of my laments is that there is no automatic equivalent force in the government. Agencies grow and grow, projects grow and grow, all totally decoupled from whether they are achieving any progress whatsoever towards the agency's mission. I'm not defending the specific actions of this administration (for which I simply don't know enough), but it is refreshing to see the government rummaging through its mess and cutting stuff that is irrational, corrupt, and not serving the mission.
- miltonlost 2y ago
  > One of my laments is that there is no automatic equivalent force in the government. Agencies grow and grow, projects grow and grow, all totally decoupled from whether they are achieving any progress whatsoever towards the agency's mission. There was. It's the GAO and the inspectors general of the agencies, both of which have been gutted by this administration. > I'm not defending the specific actions of this administration (for which I simply don't know enough), but it is refreshing to see the government rummaging through its mess and cutting stuff that is irrational, corrupt, and not serving the mission. LMAO, you're not defending the specific actions, but you know enough about the actions to know that they are "cutting stuff that is irrational". This is a defense of DOGE but with the "no, i'm NOT defending Musk" veneer that doesn't pass muster. You're giving this administration the benefit of the doubt and a large amount of good faith that they have not earned.
umvi 2y ago
Maybe the federal government needs a reset/dismantling/pruning/whatever you want to call it. With any "normal" president (including Kamala Harris), the federal government would likely be expanding spending and gov't programs right now even though the debt is so huge that interest payments on the debt now eclipse the defense budget, which itself exceeds the next 9 defense budgets in the world combined.
- tomrod 2y ago
  Current budget is set to expand deficit spending due to tax cuts and certain spending increases, in spite of project cuts to social safety nets and entitlements.
- ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
  > With any "normal" president (including Kamala Harris), the federal government would likely be expanding spending and gov't programs right now Perhaps, and in such a case, the american economy would not be cratering like it has been lately, and americans would be suffering less, and america would be stronger on the international stage. In fact, all things considered, more spending would have been better for america than the current state of things. > the debt is so huge that interest payments on the debt now eclipse the defense budget There's always taxing the rich, but the plan by the american ruling elites in the republican party currently seems to be to increase the debt sky-high via tax cuts for rich americans, only partially paid for via increased taxes on non-rich americans, with the rest piled onto the american debt burden.
  - umvi 2y ago
    You can't just spend your troubles away forever. It might temporarily alleviate things, but long term it will collapse the entire system. At some point there need to be painful austerity measures - budget cuts, increased taxes, and the like. It's unpopular to do painful things, but it's necessary for survival.
    - tinyplanets 2y ago
      But you also can't just cut taxes forever. The tax cuts being proposed by the current Republican budget are projected to add even more to the deficit.
jcims 2y ago
This is also true for 'big bets' that a company makes that gain enough momentum to stick around but haven't fully been realized or financially reconciled with the corporate strategy. Source: cloud engineering lead at a large financial.
saelthavron 2y ago
Sorry, but it does occur in the private. I recently worked at a company which pretty much did this. They fired all of the contractors and a bunch of employees because they decided change their focus. It is far from dying.
Spooky23 2y ago
Uh, no. I can name a half dozen people who are in roles like this for F500 companies. Hell, my wife was zoning SANs for $300/hr for like 6 years at a big bank. Another friend is essentially a pimp for a bunch of companies providing logistics staff. He takes a vig from the work of like 10k people.
- fallingknife 2y ago
  Why should I care? It has no effect on me. That's between the shareholders and management. Government bloat comes out of my paycheck.
  - spwa4 2y ago
    But ... Trump will increase spending. Musk's financial future is dependent on increasing spending. They want to INCREASE the load on your paycheck, not decrease it.
    - fallingknife 2y ago
      Not really. Trump has cut the budget of NASA which is the part of the government that is the biggest customer of Spacex. They have also want to get rid of EV tax credits which are a huge source of income for Musk. Financially he would be much better off under a Harris administration. I think these are both extremely stupid policies, but its just not correct to say that the Trump administration is increasing spending to benefit Musk.
      - spwa4 2y ago
        The last data is from the previous month. Trump had already started "cutting costs", and requested a budget ... 8% higher than Biden's last budget. Same week data came out, showing Trump has overspent by about 10%. This combines to Trump outspending Biden by about 15% so far. So Trump is increasing spending already. One might also comment this is hardly surprising since he did the same in his previous term, when he overspent by 4.6 trillion (meaning he enacted policies that would cost the US that amount over 10 years), and that was because congress stopped him from doing more damage. Trump is responsible for 20-25% of the entire US public debt in 2025 (Biden at most 5%, and a lot of that was Trump policy, mainly the tax "reduction") Does this benefit Musk? Well, the pentagon announced they're paying about 6 billion to SpaceX, so in one announcement about 3% of their Trump-announced budget increase is going to Musk. They're also buying from Tesla, against just about everyone's advice, but are unwilling to say how much. They're also paying a lot for Starlink and even Xai, but also not known how much.
rayiner 2y ago
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- notahacker 2y ago
  tbf, unlike the US government employees selected on the basis of being sufficiently immune to reality to assert that Trump won the 2020 election in their "fidelity to the Dear Leader" tests, those who think that endorsement of such views is "deplorable" might have a point...
  - rayiner 2y ago
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dvdhnt 2y ago
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- stonogo 2y ago
  Why has nobody been prosecuted, then? Why was USAID's detailed budget website removed by the current administration? If crimes were being committed, why has there been no accountability? I keep hearing about all this corruption, but nobody seems to be in jail about it.
  - dvdhnt 2y ago
    Accountability is shutting down the agency and shuttering the programs. They did that. The point of a slush fund is that the funds weren't allocated for specific programs by law, they were discretionary. So, while technically not illegal, they are frivolous and unethical. Not to mention, how would half the country and most of the world react if Trump's DOJ started arresting the people involved? They'd call him a tyrant and burn more Teslas.
    - phonon 2y ago
      What exactly do think the Federal Budget is? Discretionary budgeting within USAID is a tiny, tiny amount. Even the items they cherry picked as being wasteful, many were from the State Department (Ambassadors has some discretionary funds to support the local arts.) Congress decides how taxes are spent, not the Executive Branch, and certainly not the accountable to no-one DOGE. https://apnews.com/article/usaid-funding-trump-musk-misinformation-c544a5fa1fe788da10ec714f462883d1 https://apnews.com/article/usaid-funding-trump-musk-misinfor...
    - stonogo 2y ago
      No, if a project does not work then you shut it down. If someone is stealing money then you prosecute them for theft. That's what the DOJ is for. There are plenty of instances of the DOJ prosecuting government employees for crimes. So now, instead, we just have to take some rando's word for it that bad stuff was happening but nobody's going to jail over it because it was "technically not illegal"? And you call that accountability?

varispeed 2y ago

"unhealthy" it's simple profiteering. In the UK that's got especially interesting. When more consultants started quitting these big firms to go independent (offering cheaper services to public sector and often better quality), these corporations lobbied for something called IR35 - basically means if company is worker owned, then it cannot make profit. Now big consultancies have very much a monopoly on making profit from some else's work and charge public sector - tax payer handsomely. You would think that such setup is ultimately corrupt.

notahacker 2y ago
That's nonsense. IR35 basically makes it more difficult for companies to treat an individual like an employee whilst paying them as a "consultant" (saving themselves various obligations and allowing the "consultant" much more flexibility in avoiding tax). Accenture actually used to hire a lot of people that way themselves... Individual consultants never were competing particularly closely with Accenture or Deloitte or McKinsey and their mass of bodies, brand and board level access, and IR35 really doesn't change their competitive position, or affect small boutique consultancies composed of people who quit Big Consultancy to do better at all. (sure, if you want to spend your next 6 months contracting as an individual on site for one employer you might now need to enlist the support of a specialist umbrella company to assure IR35 compliance, but if you're in that position you're not really competing with expensive big consultants selling massive projects at C level on brand rather than their own capabilities to departments based on individual skillset)
- varispeed 2y ago
  You're missing how IR35 actually reshaped the ecosystem - not just in terms of tax compliance, but in terms of who's allowed to profit from delivering services. It's not about preventing companies from treating people like employees. In fact, post-IR35, it enabled exactly that - but with fewer rights. Now, individuals can still be engaged for long-term, full-time work, as long as they go through an umbrella company and give up both autonomy and the ability to run a business. The result is employment in all but name, with none of the legal protections, and often less pay due to umbrella fees and unreimbursed business costs. You're also wrong to suggest that independents weren't competing with the likes of Accenture or Deloitte. In practice, they absolutely were - especially in the public sector. Individual consultants and small firms were frequently: - Delivering the same work at lower cost and higher quality - Auditing or overseeing work delivered by big firms - Winning smaller-scale, high-trust engagements directly with departments that didn't need an army of suits and a 200-page PowerPoint. This did threaten the margin-heavy model of large consultancies, and they did lobby for IR35 and the subsequent reforms to de-risk their position. What IR35 achieved was to push out small, agile operators by making them legally and commercially "difficult" to work with - not because they were "tax dodging", but because they lacked the compliance resources and political access to fight back. Meanwhile, large firms were exempt from these concerns. They can place workers with clients indefinitely without IR35 scrutiny, because the worker is not the owner of the delivery company. That's the loophole. The exact same working pattern is treated as fine if the profit flows to Deloitte, and suspicious if it flows to a one-person or small, workers owned limited company. This isn't about "6-month gigs needing umbrellas" - it's about eliminating small, independent service providers from public sector procurement pipelines. It's about monopolising access to taxpayer money. And calling that "ensuring proper employment classification" is naive at best, and disingenuous at worst. IR35 didn't restore fairness. It restructured the market to favour large corporations and removed one of the few viable routes working professionals had to operate independently and build something of their own.

leguminous 2y ago

Part of the reason the US government needs to use consultants is because they can't actually pay enough to hire senior developers directly due to the constraints imposed by the GS pay scales. Often times the top levels of the pay scale aren't even available because there is some rule about how people can't be paid more than someone else. So instead they pay for consultants and all of their overhead. (Of course there are more reasons as well, but this is a popular one that some of my friends in government agencies complain about.)

red_admiral 2y ago
That was Edward Snowden's explanation as well, for why he was technically employed by Booz Allen Hamilton while doing sysadmin work for his former employer, the NSA.
mellosouls 2y ago
They still don't generally need to use consultants. Even at the poor rates of pay in many government teams, there are still some decent technical staff who don't just chase the dollar. Bear in mind the salary standard is normal market, not FAANG/SV. Consultants are nearly always used so that managers can say "we went with BigCo, its their fault" when things go wrong. ie. they are generally a political choice rather than technical.
- cgannett 2y ago
  And that is one of the more charitable political reasons that exist. I'm guessing Dolette and the like didnt drop enough campaign contributions. Betting in a couple months Tesla is gonna get a big fat contract.
- LunaSea 2y ago
  > there are still some decent technical staff who don't just chase the dollar They are probably not chasing the job security either.
  - mjevans 2y ago

netbioserror 2y ago

I hope senior government staff face hostility exactly proportionate to the salaries and budgets they've extracted from the US populace through taxation and inflation, alongside the foreign influence far too many of them are responsible for peddling. The government is not a jobs program, and they owe the people, not the other way around.

FloorEgg 2y ago

I'm not paying close attention to all the noise, so forgive me if I am way off base. But aren't they effectively doing a values purge/refinement/reset? Similar to what Elon did with twitter and what few companies have managed to do to transform themselves? My point is (in an effort to maintain a most respectful interpretation) that I imagine the environment is becoming more hostile to people with certain values while becoming less hostile to people with other values. And while there's a good chance I'm wrong, my generous assumption would be they are making a hostile environment for people who value process over outcome and making it less hostile to people who value outcome over process. (Replacing bureaucrats and risk-averse money wasters with problem solvers, innovators and cowboys)

Vegenoid 2y ago
Even if this is the case, “process” is immensely more important in government and military than in companies because government has the authority, the prerogative even, to use violence, ruin lives, and kill people. The onerous processes are in place to protect civilians. When you shoot from the hip at a tech company, the bad outcome is that a lot of money gets wasted and people lose their jobs. When the federal government shoots from the hip, trust in the institution erodes and people die. Not that there is no room for streamlining and reducing bureaucratic and IT bloat, but it is very important to remember that the government is not a business, and in many ways should be run very differently from a business.
- anon84873628 2y ago
  Plus, many of the laws government has to follow are exactly about the process by which things are done. That is what helps ensure it is fair, effective, transparent, etc.
  - FloorEgg 2y ago
    I agree, but what was fair and effective in 1970 might not be anymore, right? Do you agree that these processes need to evolve over time? And if so, what if they haven't been evolving as fast as the rest of the world and have fallen behind? What is a leader to do, when many processes no longer are in anyone's best interest other than the people who maintain them and those have learned to exploit them? The government doesn't seem like a machine to me, more like society's nervous system. It's a very scary idea that it has become so rigid and so outdated that a massive overhaul is necessary. It does seem like an opening for extremism (fascism, tyranny), which I'm sure we both fear. I just find it very hard to tell whether disrupting the system or letting it continue will lead to a better outcome for Americans.

dughnut 2y ago

I feel the appeal of your argument, but people just aren’t fungible, and the incentives in a public in private identity are completely different. I work at a consulting firm, and, trust me, you want state employees doing the absolute minimum amount of work necessary. Ideally, you just have enough people to administer the funds and then all work anyone cares about should be routed to private entities through a competitive process (market discipline for consultants is key here). My experience is that the people at the state are highly likable, but in terms of productivity are close to worthless or are a major obstacle to productive work. I work for a department of transportation where the leadership in the materials division does not actually know what density is or that it is measurable. I would expect someone with good grades in high school to understand this. Every single construction contract for highways has about a 15% overage on crushed rock. The weight to the material is determined by a “50% compaction factor“ and if you’re thinking “that sounds like a made up concept“ you would be correct. This has been happening for years and nobody is allowed to use the correct number because that would embarrass someone with a long tenure. The state Congress needs to liquidate the whole agency.

PeterStuer 2y ago

You have to understand consultancies in IT are just brokers. They buy in "inventory" of "profiles" at as low a cost as possible, and sell that inventory to their customers for as much as possible. So you've got your CS graduate which you recruit and pay $40/hr, slap a badge on them and rent them out for $120/hr. Once in a while you fall short and need to hire some freelancers for $60/hr. That's it. As your gov agency is capped on paying it's own recruits $25/hr for the position, very few will end up as 'native' gov workers, and the once that do will get poached swiftly by the consultancies. Now these juicy contracts are not sold piecemeal, but in huge bulk. Not 3 guys for 2 months for a project, but an umbrella contract for delivering 2.000 full time profiles over the next 2 years. Very few consultancies can credibly fulfill on such commitments making the market fairly small and not too competitive. The few that participate have no incentive to spoil the roost and derail the gravy train. No explicit collusion is required. It's an iterative prissoners dilemma situation where the few players all know each other and frequently switch sides.

abakker 2y ago
I think it is important to distinguish between Consulting, Staff Augmentation, and Managed Services. Many of the large integrators/consultancies do all of these options, but the objectives, contract sizes, and durations of the contracts are all expected to be different. Consulting - best though of projects, governance, and on-demand expertise. There are definitely junior resources in play, but the objective is to build on the IP of the consulting firm and to create a external channel for problem solving or delivery that is not dependent on or hampered by internal inertia. Staff Augmentation - a lot of time this is just billed hourly, and you really are looking at paying a premium for a non-committed spend - if FTEs are "reserved instances" then staff aug contracts are the opposite. You pay a premium for the lack of long-term commitment and to make this look like variable OpEx. my opinion is that this model is over used in most businesses. Managed Services - longer term commitments to deliver services. Generally the good advice is to contract on "what you want done" rather than the detailed "how you want it done", though that is more philosophical than practical. The expectation is that the service delivery will improve, and that those process improvements, automations, training, and provider IP/Tools will deliver decreasing unit prices for "resource units" over time. Thinking of consultancies as pure brokers is certainly a mental model you can use, but is not the most nuanced model. I think it tends to be better to acknowledge that there are structural reasons why all of these models are present in organizations and rather to think about how they should be governed. (disclaimer, my employer is an advisor on how to contract for these kinds of services. My work is not related to contracting, but research about this market)

ljm 2y ago

In the UK, the preference for consultants and contractors was always because it’s accounted for differently on the balance sheet. The consultants would actually cost more money overall, especially since they could be engaged longer than the average tenure of a full time engineer. But it wasn’t on the wage bill so it was fine. In reality it was just really unfair to the full time engineers who, while they did get some benefits for being on board, did not get anything approaching equal compensation. Even being outside IR35, which is the legislation that stops employees masquerading as contractors to lower their tax burden, they would fundamentally just be better-paid employees. Of course, this is more on the individual level but even bringing in an agency… they could charge 1200 a day while the person on the job takes home about 400 of it if they’re lucky.

frogperson 2y ago

Their actions are actively hostile to the US government and its citizens. You'll never convince me otherwise. Republicans act as if US citizens are the enemy and they want to destroy the country. It's the only way of looking at it that makes sense. The enemies are in the gates and no one is fighting.

m463 2y ago

> in the private sector yet it happens. The problem in any case is when the consultants/contractors/temp workers become entrenched. It's really easy to do it - just put people who know less next to people who know more but are paid less. Then you can't keep your normal employees and have to keep hiring from outside.

theropost 2y ago

There are consultants who bring real value. They’re experts at the top of their fields, offering skills not available in-house. They help upskill staff, deliver results, and provide knowledge transfer that has long-term benefits. Those people deserve to be paid well for what they bring. But too often, consultants are brought in to do work that existing staff could already handle or to maintain systems that should’ve been fixed years ago. It’s not always outright corruption, but it props up managers who rely on outside help to get by. And many of these consultants aren’t adding value — they’re just billing for work that could be automated or easily solved. One example involved consultants paid to babysit an outdated system. It was generating massive reports, and instead of fixing the root issue, someone had to manually delete files every few hours. Thousands per week were spent when a simple script or hardware upgrade could have fixed it. It’s wasteful and completely unnecessary. This isn’t rare. It’s everywhere. And while it’s not always illegal, it’s driven by self-interest, favoritism, and comfort. That’s where the real waste is, and that’s where the cuts should happen. Consulting used to be about value. It was a profession grounded in skill, purpose, and a drive to contribute. Now, it’s often about milking the system. People leave the public service knowing they can return as consultants and get paid two or three times as much, just because of who they know. We’ve replaced public service and merit with opportunism. Instead of building better systems and serving the country, we’re incentivizing people to exploit it. And the worst part is, it’s become normal. But it shouldn’t be. This is structural corruption — accepted, embedded, and everywhere.