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> pulling out a checkbook will reverse people's party alliances in an instant A team of dedicated startup employees who really believe in what they're working
by alxp 14y ago
> pulling out a checkbook will reverse people's party alliances in an instant
A team of dedicated startup employees who really believe in what they're working on vs. throwing money at consultants 9-to-5er programmers? Pardon me while I place a few long bets.
- moocow01 14y agoThats not what I said... Im saying that you can throw money at a team of dedicated startup employees to level the playing field. All the GOP has to do is establish a pot of money for political tech and be willing to take a risk on startups looking to service political campaigns. Think of essentially the SpaceX competition but for political campaign tech for the GOP
- YuriNiyazov 14y agoYou'd lose that bet. I live in the Bay Area, favor Obama over Romney, and have historically shown plenty of dedication to the startups which I founded or at which I have worked. If Romney's campaign came to me and said "please work 80-hour weeks at $200/hr to build us the most kick-ass infrastructure you can so that we can win" you can be damn sure I'd be moving to Boston the next day. I know plenty others who would as well.
- redthrowaway 14y agoAnd if the Obama campaign were making the same offer, which would you choose? The campaign may have relied mostly on volunteers, but it would be foolish to think they wouldn't hire a small team of engineers to do the same work if they had to. The benefits to fundraising alone are substantial enough to warrant the cost.
- misterbwong 14y agoAnd if the Obama campaign were making the same offer, which would you choose? This would be a valid point if there were only enough competent engineers for one party's staff. That isn't the case, though.
- eshvk 14y ago> And if the Obama campaign were making the same offer, which would you choose? I think the point is that Romney's campaign would be able to hire engineers at some cost. This cost may be significantly higher than the cost that Obama would have to pay but nevertheless passionate, dedicated engineers can be obtained to produce high quality infrastructure.
- YuriNiyazov 14y agoI would probably work for Obama, and even at a cheaper rate that I would for Romney, but like misterbwong and eshvk said, the point is that if Obama has already hired his whole staff, Romney can offer a certain price where I am willing to ignore my political affiliations and be fully professional (read: not sabotage the effort because I dislike the candidate)
- jfoutz 14y agoBut they wouldn't do that. They'd call up their defense contractor buddy who did that great system for the DoD that was only 2 years late and triple the original budget.
- pilom 14y agoBeware survivor bias (in this case I guess it is the converse). The only DoD contracts you ever hear about are the ones that are over budget and behind schedule. That doesn't mean that the vast majority of them actually aren't great engineering on time and under budget.
- jfoutz 14y agoI would completely agree that there are projects that are on time and on budget. The argument i should have made in a less pejorative way is, Defense contractors are in the business of selling consulting services. Fundamentally, government contractors economic incentives are more closely aligned with billable hours than shipping good software. When you sell the artifact itself, it has to be good. when you sell time, customers just have to feel good about how the time was spent.
- YuriNiyazov 14y agoThey might in the next election, after having read the Nate Silver article and this thread.
- temphn 14y agoAbsolutely, they could have done much better by spending intelligently. But tend to also agree with alxp here, in that given finite resources you will be better off with missionaries rather than mercenaries.
- YuriNiyazov 14y agoThere are two things with which I take issue in your comment: 1) Finite resources are always the case, so it would follow from your argument that one is always strictly better off with missionaries than mercenaries, which is simply not the case. 2) If there was anyone who could be considered to have infinite resources, it would have been the Romney campaign.
- rayiner 14y agoYou're overselling the benefits of dedication, which can't be bought, and underselling the benefits of professionalism and experience, which can.
- gtd 14y agoVery true, however I think the talent and ability of a technical team is just the tip of the iceberg here. The real coup that the Obama campaign pulled off was bringing a top-flight tech team in-house and somehow fitting them into the established campaign apparatus so their skills could really be leveraged. The fact is it doesn't matter how good the engineers are, if they are mismanaged then you will not get good results. The main thing that Silicon Valley has really figured out is the necessity of letting engineers into the board room so to speak. You can't have a bunch of big-shot executives trying to dictate what to do from on high because the technical and operational challenges are just as significant as the political and strategic challenges. If the engineers are outsourced, or don't have autonomy, or aren't given a seat at the table for high-level decisions, then it will be impossible for them to deliver anything as groundbreaking as what the Obama campaign delivered. What is conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley has been slow to make its way into the political sphere, but I think the cat's out of the bag now, and I'm sure you'll see a lot less hubris and a much more solid effort from the GOP in 2016.