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Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#11

Post by kbenson »

pryelluw wrote: post #7

One example is staff time totaling 727 hours on a logo change. The old logo was a blue square with 18F in the lower-right-hand corner. The new logo, a black square with 18F centered and a different font, wasn’t worth the time and doesn’t look as good. How is that even possible?

I could see 200 employees with a a single all-hands-on-deck meeting where nobody can keep it together and it's three hours of chaos where nothing gets accomplished, but everyone racks up a free lunch, and then a few smaller meetings over multiple weeks that account for the rest of the time.

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#13

Post by justinsaccount »

FTA:

> “Since its launch in March 2014, 18F has struggled financially,” says GSA’s Office of Inspector General (IG), citing loses every year, now totally over $31.6 million.

And from a random site that seems to agree with a few others:

> In fiscal year 2015, military spending is projected to account for 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending, a total of $598.5 billion

In 3 years 18F has spent 31.6 million. Even if it lost 31.6 million every year, it could do that for NINETEEN THOUSAND YEARS and still not equal what we spent on the military in one year.

Imagine a country where 18f had a budget of 600 billion dollars a year.

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#15

Post by justinsaccount »

lsmarigo wrote: post #10

Activities that can’t be billed to other agencies are another drain. One example is staff time totaling 727 hours on a logo change. The old logo was a blue square with 18F in the lower-right-hand corner. The new logo, a black square with 18F centered and a different font, wasn’t worth the time and doesn’t look as good. for anyone else curious: (new) Black Logo: https://18f.gsa.gov/assets/img/logos/18f-logo.svg (old)…

The new logo looks like something you would come up with if you needed a placeholder image for the real logo.

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#16

Post by [deleted] »

ajju wrote: post #4
nowarninglabel wrote: post #2

This is disappointing to read, given I love what 18F has done. No matter whether we think they should be breaking even or not, they shouldn't be creating wildly inaccurate revenue projections and then falling drastically short of them. That looks like something is going drastically wrong with management there, especially considering greater macroeconomic conditions have not changed drastically enough in a way that wo…

How many fast growing startups have accurate financial projections?

[deleted]

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#17

Post by dangrossman »

pryelluw wrote: post #7

One example is staff time totaling 727 hours on a logo change. The old logo was a blue square with 18F in the lower-right-hand corner. The new logo, a black square with 18F centered and a different font, wasn’t worth the time and doesn’t look as good. How is that even possible?

727 hours is a team of 10 working for less than 2 work weeks. Or a team of 6 having a couple 1-hour meetings with other groups in addition to doing the design work. It'd be hard for any medium to large organization with an internal design team to rebrand without using hundreds of hours of staff time.

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#18

Post by jdale27 »

pryelluw wrote: post #7

One example is staff time totaling 727 hours on a logo change. The old logo was a blue square with 18F in the lower-right-hand corner. The new logo, a black square with 18F centered and a different font, wasn’t worth the time and doesn’t look as good. How is that even possible?

Not sure how it happened at 18F, but in my experience working with "serious" designers, this is not surprising. They will spend weeks interviewing "stakeholders" and customers, iterating on "visual languages" and "brand identity", etc., etc., going through endless tweaks and revisions and feedback sessions before finally settling on something that looks like a totally untrained graphic designer crapped it out in five minutes. (Obviously this doesn't apply to all designers; there are many who are much more pragmatic.) The recent redesign of the University of California logo is a good example of this phenomenon: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-69-the-brief-a....

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#19

Post by losteric »

lsmarigo wrote: post #10

Activities that can’t be billed to other agencies are another drain. One example is staff time totaling 727 hours on a logo change. The old logo was a blue square with 18F in the lower-right-hand corner. The new logo, a black square with 18F centered and a different font, wasn’t worth the time and doesn’t look as good. for anyone else curious: (new) Black Logo: https://18f.gsa.gov/assets/img/logos/18f-logo.svg (old)…

They should have just updated the old logo with the new font

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#20

Post by hbosch »

pryelluw wrote: post #7

One example is staff time totaling 727 hours on a logo change. The old logo was a blue square with 18F in the lower-right-hand corner. The new logo, a black square with 18F centered and a different font, wasn’t worth the time and doesn’t look as good. How is that even possible?

Honestly that's a dumb one to cherry pick, because we only see the end result. If you figure a team of 6, for instance, working 30-40 hrs a week on branding for about a month, the time is easy to figure.

What's harder to understand externally is that there may have been 10, 20, or 40 logo designs that get explored, scrapped, edited, changed, saved, reverted... and sure, sometimes you end up pretty close to where you began. But that doesn't mean it was wasted time or effort.

Design often gets shit on when all you see is the beginning and end. The value is in the middle, which is done internally.

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