Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 219 posts

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

#51

Post by Yhippa »

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)…

There's probably a legitimate story behind this right? This sounds like the randomizer IBM made for the TSA where the cost was shocking but was explained away by overhead or typical government costs.

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

#52

Post by chris_7 »

kyleblarson wrote: post #46
dangrossman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

that said, assuming you are working in the US, are you willing to work an extra few minutes over the course of the next year to generate the tax revenue for this?

When I work overtime, I don't get paid more...

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

#53

Post by cloakandswagger »

guessmyname wrote: post #33
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)…

This reminds me a time when I used to work closely with a design team in a web agency, it was very frustrating to work with them because every little modification to things like colors, sizes, buttons and the like would be accompanied with several hours of "design strategy" , time that the designers would waste thinking and prototyping new ideas for the corporate image of any of our clients, I say "waste" because mos…

It took a couple of experiences dealing with serious, fancy pants designers to convince me that most of them are charlatans.

Even something as simple as widening a button was stonewalled by "explorations", "design strategy meetings", "pattern library meetings", etc. The end result was getting even a single component mocked up took at least a week and was no better than what I could have come up with in 30 minutes.

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

#54

Post by spectrum1234 »

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)…

Assuming $125,000/employee and 2000 hours/year that logo cost $45437.50.

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

#55

Post by randomfool »

ecaron wrote: post #45

One piece of 18F that I've always appreciated is their published API standards - https://github.com/18F/api-standards . They spawned it off the frequently mentioned White House API standards, and it phrases a lot of the opinions well without being preachy. But more than anything else, this made me feel like there are real humans behind 18F. So I wish them all the best and hope this article (and ones like it) falls in…

I fully agree that they should be doing stuff like this... but I doubt it falls under billable hours.

With all the government outsourcing it's difficult to have a consistent stack. I have hopes that 18F brings some sanity.

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

#56

Post by maverick_iceman »

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?

Steve Jobs wannabes I guess.

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

#57

Post by aerovistae »

trendia wrote: post #28
ajju wrote: post #3

Did I misunderstand or is the story also - A government department was started with the ambitious goal of "zero budget" and this year with a 183 person team will have recovered 68.75% of its costs. And did we forget that fast growing startups don't usually break even either?

But fast growing startups are funded by private investors, not taxpayers.

And fast growing startups are usually working for private investors, not taxpayers.

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

#58

Post by [deleted] »

justinsaccount wrote: post #13

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.…

[deleted]

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

#59

Post by [deleted] »

guessmyname wrote: post #33
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)…

This reminds me a time when I used to work closely with a design team in a web agency, it was very frustrating to work with them because every little modification to things like colors, sizes, buttons and the like would be accompanied with several hours of "design strategy" , time that the designers would waste thinking and prototyping new ideas for the corporate image of any of our clients, I say "waste" because mos…

[deleted]

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

#60

Post by agravier »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #53
guessmyname wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me a time when I used to work closely with a design team in a web agency, it was very frustrating to work with them because every little modification to things like colors, sizes, buttons and the like would be accompanied with several hours of "design strategy" , time that the designers would waste thinking and prototyping new ideas for the corporate image of any of our clients, I say "waste" because mos…

It took a couple of experiences dealing with serious, fancy pants designers to convince me that most of them are charlatans. Even something as simple as widening a button was stonewalled by "explorations", "design strategy meetings", "pattern library meetings", etc. The end result was getting even a single component mocked up took at least a week and was no better than what I could have come up with in 30 minutes.

Not charlatans, but professional bikeshed painters :)
Post reply on HN