The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night • Hacker News Board

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#351

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

war1025 wrote: post #59

nooron wrote: post #44

I started a company that was asked to write a proposal to make what became the app that failed last night. I declined because it was outside of our core skillset. You can read my prior comments or look at my profile to validate this. If you want my perspective as someone who started a Democratic software company, you should keep reading. This app emerged from a mandate to make the caucus more accessible and transpare…

I don't know whether I heard correctly or if the number was accurate, but I heard someone throw out $60k as the amount paid for the app development this morning on the radio. That sounds like a lot of money to a lay-person, but assuming $100/hr, which seems like at least a reasonable ballpark rate, that breaks down to 600 man-hours, or 15 man-weeks. That is a very tight deadline to turn out a critical app like this.…

[deleted]

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#352

Post by JackRabbitSlim » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

I'm all about Hanlon's razor but naming the ticking time-bomb of a voting software startup "Shadow Inc." seems a bit too on the nose to be pure stupidity.

Everything about this reeks of a publicity stunt to "ruin" electronic voting in the public eye.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#353

Post by akhilcacharya » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

nooron wrote: post #44

I started a company that was asked to write a proposal to make what became the app that failed last night. I declined because it was outside of our core skillset. You can read my prior comments or look at my profile to validate this. If you want my perspective as someone who started a Democratic software company, you should keep reading. This app emerged from a mandate to make the caucus more accessible and transpare…

This is both true and why Mike Bloomberg is building one in-house.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#354

Post by chipotle_coyote » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

claudeganon wrote: post #337

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP wasn't being metaphorical in any sense, they were literally describing how caucuses work. If your first choice doesn't meet a qualifying threshold in your precinct, then you can switch your vote in the second round, and supporters of other candidates can literally try to convince you before that round. It all happens in the open with people literally crossing to different parts of the room to caucus for differ…

But the Iowa caucuses also has a delegate apportionment system that privileges rural voters over those in large cities, similar to the electoral college. It strains meaning to describe something designed to produce an undemocratic outcome as being more democratic than republican.

That's a real issue -- and one that seems like it's going to have an actual effect this time around, giving Buttigieg slightly more delegates than Sanders even though Sanders actually has slightly more support. I think the Iowa Caucus worked as designed, despite the collapse of the app, but just like the Electoral College, that doesn't mean the actual design is good!

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#355

Post by godelski » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:37 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #331

pas wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

70K is the median programmer income in the US. (Based on a very thorough let's look at the first thing Google regurgitates!) It should have been enough to fund a business analyst and an app developer for a few months. Plus Shadow Inc's overhead + profit. It's absolutely bonkers how shitty the industry is. A kid can throw together an app in a few days, but somehow 60K USD is not enough. That said I work in "consulting…

> 70K is the median programmer income in the US. (Based on a very thorough let's look at the first thing Google regurgitates!) BLS, which while not perfect has far better data than most other sources trying to do this independently, says $84,280 in 2018. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/... > It should have been enough to fund a business analyst and an app developer for a few months Probabl…

That same link has "Software Developers" at $105,590/yr[0]

[0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#356

Post by stronglikedan » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:38 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #348

rayiner wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caucuses are great. High information voters who have to publicly stand by their candidate, and persuade other members of their community to support their candidate. More on the “democracy” side of the equation than the “republic” side.

What about the Iowa Caucuses makes you believe these are "high information" voters? They often have nonsensical positions and ranked choices. They're committed voters, but that is not at all the same thing.

This [0] was my favorite "high information voter" story so far.

[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mayor-pete-buttigieg-gay-iowa-c...

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#357

Post by azernik » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:39 PM UTC

ihunter2839 wrote: post #111

nooron wrote: post #44

I started a company that was asked to write a proposal to make what became the app that failed last night. I declined because it was outside of our core skillset. You can read my prior comments or look at my profile to validate this. If you want my perspective as someone who started a Democratic software company, you should keep reading. This app emerged from a mandate to make the caucus more accessible and transpare…

Can you comment on whether the proposal was part of the the SBIR / STTR program? Just curious as to the scope of companies that were participants in the proposal process. As an aside - these instances of underfunded and underdeveloped services, specifically in the political sphere, are really painful reminders of the flip side to the idealistic technocratic future that I think a lot of folks around here assume to be…

Caucuses are run by the parties, not the government; it went through whatever podunk procurement process the Iowa Democratic Party has, not anything federal or even governmental.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#358

Post by azernik » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:42 PM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #314

nooron wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I appreciate your comment and I'm happy to share. It is very hard to make into a real business, very few people have succeeded. You do it because you believe in a cause or a candidate or a party. As far as why people don't sell to everyone, the above explains a lot. Another explanation is that political sales (which is different from true election tech, which is purchased by governments) are driven by trust and…

This is interesting and, yes, I do understand. Yet, another take on this is that groups (parties) would then rob themselves from perhaps working with or searching for the most capable of providers. I am not trying to diminish anyone at all, but I would think these kinds of party line attachments mean that not everyone ends-up with the most capable developers, particularly so if what drives this is passion rather than…

> but I would think these kinds of party line attachments mean that not everyone ends-up with the most capable developers

This is a real phenomenon, but not in the way you think. Democrats have historically had a tech edge, because the real talent leans left politically. Obama kind of killed that, but for a good cause - he diverted a lot of those politically-driven types into working directly for the federal government under the umbrella of USDS and 18F.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#359

Post by godelski » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:46 PM UTC

pas wrote: post #329

godelski wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean that's the kind of money you spend funding two interns for a few months. Is it a surprise that this app looks like it was designed by a few interns on a tight schedule?

70K is the median programmer income in the US. (Based on a very thorough let's look at the first thing Google regurgitates!) It should have been enough to fund a business analyst and an app developer for a few months. Plus Shadow Inc's overhead + profit. It's absolutely bonkers how shitty the industry is. A kid can throw together an app in a few days, but somehow 60K USD is not enough. That said I work in "consulting…

> It should have been enough to fund a business analyst and an app developer for a few months. Plus Shadow Inc's overhead + profit.

No. The median software developer makes ~$50/hr. Overhead is 2-3x (usually higher for a smaller company but we'll be generous). So company is charging $100/hr. At 60k that's a single developer working 15 weeks (10 if we're being realistic). But we know that it is at least two developers so that's 7 weeks (2 on our realistic scale).

> A kid can throw together an app in a few days,

Sure, but it doesn't matter if flappy bird crashes occasionally. Flappy bird doesn't need to communicate with other users. I know this app they built wasn't that complicated, but the kids that are pumping out apps in a few days are above average talent and probably working more than 8hrs in a day. You're comparing above average to what is already suspected to be below average (considering they are recent bootcamp graduates and have little experience).

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#360

Post by azernik » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #318

zacharycohn wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless they're A) very large, and B) selling commodities, a company that works with one party will not hired by the other party. The two parties have two completely different sets of infrastructure.

Maybe what I am thinking is that, if it is a real business with products that are agnostic any user would benefit from a much higher quality product. I don't know enough about software in politics to understand just how ridiculous this idea might be. Perhaps an example might serve as a better explanation of what I am thinking: Trello is a real company with a product that is agnostic. Politicians of any school of thou…

The essential factors [1] are:

* There are types of software that are politics-specific, and therefore do not exist until a party pays for it to be made.

* Politics is a zero-sum game: if you're funding software (either institutionally, or by being a tech worker who works below market wage For The Cause), you don't want it to be used by your political opponents.

So commodity stuff that already exists is bipartisan. Any application that is specific to political campaigning is highly partisan.

[1] There's also a secondary issue of data security for cloud products; parties maintain extensive voter files with things like past voting history, up-to-date contact information, and past contacts [1a]. They do not want this information falling into the hands of the opposing party, and so don't want their data touching any organization that might potentially have cross-partisan ties, or godforbid might have cotenancy for D and R data.

[1a] This is basically the king of all CRMs, and these days they might be able to reimplement it as a bunch of plugins on top of a commercial provider like Salesforce, but those only became available relatively recently, data migration would be nontrivial, and there's a substantial amount of politics-specific functionality that would need to be rewritten as plugins.