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Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

breakingdefense.com

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Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#251

Post by satvikpendem »

ebiester wrote: post #116
uticus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, devil's advocate would point out COBOL in 60s was written with a lot more focus on lasting in general. They didn't largely have the same general attitude of 'we iterate quickly with our script kiddies' as is prevalent today. Not that all software from then was wonderful. Or that COBOL magically guarantees great code. But, on the flip side, you can't say the code base isn't battle-hardened (to various liter…

I can build you a team using today's (quality: average B2B startup) programmers and today's methodologies that will write software for 40 years. It will just cost twice as much as the team that iterates quickly. It will cost more because I will spend more money on business analysis up front. I will spend more money writing automated tests. Most importantly, I will maintain my own toolchain and libraries or pay someon…

> using today's (quality: average B2B startup) programmers and today's methodologies that will write software for 40 years.

I'm not sure I would trust these people over those of the past, regardless of what they say they will accomplish, Chesterton's Fence, and the Lindy Effect, and all.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#252

Post by satvikpendem »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #158
ebiester wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can build you a team using today's (quality: average B2B startup) programmers and today's methodologies that will write software for 40 years. It will just cost twice as much as the team that iterates quickly. It will cost more because I will spend more money on business analysis up front. I will spend more money writing automated tests. Most importantly, I will maintain my own toolchain and libraries or pay someon…

The trick is to use JS. (Not anything that compiles to it) It will be guaranteed to run in 100 years time. Any other language can die or have incompatibility issues. Over that timespan.

> It will be guaranteed to run in 100 years time.

This is never guaranteed. How do you know that nothing will change in JS land in 10 years, much less 100? You don't, that's how.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#253

Post by satvikpendem »

kube-system wrote: post #190
quickthrower2 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick is to use JS. (Not anything that compiles to it) It will be guaranteed to run in 100 years time. Any other language can die or have incompatibility issues. Over that timespan.

I can't tell if I'm being Poe's Law'd. JS engines are a moving target and have been ever since it was called LiveScript.

Just use LISP!

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#254

Post by johnnyanmac »

satvikpendem wrote: post #251
ebiester wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can build you a team using today's (quality: average B2B startup) programmers and today's methodologies that will write software for 40 years. It will just cost twice as much as the team that iterates quickly. It will cost more because I will spend more money on business analysis up front. I will spend more money writing automated tests. Most importantly, I will maintain my own toolchain and libraries or pay someon…

> using today's (quality: average B2B startup) programmers and today's methodologies that will write software for 40 years. I'm not sure I would trust these people over those of the past, regardless of what they say they will accomplish, Chesterton's Fence, and the Lindy Effect, and all.

I imagine that is exactly what:

>spend more money on business analysis up front.

Entails. But sure, if the government doesn't want to pay for that quality, they can spend just as much or more resurrecting Cobol devs in cryo-stasis in 2099

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#255

Post by wolverine876 »

Mizza wrote: post #210
wolverine876 wrote: post #104

The US Department of Defense was not audited until six years ago, when it began a project to make their organization auditable. From the start, it was expected to take longer than six years: You are looking at a potential new job. A large company wants you to lead a project on their audits. Here is the situation: They are large and complex - on a different order of magnitude, possibly the largest, most complex organi…

I don't know anything about either the military or accounting domains, but it's kind of a fun problem to think about solving. What data structure do you organize the problem into? Is it a tree? Depth first search? Breadth first search? Maybe you just pick a point at random and walk from there.

One data structure, one solution, for the entire problem seems like an unlikely path. Probably I would see how to break it into smaller, individual, more manageable audits, which seems to be what they did.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#256

Post by johnnyanmac »

sneed_chucker wrote: post #240
jongjong wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WTF. I worked on some high exposure projects as a senior dev and never a final offer above $130k USD. Even after haggling hard at a company I had been at for 3 years and they told me I was their top, highest paid engineer and it led me to quit. Then I got approached by Facebook to work in London HQ and the offer they were dangling was £100GBP which was about $130k USD. Highest offer I ever got before I even got to th…

Why would you assume that? Look up levels.fyi $250k total comp isn't even particularly high at one of the big companies.

gotta keep in mind that this sounds like pre-COVID times, and even big companies weren't going to pay San Fran Salaries to low CoL areas.

It definitely isn't easy to find those numbers if your CoL doesn't require them. You'd need to move to those areas.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#257

Post by johnnyanmac »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #168
ramilefu wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on where you live. An “experienced engineer” is going to make a lot less if they live in Mississippi than if they were in California. 250k for the former is likely “top dollar”.

People on HN are convinced if you don't live in California maximizing your salary, you're not capable of doing so. Highlighted in the sibling comment: "you will get whatever candidates decided to live in Mississippi" As if top talent never decides to live in Mississippi and accept 250k/year as their salary ceiling...

People also seem to forget that there are "cost of living adjustments" for a reason. Many companies will fight and suggest that you don't need salary X if you don't live in place Y.

It's not impossible and $250k is nowhere near the ceiling. But you're not going to find those jobs on a causal LinkedIn search like you would in California.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#258

Post by herewulf »

bumby wrote: post #226
bastawhiz wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet hundreds of thousands of companies pass the same audits. The call for audits came from ridiculous amounts of misreporting and waste. Accounting systems that can't do accounting and deal with trillions of taxpayer dollars should not have the goalposts moved. A 0.001% error in a trillion dollar system is ten million dollars. That's taxpayer money that could fix derelict bridges or pay for thousands of children…

I agree with you, but I’d venture to guess most of those companies would use “combat” in that sense as an analogy. The DoD does not.

Yet the DoD's bureaucracy is neither combat nor inspection ready.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#259

Post by teaearlgraycold »

askonomm wrote: post #18
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I don’t know if what the government is doing is the best long term decision. But the US’s national debt could be compared to a mortgage. And the government’s income is massive so they can be in trillions of debt without it exceeding what they can reasonably pay off (never paying it all off, but paying off individual loans). So by your analogy, is it actually bad for a normal person to be in debt? Normal people hav…

Has the number ever decreased? As in, have they actually paid things off? Without actual numbers, U.S feels increasingly like a high-school bully who borrows money and then threatens with violence when that money is wanted back.

You pay off pieces. They acquire more than they pay off, though. And their income keeps going up so it’s not necessarily a problem to do that. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean the debt they’re taking on is for good. But the rough idea of expanding the debt with the GDP seems reasonable to me.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#260

Post by johnnyanmac »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #159
thelastgallon wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incentives only work on low-skilled labor that is quantifiable. Eg. more money for flipping more burgers. It is not a settled science paying people a lot more will automagically solve problems. People crave Autonomy, Mastery & Purpose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbR2V1UeB_A What is definitely going to happen is you will attract the cowboys who have convinced themselves and can convince you to pay top dollar. The…

>People crave Autonomy, Mastery & Purpose I'm not a sack of chemicals whose desires can be reduced down to some pithy pseudo-scientific Maslowian quip. The only thing I crave from my job is cash so I can take care of me and my family. 250k/yr for a COBOL position would suit that end just fine. You can keep your autonomy, mastery, purpose, and all the other foofoo, just hand me the check so I can be on my way.

>The only thing I crave from my job is cash so I can take care of me and my family

sounds like purpose, of which you need mastery of some skillset to earn your autonomy to furfill.

That said, I'm sure there's much easier ways to earn 250k than untangling a governement codebase. Not that they are offering that to begin with.

>just hand me the check so I can be on my way.

Yeah, you probably wouldn't pass clearance with that attitude if we're being frank.

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