Do people know age of founding fathers or USA?
Between 26 and 81.
The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
591–600 of 1001 posts
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#592I don’t know how this will shake out, but I do worry that these 19-24 year olds, some of whom are known to HN for other achievements, are putting themselves in real legal jeopardy. Edit: by the way, this post isn’t off-topic. It is about the activities of the US Digital Service (now known as Doge), and the exploits of young hackers who came up through top tech companies. It has implications for information systems se…
From a journalistic standpoint, it's entirely fair to report on these 19-24 year olds, and it is not doxxing to do so. They are quite literally now involved in the US government, and are consenting adults making the rational decision to involve themselves in real legal jeopardy.
So are public teachers. But I don’t think you would respond the same way.
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#593Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…
The age is irrelevant. What IS relevant is the fact that the engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project were all qualified and legally hired and authorized to do what they did. This is NOT true for DOGE which has no legal right to the federal payment system and no legal authority to stop any payments congress has approved.
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#594And here I thought they'd actually consider my resume. They didn't even bother looking. When DOGE first called for people to apply, they did it on X and said we can send a message to their account on X.
So I actually got excited about tackling waste, and wrote this cover letter:
https://magarshak.com/resume-cover-letter.php
Little did I know this admin was going to be shutting down datasets from data.gov and other crap. I really tried to bring something positive into it, but it's just more of the same. They sidelined Vivek too.
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#595Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII. Feels like Chesterton fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.
I'm not sure why people are focusing on the engineers here. The fish rots from the head. Elon is the definition of Dunning-Kruger. He seems smart (maybe) when he's talking about something you know nothing about but as soon as he talks about something you do know about, the illusion quickly shatters. Many here learned this after the Twitter takeover when he started talking about software and technical infrastructure.…
It’s the definition of failing up: you sin bullshit for long enough, and make big enough changes, that you get your next job before you’re accountable for the consequences.
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#596If DOGE wants to be effective it really should be going after the big ticket items like medicare or defense, some estimates have medicare at 40% fraud and waste and the DoD can't even pass an audit so no one really knows what %. And that is just getting what we've paid for, not even evaluating if what we've paid for is effective. Of course to do that would require actual coalition building, hard choices that upset vo…
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Musk is a known liar and you shouldn't believe anything he says.
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#597Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…
The age is irrelevant. What IS relevant is the fact that the engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project were all qualified and legally hired and authorized to do what they did. This is NOT true for DOGE which has no legal right to the federal payment system and no legal authority to stop any payments congress has approved.
Hilarious irony here, given that these qualified and legally hired people built the most morally reprehensible weapon in history
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#598Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII. Feels like Chesterton fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.
Never appropriate. The actions are entirely unconstitutional. If the US decided to disband USAID it would have to be an act of congress, unelected friends of the president don’t come close to being able to make that call.
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Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#599Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#600Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII. Feels like Chesterton fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.
Agreed - it’s arguably as much a risk-on behavior as the excessive spending they’re warning about. They are using a similar cut-first mentality to what has been done in the private sector, but in the govt there are more considerations than the direct economic impacts of the actions. In an ideal world the better route is likely to spend more time on analysis before making cuts and to try and reduce variance, but it’s…
Or, for that matter, before the judiciary can act as a balance. Establishing “facts on the ground”.