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

Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 454 posts

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#211

Post by notahacker »

dcow wrote: post #127
bayindirh wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's corruption and is universally bad. That's nothing to do with efficiency (remember the E in DOGE). Let's not move the goalposts, shall we?

I’m not moving goalposts, that’s what DOGE is attacking. It’s 100% part of efficiency. And it’s absolutely happening. DOGE is addressing “fraud, waste, and abuse”.

This thread discusses DOGE laying off a small agency that made useful online tools for people to access government functions at much lower costs than private contractors were previously charging the government. It is not obvious that this is an example of "fraud, waste and abuse". Other decisions they have made include laying off anyone unfortunate enough to be on a probationary period because they were recently deemed deserving of promotion or someone recently decided their role was necessary and they were the best candidate, and removing people responsible for nuclear safety before grudgingly admitting they might have been premature in firing people without finding out what they're doing first.

This is all stuff DOGE is actually attacking, not hypothetical 100B NGO donation of which 95% had gone to politicians which they pointedly haven't discovered. Although given the current track record for "savings" they have published, if they did "discover it" we'd probably find that it was just an error in the output of their GPT-authored PDF scraper...

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#212

Post by ctxcode »

consumer451 wrote: post #174
modeless wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is private companies that accumulate too much waste and useless things can fail and be replaced. The exception is companies propped up by government regulation. The problem with modern big companies is that the exception has become the rule. Regulation is so pervasive it's become a "what the hell is water" situation. People don't even recognize that the dysfunctional companies are protected from failur…

> The difference is private companies that accumulate too much waste and useless things can fail and be replaced. The US healthcare system is evidence that this is an overly simplistic view. In a not for profit healthcare insurance system, every dollar not spent on patient care is considered waste, and we work to decrease it. In a for profit healthcare insurance system, every dollar not spent on patient care is consi…

Non profit: Every dollar not spent on patient can be donated a NGO and then laundered into your own pockets.

For profit: While company A keeps the profit, company B lowers its prices instead. Now customers are going to company B instead of A.

Im not saying that this is how it's done, but in the real world, things are not that simple.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#213

Post by nobodyandproud »

dcow wrote: post #86
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is at the root here an ideological presupposition that profit (and competition) is the only real motivation that produces quality or efficiency. Community service as a motivation is actually extremely strong, but becoming more and more invisible in public discourse. With expected results. Which is strange from a nation that is constantly proclaiming its "Christian" foundations? I have many friends (and a spouse…

They shouldn’t be taking pay cuts, for one. The government should be paying competitively and fairly.

How would this happen? More taxes? More government bonds to increase the national debt (an irresponsible, conservative favorite)?

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#214

Post by wbl »

modeless wrote: post #68
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #19

Privatization is what a lot of people believe is the answer, thinking that there is so much waste and useless things the Federal government does. These people must have never worked at a large corporation. I have a relative in the federal government and we would share stories because the dysfunctions are basically the same. Any large organization of humans working uses a pyramid organization since like the middle age…

The difference is private companies that accumulate too much waste and useless things can fail and be replaced. The exception is companies propped up by government regulation. The problem with modern big companies is that the exception has become the rule. Regulation is so pervasive it's become a "what the hell is water" situation. People don't even recognize that the dysfunctional companies are protected from failur…

Government absolutely fixes things that aren't doing their job. However typically the job needs to keep getting done in that whole process.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#215

Post by afro88 »

envy2 wrote: post #136

This is exactly what Trump and Musk would want, privatization of what should be (and were) government services. No one — and I mean no one — should profit from the provision of what should be core government services, like tax filing or health care.

They were an agency / consultancy. So much digital work in Australia is done by consultancies (deloitte etc). The idea is they go to tender for each project to utilise the mechanism of competition for efficiency, but in reality the tenders usually go to the incumbent who over charges them.

A consultancy (maybe funded by Cuban) will get this work that 18f was doing and in 2-3 years they will be grossly overcharging and this move will be for nought.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#216

Post by skissane »

lesuorac wrote: post #202
skissane wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Federal government employees cannot make more than the VP ($235,100). So if you know a role that pays more than that it pays less in the federal government. (There is some hand wavey-ness around locale pay and stuff but we're not talking 2x) Medical specialists (certain types thereof) and surgeons employed by the federal government (VA, DOD, etc) commonly earn $3xx,xxx or even $4xx,xxx - which is less than they’d g…

VA Clinicians are exempt from the cap - https://www.veterans.senate.gov/services/files/3512D245-DA89...

Not just VA, I also believe DOD civilian physicians

DOD and PHS uniformed physicians get base pay per military pay scales, but allowances/bonuses/etc push that significantly higher, although still not as high as civilian pay rates

IHS base pay, like VA, maxes out at $400k. I believe this is due to a legal provision that says no federal employee can get more base pay than the President

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#217

Post by alephnerd »

skissane wrote: post #205
alephnerd wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has issues as well becuase it's been a de facto austerity state since 2009 due to their debt break, but the American administrative structure is very different from Germany's, so it's an unfair comparison in either direction. The only countries remotely similar to the US might be Canada and Australia.

> but the American administrative structure is very different from Germany's, so it's an unfair comparison either direction. > The only countries remotely similar to the US might be Canada and Australia. Like the US, Canada and Australia are federations - but Germany is too. Unlike the US, Canada, Australia and Germany all have parliamentary rather than presidential systems So I’m not sure what you are suggesting tha…

All federations aren't equal, and administrative procedures and laws are very distinct country to country.

> but I doubt either makes a big difference to government employment

It does, because employment law (and any other form of law) is largely built on top of a mixture of administrative policy acts along with past rulings and cases.

Fundamentally, Germany and the US are not comparable becuase there are very significant differences between past case law along with administrative hiring procedures.

IMO, the only large federations structurally comparable to Germany are probably Italy, and maybe France or Spain.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#218

Post by luckylion »

alephnerd wrote: post #81
luckylion wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience as a consultant with both (local) administrations (in Germany) and much larger corporations is that the corporations weren't even close to being as dysfunctional. I'm certain there are great parts of government, but I've never experienced it, and all I'm hearing from friends who work at the federal level is that it's no different there.

Germany ain't the US. Organizational culture in one might be different than the other.

I'm sure they are. Yet the arguments for why government is doing just fine and large corporations are at least as bad are very similar, so there seem to be some similarities as well.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#219

Post by 6stringmerc »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #94

D+ grade headline. His full offer and message: “If you worked for 18F and got fired, Group together to start a consulting company,” wrote Cuban. “It’s just a matter of time before DOGE needs you to fix the mess they inevitably created. They will have to hire your company as a contractor to fix it. But on your terms. I’m happy to invest and/or help.”

Sounds like Cuban is still doing his best to pivot into politics (AGAIN) and his “rah rah” quote here with no functional action / money up front fits the profile.

As a Dallasite I remember very clearly Mark was angling to run for office before the news came out his Mavericks work culture was rife with sexual deviance and favoritism / help to sweep things under the rug and it tanked his ambitions. Totally serious about this.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#220

Post by nobodyandproud »

moogly wrote: post #187
jisnsm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. The government will have several providers to choose from, which will have to compete in price. If the prices are still inflated, we are talking government corruption, which is yet another reason to make the government smaller, not bigger.

> compete in price Which equals worse service. I've yet to across a privatization project that improved anything for the end user, and I lived through a bunch in the 90s. Interregional rail, public transport, postal, telecom... They were all failures.

I can’t think of one privatization effort in the US that improved services, or kept services steady at a lower cost.

There may be one but it’s certainly the exception.

Though it greatly enriches those helming the effort.

Post reply on HN