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Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

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Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#231

Post by epistasis »

afro88 wrote: post #190
xivzgrev wrote: post #5

They built / manage login.gov? Oh boy. It’s one thing if Twitter has bugs. It’s another thing if people have bugs while trying to login or signup to government services. Or hackers finding vulnerabilities and no one to fix them?

According to wikipedia[1] they incubated it, and it has since been run and maintained elsewhere. Same deal with cloud.gov (though that was an 18f prototype) In fact it looks like most of their projects were prototypes, incubations or partnerships with other agencies and departments. Seems like a modern digital agency / consultancy within the govt. I'm not sticking up for the decision to cut them (I think it's a great…

Which facts do you believe are not straight?

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#232

Post by hypeatei »

tsunego wrote: post #134
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…

Privatization isn't about eliminating human flaws but accountability and incentives. Private corporations face real consequences if they're inefficient: customers leave, profits drop, and they eventually fail. Government agencies, funded by taxpayers without alternatives, rarely face such direct pressures.

That is a feature, not a bug. Government is our safety net which has catastrophic consequences when it fails.

If you have issues with certain programs or funding, then that is handled by congress NOT the executive.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#233

Post by analog31 »

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…

>>> The difference is private companies that accumulate too much waste and useless things can fail and be replaced.

Like health care and higher education?

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#234

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

dzonga wrote: post #15

18f has(d) really smart people. who gave up higher wages in the private sector to serve the public. then idiots like musk come along. damage from musk n co will be monumental in the years to come.

> damage from musk n co will be monumental in the years to come.

That is the point.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#235

Post by alephnerd »

skissane wrote: post #227
alephnerd wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 signif…

You suggested Australia and Canada have something in common with the US in this area that Germany doesn’t - but when challenged you can’t actually name anything specific, you just fall back on vague generalities > IMO, the only large federations structurally comparable to Germany are probably France and Italy. Unlike Australia/Canada/Germany/US (among others), neither France nor Italy are federations, both are unitar…

> You suggested Australia and Canada have something in common with the US in this area that Germany doesn’t - but when challenged you can’t actually name anything specific

I didn't realize you explicitly asked for that.

In this case, it's the English Law Tradition, and alignment between US and Canadian administrative norms as being part of the same common market.

I recommend reading this paper about the differences in Administrative Procedure legislation (which includes federal employment rules and norms) in Germany versus the US [0]

Fundamentally, "Germany has a tendency to underestimate the importance of the administrative decision-making process while the US takes the procedure more seriously" [0]. That along with Germany's juristic legal tradition becomes the crux of the issue when comparing Germany versus the US, becuase our precedents are entirely different, leading to different causes for dysfunction.

In general, I think online Europeans need to stop comparing the US to their countries. The causes for our dysfunctions are different, and our entire legal, constitutional, and political traditions are VERY different because of a 300-500 year split.

[0] - https://academic.oup.com/icon/article/11/4/940/698721

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#236

Post by ctxcode »

austin-cheney wrote: post #169

Is there any evidence that government teams are more wasteful or less productive than commercial alternatives? How does spinning a government team into a government contract of a commercial vendor save the government money?

Private companies are required to do a good job and balance spending to stay alive. Goverment agencies can do the most horrible job for enormous amounts of money and just keep going.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#237

Post by nobodyandproud »

jisnsm wrote: post #191
hello_moto wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how govt contract works. Repeat providers will win almost all contracts because they know how to navigate the "red tapes" and they know the inner people. Competition? lol...

I am very aware of this, which is why I mentioned corruption in my comment, and how the only solution is to make the government smaller. Should have read the comment to the end.

A smaller government may cut the red tape, but it can only service a smaller number of client or citizens. Or offer far less.

Furthermore, I can point you to SCRUM teams that are small, but are wildly inefficient. Size isn’t the root cause of inefficiency.

The better take is why is the bidding process so opaque? Why the red tape and micromanaging?

Most importantly: Would this still lead to a better outcome than motivated, short-term government employees?

USDS was a 4 year(?) stint; I declined because I need stability in the private sector at this stage of my life and can’t move to DC, but if I were in my 20s I would’ve jumped at the chance.

Edit: Well, not now but in 2019/2020.

I can help you reason through the whys on the inefficiencies if you’re truly interested.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#238

Post by trial3 »

brookst wrote: post #36
trial3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but the core problem to me feels like “billionaires in charge of what should be government functions.” this is still that bad for that reason even if Cuban is funnier on Bluesky

This is the category / degree fallacy. We don’t get to choose a world where billionaires have no special power. The choice is whether to accept some good from billionaires, or to reject what good they can do because of the harm they do.

> This is the category / degree fallacy.

I have been reading about what this is (I have not encountered it before) and earnestly fail to see how.

> We don’t get to choose a world where billionaires have no special power. The choice is whether to accept some good from billionaires, or to reject what good they can do because of the harm they do.

If we're discussing fallacies, I'm getting tasting notes of False Dilemma. We, participants in society, can shape, define, and reject what "special powers" means. Not totally, and I imagine the royal we of HN commenters might disagree on how much or in what ways, but I believe it is possible.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#239

Post by atlgator »

gortok wrote: post #14
xivzgrev wrote: post #5

They built / manage login.gov? Oh boy. It’s one thing if Twitter has bugs. It’s another thing if people have bugs while trying to login or signup to government services. Or hackers finding vulnerabilities and no one to fix them?

login.gov is one of the few government services that as a private sector techie I'm in awe of. They really knocked it out of the park with login.gov, and I can only assume it was politics that had the IRS use ID.me instead of login.gov.

It could be either or both of two reasons: 1) Login.gov does not have identity verification. It appears like they do because most accounts are created via the Trusted Traveler programs. However, that system belongs to CBP and is not available to other agencies. ID.me has multiple different types of ID verification, including specialty affiliations like military/veterans, first responders, nurses, teachers. 2) ID.me has a larger pre-existing pool of vetted users. This means less new signups for IRS which translates to less help desk calls, etc.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#240

Post by dcow »

I feel like a lot of the discussion is beating around the bush or tangential.

The very simple cause of this wave of layoffs is in response to the “what did you do this week?” email. If you’ve been following closely, a week ago DOGE sent an email to many people, including suspected dead government workers, asking them to list in 5 bullets what they accomplished the prior week. Some people didn't respond after having the last week to do so. Some people protested with insubordinate responses. According to TFA the people let go were unable or unwilling to complete this simple task.

DOGE this DOGE that. At least in this instance it seems like a effective tactic was deployed and cuts were made based on observed performance.

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