Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#351

Post by elif » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 6:02 PM UTC

trial3 wrote: post #16

hiddencost wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean Musk is carrying out a coup, and Cuban is trying to invest in some programmers. I think there's some day light here.

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

that's not true. the core problem is "billionaires destroying government functions"

in that light, cuban is doing the literal opposite by trying to save one.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#352

Post by notahacker » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 6:03 PM UTC

dcow wrote: post #250

notahacker wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 deem…

None of the individuals working for this agency could provide a list of 5 things they did the prior week, either. The subthread here was talking about waste generally I wasn’t intending to move any goalposts. Ignore fraud. I still think it’s unacceptable for government workers to be insubordinate or absent to the point where they can't provide a weekly standup update when asked. That’s inefficient waste in my book.

> None of the individuals working for this agency could provide a list of 5 things they did the prior week, either.

Elsewhere you have claimed this is stated in the article, despite the fact it doesn't state it in the article[1]. It's also already pretty well established that Elon bragged on his platform about "deleting" 18F long before sending out these messages to them and the rest of the federal government. So now you're moving the goalposts again to pretend that Elon's long-established desire to "delete" 18F actually amounts to justified dismissal for "insubordination"

If the best arguments you can muster for DOGE's actions are all in bad faith, perhaps DOGE is not doing a good job.

[1]the article merely notes that they received a second demand for standup updates mere hours before they were advised their entire department had been shut down, which if anything suggests DOGE isn't very good at coordinating what it's doing and that replying to those emails is pointless because you'll get fired anyway It also links to an article which confirms that they were fired because 18F "as been identified as part of this phase of GSA’s Reduction in Force (RIF) as non-critical", not for "insubordination:

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#353

Post by luckylion » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 6:04 PM UTC

surgical_fire wrote: post #304

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.

My experience of working in corporations in more than 2 decades, from startups to FAANG, is that those are riddled with mismanagement and poor decision making, be it for incompetence, egocentrism, ignorance, etc and so forth. The only difference is that corporations tend to be optimized for generating profits, all else be damned. I certainly wouldn't trust corporations with government functions.

It depends on what you consider government functions, but I'd be cautious as well.

And while the German's government eventual recognition that fax machines are no longer the state of the art is an extreme case, I believe it's exemplifies the problem. Private companies, both large and small, have done that much earlier.

Those profits they're chasing above all else are a powerful driver for innovation and optimization.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#354

Post by n3storm » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 6:04 PM UTC

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…

Reality at least in Europe is big companies come from big burguesse families and they know how to masquerade themselves in order to keep being attached to government (no matter the color). Like oligarchy in disguise.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#355

Post by notahacker » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 6:06 PM UTC

dcow wrote: post #340

notahacker wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> According to TFA the people let go were unable or unwilling to complete this simple task. TFA does not say this.

> Those impacted in the wee hours of Saturday morning also received emails late Friday from DOGE with the subject line, “What did you do last week? Part II.” They were asked first last last week. And then again on Friday. —— > According to Politico, the emails — prompting employees to list their weekly accomplishments by Monday — were widely distributed across multiple agencies, including the State Department, the IR…

Not a single word in that sentence about how every agency receives those emails indicates that the staff let go (i.e the entire 18F workforce) were "unable or unwilling to complete this simple task"

Though the fact that they were asked to submit a list of accomplishments by Monday and fired in the early hours of Saturday morning with a statement their department had been deemed "noncritical" is a pretty good indication that noncompliance had nothing to do with it...

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#356

Post by sarchertech » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 6:06 PM UTC

dcow wrote: post #256

nosianu wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This appears to be a targeted cut of insubordinate or redundant individuals. What a wild take! Only some of sooo many reports all over the media 5-6 days ago that you somehow missed: "Key US agencies tell staff not to answer Musk email on what they did last week" https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0qrj20g5vo "Elon Musk’s Federal Worker Emails: Agency Leaders Can Decide If Employees Must Reply, White House Says" ht…

Sounds like insubordination.

Most of the agency heads telling employees not to respond were just installed by the President within the last few weeks.

They answer directly to the President. The email was sent by someone at OPM who also answers directly to the President.

The President has issued no formal orders regarding these emails. He did issue an executive order telling employees to comply with DOGE requests but this email came from OPM not DOGE.

There whole thing is an unclear clusterfuck.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#357

Post by scintill76 » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 6:10 PM UTC

dcow wrote: post #322

scintill76 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, why don’t you write your interpretation, and explain how that quote from TFA means that the email came before any layoffs.

18F was let go yesterday morning, 1 March. 2nd “what did you do” email came Friday, 28, Feb. 1st “what did you do” email came Saturday 22 Feb.

I was incorrect, and you are right about the order of events in this case, although I don't believe TFA says these 18F employees didn't reply to the email. I noted in an edit that I accidentally pulled a quote from a different article. I believe the gist of what I and others are saying here is still true.

Some other points:

* The second email came "late Friday" and the layoffs happened hours later at 1 am on Saturday, so it's not reasonable to count the second email as a warning or genuine attempt to find the "good" employees. I'm guessing it was just blasted out and happened to land in their inboxes before the firing notice did.

* Based on https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/01/general-services-ad... it appears the entire 18F unit was cut, so this doesn't seem targeted or predicated on email responses. Also, I'm not a leader, but if 100% of my organization didn't comply with an order, cutting them all is probably a much less effective decision than trying to meet them half-way. I guess if they've truly been doing nothing for years, there would be no loss, but that seems unlikely to be true in most cases including 18F's.

* Your initial comment appeared to be speaking generally on DOGE cuts, so it is fair for us to be responding accordingly. 18F seems to have been pretty small, but part of the reason this story is interesting is everything else DOGE is doing. As we've said, plenty of cuts happened before and independent of any email. Personally I'm doubtful that responding does much, but I'd be interested in any reporting on employee's experiences or what DOGE is saying about responses and how it affects their decisions.

Like I said above, I don't think TFA mentioned 18F's responses and there's not really a good reason to assume that the layoffs were due to no response.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#358

Post by nickpinkston » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 6:10 PM UTC

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…

This can be true, but also many of these companies are themselves essentially monopolies that also don't face market pressure - such as Visa, Comcast, etc.

You can say this is due to corporatism, which is often true as well, but gov't regulation is required for natural monopolies.

This is to avoid issues like the early railroad boom where they hugely overbuilt, a lot of them went under and/or eventually coalesced into a few monopolies, which needed regulation to prevent them squeezing their customers to death.

The best markets are sensibly regulated. It's a balance, not a binary.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#359

Post by toast0 » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 6:12 PM UTC

specialp wrote: post #158

kingstoned wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's generally a myth that government employees are somehow receiving low total compensation and they could do better in the real economy. Here's one government employees providing stats and experiences about what it is like to work for the government: https://www.betonit.ai/p/the-joy-of-government-employment

It is exceedingly rare to make over 200k in govt. Most heads of agencies and other high level roles are GS-15 which tops out around 195k What you USED to get in exchange for less salary was stability as government jobs were viewed as less vulnerable to economic cycles and uncertainty. Now that value prop is gone

Governent jobs top out on salary, and generally offer a lower salary than similar jobs anyway, but...

Government jobs often have nicer health care plans than many corporate plans (but some corporate plans are very nice too).

Government jobs are still likely to have a defined benefit pension. Those are potentially a large deferred compensation, that can be hard to evaluate fiscally, but can be an amazing resource. If you can manage to get 20 years of Active Duty military, retirement benefits are pretty good, and there's nothing private sector that is close to that.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#360

Post by Jcowell » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 6:12 PM UTC

plagiarist wrote: post #185

microtonal wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is private companies that accumulate too much waste and useless things can fail and be replaced. Even if that is true, in some areas companies' interests strongly misalign with that of citizens. An insurance company earns more by rejecting customer declarations. An ISP earns more by giving customers less bandwidth for a higher price. A toll road company earns more by doing as little maintenance they ca…

The theory of capitalism leading to efficient markets makes a great deal of assumptions that are simply not true in the real world. Even for elastic goods that nobody needs to participate in at all, let alone an inelastic good like healthcare where people will pay pretty much anything for themselves or their family members to continue living.

I think it’s true , it just that sometimes companies become the market