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

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#401

Post by s1artibartfast » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 8:52 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #326

s1artibartfast wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you want to actually improve governance (and we really should because it is in fact often quite dysfunctional), you don't come in with the notion that it is intrinsically rotten to the core and the very idea of governance is flawed by nature. There are really two type if inefficiencies being conflated here. That of the workers, and that of the organizations. For the organization, firing does nothing. You have to…

For the first time in a long time the GOP has control over all branches of gov't. So if there were policy and organizational changes they wanted to make, they now have the power to do it, through passing laws. But they're not doing that. Which really draws attention to the fact that it's not the manner in which government is being run that is a problem to them. It's government itself.

I agree that the GOP has legislative control. It'll be interesting to see what they do with it in the coming years, if anything. Destroying and undermining departments through the executive is easier than redesigning it through the legislative, and I suspect this is why we are seeing the current actions.

I'm not sure what you mean by the following statement:

>manner in which government is being run that is a problem to them. It's government itself.

Where are you drawing the distinction? I imagine someone could disagree with both what government does and what it is.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#402

Post by notahacker » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 9:01 PM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #362

notahacker wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading every thread related to DOGE reveals the same pattern. Defenders of DOGE, being unable to amount any defence for actual actions the thread is highlighting, have to construct the straw man of arguing that anybody suggesting those actions are spectacularly inept and counterproductive it is thinks that government is unimprovable. P.S. Have plenty of experience selling to inefficient public and private sector ent…

The straw man is pushing the idea that nothing should ever be touched because all of it is essential. Somewhere between don't touch anything and destroy it all is the truth. Finding and fixing problems of this type, whether it is in the private or public domains is difficult and ugly. It never looks good. It never feels good. That's just reality. BTW, I keep reading and hearing derogative terms like "script kiddies"…

> The straw man is pushing the idea that nothing should ever be touched because all of it is essential

Nobody ever said that. They suggested that a bunch of people with no idea how anything in government worked or even the basic numeracy skills to tell the difference between a million and a billion dishing out firings with zero knowledge of who they were firing and bragging about it (with an occasional "oops maybe we shouldn't have fired the guys protecting us from nukes or Ebola) didn't look like a solution. So yes, it's a straw man entirely of your own construction.

I mean, if you're sincerely interested in cutting stuff that's absolute waste you'd maybe start with not charging Secret Service personnel 5x the market rate to stay at places like Mar-a-Lago for a cool $2m income for the president's personal business, not with firing people who create tax filing tools.

> BTW, I keep reading and hearing derogative terms like "script kiddies" and "20 year olds". What's happened to diversity and inclusion?

The government banned it, remember. In favour of "meritocracy". So I'm wondering what merit an 18 year old with two internships (fired from one) and no professional experience has demonstrated in the auditing of government employees? I think there's also a magical ability bar, and I'd set that a bit higher than being unable to tell the difference between a million and a billion when summing up their achievements in a public facing communication. Probably a whole pool of candidates out there that have never tried to procure DDoS attacks; most otherwise-equally-unqualified 18 year olds haven't never mind most people who understand how to audit government departments or at least how to read a balance sheet. But yeah, it does look a whole lot like DEI for people that would definitely have to delete their social media to get a regular job. You like DEI now the beneficiaries are unqualified edgelords rather than qualified people who are black or female?

> Write a check right now for $50K to the federal government to keep the employees being fired

As I understand it, the topic is Mark Cuban proposing a bigger check to them...

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#403

Post by ehutch79 » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 9:16 PM UTC

macbem wrote: post #395

weebull wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never rejoin under somebody that's already fired you. They are being forced to do it and will fire you again at the first chance. Only go back if the management has changed. In this case, that means "If doge is gone".

that's not always the case. I've seen situations where managers were forced to lay people off due to a company decision. When the company stabilized in a few months, managers reached out to these fired and they happily joined back. It's all a matter of treating people with empathy and honesty even in bad scenarios. That being said, this is most likely not one of these cases.

That’s different than firing people outright.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#404

Post by jopicornell » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 9:21 PM UTC

tmoertel wrote: post #209

consumer451 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> In a not for profit healthcare insurance system, every dollar not spent on patient care is considered waste, and we work to decrease it. That’s cute. But the reality is often closer to this version: In a not for profit healthcare insurance system, every dollar not spent on patient care is considered waste, so we give it to ourselves and find a way to call it patient care.

That's not how it works in countries with fully subsidized healtcare. It seems you are biased towards some intents that have been done in USA to subsidize some part, in a perverse, privatized and corrupt system.

In Spain it is the privatization of the healthcare that is "given to themselves and call it patient care", making politician friends (and politicians themselves) richer and corrupt, and selling it as a way to "fix the healthcare" that they are breaking.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#405

Post by TFYS » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 9:25 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…

With private companies there's a lot of inefficiency that comes from having to have competition. Without competition you'll have monopolies, and combined with the profit motive those are a disaster. But to enable competition you need to have multiple organizations doing exactly the same thing. That's a lot of unnecessary "overhead cost" that you get by having duplicate products, duplicate management, duplicate HR, duplicate everything. You also have to build a brand, do marketing and other competition related things that don't actually contribute to the product itself and which would be mostly unnecessary without competition. Add to all that the overhead cost that is profit and the amount of waste in a public organization whose goal is not profit and that doesn't need to compete doesn't sound so bad.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#406

Post by latentcall » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 9:33 PM UTC

croes wrote: post #20

mharrig1 wrote: post #3

So Mark Cuban wants to lean into exactly what DOGE is pushing by putting himself in the middle of the Governmental to Private shift? That doesn't surprise me and gives more evidence that Cuban is not dissimilar to Musk, just that he has much better PR.

The question is what would you do if you were Cuban?

Perfect my rope vieja recipe and open a sandwich food truck as a side business.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#407

Post by moogly » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 9:36 PM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #257

nobodyandproud wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

ahem SpaceX. No Musk fan, but that company has been doing a real bang-up (literally) job of developing affordable launch systems. I think the SLS is a disaster, and I suspect is very much in DOGE's crosshairs. As always, "it depends" is really where the truth lies. There doesn't seem to be anyone that is "always right," or "always wrong." It's the extremists that believe that there is "always right/wrong," that cause…

Is that the same thing though?

Lots of private for-profit cooks involved in SLS. That's the other issue common with privatization: way too easy to blame someone else/each other in the chain of subcontractors.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#408

Post by reaperducer » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 9:38 PM UTC

JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #164

xivzgrev wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think they’re similar at all. Musk is cutting things left and right, creating large messes and giving himself hand outs. He is making things less efficient (vs more). Cuban sees the mess, and an opportunity to make some money while also providing value to the government. I guess they’re similar in taking advantage of the moment and looking to make money, but I don’t see how Cuban’s proposal is destructive, un…

An opportunity to provide value to the government by replacing their own service with an inevitably more expensive one which can be recontracted out to whoever suits the interests of a specific administration with minimal pushback. It's not Musk's ideal scenario I'm sure, but he'd be an awful lot more happy with it as the new status quo than what was there before.

"Replacing" sounds like he's taking it away. It's already gone.

He's resurrecting it.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#409

Post by surgical_fire » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 9:39 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #353

surgical_fire wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

They are also a powerful driver for exploitation both of employees and of the general public.

Be careful with what you wish for. I certainly prefer dealing with a public sector that still operate on fax machines but that still may fundamentally work for the public good (as inefficient as it may be), than with a corporation that would bleed me dry if it would means some asshole CEO makes a few extra bucks in his annual comp.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#410

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 9:40 PM UTC

moogly wrote: post #407

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ahem SpaceX. No Musk fan, but that company has been doing a real bang-up (literally) job of developing affordable launch systems. I think the SLS is a disaster, and I suspect is very much in DOGE's crosshairs. As always, "it depends" is really where the truth lies. There doesn't seem to be anyone that is "always right," or "always wrong." It's the extremists that believe that there is "always right/wrong," that cause…

Is that the same thing though? Lots of private for-profit cooks involved in SLS. That's the other issue common with privatization: way too easy to blame someone else/each other in the chain of subcontractors.

It will be interesting to see what happens with SLS. I guarantee that Musk wants it fed into the shredder, but lots of senators and congresscritters rely on its pork.