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Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

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Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#101

Post by Jtsummers »

jayparth wrote: post #83
curiousllama wrote: post #31

This will fail not because it's a bad idea, but because the government will reject it. Contrary to popular belief, established universities do a very effective job of preparing tech talent for government jobs. The issues, which Schmidt seems to miss, are twofold: (1) the government, with few exceptions, is a TERRIBLE place to build effective tech skills. Slow, heavily outsourced, bureaucratic beyond belief, and low p…

I mean... "The Department of Innovative Technology" is kind of what the USDS is. It's ran by very competent people, and do short "tours of duty" with competent SV engineers instead of long-term, safe, bureaucratic jobs. Here's a podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvXN7fRTVds I think you're misinformed on the topic, but that's OK. I assumed it was a typical government agency until I got further information, and…

I'll reiterate my point from another post:

It is not a lack of talent, it is a lack of good governance/administration that causes most software/IT failures for the government. USDS is actually pretty cool, and they seem to be doing really great work. But they're a small part of the system. In order to actually improve software/IT within the government we need to fix a lot of small problems.

Here are some more:

Just the universal waste within the way government treats software acquisition. If you ran a private company and you had small teams (each less than 10) going out and individually buying a software system, say half of them end up buying small-team licenses for Visual Studio as an example, you'd want to murder someone. They could save 20-40% by combining all purchases under a common contract.

Or instead of hiring an actual system administrator, the new guy gets tasked with managing in-house servers. Oh, but it's not one person for an office of 1k, it's every small team of 5-15 people dedicating one person to manage 1-5 servers. Servers that could, mostly, be shared across teams and so instead of 100 admins you could probably get by with 10-20 full-time and trained admins, along with a fraction of the servers and a fraction of the software cost.

The US government does this all the time because there is little-to-no communication involved. What's hilarious(ly sad) is that I've seen this where the purchases went through the same purchasing officer. A bunch of teams all buying expensive (because of scale) licenses when they could've combined them into one joint contract. Millions wasted a year doing crap like this even in smaller branches.

Fix the crap like that and then USDS's model can become effective and universal. Until then, there is so much waste abounding within the way US government does software/IT that it will always be a joke.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#102

Post by nitrogen »

antimeridian wrote: post #67
bpodgursky wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the null hypothesis is more useful here; assume that NOWHERE builds tech skills until otherwise demonstrated. What you see: a bunch of tech startups founded by ex-Google, ex-FB, ex-Amazon employees. What you never see: hot tech startups founded by ex-government bureaucrats At very best/worst, you get beltway contractors who have "skills" at extracting money from the government. Those contractor firms NEVER en…

i don't know that I would use "founded a tech startup" as a good proxy for skill creation. perhaps the type of people who acquire tech skills in government are aren't necessarily primed to found a startup

To elaborate on this, it's conceivable that startups come from tech giants not because of tech skill, but rather because of confidence and connections.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#103

Post by nitrogen »

knzhou wrote: post #60
brlewis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a school rejects qualified applicants because there are too many, doesn't that indicate a shortage of that kind of school?

No, because school prestige is a positional good. This is like saying you can address the shortage of Olympic gold medals by just manufacturing tons of them.

But the point of school prestige, at least in tech, is to assess skill. If the available pool of raw talent is larger than can be funneled through prestigious schools, then there is a need for more schools.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#104

Post by bsanr2 »

curiousllama wrote: post #31

This will fail not because it's a bad idea, but because the government will reject it. Contrary to popular belief, established universities do a very effective job of preparing tech talent for government jobs. The issues, which Schmidt seems to miss, are twofold: (1) the government, with few exceptions, is a TERRIBLE place to build effective tech skills. Slow, heavily outsourced, bureaucratic beyond belief, and low p…

I wonder if you may be discounting the value of a pipeline that's presumably going to be substantially less expensive than going to a private university.

Perhaps one of the goals here is to flood the government tech sector with new personnel who have been indoctrinated to expect a certain culture, in such a way that the existing structure won't be able to resist changing. If you and your entire cohort have an n-year commitment, and all of you are saying, "No, this is too slow, don't outsource that we need to do it ourselves, that's not the right tech we need to use this," eventually something gives.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#105

Post by kxyvr »

duxup wrote: post #90
kxyvr wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not entirely true, but the devil is in the details. As an example, the Federal government employs thousands of physicians at the VA and, depending on specialty, they are paid significantly more than this. Last time I checked, they capped out at $400k: https://www.va.gov/OHRM/Pay/2020/PhysicianDentist/PayTables_... Anyway, the point is that the federal government can and does pay significantly more than the GS…

I remember a couple departments (including the NSA) complaining about the federal cap when it came to some IT projects, so I'm not sure it is a sure deal to get past that cap. The VA is a whole other land of bureaucracy that plays by its own rules.

Oh, I very much agree and they were most certainly capped at that organization. It's a major problem because and I very much agree with your original comment that there are better options now working for big tech.

I guess my point above is that feds can fix this if they truly wanted to. There's precedent for them hiring people for far more money than the regular GS rate when they need to. It would be impossible to hire a surgeon for $160k, but they need them, so they pay more. At the moment, the government doesn't feel they need to pay more, so they don't. I hope someday that will change and think it's important to educate and lobby the federal government to help them understand this and change their policy.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#106

Post by [deleted] »

jonwachob91 wrote: post #22
x87678r wrote: post #9

> funnel tech workers into government work Government work doesn't pay well, so it will never be as prestigious as Stanford or MIT. EDIT - previous title had the headline part where it said it will "rival Stanford and MIT"

Not everything in the world can be measured by pay. Sure, an FBI Criminal Profiler earns a tiny fraction of what a google dev earns. But one can take serial killers off the street, and the other just makes ads more annoying. A Social Worker earns almost nothing, but they get to help the most needy of people get the help they need. A FB engineer earns 10x the pay, but just makes ads more annoying. A teacher earns almo…

[deleted]

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#107

Post by jeffreyrogers »

Peter Thiel was thinking about starting a university at some point too. He decided not to because it was too hard. Seems like it could be a great idea though. Government at all levels in the US has a lot of problems and getting smart, reform-minded people into it would hopefully help correcting that.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#108

Post by curiousllama »

natalyarostova wrote: post #94
curiousllama wrote: post #31

This will fail not because it's a bad idea, but because the government will reject it. Contrary to popular belief, established universities do a very effective job of preparing tech talent for government jobs. The issues, which Schmidt seems to miss, are twofold: (1) the government, with few exceptions, is a TERRIBLE place to build effective tech skills. Slow, heavily outsourced, bureaucratic beyond belief, and low p…

Classic modern HN comment. The hard working person with a history of success who is trying a risky ambitious project will fail, because they didn't consider the few things a commentor instantly spotted as problems.

Yea, that's fair. I should - I do! - commend the effort.

Some good things here: (1) It's good to try to solve problems. (2) There is a shortage of tech talent in the country (3) Eric Schmidt is very smart. Sure as heck smarter than me.

Still - from my admittedly-limited vantage point, I can name a four people with degrees in public policy and CS (or similar) that tried and failed to get good jobs in government, so they took $150k+ tech jobs in the private sector instead. So seeing someone saying "the problem with government tech is one of pipeline" is jarring to say the least.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#109

Post by wolco »

bpodgursky wrote: post #56
Upvoter33 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"(1) the government, with few exceptions, is a TERRIBLE place to build effective tech skills. Slow, heavily outsourced, bureaucratic beyond belief, and low paid, there is very little creativity and variety in which to build unique technology, and no reward for the BS." Strong claim; links or citations to back it up? (Not necessarily doubting you, but it sounds a bit like a right-wing talking point, and hence I ask) Y…

I think the null hypothesis is more useful here; assume that NOWHERE builds tech skills until otherwise demonstrated. What you see: a bunch of tech startups founded by ex-Google, ex-FB, ex-Amazon employees. What you never see: hot tech startups founded by ex-government bureaucrats At very best/worst, you get beltway contractors who have "skills" at extracting money from the government. Those contractor firms NEVER en…

In fairness getting vc money for government contracts is the problem not the employees who start companies.

Long lead times don't go well with the pump and dump vc funding model.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#110

Post by jeffreyrogers »

Animats wrote: post #100

Who's supposed to fund this? Is Schmidt putting up the money himself? Is this to be a real college, with accreditation, or something like "Singularity University" or Udacity or DeVry?

I believe it is supposed to be a real college. I've seen it mentioned a few other places informally and that was the impression I got.
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