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Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#141

Post by acdha »

spectrum1234 wrote: post #54
lsmarigo wrote: post #10

Activities that can’t be billed to other agencies are another drain. One example is staff time totaling 727 hours on a logo change. The old logo was a blue square with 18F in the lower-right-hand corner. The new logo, a black square with 18F centered and a different font, wasn’t worth the time and doesn’t look as good. for anyone else curious: (new) Black Logo: https://18f.gsa.gov/assets/img/logos/18f-logo.svg (old)…

Assuming $125,000/employee and 2000 hours/year that logo cost $45437.50.

The standard rule is to double the rate for staff to account for overhead - healthcare, retirement, paid leave, etc. If they're paying a GS-15 staffer $125k I'd be surprised if the effective net cost is significantly less than $250/hour – and that's probably a big win compared to a contractor charging you $250 for someone making $90k.

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#142

Post by [deleted] »

mdasen wrote: post #82
tyre wrote: post #25

I don't care if 18F makes money, and in some cases it may make sense for them not to. In a perfect market, they would be able to sell their services at the same price as the value of those services. So if they build a system for the Veterans Administration (VA) that saves $1 million, they should get $1 million for it. Their EOY revenue would reflect their value created. But they are actually selling to themselves. Th…

Ultimately, the issue is whether 18F is more effective than other means and accurate accounting is important to that end. Let's say that the VA gets bids to create a new system for something. 18F says they can do it for $900k and ContractorX says they can do it for $1M. 18F gets the contract and produces a system that cost the VA $900k. Let's say the system cost taxpayers an additional $1M that isn't billed to the VA…

[deleted]

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#143

Post by epynonymous »

tyre wrote: post #25

I don't care if 18F makes money, and in some cases it may make sense for them not to. In a perfect market, they would be able to sell their services at the same price as the value of those services. So if they build a system for the Veterans Administration (VA) that saves $1 million, they should get $1 million for it. Their EOY revenue would reflect their value created. But they are actually selling to themselves. Th…

tax dollars, down the drain, was the logo worth that much to change? they need to be more nimble and thrifty

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#145

Post by kuschku »

wavefunction wrote: post #76
justinsaccount wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new logo looks like something you would come up with if you needed a placeholder image for the real logo.

For the US Federal Government, it's fairly revolutionary.

Other governments spend less and get more impressive results http://www.schleswig-holstein.de/SiteGlobals/StyleBundles/Bi...

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#146

Post by jessaustin »

newjersey wrote: post #126
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends, will they use private email servers?

I don't have any credibility or knowledge to talk about the exact current issue at hand but don't we at hn pine over the beautiful past where email was distributed instead of going between Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Google? A private email server isn't bad by definition, is it? Perhaps we should try to help the "ordinary" person keep their servers secure?

It's bad when its purpose is the evasion of lawful public oversight, e.g. by FOIA requests.

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#147

Post by jkingsbery »

Whether or not it's worth the money, many true startups that lose that much money die out. The threat of dying off if the company can't figure out how to get sufficient revenue is one major source of creativity in startups. So, it's just another government agency.

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#148

Post by kuschku »

personjerry wrote: post #30
bsimpson wrote: post #9

> The new logo, a black square with 18F centered and a different font, wasn’t worth the time and doesn’t look as good. That was a really odd injection of opinion to read in what appears to be a news piece.

A surprising number of news pieces actually end up giving you some sort of opinion. As a made-up example, a news article on Samsung's falling stock might focus on its Note 7 failures, making the assumption (and thus giving the reader the impression) that the mobile phone is the main cause of the company's decreasing revenues, when in fact the company's general electronic components sales have been dying for months. B…

> This sort of "opinion" is far more difficult to notice, but still exists in reporting in the form of attempting to speculate on the reasons behind the facts.

But that’s how it’s usually marked – as a seperate, independent part of the article, marked opinion or speculation, or by putting it in context.

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#150

Post by zomg »

18f? at least she's legal.

anyway, what a gigantic, steaming pile of shit idea this is.

this business was doomed from the start because our government doesn't operate with an eye towards profitability because NO ONE is incentivized to do so!

so they're $30M+ in the red and are bringing in a "third party" (read: PRIVATE SECTOR CONSULTANTS) to figure this clusterfuck out?

this stories BEGS the question: does this country have a REVENUE problem or a SPENDING problem?

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