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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

#161

Post by wan23 »

kingstoned wrote: post #32
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.

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

The salary cap for most federal employees is $195,200 - that's the max for any level of experience. Big law firms are paying 225,000 for new grads and it goes up quickly from there. The median software engineer salary in the bay area is 260K. There are a lot of careers where a smart and motivated person could instantly be doing better switching from public to private.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#162

Post by dcow »

davepeck wrote: post #142
dcow wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that trying to curb “fraud waste and abuse” is an outfight foolish endeavor, no.

There are effective approaches to curbing fraud waste and abuse and ineffective or even damaging approaches. Which do you believe the current administration is engaged in?

I believe they will prove effective.

I believe the government is in need of disruptive change. I welcome the effort.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#163

Post by microtonal »

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.

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 can get away with, while keeping prices high.

Yes, in a perfect market, customers will flock to competitors that are better for them. However, in many cases a perfect market is not attainable for various reasons. E.g. because the cost of entry is too high (e.g. making a competing ISP would require you to put your own fiber in the ground) or because there are network effects that are nearly impossible to break.

This is why certain markets need strong regulation or government monopolies -- to protect people from pure profit seeking. Health care is a good example. Health care in Western Europe is much better, while less money is spent on health care. This is because health care is strongly regulated and insurance companies cannot f*ck over customers. The objective function of maximizing profits becomes a constrained optimization problem, which generally leads to other ways to increase profits, like pressuring pharmaceutical companies to lower prices of medicines.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#164

Post by JansjoFromIkea »

xivzgrev wrote: post #11
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.

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.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#165

Post by wan23 »

_fat_santa wrote: post #125
jkubicek wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 18F going private is a terrible idea. The US government should directly employ the people that are responsible for building and owning its core infrastructure.

I would argue that companies like Plantir show that it's actually quite viable to be in the private sector while simultaneously serving the public sector. Granted Plantir is primarily military and law enforcement but I would say the overall model could work well for other parts of the govt.

It's important to have some in house expertise to know what to buy from the private sector though.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#166

Post by readyplayernull »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #94

D+ grade headline. His full offer and message: “If you worked for 18F and got fired, Group together to start a consulting company,” wrote Cuban. “It’s just a matter of time before DOGE needs you to fix the mess they inevitably created. They will have to hire your company as a contractor to fix it. But on your terms. I’m happy to invest and/or help.”

Something tells that's an intended feature not a bug, that they will re-hire personel, re-buy assets like all those EVs, re-rent offices, but next time it will be with gov-aligned providers, and the cost will be the same for less.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#167

Post by juujian »

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…

Except for too big to fail companies, that is...

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#170

Post by baby_souffle »

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…

What about things that no private company could do or would at least find profitable? I’m think of ‘free’ healthcare or even keeping the nukes in working condition.

Are either of those endeavors necessary? Are they profitable? Should they be profitable?

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