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The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

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Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#171

Post by jmull »

allovernow wrote: post #162
jmull wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this even helping Buttigieg? There doesn’t seem to be any indication this was anything but a regular screwup. Throwing around suggestions of a vague conspiracy looks unwarranted. You’re suggesting that to avoid suspicion companies providing services to political campaigns must be apolitical and to have never previously provided services to a candidate in the race or any previous opponent of a candidate in the…

No, I'm saying those in support of ostensibly neutral third parties should not be making tweets indicating strong bias for one of the parties they are charged with treating neutrally. Is it really so difficult to keep your public persona neutral and vanilla if you're a damn CEO? Wasn't this standard practice until recently? What, because Trump vomits on Twitter 24/7 everyone else needs to as well?

You think it’s OK for CEOs of companies providing services to political campaigns to have political opinions as long as they keep them secret?

I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, so here’s your chance: any particular reason we shouldn’t dismiss you as not being serious?

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#172

Post by nl »

war1025 wrote: post #59
nooron wrote: post #44

I started a company that was asked to write a proposal to make what became the app that failed last night. I declined because it was outside of our core skillset. You can read my prior comments or look at my profile to validate this. If you want my perspective as someone who started a Democratic software company, you should keep reading. This app emerged from a mandate to make the caucus more accessible and transpare…

I don't know whether I heard correctly or if the number was accurate, but I heard someone throw out $60k as the amount paid for the app development this morning on the radio. That sounds like a lot of money to a lay-person, but assuming $100/hr, which seems like at least a reasonable ballpark rate, that breaks down to 600 man-hours, or 15 man-weeks. That is a very tight deadline to turn out a critical app like this.…

It's worth adding to this that turning it into a Web App doesn't make it dramatically cheaper.

Most of the time here (and hence money) goes in gathering requirements and stakeholder engagement.

I'd imagine there is probably at least 200 hours of meetings, travel and phone calls just getting to the point of working out what they need. And yes, a lot of that is going to be physically sitting down with volunteers in some town and seeing how things are done.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#173

Post by cma »

hcknwscommenter wrote: post #149
conanbatt wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes it even worse.

Really? They're basically saying: 'shadow' is your 'buddy' who is always there for you. So, we want to be that. In retrospect, it sounds bad but really, it's just a nothingburger.

Given the party tried to make them hide their name, can we really only say it is retrospect?

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#174

Post by trianglem »

megablast wrote: post #168
nooron wrote: post #44

I started a company that was asked to write a proposal to make what became the app that failed last night. I declined because it was outside of our core skillset. You can read my prior comments or look at my profile to validate this. If you want my perspective as someone who started a Democratic software company, you should keep reading. This app emerged from a mandate to make the caucus more accessible and transpare…

> I declined because it was outside of our core skillset. Um, isn't this app allowing people to enter data, and sending that to an API? How could that be out of anyone's core skillset? Almost every single app must do that.

We had to turn down a democratic contract because we could not fulfill the security requirements in time. Maybe that played a part.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#175

Post by nl »

Aperocky wrote: post #144
tptacek wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

60k for an app that runs results collections for the Iowa Democratic Caucus sounds absurdly low. By comparison, just to get an app like that assessed for security issues --- and my assumption is that this is not an especially complicated app --- you'd already in the neighborhood of 20k.

Why they can't just do a https website with login is beyond me. Why an App? We all know there's nothing in it but boilerplate.

A large amount of the cost (perhaps most of it) isn't in building the software, it's in working out what they need.

Yes, a webapp will cost less. But if the vendor did this bad a job on an app they probably could do just as bad on a webapp.

Changing tech wouldn't have solved the problem for this vendor.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#176

Post by 333c »

chrisweekly wrote: post #25
tmpz22 wrote: post #14

This should really be getting more attention, here is an alternative breakdown: https://imgur.com/gallery/ycOC0HX . The jest of it is one of the most important institutions in the United States (the Democratic National Committee) uses a highly nepotistic and incompetent system for managing IT which leads to colossal failures in marketing, canvassing, and security. Not to mention massive PII violations as millions of…

"jest" -> gist (funny substitution tho)

And on that note, "could care less" -> "couldn't care less."

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#177

Post by trianglem »

sct202 wrote: post #83
3uclid wrote: post #63

Checked their LinkedIn and the employees who work there. The founder is non-technical and there are two developers: one who is a "back-end intern" and the other is a front-end developer (both are fresh from bootcamps). ...Yikes.

The CTO is a former Googler SWE.

I’m so furious I’m willing to say she was a “woman” hire.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#178

Post by trianglem »

spike021 wrote: post #37
skrowl wrote: post #3

I'm picturing the Dos Equis meme saying "I don't always test, but when I do, I test in production. Stay on call, my friends." At least now I don't feel bad about when I test in production. (just kidding, I didn't feel bad before).

One time I was working on a Splunk thing at an old job. We had an engineering contact there, and when a question came up about how something in Splunk was tested, the guy literally just replied back to our email with that meme and no other details. Yikes?

Devs that respond with memes are either really bad (like 80%) or really, really good.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#179

Post by madeofpalk »

Aperocky wrote: post #164
madeofpalk wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it matter? You've still got to build it, the cost would be (roughly) the same.

The added complexity of having to build an app and all the boilerplate can significantly increase the complexity from just a simple website. And while an app not hard, a https website with login and post capability is on the _extremely simple_ territory. As long as precinct official are trustable, I don't see any reason why they have to use an app. I guess for the wow factor? As the entire political process is essent…

I think the argument of $60k being not that much still stands, and you would still be left with a sub-par result regardless of whether its an app or a website.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#180

Post by ncallaway »

jancsika wrote: post #156
nooron wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I'm really glad you asked, and I'm happy to share. The reason that most people start companies in politics is because they have strong political leanings. You do it because you believe strongly in something or someone and want to support it, even if it pays less or sucks. Even if you wanted to cross the aisle, it would be hard. If you work for Democrats, Republicans will not work with you. If you work for Republ…

So when Republicans and Democrats walk from the Capitol to their respective fundraising call centers, is your claim that that there is a different software stack in each building to handle the call automation? I have no idea how to find out whether those tech stacks are indeed different. But if someone knows the answer I'd definitely find it instructive.

Probably.

Whenever I've done calling or canvassing for progressive causes or democratic candidates we've used some version of NGP VAN (https://www.ngpvan.com/about).

I wouldn't be surprised if there are some cross-party solutions (especially the closer you get to core infrastructure—I'm sure both parties use AWS).

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