Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In goodbye message, Chaillan unloads over DoD’s technology culture, processes

federalnewsnetwork.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 38 posts

Re: In goodbye message, Chaillan unloads over DoD’s technology culture, processes

#21

Post by meowster »

ianai wrote: post #20
ashtonkem wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbf, $170k is also the max that Amazon pays (more or less) in cash. I think the issue here is that the government is overweighting the value of pensions over stock, and underweighting quality of life concerns.

Who’s getting pensions in government? I thought they were all 401k now.

I don't know of any federal government 401k; everyone gets a "pension", it's called FERS (Federal Employees' Retirement System)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Employees_Retirement_S...

Re: In goodbye message, Chaillan unloads over DoD’s technology culture, processes

#22

Post by lumost »

ashtonkem wrote: post #19
jjeaff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they overweighting pensions? Retirement after that salary would be pretty valuable. Not to mention the security.

I guess you can slice it two ways. 1) The expected financial value of a pension. Especially assuming that the millenial in question won’t be willing to tolerate poor quality of life long enough to make it lucrative. 2) Belief that the institution backing the pension will be willing and capable of meeting their obligations in N years. Personally, I think I’d say that the pension would be close to the value of stock op…

I only had one offer of working at a company with a pension program. The recruiter highlighted that the pension "existed" but was unlikely to pay out for a new employee.

I knew someone who was close to hitting their 20 year pension in the private sector, but the company instead decided they had a performance problem in year 19.

While the federal government has less incentive to play such games, betting on illiquid financial offerings that are contingent on a single entity liking you for N decades and still being around after Y decades is pretty suspect.

Re: In goodbye message, Chaillan unloads over DoD’s technology culture, processes

#23

Post by ashtonkem »

lumost wrote: post #22
ashtonkem wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you can slice it two ways. 1) The expected financial value of a pension. Especially assuming that the millenial in question won’t be willing to tolerate poor quality of life long enough to make it lucrative. 2) Belief that the institution backing the pension will be willing and capable of meeting their obligations in N years. Personally, I think I’d say that the pension would be close to the value of stock op…

I only had one offer of working at a company with a pension program. The recruiter highlighted that the pension "existed" but was unlikely to pay out for a new employee. I knew someone who was close to hitting their 20 year pension in the private sector, but the company instead decided they had a performance problem in year 19. While the federal government has less incentive to play such games, betting on illiquid fi…

Yeah, there’s no way I’d value a private pension as worth more than $0. That requires orders of magnitude more trust in for profit corporations than I actually have.

With the government I’m confident that they’ll pay, I’m just not confident I personally would be willing to deal with it for 2-3 decades.

Re: In goodbye message, Chaillan unloads over DoD’s technology culture, processes

#25

Post by bradj »

meowster wrote: post #21
ianai wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who’s getting pensions in government? I thought they were all 401k now.

I don't know of any federal government 401k; everyone gets a "pension", it's called FERS (Federal Employees' Retirement System) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Employees_Retirement_S...

There’s a government program that is similar to a 401k, called the Thrift Savings Plan.

https://www.tsp.gov/

Re: In goodbye message, Chaillan unloads over DoD’s technology culture, processes

#26

Post by dryst »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #4

> Chaillan added that DoD remains stuck in the outdated water-agile-fall acquisition processes... Wait what?

Contracts are written up front for two plus years of work. Waterfall. The DoD and contractors pretend to do agile in the middle by running everything through sprints, even though you can't change the plan. Water-agile-fall

Re: In goodbye message, Chaillan unloads over DoD’s technology culture, processes

#27

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

> There are 100,000 software developers in the DoD. We are the largest software organization on the planet,

Tata Consultancy Services, India employs more than 500,000 people. They manage the IT stack of companies from Walgreens to Ferrari. I'm not the person to nitpick, But I'm particularly proud of TCS's employment figures because I've personally witnessed many move from being poor to wealthy(by Indian standards) after being employed by them(often the first degree holder in the family).

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/15/economy/tcs-india-it-remo...

Re: In goodbye message, Chaillan unloads over DoD’s technology culture, processes

#28

Post by gaadd33 »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #27

> There are 100,000 software developers in the DoD. We are the largest software organization on the planet, Tata Consultancy Services, India employs more than 500,000 people. They manage the IT stack of companies from Walgreens to Ferrari. I'm not the person to nitpick, But I'm particularly proud of TCS's employment figures because I've personally witnessed many move from being poor to wealthy(by Indian standards) af…

Just to clarify, TCS seems to only have 500,000 people employed, the whole DOD has roughly 2.86 million as of 2018, of them 100,000 are software developers. I don't think that the entirety of TCS is made up of software developers.

Re: In goodbye message, Chaillan unloads over DoD’s technology culture, processes

#29

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

gaadd33 wrote: post #28
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #27

> There are 100,000 software developers in the DoD. We are the largest software organization on the planet, Tata Consultancy Services, India employs more than 500,000 people. They manage the IT stack of companies from Walgreens to Ferrari. I'm not the person to nitpick, But I'm particularly proud of TCS's employment figures because I've personally witnessed many move from being poor to wealthy(by Indian standards) af…

Just to clarify, TCS seems to only have 500,000 people employed, the whole DOD has roughly 2.86 million as of 2018, of them 100,000 are software developers. I don't think that the entirety of TCS is made up of software developers.

Obviously entirety of 500,000 couldn't be SW developers, But definitely >100,000 are in IT and could be in U.S. alone.

>TCS Recognized as the #1 Top Employer in the United States for 2020[1]

>more than 327,000 employees were trained on multiple new technologies, and over 404,000 trained on Agile methods.

They recruit thousands every year from Engineering colleges in India specifically for SW role. Have been doing that for at least two decades. Their target for FY22 is 40,000 freshers.

It's late in India otherwise I could get the exact figures of IT employees in TCS as every Engineer here knows someone who is working in TCS be it Computer Science or Civil Engineer or even Bio Tech(All of them go to work in IT there).

[1] https://www.tcs.com/tcs-recognized-as-number-one-top-employe...

[2] https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/tcs-to-hire-40-000-f...

Re: In goodbye message, Chaillan unloads over DoD’s technology culture, processes

#30

Post by Pokepokalypse »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #27

> There are 100,000 software developers in the DoD. We are the largest software organization on the planet, Tata Consultancy Services, India employs more than 500,000 people. They manage the IT stack of companies from Walgreens to Ferrari. I'm not the person to nitpick, But I'm particularly proud of TCS's employment figures because I've personally witnessed many move from being poor to wealthy(by Indian standards) af…

I attended an interview with them once. (I think it was for one of their clients; American Express). It started in a large conference room, where I was one of about 200 other people. Weirdest interview ever, and also totally inappropriate for my skillset - due to the recruiter not giving a crap, apparently.
Post reply on HN