231–240 of 684 posts
Now the UK should swiftly follow suit in sacking these cowboys. The taxpayer is being charged extortionate rates in some cases for fresh graduates who know effectively nothing at all about what they talk about. At the same time, we should increase salary banding for technical roles to the market rate. We will get the experience we need for much, much less.
Good riddance, and hopefully they won't be missed. Here in Canada these consultants are just leeches who suck up all the tax dollars which could actually be used for something useful.
Now the UK should swiftly follow suit in sacking these cowboys. The taxpayer is being charged extortionate rates in some cases for fresh graduates who know effectively nothing at all about what they talk about. At the same time, we should increase salary banding for technical roles to the market rate. We will get the experience we need for much, much less.
Assuming they are akin to grad students, these "fresh graduates" likely have more intersectional knowledge than long-time deep domain experts. I've worked in grant funding landscape, and one of the biggest challenges is that:
1. Experts have deep knowledge, but don't keep up outside their field, and yet have the most power in distributing funds that bet on future innovation and 2. Grad students have very little power to direct funds, but straddle more fields and are better positioned to see new intersections emerge.
Each have strengths. Being naive has advantages to the learner that the expert can extract from simply by having them around
So I'd argue that keep an abundance of "fresh grads" isn't just cynical cost-cutting, but part of the secret sauce of why these big orgs generally operate as effective institutional ecologies
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Yes because if it’s one thing workers like is removing their bargaining power and relying solely on how future administrations feel about your job.
unions should not be able to negotiate against the collective will of the people and seniority based leveling has been a disaster for the government in the US, at least.
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Both are there to collect a check. One can get fired for doing nothing and the other cant.
I'd counter that the cost to the American taxpayer is far less when you avoid the consultant upcharge, all else being equal.
Now the UK should swiftly follow suit in sacking these cowboys. The taxpayer is being charged extortionate rates in some cases for fresh graduates who know effectively nothing at all about what they talk about. At the same time, we should increase salary banding for technical roles to the market rate. We will get the experience we need for much, much less.
One of the great things about arbitrarily breaking contracts is that you save money in the short term, and signal future contractors that they need to charge even more exorbitant rates in future government contracts because you can never be sure if/when you will get paid.
Arbitrarily breaking contracts usually trigger clauses where you have to pay damages/penalties for doing that, so Accenture most likely isn't loosing any money here. All government contracts tend to have clauses like these, at least where I'm form.
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Have you actually reviewed the plagiarism examples to confidently say that this would lead to the expulsion of undergrads?
They have been available online. You can go look at them. Yes, they would have resulted in disciplinary action for undergrads.
My professor friends are struggling to have meaningful discipline for entire essays copied from ChatGPT.
Can you please copy the ones you find most egregious here and point to similar examples leading to the outcomes you describe in other environments?
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Pay isn’t everything. Government civilian GS employees have an extremely generous benefits package and usually excellent job security. Contractors frequently take pay cuts to work directly as a government employee for these reasons.
That ship has sailed now, though. The benefits and job security can no longer be counted on. Government is gonna have to compete more on salary, or accept worse candidates.
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I am not here to talk you out of your mental model around the cult of Elon. His companies have received almost $40B in various forms of government support, those are the facts. He is a skilled operator, able to whip teams of engineers to success and distort reality persuasively to customers and investors alike, but his ventures would not have survived without the government support he’s received.
Phone me when someone else lands an orbital class rocket or offers a cheaper ton to LEO. Until then you're complaining about the lowest bidder. And you're going to have a hard time convincing me that the lowest bidder is doing anything but saving their customers money on a service they were already intent on purchasing, and had previously been spending 2x - 10x for: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/753q6s/econ…
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>> The pacts "represent non-essential spending on third party consultants" for services Pentagon employees can perform The irony is that they're cutting external solution providers to do more in-house. ... which means more work in-house. ... done by the same teams they just cut the size of. Without looking at government pay bands for specialty talent, I think the Pentagon is going to have a hard time doing this work…
Yeah that’s going to be the problem. The pay bands are so low they would be lucky to get people with degrees at all. Definitely not talent
Govt gives benefits and job security, at least till the next opportunity rises.