Live data from Hacker News

The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

wired.com

331–340 of 1001 posts

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#331
Good. These guys, in addition to obviously being very smart, are young and don't have a lot of baggage in government or industry.

I think they are perfect for tracing down what has been going on and finding where inefficiencies and/or corruption has been occurring. Anyone who has issue with rooting out corruption and inefficiency isn't in the right.

Of course what is done with what they find will not be in their hands.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#332
post #83

Experienced enough to win this though: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39261861

I came in first place in my college CTF. Where do I sign up to decide which parts of the government should be shut down?

I think Musk asked for applications on twitter.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#335

how is someone’s age relevant? Is a 55 y.o. Software engineer who spent 20 years in a bureaucratic wheel any better than a bright 20yo mind? They both suck in a different way! Writing an entire article with ageism as a center piece is truly pinnacle of American journalism

When they're as young as literally 19 years old, then it must be the case that they lack the appropriate experience.

I’m not disagreeing with you but let’s ask the question “experience for what”? Is it making a couple of dashboards, extract data from legacy systems into something more queryable, or generating a couple of expense reports? Or will they be making actual significant decisions affecting millions? How likely would that be?

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#336
post #73

Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII. Feels like Chesterton fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.

Is this really a drastic action? As others in this thread have pointed out, these programs are a single-digit percentage of the Federal budget. We could delete these completely and still have a budget that is 90% the same as last year.

Wow. That’s a refreshing take on the reducing the corruption angle.

If these programs are so small, why aren’t they going after the real grift? It’s too hard? Why the small, more relevant to citizens programs get cut first?

Because its easy to avoid the military spending and the black box that represents.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#337
post #174
post #122

Posts here talk about the legality of this, that what they are doing is not allowed, or that they're doing something naively without understanding. But what is the goal? Maybe what goal to they think they're pursuing? This is hacker news, so I'm asking for an answer without political rhetoric.

The goal is to find government waste and to trim the fat. The goal is to make the US government lean, efficient, and effective at improving the lives of Americans while not prioritizing improving the lives of citizens of other nations. The view is that the government of those other nations should be responsible for taking care of their own citizens. The goal is to uncover fraudulent payouts, stop more from going out…

None of that is the goal. That's the propaganda.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#338
post #122

Posts here talk about the legality of this, that what they are doing is not allowed, or that they're doing something naively without understanding. But what is the goal? Maybe what goal to they think they're pursuing? This is hacker news, so I'm asking for an answer without political rhetoric.

[flagged]

I'm not even in the U.S. what did I do lol

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#339

how is someone’s age relevant? Is a 55 y.o. Software engineer who spent 20 years in a bureaucratic wheel any better than a bright 20yo mind? They both suck in a different way! Writing an entire article with ageism as a center piece is truly pinnacle of American journalism

I think it is more about how Musk needs to surround himself with young easily impressed and gullible minds, because anyone else would probably see through him all day. These young guys are probably afraid to speak out against him, or are sucking it aaaaall up as ordered by Musk. He will have chosen who gets to tag along.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#340

I'm concerned about my US bonds, as the way to access them is through a government website. Are these people going to block my access and steal my money? >> “We really have very little eyes on what's going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what's happening because these aren't really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the ri…

Investors' faith in US bond and equity markets is, unironically, the most powerful immediate-term check on the current administration. The longer-term check is the midterm elections in 2026. If they really screw things up, as they appear to be doing, that's their deadline for fixing them.
Post reply on HN