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3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

wsj.com

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Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#351

Post by lern_too_spel »

dubcanada wrote: post #287
driverdan wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked on this type of application in the past they should find a new company to work with if they can't handle this traffic. We were handling hundreds of requests per second with ease 10 years ago. That was with MySQL and the app running on the same server. It doesn't take many resources to show the user a form, validate it, and save to a DB.

A bunch of armchair developers seem to have been summoned to tell the Federal government how to handle form submissions for an extremely security and privacy intense application using their fancy modern techniques. You are talking about comparing a basic web form with an application for unemployment benefits which must go into a federal tax database and be processed using a what I assume is a garbage mainframe system…

Unemployment benefits are handled by the states, not by the federal government.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#352

Post by [deleted] »

Demiurge wrote: post #300
dubcanada wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bunch of armchair developers seem to have been summoned to tell the Federal government how to handle form submissions for an extremely security and privacy intense application using their fancy modern techniques. You are talking about comparing a basic web form with an application for unemployment benefits which must go into a federal tax database and be processed using a what I assume is a garbage mainframe system…

I also completely agree with this sentiment. A gov't form could be an unsightly complex beast that can't be re-architected, sometimes, ever.

[deleted]

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#353

Post by humpty_drumpfty »

wmeredith wrote: post #89
PaulRobinson wrote: post #23

A staggering number, and unprecedented in the modern era. I'm not in the US or an America, but my (retired), Father is and for the sake of the people around him and his family I hope this is the point where the American political system - and Republicans in particular - realise that their ideologies are dead. In the UK we saw an Old-Etonian Tory Prime Minister in the space of a couple of weeks: - Effectively national…

> and Republicans in particular - realise that their ideologies are dead Good luck. Their base doesn't care. I was speaking with my father a couple days ago, who is a US Board-Certified surgeon and ran his own practice for 40 years. He's a smart guy, but firmly lives in the Fox News/Rush Limbaugh bubble. He was saying how he was hoping this crisis would put the final nail in the coffin ... for the corrupt democrats.…

>He's a smart guy, but

Your expertise is in "accessibility" and "online marketing".

Your father's expertise is in surgery and ran his own private practice.

Maybe you should take a step back before assessing the intellect of people's political takes.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#354

Post by kirykl »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #161
ian0 wrote: post #85

How is our social system so fragile? I mean seriously - thousands of years and wireless comms and rockets to the moon and not only do we forget to prepare for a virus (something that had happened routinely throughout our history) but when it hits and people have to stay at home for a few weeks the economy falls down and leaves millions of people who want to work unable to do so.

It's just the consequence of market economy. Everyone is under pressure to "cut out fat", make themselves "lean". That applies everywhere across the supply chain. First thing that goes is every redundancy, buffer and spare capacity - things that would mitigate a crisis like this. It's because the companies that "cut out fat" can grow faster, sell cheaper and profit more, compared to their competitors that have risk h…

The government does have stockpiles for emergencies, mandated buffers will guarantee overproduction and affect market equilibrium

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#355

Post by specialp »

mtberatwork wrote: post #51
PaulRobinson wrote: post #23

A staggering number, and unprecedented in the modern era. I'm not in the US or an America, but my (retired), Father is and for the sake of the people around him and his family I hope this is the point where the American political system - and Republicans in particular - realise that their ideologies are dead. In the UK we saw an Old-Etonian Tory Prime Minister in the space of a couple of weeks: - Effectively national…

I would like to be optimistic and think we all learn valuable lessons from this but realistically most people will just double-down in their convictions and blame some other externality as to why their own political/economic ideologies didn't pan out.

People are probably going to take the bailouts and not think at all that their "free-market" and unbridled capitalism approach is wrong. We know this because it happened in 2008. In reality it isn't unbridled capitalism because if it was it would result in massive bankruptcy and people hurting bad as they did in the depression. But since neither 2008 and today has been show to deliver the hurt that 1929 did yet, I don't think we will see the appetite for massive social programs that FDR enjoyed. Those people saw what it was like to be penniless and nearly starving.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#356

Post by vsareto »

Demiurge wrote: post #300
dubcanada wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bunch of armchair developers seem to have been summoned to tell the Federal government how to handle form submissions for an extremely security and privacy intense application using their fancy modern techniques. You are talking about comparing a basic web form with an application for unemployment benefits which must go into a federal tax database and be processed using a what I assume is a garbage mainframe system…

I also completely agree with this sentiment. A gov't form could be an unsightly complex beast that can't be re-architected, sometimes, ever.

They could, they just don't want to pay for it. The government has no interest in being known for easily handling a huge spike of traffic during a crisis. They can just take the lower road and get by with less and saying 'try again later'. There's no repercussions here because it's the government.

Hence mainframe maintainers should really move to charging $1 million/year in a decade or two.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#357

Post by devonkim »

dubcanada wrote: post #287
driverdan wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked on this type of application in the past they should find a new company to work with if they can't handle this traffic. We were handling hundreds of requests per second with ease 10 years ago. That was with MySQL and the app running on the same server. It doesn't take many resources to show the user a form, validate it, and save to a DB.

A bunch of armchair developers seem to have been summoned to tell the Federal government how to handle form submissions for an extremely security and privacy intense application using their fancy modern techniques. You are talking about comparing a basic web form with an application for unemployment benefits which must go into a federal tax database and be processed using a what I assume is a garbage mainframe system…

Yep, USDS and 18F folks would have to agree with you here. The arcane crap that we have to deal with in payment and government information systems is beyond frustrating and makes it extremely tough. I read an article about having to fix a multi-decade Cisco router bug to get CI/CD and automated deployments working after USDS / 18F started setting up faster deployments but still needed to figure out how to deal with legacy stateful DB connections.

The reality of government paperwork systems on the backend is much, much closer to this hell and is part of why so many like myself ran screaming from public sector because when you see so many peers doing so well at FAANGS, why would you subject yourself to something that resists change and wants to keep it the same way? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2014/03/2...

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#358

Post by vharuck »

steveeq1 wrote: post #168
sago wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly I think the effect might be the opposite. The massive financial hardship seems poised for a backlash where a group promoting 'economy above all else' will gain the support of millions who feel their financial future has been unfairly taken. I see little threads fraying already. I have heard even normally fairly left-leaning people saying variations of 'this will kill more people from poverty'.

What if that ends up being true?

It might be. But I think the takeaway from "we either let people die from the virus or die from slipping in our economy" should be "let's have an economy that's more robust to disasters."

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#359

Post by taylodl »

luma wrote: post #88
stupandaus wrote: post #24

A few things to note: 1. These figures are only new claims as of 3/21, so the numbers will get worse. 2. This is ~2% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce. 3. This is nearly 5x (!) the prior record of 671K new jobless claims from 1982, and redefines the scale for jobless claims. [1] 4. This does not account for the countless gig workers that are part of the modern economy that likely did not file for unemployment s…

Further, unemployment benefits are managed by the states, and those states are running web services which typically see a few hundred hits a day. They are now trying to process tens of thousands of new records each day, and at least in MI the service is absolutely not up to the task. My wife managed to get her filing completed a little after 1am this morning. She was the only one of her 20 coworkers to successfully f…

Somewhere there is an architect saying "I told you so!" I can almost guarantee the requirement was to handle several hundred requests per day, an architect pointed out if we get deluged then we won't be able to handle it, so maybe they were able to get them to allow for one or two thousand requests per day.

Now of course we don't know what the architecture of this system is and what the deltas in cost would have been to allow this to scale-out more - but I do know that all too often the more robust solution giving you much greater protection and lower cost down the road is often discarded if it costs even just 5%-10% more. Then the day comes when the people making these decisions get caught flat-footed and they try to blame everyone but themselves. It doesn't always happen like this - but it happens a lot.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#360

Post by tmpynews »

Someone can correct me on this if I am wrong.

Most of the unemployment is people on the lower end of the spectrum in terms of financials. Most of them are in the service sector. The middle of the pack group did not suffer because of this (yet). Whenever this clears the service sector, travel, restaurants, hospitality etc will bounce back very quickly. So all the people that lost their jobs could just get them back and the recovery will be sharp.

However, the kick in the nuts will be if the virus drags on for months. Then it becomes uncertain.

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