Earlier quoted context omitted.
GS pay scales can support senior devs just fine. Maybe not the $500k Googlers, but normal ones.
Yes, but sometimes you do actually want the $500k Googlers.
I promise you never want that.
Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
391–400 of 684 posts
Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
#392Consultants are misused if employed on a constant basis instead of employing enough senior staff directly. There are well known drivers on both sides that tend to promote such an unhealthy setup. What is concerning at the US government is not cutting consulting but at the same time cutting staff and on top creating a hostile environment for senior staff. This is unprecedented and is not something one would do in the…
I feel the appeal of your argument, but people just aren’t fungible, and the incentives in a public in private identity are completely different.
I work at a consulting firm, and, trust me, you want state employees doing the absolute minimum amount of work necessary. Ideally, you just have enough people to administer the funds and then all work anyone cares about should be routed to private entities through a competitive process (market discipline for consultants is key here). My experience is that the people at the state are highly likable, but in terms of productivity are close to worthless or are a major obstacle to productive work. I work for a department of transportation where the leadership in the materials division does not actually know what density is or that it is measurable. I would expect someone with good grades in high school to understand this. Every single construction contract for highways has about a 15% overage on crushed rock. The weight to the material is determined by a “50% compaction factor“ and if you’re thinking “that sounds like a made up concept“ you would be correct. This has been happening for years and nobody is allowed to use the correct number because that would embarrass someone with a long tenure. The state Congress needs to liquidate the whole agency.
Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Government civilian GS employees have an extremely generous benefits package and usually excellent job security. Had. Not have.
Yep this was true a decade or 2 ago not true anymore. Generous compared to Walmart, sure but not compared to Industry for any type of Technical work.
Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
#394Consultants are misused if employed on a constant basis instead of employing enough senior staff directly. There are well known drivers on both sides that tend to promote such an unhealthy setup. What is concerning at the US government is not cutting consulting but at the same time cutting staff and on top creating a hostile environment for senior staff. This is unprecedented and is not something one would do in the…
You have to understand consultancies in IT are just brokers. They buy in "inventory" of "profiles" at as low a cost as possible, and sell that inventory to their customers for as much as possible.
So you've got your CS graduate which you recruit and pay $40/hr, slap a badge on them and rent them out for $120/hr. Once in a while you fall short and need to hire some freelancers for $60/hr. That's it.
As your gov agency is capped on paying it's own recruits $25/hr for the position, very few will end up as 'native' gov workers, and the once that do will get poached swiftly by the consultancies.
Now these juicy contracts are not sold piecemeal, but in huge bulk. Not 3 guys for 2 months for a project, but an umbrella contract for delivering 2.000 full time profiles over the next 2 years. Very few consultancies can credibly fulfill on such commitments making the market fairly small and not too competitive. The few that participate have no incentive to spoil the roost and derail the gravy train. No explicit collusion is required. It's an iterative prissoners dilemma situation where the few players all know each other and frequently switch sides.
Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't just spend your troubles away forever. It might temporarily alleviate things, but long term it will collapse the entire system. At some point there need to be painful austerity measures - budget cuts, increased taxes, and the like. It's unpopular to do painful things, but it's necessary for survival.
you have a fundamental misunderstanding of govermental debt and the US.the US CAN 100%, its not a guess its a fact, spend away their troubles forever. learn how the global economy is, understand what fiat is, find out what your missing. (first hint, money is a construct - and follow the tbills) you know what does make the US have to do "painful austerity measures - budget cuts, increased taxes, and the like. It's unp…
Yes, the US can spend away their troubles, as long as it maintains treaties it signed on to, can, at least, to some degree, demonstrate some maintenance of its debt, and doesn’t alienate its trade parters, much less the whole world.
If you think I’m just being a partisan, take a look at the US Bond market for the last two weeks.
Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s amazing that people so committed to constitutional principles were able to enact the largest tax increase in history without the advice and consent of congress. Impressive even for tax and spend republicans. In democracy loving areas of the British Empire, that type of arbitrary action led to revolutions.
They absolutely have the consent of Congress. Congress can stop this at any time. They elect not to. Their silence is consent in this case. You can attribute that silence to active support or cowardice but either way they can stop it and don't so they approve of it. "In democracy loving areas of the British Empire, that type of arbitrary action led to revolutions." Not sure if you have taken a look at Britain lately…
The latter comment is a reference to one of america's founding events being triggered by an ~8% tariff on foreign imports by americans, levied by a unilateral power who thought themselves king of the territory.
Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Last I checked, there was a surplus of tech talent in the US who have been subject to layoffs. Govt gives benefits and job security, at least till the next opportunity rises.
Doubt it, many mid/low tier industries still struggle to hire because they pay engineering salaries not tech money. Government salaries are easily 30-50% lower
Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of the reason the US government needs to use consultants is because they can't actually pay enough to hire senior developers directly due to the constraints imposed by the GS pay scales. Often times the top levels of the pay scale aren't even available because there is some rule about how people can't be paid more than someone else. So instead they pay for consultants and all of their overhead. (Of course there…
GS pay scales can support senior devs just fine. Maybe not the $500k Googlers, but normal ones.
What "grade" would a senior dev be at?
Pay scale for the DC area: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...
Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
USAID looking for an ROI???? THat's NOT the purpose of aiding other countries. You don't need to look for a return on an investment. USAid was feeding children in places. You're looking for an ROI on saving human lives. Learn empathy.
Empathy seems to be in rare supply these days. I've made the mistake of talking to these people about the human collateral of these decisions and it's waved off like I'm bringing up an unpleasant experience in a checkout line.
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Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not paying close attention to all the noise, so forgive me if I am way off base. But aren't they effectively doing a values purge/refinement/reset? Similar to what Elon did with twitter and what few companies have managed to do to transform themselves? My point is (in an effort to maintain a most respectful interpretation) that I imagine the environment is becoming more hostile to people with certain values while…
Even if this is the case, “process” is immensely more important in government and military than in companies because government has the authority, the prerogative even, to use violence, ruin lives, and kill people. The onerous processes are in place to protect civilians. When you shoot from the hip at a tech company, the bad outcome is that a lot of money gets wasted and people lose their jobs. When the federal gover…
That's all true. Process and bureaucracy are guard rails, and guard rails limit change. So when the whole system is barrelling towards a cliff (default, hyperinflation, kinetic war), what should the leaders try and do?
It probably seems like I'm defending their actions, I genuinely don't know if their actions are correct and I'm not defending them. I'm just acknowledging it seems like many US institutions haven't been appropriately evolving, and now the US as a whole is between a rock and a hard place.
If I'm going to spend time thinking about these things (that I have virtually no control over), I would prefer to do it in a curious and mostly emotionally detached way.