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Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

reuters.com

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Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

#411

Post by [deleted] »

bumby wrote: post #226
whimsicalism wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the problem is there is literally no incentive to make sure you are hiring the right people in government. nobody is sacked if you dont make your numbers, xyz. higher salary bands are a neccessary but not sufficient condition to get competent operators.

A counter point: Salary should be decent, but I’m not wholly convinced it needs to be at “market rate.” By having reasonable rates but below “market” value, you are likely creating a selection bias for people who are in it for the mission more than they are in it for the money. I think that’s a good thing. It’s like the idea that politicians should be allowed to trade stocks or else you won’t get the “best” talent. I…

[deleted]

Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

#412

Post by giantrobot »

mikeyouse wrote: post #36
rel2thr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A correlary to the Gelman effect, with govt spending , it all sounds important and reasonably priced unless the spending is in your circle of expertise

Is there a reciprocal Gelman where ignorant outsiders assume things are unreasonable and wasteful but anyone with expertise knows better? (Examples come to mind of Sarah Palin ridiculing fruit fly genetics work or DOGE’s press conferences about children receiving social security when they were just receiving survivors benefits)

Authentic frontier ignorance?

Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

#413

Post by grandempire »

miltonlost wrote: post #353
whimsicalism wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of what you said is what I'm saying and you're making all sorts of presumptions about what you think I believe. I think you struggle with civil discourse and doubt this conversation will be productive, so have a nice day.

Cool. Go back to thinking we can only raise taxes on the middle class to pay for medicare and ignoring any taxes on the wealthy like you said in your first post. ( we simply cannot afford to be yeeting historically unheard of levels of money at the elderly without raising taxes significantly on the middle-class, that is the rub of our current fiscal situation ) Your current fiscal situation is only right-wing talking…

> right-wing talking points.

You keep saying this - it’s a form of ad hominem.

Also last I checked the Trump administration is not exactly full of free market healthcare advocates. You may be remembering Paul Ryan from 2012.

Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

#414

Post by _mlbt »

nothercastle wrote: post #389
_mlbt wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said usually for job security because I am familiar with the current administration’s actions, and the benefits have not been touched and would take an act of Congress to change. Trust me, there are still lots of talented individuals who are eager to join the government workforce, even now.

For poverty wages? In my city government workers with families almost universally qualify for subsidized housing. People in my experience get half my salary, and then half of that goes to housing. Maybe some C tier talent goes to government but not without wfh, pension or other benefits.

Federal IT workers are hardly working for poverty wages. In addition to their base salaries, they receive additional locality pay, generous benefits like paid time off, retirement benefits, inexpensive health insurance and life insurance, training and advancement opportunities, and the opportunity to receive monetary and time off awards. It’s not FAANG salaries, but they are very well compensated and the working conditions are usually great.

Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

#415

Post by franktankbank »

raverbashing wrote: post #386
reaperman wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only place this falls apart is that Accenture / Deloitte are really not sexy. Like being a federal employee at a similar pay scale would actually be more sexy. McKinsey/BCG maybe this makes sense.

You would be surprised at how new grads see these companies, especially those coming from business/accounting degrees, etc It's not too bad

It absolutely has been a great jumping off point. My finance brother makes bank now outside of the big 4.

Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

#416

Post by franktankbank »

pureagave wrote: post #311
leguminous wrote: post #279

Earlier 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…

It has been this way a long time. I interviewed and got a job offer with the Naval Research Lab in the late 1990's. It was a very cool job working on chips for space defense systems and I was told they could match any private offer and as a bonus I would retire with a full pension when I was 41 (I was 21 at the time). It sounded good and I loved the idea of making things that went into space. Then I started to get of…

When did you retire?

Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

#417

Post by grandempire »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #184
ibejoeb wrote: post #21

Kinda amusing that the general sentiment so far, in a forum filled with technology expertise, is that there is certainly waste in these budgets. But, when discussing the overall trend of cutting programs in other fields where the majority doesn't have that expertise, the conclusion is the opposite.

This is a misframing of the sentiment. No one believes there isn't waste in government. We just don't believe 5 under 20 year olds, some with criminal backgrounds, others whose only qualification is Elon Musk likes them, are good at identifying what's waste and what's important. And we would like to see a measured approach to reducing waste, with some findings released to the people about what the plan is going forwa…

> 5 under 20 year olds, some with criminal backgrounds,

This is a subset - the one the media choose to highlight and that’s occupying your mindshare.

Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

#418

Post by killjoywashere »

leguminous wrote: post #279
heisenbit wrote: post #217

Consultants 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…

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…

A major incentive for hiring work out to the private sector is the impossibility of firing GS-series employees. Ultimately, whomever the elites are who happen to be taking a lap through government today are interesting in maintaining a responsive chattel workforce capable of reaping and sowing the crops of the day. They depend on their slave drivers, I mean senior HR staff, to keep them informed about how their current staff mix affects their ability to react to the crises of the day. If you have tons of highly trained agroconomists in GS billets, what are you going to do with them?

Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

#419

Post by grandempire »

tclancy wrote: post #326
grandempire wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cutting it all at once with no other plan can have disastrous consequences. I think this part is overestimated. It will get fixed.

By whom?

This comment by saying it will be disastrous. Remember all the twitter predictions?

Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

#420

Post by rtkwe »

next_xibalba wrote: post #351
reciprocity wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't you seen the documentary Inside Job covering the 2008 financial crisis? "Burning it all down and starting over" is a very immature and myopic perspective and cannot be taken seriously as a workable solution. The solution is to implement regulation that, very broadly here, enacts mechanisms to make private gain for public loss something incredibly difficult to do. There need to be checks against people in posi…

> cannot be taken seriously as a workable solution ... in your opinion. More regulation will just lead to more and more ineffectual bureaucracy. "More regulation" as an answer is why nothing gets built in California. "More regulation" is why the Vogtle Unit 4 in Georgia took 20 years to permit and complete, whereas the same can be done in under 5 years in China. "More regulation" is why it takes 10 years and $3 billi…

So what is your actual meaning when you say burn it down? Fire some university president heads who've been caught or what? You're language is vague but grandiose.

The whole academic pipeline is actually quite delicate if we're talking massive disruptions, the current funding shake up is threatening to screw a whole class of graduates because PIs and Universities don't know if they'll be able to pay new graduate students so many are massively cutting back the number of admissions they're taking or skipping a year entirely. That has a knock on effect of screwing up new professors who're still setting up their labs because they can't get research started quickly to get new grants which can screw up their entire careers too. All that to find replace the word diversity or because a few high placed people faked some data?

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