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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

#501

Post by 0xffff2 »

NegativeK wrote: post #433
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…

Pay is a common one from the employee's side. From the manager's side, it nearly takes an act of fucking god to open up a new position. Citizens pay attention to the number of employees, and they get mad about it. You really don't want to be the one to cause citizens to angrily call elected officials if you're in an appointed government position (i.e., an at-will employee.) I have an unsexy government job. I've seen…

>In a similar vein, I've some friends who worked at a hush hush defense facility. The vast majority of the people at the facility are hired through a contractor. The employees are unionized, have a pension, and when a new contractor wins the bid, they have to agree to keep the staff in their current positions.

Not defense, but my government contract works the same way. I'm on company number two, but I know people who have worked for 4 different companies, all while doing the same job on evolutions of the same contract. There are people who have done full careers working onsite for my agency without ever converting to be a civil servant.

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

#502

Post by wonderwonder »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #396
wonderwonder wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yup, I read that wrong, my fault

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

#503

Post by calvinmorrison »

curiouscavalier wrote: post #223
calvinmorrison wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they're a order of magnitude higher for some reasons though. I work in consulting, and occasionally larger enterprises approach our firm. We almost always decline because their requirements from vendor screening, to change review boards, to just the amount of sheer meetings it takes to enact a change to a title change on the website home page - its not worth it. A couple times we made the mistake of giving a 'go away…

Yep, the procurement process (and related) requires a lot be baked into pricing. I’d also be curious what the fully burdened rate of in-house staff is compared to consultants. I’ve seen situations in the gov (not DoD) where despite high consulting rates, the full cost of hiring was even higher per hour. But I’m loath to defend the big firms. Generally, quality plus the ever push for expanding scope leaves a sensation…

thats part of it. onboarding vendors is such a PITA bringing on a DO-ALL-KINDA-BADLY vendor is preferred over a specialist vendor.

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

#504

Post by 0xffff2 »

LunaSea wrote: post #346
mellosouls wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still don't generally need to use consultants. Even at the poor rates of pay in many government teams, there are still some decent technical staff who don't just chase the dollar. Bear in mind the salary standard is normal market, not FAANG/SV. Consultants are nearly always used so that managers can say "we went with BigCo, its their fault" when things go wrong. ie. they are generally a political choice rather t…

> there are still some decent technical staff who don't just chase the dollar They are probably not chasing the job security either.

Working for the Federal government used to provide a solid pension, solid healthcare for life, and rock solid job security. The first has been mostly eroded away over the last decade. The last of course has completely evaporated over the past 3 months. AFAIK you still get healthcare for life if you manage to retire. All in all, I can absolutely see why someone would take the US civil service deal 20 years ago. Not so much 5-10 years ago.

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

#505

Post by BeetleB »

ethbr1 wrote: post #459
BeetleB wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I was referring to the job security aspect, given all the layoffs. But yes, the federal package is good, but not fantastic. It's on par with what a typical company provides. Salary is decent, too. Not FAANG, but not below industry average. More or less, just like a typical industry job. State/city jobs tend to have much better benefit packages, but lower pay (often a lot lower). They also tend to be relatively…

> tend to be relatively chill workwise This feels like something that needed past tense. Some rich asshole I don't know blasting out weekly check-in demands to the org-wide list doesn't sound very chill.

> Some rich asshole I don't know blasting out weekly check-in demands to the org-wide list doesn't sound very chill.

Context? The comment was about city/state jobs, not federal.

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

#506

Post by rockemsockem »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #379
glitchc wrote: post #347

It's interesting reading conversations in this thread. Everyone wants government to hire competent individuals. Yet, when it comes to a personal choice, the very same individuals decline the lower compensation. Everyone then wants government to pay salaries comparable to the private sector. Yet no one wants to pay extra (income, land, sales) taxes to actually support the massive increase in government spending that's…

The narrative around fed jobs has changed recently too. A fed job used to be a lower salary, but much stronger job security. Now with the new administration government job security is gone, so federal jobs overall are simply not as attractive anymore.

It's been almost 3 months. Just maybe there haven't been any new fundamental long-term trends established in that time

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

#507

Post by [deleted] »

prepend wrote: post #446
Taikonerd wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What "grade" would a senior dev be at? Pay scale for the DC area: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...

Senior devs are usually gs-15, step 10 which is about $195k in DC I don’t think it’s the money, I think it’s the mindset. There’s more project managers than actual hands on engineers.

[deleted]

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

#508

Post by michaelteter »

While there's almost certainly a good amount of waste in these consulting contracts, there's also a strong possibility that these cuts were done without a clear sense of what would be lost without them.

But hey, I suppose sometimes we just deem projects too big and messy to comprehend, so we just toss it all and start over. It rarely turns out as nice or easy as we thought it would be.

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

#509

Post by rockemsockem »

miltonlost wrote: post #316
stackedinserter wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to track, because it's all nice websites with generic messages like "we make life better" and pictures with obligatory diversity faces. E.g. $4.5 billion here chemonics.com. Or $3 billion here devalt.org. Where did these money go? How can we measure the ROI? USAID is a corrupt wasteful sinkhole, good riddance to it.

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.

Isn't saving lives and feeding children ROI? I think the parent comment was stating that these things were not measured and therefore the ROI should absolutely be known.

You should always measure the impact of the things you do and the money you spend, you should never just say "we're trying to do this and so the money should always flow". If you and trying to feed children you should be able to estimate the number of meals you provide and if that number is too low you should stop getting money.

I'm not commenting on USAID cuts in particular here, but your comment struck me as being rather strange.

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

#510

Post by Den_VR »

0xffff2 wrote: post #504
LunaSea wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are still some decent technical staff who don't just chase the dollar They are probably not chasing the job security either.

Working for the Federal government used to provide a solid pension, solid healthcare for life, and rock solid job security. The first has been mostly eroded away over the last decade. The last of course has completely evaporated over the past 3 months. AFAIK you still get healthcare for life if you manage to retire. All in all, I can absolutely see why someone would take the US civil service deal 20 years ago. Not so…

https://www.nteu.org/blog/2025/04/08/Senate%20Passes%20Budge...

Healthcare may be vouchers soon.

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