551–560 of 684 posts
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So you are comparing existing, actual waste with your "imaginary" waste that might or might not happen... Go easy on the kool aid.
We don't know if they're actually cutting waste here. DOGE has already had to do a massive climb-down from saving $1000B to saving $105B, but most of that $105B has not been shown to be true. Actual cuts may only amount to a few billion.
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If you have to explain your conspiracy theory with "the majority of these people suffers from the same special kind of neuroticism", I suggest you get back to your whiteboard. Or you can keep living in a Disney reality where uncle Scrooges are the norm and not the exception.
I think you might be misunderstanding op's comment. "Because the amoral drive for extreme wealth doesn't stop at a certain level of wealth" is a statement that I read on its face. One does not need to reach for "conspiracy" as a way to explain the behavior of people faced with an opportunity to acquire more money: just look at the 5-6 posts making the same point in this very sub-thread. Did you miss those or did you…
I'd rather believe wanting power for power's sake than this cartoon idea of an old duck diving into a pool of well-polished coins.
Truth is that beyond a few truly neurotic exceptions, the obscenely rich do use their money. Just not all in supercars and yachts, but also to influence what they can.
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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…
I think it is important to distinguish between Consulting, Staff Augmentation, and Managed Services. Many of the large integrators/consultancies do all of these options, but the objectives, contract sizes, and durations of the contracts are all expected to be different. Consulting - best though of projects, governance, and on-demand expertise. There are definitely junior resources in play, but the objective is to bui…
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> 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…
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You also create a selection bias for people who are bad at what they do and can’t get a better paying job.
Again, this assumes the main motivation is money. Ie if they could get a better paying job, they would. You can select for highly skilled people who also aren’t putting money as the top priority. The point I’m getting at is that pay can be a noisy proxy for skill and we should probably not assume they are tightly correlated in all domains. One person once said the people at the NSA are much more like Marines than Sil…
People evaluate pay to quality of life at work ratio, not just pay (although it is most commonly referred to as pay to avoid writing or saying all of that out).
You cannot expect a person to come out of school at 30 to 35 years old with $300k+ of debt after working 80 hour weeks during their 20s and slaving away in residency and not expect a decent pay to quality of life at work ratio.
If you do not increase quality of life to make up for lower pay, you will end up with less driven or less capable people. Note that quality of life also includes security of income, which can reduce that type of stress.
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…
It's the only way of looking at it that makes sense. The enemies are in the gates and no one is fighting.
What were these contracts for? Networking or day to day software/application maintenance? I get they were probably bloated (I did work for a defense contractor at one point) but presumably they were doing something. I mean isn’t Deloitte a accounting firm? I’m a little worried about the “stand down” attitude against cyber attacks.
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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…
I know someone who wanted to move from government contractor to government employee. He was already a veteran, had a degree, few years of experience as a contractor, etc. it took an entire year from “okay we can give you a job” to him starting.
A friend knew a hiring manager and was a quiet shoo-in for a job. HR dragged their feet for half a year and then, suddenly, moved at absolute light speed to get the job posting up, closed, and the shoo-in to be approved as much as possible.
It was because the contract was ending soon. Laid off workers (including contractors), veterans, and people with disabilities are given priority during the hiring process (which makes some kind of sense), but these contractors had such a stink associated with them that the HR people who presumably didn't want to work with the manager suddenly did, just to avoid hiring the contractors.
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> workers are allowed to bargain against the government, as in “i will not take the job at the pay you are offering.” In the same way that someone is allowed to not breath underwater. A lot of people don't have the luxury of choosing.
Unemployment is currently 3.5%. Every sector of the economy is looking for more workers.