The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE • Hacker News Board

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#851

Post by oblio » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:20 AM UTC

elzbardico wrote: post #455

xnx wrote: post #73

Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII. Feels like Chesterton fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.

>> The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII. In which parallel reality do you live? Some metrics: - U.S. share of global GDP (nominal). 40% in 1960 to around 24% nowadays. - Share of global exports from the peak of 17% in 1963, to around 8.5% today (China is 14%). - Global R&D expending from the 1960 peak of 69% to 30% today with China closing the gap currently at 23%. - Reserve currenc…

Regarding the metrics, 1945 to roughly 1971 or more realistically, 2010, were anomalies.

The US watched the rest of the world burn itself down during WW1 (partially) and during WW2 (almost completely).

There were basically 0 industrialized countries doing better in 1945 than they were in 1928.

The US reached those insane peaks because of a total aberration. It was never going to last.

China and India, for example, have been between 1/3 and 1/2 of the world economy for multiple millennia.

After the Age of Discovery Europe as a whole took over at least 1/3 itself.

The US would do well to adjust to this new reality, but I guess the temptation to make America great again is too strong.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#852

Post by paganel » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:23 AM UTC

xnx wrote: post #73

Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII. Feels like Chesterton fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.

> The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII.

That may be true if you look at the US in isolation, they're much richer now compared to 1950, but they've never had a strong a contender as China is right now. The Soviets were matching them militarily back in the Cold War years but they were never close to surpass them economically, like China is now in the process of doing.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#853

Post by nojonestownpls » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:23 AM UTC

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #843

sam345 wrote: post #655

HN Comments have really deteriorated. Dang is AWOL i guess.

They really really have deteriorated. I’m not sure that dang’s efforts alone would be enough to hold back the tide though. I worry this is a culture shift :/

Not necessarily a culture shift - assuming you mean IRL culture, not HN culture - but rather a sign of HN's much increased popularity in recent years, outside the thoughtful nerd circle.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#854

Post by kamaal » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:24 AM UTC

seanhunter wrote: post #746

niceice wrote: post #440

Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…

> Perhaps one reason startups work so well… If you take any individual startup its probability of success is very low. Most startups fail. There is a very extreme survivorship bias at work when people say startups work well or that particular tactics are why startups are great etc (pointing at a successful startup). Startups as a whole produce a lot of innovation because there is this extreme Darwinian process where…

>>Government generally doesn’t have the luxury of failure because the consequences for people’s lives are too extreme.

Im guessing they will eventually discover why bureaucracy even exists. That is to move slow enough to ensure big mistakes become impossible and provide stability for newer things to happen at their own pace.

Im guessing any chaos inside bureaucracy for as little as a decade could cause a lost century to a country. The cost of stabilising, course correcting, recovering and then going on upwards could take decades.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#855

Post by nojonestownpls » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:28 AM UTC

eutropia wrote: post #224

There are people in this thread claiming that Wired "doxxed" these engineers working for Musk dismantling things they don't understand; however didn't Musk publicly mock individual federal employees on his twitter account, drawing the eyes of millions onto random government functionaries for no other reason than to capriciously taunt them about being fired? I hope people condemning the former also condemn the latter.

Imagine if this was a male journalist snooping through newly appointed young, female engineers' histories, e-stalking them the same way and writing an article of his findings. You can justify it as "it's technically still reporting", but it's very creepy that they thought of this and then continued to think this was a good idea throughout the process.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#856

Post by exe34 » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:29 AM UTC

alfalfasprout wrote: post #532

niceice wrote: post #440

Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…

First, there's hardly any evidence that these are anywhere near "brilliant engineers" let alone 1%. Their claims to "fame" were being interns or working on tightly scoped greenfield projects. Some might be interesting, sure. But it's hardly relevant to operating in a complex organization. But more importantly, the real issue is regardless of how old they are an unelected individual is doling out hyper-privileged acce…

I don't understand the "unelected" aspect - he funded Trump and Trump got elected. Trump said Elon would get to run a wrecking ball through the ship of state and the magas cheered. He derives his authority from Trump. A lot of people work at the white house and only one of them was elected.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#857

Post by kuon » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:30 AM UTC

mychael wrote: post #648

boplicity wrote: post #484

Remember, if you can vote, vote the next time you can. Convince your friends and neighbors to vote, too. Apathy has real consequences.

Many of us here voted for exactly this and we are very happy to see all of these changes.

[flagged]

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#858

Post by awestroke » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:30 AM UTC

sam345 wrote: post #661

What evidence do people have that anything damaging is happening? Because these people are assumed to be conservative and not progressive? How is this any different than an internal audit whose work would be kept confidential? Or even a third party vendor who presumably would be covered by confidentiality agreements? The allegations in these comments are completely without evidence and are outright politically biased…

Yeah let's let them continue their coup until we can assess all the consequences and determine whether dismantling the whole country was a good or bad thing

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#859

Post by andyjohnson0 » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:30 AM UTC

In pondering the mindset of these people, I was reminded of a very different submission on hn yesterday [1]. Quote:

"Avoid, at all costs, arriving at a scenario where the ground-up rewrite starts to look attractive"

Seems to me that in their narrow, reckless arrogance they're doing something similar to the mechanisms of government. This is all broken and people who built it were idiots. Lets just scrap it and built it again with a modern stack.

Chesterton's fence, metacognitive ability, overconfidence effect, those who do not learn from history, etc.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42920285

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#860

Post by matthewmacleod » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:33 AM UTC

novia wrote: post #174

m463 wrote: post #122

Posts here talk about the legality of this, that what they are doing is not allowed, or that they're doing something naively without understanding. But what is the goal? Maybe what goal to they think they're pursuing? This is hacker news, so I'm asking for an answer without political rhetoric.

The goal is to find government waste and to trim the fat. The goal is to make the US government lean, efficient, and effective at improving the lives of Americans while not prioritizing improving the lives of citizens of other nations. The view is that the government of those other nations should be responsible for taking care of their own citizens. The goal is to uncover fraudulent payouts, stop more from going out…

If that were the goal, I think we'd see some evidence of it.

You do not "do a thorough accounting" by deciding in advance what programs and operations to terminate based on specific ideological viewpoints. I don't doubt for a second that this is "the way they are thinking about things" – but it's hopelessly, irredeemably naive to think that's what's being done.