Never understood the underpaying of highly qualified people in the govt. Making a sacrifice for your country in a high powered / representative position is one thing, but the rank and file? Billions are spent on defense contracts and old software, but when bringing on teams of people to revamp the system, they want these people to take more than a 50% pay cut. D.C. is an expensive place to live as well. If you think something is crucial for the country to advance and survive, don't be cheap about it.
I work for federal government. And the government subsidies my pay @ $4500 to live in DC. I’m humbled by my opportunity to be in the public service. I’ve turned down valley jobs. US gov is filled with highly qualified people. You just don’t know their twitter.
DC itself has a pretty bad government COL adjustment because it is the average of an area comprising some much lower COL areas in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. For example, a GS employee who works in Downtown DC where a 1 BR apartment will go for $2500 / month will get paid the exact same amount as his / her peer working in Hampshire, WV. The same apartment there is about $700.
Force as in military or combat jobs? Any list that provides jobs or departments that offer this type of subsidy?
Quick Google search brings deferred loan programs. I'm not aware of subsidized housing programs except for stationed military. If this is widely available, it would change the math for many people. 4,500/month stipend pays the mortgage. Friends in other govt departments never had that, is it DC specific?
Yearly makes much more sense. At the same time, nowhere near enough to make up for the pay cut. I’m non tech, and my peer who was being recruited for US Digital Service would had to take about a 50k pay cut to sub 100k level.
Perhaps a better analogy: let's say you're hiring people with the offer that you'll pay them $2M the first year, then nothing for 20 years. The danger is that the person will quit. So it is more conservative to offer a deal where you pay them nothing for 20 years, then $2M. Then you're pretty sure they'll stay, especially if they're 15 years in.
I think that's probably the best way to understand the salary/pension trade-off. The public sector is geared to be quite risk averse in investments, so it offers back-weighted comp to try to be frugal on training and provide continuity.
There's also basically no other employer that can credibly offer this kind of comp, so the public sector, by offering it, can compete quite well for talent in the space of those interested in that configuration. It's not the only way to run things, but it makes some sense.
Do civilian government employees even get a pension plan anymore? I got an offer a few years back from a three letter agency in DC and I'm pretty sure they just had a 401k.
Right I was talking to a retired, lifelong federal employee who mentioned he didn’t pay SS. Since ‘84 was over 30 years ago I expect the number to flip for those on the new pension scheme, soon.
Yes, 1.1 percent of the average of the highest three years you were paid during your service for each year you worked. So if you did 30 years, you’d make 33 percent pension. That’s on top of the employer match that the government does if you contribute to the Thrift Savings Plan, an ultra low expenses IRA plan for military and federal civilians.
Or that you can (apparently? I heard?) lose your pension entirely if you get fired before reaching retirement age.
(pension funds should be owned by the person using it, so that you will have access to it at retirement age even when you're fired. An employer should also not be able to take anything from it, and be held liable if they don't pay it.)
I definitely wouldn't characterize the average government employee as a "true believer" at all. Given the pension-salary ratio, they are mostly selected for being risk adverse and unambitious.
It could also create disgruntled employees. Finding people feeling underpaid and undervalued must be prime candidates for foreign agents. While definity not an expert in this, every time I've read about traitors it seems money, sex or ideology drive the betrayal. And the first seems the most common in modern times.
> He never indicated any political or ideological motive for his actions, telling the FBI after he was caught that his only motivation was profit
> The FBI paid $7 million to a KGB agent to obtain a file on an anonymous mole, who the FBI later identified as Hanssen through fingerprint and voice analysis.
Sad they'd spend millions to catch moles but can't somehow afford to pay the crucial people the right sum. If you've got people who have access to valuable information consider their financial situation and adjust their compensation accordingly so they're never left wanting, your enemies will use the same damn information to make them turn on you... Why the hell not beat them to the punch? If they've got their expenses covered they've got no serious reason to commit treason one would think.
The two biggest things one can do to lose or be denied access to a security clearance are 1) foreign contacts and travel and 2) financial issues.
Most of the security clearance denial appeals are published by the US government, and just from a cursory glance, you can see that mundane credit problems, foreclosures, etc. are the top reason given.
Just like Wayne Knight's character Nedry in Jurassic Park, where do you put a stop on what needs to be paid to keep things safe? It's a dangerous game to place a price on safety if the sole determinant is the loyalty of the individual.
This is true. Though the perks and benefits that the govt provides for office workers are not going to be able to compete with top tech companies. Pension is delayed payment of decades while tenure at companies are dropping. I bet quantifying these forms of pay would make the comparison even worse.
There are a few things that I’m comparing it to that makes me say they are cheap (since it is a relative term).
1. How much money the govt has spent in other endeavors whether policy or contractors.
2. How much private sector (market) values top talent that the govt is trying to attract and retain. Value prop for private companies is high, but the impact these people can have on the US govt should be a lot larger.
As someone who works for the Defense Department I found this article totally unsurprising. This sort of story is common. The question people should be asking is why does it take a 3-star general's blessing in order to get a team functioning computers that are usable for something besides Email and Microsoft Office.
Another major obstacle that isn't touched on in this article is buying things. Typical timeline for purchasing anything through the normal mechanisms is minimum 4 months and 6-9 months isn't uncommon many years. Doesn't really matter how much it costs. So any group that wants to get things done on a reasonable timeline ends up putting a substantial portion of their budget on a contract who's sole purpose is to be a purchasing vehicle that circumvents the usual buying process.
If Command and Control is such a bad way to run a team, why does the military use it?
This was explained to me in NCO school. I was in the Israeli paratroopers in 1986. Probably the worst paratrooper they ever had, now that I think back.
There are several standing orders for soldiers. Number one: if you are in a mine field, freeze. Makes sense, right? It was drilled into you repeatedly during basic training. Every once in a while the instructor would shout out “Mine!” and everybody had to freeze just so you would get in the habit.
Standing order number two: when attacked, run towards your attackers while shooting. The shooting makes them take cover so they can’t fire at you. Running towards them causes you to get closer to them, which makes it easier to aim at them, which makes it easier to kill them. This standing order makes a lot of sense, too.
OK, now for the Interview Question. What do you do if you’re in a minefield, and people start shooting at you?
This is not such a hypothetical situation; it’s a really annoying way to get caught in an ambush.
The correct answer, it turns out, is that you ignore the minefield, and run towards the attackers while shooting.
The rationale behind this is that if you freeze, they’ll pick you off one at a time until you’re all dead, but if you charge, only some of you will die by running over mines, so for the greater good, that’s what you have to do.
The trouble is that no rational soldier would charge under such circumstances. Each individual soldier has an enormous incentive to cheat: freeze in place and let the other, more macho soldiers do the charging. It’s sort of like a Prisoners’ Dilemma.
In life or death situations, the military needs to make sure that they can shout orders and soldiers will obey them even if the orders are suicidal. That means soldiers need to be programmed to be obedient in a way which is not really all that important for, say, a software company.
You need a 3 star general's blessing to get computers because the whole military is built around authoritarianism and slavish obedience. It is built on those things because, in war, they are necessary. This has an unfortunate knock-on effect of making every decision take way too long and severely limits the autonomy of everyone in the chain of command, in often ridiculous ways. But if it comes down to being better at developing new tech, and winning a war, the army clearly has priority on the later rather than the former.
> the whole military is built around authoritarianism and slavish obedience
This is a huge misconception people have about the military. In fact the core philosophy of command in western militaries is one of enabling people to make their own independent decisions. The military wants nothing less than non-thinking obedient slaves because they know that’s how wars are lost.
>This is a huge misconception people have about the military.
I just gave you a first hand account of it, and a concrete illustration of it is the current topic of discussion. It's difficult to call what is being clearly demonstrated through multiple channels "a huge misconception". Especially considering this is an Israeli NCO saying this, when the Israelis have a reputation for actually being one of the most individualistic armies in the West.
>In fact the core philosophy of command in western militaries is one of enabling people to make their own independent decisions.
Compared to the earlier forms of warfare, this is absolutely true. A modern NCO has a level of independent from central command that would have utterly flabbergasted officers even a hundred years ago. Heck, Roman centurions were afforded less autonomy to make decisions than we give modernly to srgts.
But in absolute terms, compared to the civilian sector? The military is still an extremely authoritarian place that is utterly slavish to obedience. Because it has to be, men still need to obey their superiors when told to do things they might not want to do. Yes lower and lower ranks are given the freedom to set their own objectives and adapt on the fly to changing circumstances, and compared to the rest of military history that is quite something, but they still are not remotely individualistic or all that autonomous compared to non-military contexts.
I mean why do you suppose we retain the officer/enlisted divide, and still demand both sides keep a cordial but distant relationship? It's because we still need the authoritarian stuff as a backbone, so when an officer says "Jump" an enlisted man jumps rather than trying to argue. The Soviets found this out the hard way after the 1917 revolution, when they tried abolishing the officer corps. as a vestige of elitist authoritarianism and it backfired so horrifically they had to gobble up defecting white army officers just to survive.
From someone who describes themselves as being very bad at the job! Maybe this was what he was getting wrong?
> when an officer says "Jump" an enlisted man jumps rather than trying to argue
This is what people get wrong. When an officer says 'jump' the enlisted man actually responds 'tell me what you want me to achieve, sir, then it's my job to decide how I want to make it happen whether that's jumping or something else'.
A junior non-commissioned officer will tell you respectfully but firmly to back well off if you start telling them how to complete a task.
>From someone who describes themselves as being very bad at the job! Maybe this was what he was getting wrong?
Perhaps. He was really awful at the whole "military discipline" part of being in the military. Now he's a software developer, so that all worked out for him.
>This is what people get wrong. When an officer says 'jump' the enlisted man actually responds 'tell me what you want me to achieve, sir, then it's my job to decide how I want to make it happen whether that's jumping or something else'.
I personally only have 2nd hand accounts of the interaction from the officer's side, so I may well be getting it wrong.
My physics classes had a few navy guys in them, who were trying to get...something or other, they needed a degree in a hard science to get a promotion. I don't really know what exactly. Anyway, being really interested in ships I talked their ear off about everything whenever they'd let me. And the topic of ordering men around was always treated with a certain...presumption that every word they said would be instantly obeyed without question. Stand here and look over there at the horizon until I say otherwise sailor. Scrape this wall with this scrapper sailor, and then paint it over. Carry this crate below decks, no stopping sailor. Inventory the armory sailor, mop the deck sailor, etc. etc.
> I just gave you a first hand account of it, and a concrete illustration of it is the current topic of discussion.
You gave an account for a single situation, which is completely different from the normal business: Being caught in a minefield under fire. Yes, there are situations where the military (or self-defense or many other things) train you to the point that muscle memory takes over and you just do what you have learned. Using that anecdote to somehow say "the whole military is" is not even a stretch anymore, it's just wrong.
>You gave an account for a single situation, which is completely different from the normal business: Being caught in a minefield under fire
The first hand account is the former Israeli NCO paratrooper, the mine field example is just an illustration for why the military retains that style of management despite its problems.
>Using that anecdote to somehow say "the whole military is" is not even a stretch anymore, it's just wrong.
And I can clearly see you didn't actually read the whole article I linked to, and are instead trying to argue just based on my minor quotation. I really recommend you fully read it before arguing, both for your own edification and because it's really interesting.
>The worst paratrooper they ever had, per their own admission.
Because he wasn't suited to military style leadership. So he became a software dev instead, and he enjoyed that much more.
Still, this is a fair point.
>The US does not train the same way Israel does. Which does not train the same way China does, or Germany does, and so on.
The IDF is, as I said above, famous for its individualism and relatively lax standards of discipline by Western military standards. I suppose having fought several huge wars of national survival within living memory makes you throw all the superfluous authoritarianism out the window and retain only those parts of it which are essential to function.
So if even they are still very heavy on authority and instant obedience, the US isn't going to be any better. Nor, especially, would China who follow the Russian school of top-down control compared to the Western emphasis on bottom up (aka mission-style tactics the other fellow linked to).
If you have only non-thinking slaves you are done the moment anything doesn't go to plan. Instead of working with the situation the whole operation would come to a halt until people could reach their superiors to find out how to proceed. They would probably be dead by then.
> This has an unfortunate knock-on effect of making every decision take way too long and severely limits the autonomy of everyone in the chain of command, in often ridiculous ways.
In short, when all startups are complaining that people don't show initiative/don't have alignment/etc. what they're really saying is that they have inadequate Command and Control!
These approaches and processes for keeping people working together with unity of purpose towards a series of objectives have been refined over thousands of years and under the most difficult circumstances. Ignore them at your (and your team's) peril.
So I have a hard time believing the 100k price tag. They are not including everything here, which is typical. The government usually doesn't consider overhead costs because to the agency they are fixed. That's a multiple of 2-3. They're certainly depending on some existing developed technology which doesn't sound COTS to me, and I have no idea how much to value that at. Maybe another 100-500k unless it comes from a major prime in which case... 1M or more.
The biggest thing increasing development costs for these kinds of projects is the fact that it is SO hard for development teams to get real understanding and feedback from the actual guys using the equipment. It takes a near act of God in many cases to get as close as they did in this story. That's what gives you an actual usable product at the end of the R&D effort and what saves the most money.
Also I'd work for this team in a heartbeat. Sounds like fun even if I don't believe all their numbers.
I really enjoyed this article. The DDS is literally doing the same kind of things that the USDS is doing, but for military applications. Given the fact that the largest portion of our taxes goes towards defense spending, initiatives like create opportunities to allocate resources more efficiently, iterate with agility, and save a ton of money.
When you look at DoD contractors, there is obviously a motivation on their end to have larger contracts with inflated budgets and prolonged timelines - they're businesses. On the flip side, a government agency has none of those motivations - they just want to save lives as quickly and affordably as possible.
I am curious to see if these "lean" organizations will pop up in other parts of the federal/state/local governments. There are so many areas where better UX, logical efficiency, or inner-department communication could make people's lives easier or even save them:
- In PA you need to sign up for a tax ID separately from filing articles of incorporation. Why can't the Department of State and Department of revenue's system sync up to create a tax ID at the time of incorporation?
- Philadelphia's transit authority SEPTA has been rolling out a cashless fare system using RFID/NFC. It was supposed to be released in 2013 and still isn't complete. It cost $300 Million for Xerox to build which was twice as much as the initial budget. The kicker is their website used isn't even functional on mobile - it _literally_ uses nested tables for layout. A more efficient way to do this would be to use your phone for everything (using built in NFC) and an app to manage your fares.
Absolutely. 62% of the budget goes to social security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The rest is discretionary spending and a bit more than half of that goes to “defense”.
Philadelphia's transit authority SEPTA has been rolling out a cashless fare system using RFID/NFC. It was supposed to be released in 2013 and still isn't complete. It cost $300 Million for Xerox to build which was twice as much as the initial budget. The kicker is their website used isn't even functional on mobile - it _literally_ uses nested tables for layout. A more efficient way to do this would be to use your phone for everything (using built in NFC) and an app to manage your fares.
NFC still isn't 100% available on all smartphones and really wasn't whenever the system was designed. Particularly the cheaper smartphones used by lower income people are more likely to not have NFC even today. Back in 2010 when the system was first conceived (assuming based on 2013 release date) NFC was even rarer.
Love the lead picture -- because, you know, you're obviously not in tech if you're not wearing a t-shirt, hoodie and jeans ensemble in an environment where they would otherwise be out of place.
> “The Army didn’t really know what to do with me,” he says. “So they sent me to Ranger School. I learned how to jump out of planes and carry rifles and stuff like that.”
GROAN What branch did you go, fuckwit? That's what the Army wanted to do with you.
