NASA's Outsourced Computer People Are Even Worse Than You Might Expect (arstechnica.com)

Eric berger, writing for ArsTechnica: As part of a plan to help NASA "modernize" its desktop and laptop computers, the space agency signed a $2.5 billion services contract with HP Enterprise Services in 2011. According to HP (now HPE), part of the Agency Consolidated End-User Service (ACES) program the computing company would "modernize NASA's entire end-user infrastructure by delivering a full range of personal computing services and devices to more than 60,000 users." HPE also said the program would "allow (NASA) employees to more easily collaborate in a secure computing environment." The services contract, alas, hasn't gone quite as well as one might have hoped. This week Federal News Radio reported that HPE is doing such a poor job that NASA's chief information officer, Renee Wynn, could no longer accept the security risks associated with the contract. Wynn, therefore, did not sign off on the authority to operate (ATO) for systems and tools.A spokesperson for NASA said: "NASA continues to work with HPE to remediate vulnerabilities. As required by NASA policy, system owners must accomplish this remediation within a specified period of time. For those vulnerabilities that cannot be fully remediated within the established time frame, a Plan of Actions and Milestones (POAM) must be developed, approved, and tracked to closure."

Comments

Who would have guessed?

[HornWumpus]

EDS under a new name is the same old POS.

How do they get contracts? It's not like their incompetence isn't already legend.

The only thing they are competent at is marketing to government and fortune 500s.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> How do they get contracts?

Golf maybe?

>> It's not like their incompetence isn't already legend.

I took part in a state-wide effort to avoid hiring Accenture for some kind of state voting system about ten years, based on their demonstrated inability to complete that kind of project (they were getting sued by other governments during bidding) and their 3-4x run-up of costs at the same time. Guess what happened? The state hired Accenture anyway...got screwed with a system they couldn't use...and got charged about 3x what they were told. Unfortunately as I got older, I noticed that this happens all the time.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because management doesn't listen to IT people, or even consult them about IT-related contracts. Instead, they imagine that they have all the knowledge and experience required to judge the merits of a proposal and end up selecting the one with the slickest marketing.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called lobbying (aka bribery). You funnel lots of money into the campaigns, foundations, or libraries of powerful people (for example....Secretaries of State) and magically you get whatever you want. Big government contracts. Laws that hinder your competitors. Regulations that benefit you personally. Tax breaks. The list goes on and on and on...

Re: Who would have guessed?

[Anonymous Coward]

IT people mostly suck, too. And there's this fallacy that people will actually deliver on contractual obligations; they won't. People that are good at spotting bullshit are usually marginalized as negative influences.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[Anonymous Coward]

They can get the contract because HP is both services and hardware all in one (minimal subcontractors) and they can claim "experience" from Navy-Marine Corps Internet (NMCI, see above AC post). The problem is the Navy and Marine Corps _hate_ NMCI for many reasons, and the network is still a playground for the Chinese and Russians while any"failures" result in EDS^H^H^H HP saying "you didn't pay us enough to do X". X is anything which is not something positive for HP, which means they can blame the Govt / DoD, which means they don't have to declare problems on RFP's for other government agencies (like NASA).

The groups that were hit the hardest in the NMCI transition were RDT&E facilities because they were going to lose their custom software (and did). NASA in particular is going to be hit by this. The NMCI contract also states that HP owns all the hardware, so if they are canned they can literally pick up all the office computers, most printers, and all file servers used by the Navy and USMC and take them back, leaving the USA with a long term national security problem*. I'm guessing the NASA contracts also states this.

* This does not pertain to active military operations computers (i.e. Aegis computers, Blue Force Tracker, etc. are 100% government owned), but it does to all backoffice and logistics systems, including most computers being used for acquisition management and email dissemination.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[BringsApples]

Yeah, this article lost my interest at "outsourced computer people".

Re:Who would have guessed?

[OrangeTide]

I wish someone could dig up some proof.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[EndlessNameless]

The original NMCI contract expired and was replaced by NGEN.

Under NGEN, the government has full network infrastructure documentation and certain hardware assets.

While this particular problem has been addressed, HP got a sweetheart deal because they were basically a shoo-in. Precisely because Navy/USMC botched the original contract.

So while the government apparently learned from its mistakes, the Navy/USMC are stuck with HP for the next few years regardless.

Re: Who would have guessed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever actually been on of Accenture's customers? Same shit different company. You seem to want people to believe that a contract like this could actually executed successfully. It makes absolutely no difference how good management is, as long as IT "experts" are involved, there is no hope in hell. Accenture in my experience is really good at setting expectations REALLY low. As a result, they appear to succeed.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[Anonymous Coward]

their help desk identifies itself as NMCI...what are you on about?

Re:Who would have guessed?

[sjames]

Found the shill.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[HornWumpus]

LOL. You forgot the / sarc dude.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[lgw]

I wish someone could dig up some proof.

I suspect there was some proof on an insecure mail server stashed somewhere away from FOIA requests, but since but the DOJ and the major news outlets have pledged fealty to the queen, we'll never know.

Did you know that over half the people who met with Clinton as Secretary of State (excluding government employees) had donated to her foundation? It could not be more blatant. Clearly we no longer have the level of civilization where that matters.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[marklark]

Hmmm... Then you won't remember it and will repeat it.

Re: Who would have guessed?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're just not a team player, Bob.

Re: Who would have guessed?

[EndlessNameless]

People that are good at spotting bullshit are usually marginalized as negative influences.

I don't have that problem, so it's probably a question of how you identify BS or how you expose it up the chain.

The underlying issue is that you have to be right. If you call something out---even once---and it ends up doing what they wanted it for, then your credibility is shot.

There's an art to conveying uncertainty in regard to anything management wants.

I have never gotten a bad response from saying, "The suggested product does not have a perfect reputation, so here is an alternative if they can't deliver." And that alternative comes with a summary of the costs, functionality, and tradeoffs so he can justify the change if necessary.

The people I see marginalized as negative influences are the ones who talk shit about proposed solutions without offering one of their own. A business need can't go without a solution, so you're offering either a viable alternative or noise. And an alternative solution doesn't count if it can't check off all the major requirements, including the ones that might not be written down.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Accenture consistently drives high performance and has a history of satisfaction on projects for the worlds top organizations

No they have a history of bringing in piles of bodies that are only slightly more effective than a rotting corpse in the corner although the corpse may actually smell better.

What sets Accenture apart from the competition are its management.

Translation: We will blow more smoke up your ass than a stationary 2 stroke diesel Fairbanks engine with bad rings at load.

However Accenture Senior Management staff have shown consistently high levels of skill and communication.

See above a blowing smoke up your ass. Skills wise they suck harder than a black hole with daddy issues

Re:Who would have guessed?

[plopez]

Just wait until EDS+CSC , a black hole of IT despair.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[karlandtanya]

Perhaps we can be satisfied with digging up the people who dared to dig up the proof?

Re:Who would have guessed?

[clovis]

Accenture consistently drives high performance and has a history of satisfaction on projects for the worlds top organizations.

world's top organizations

What sets Accenture apart from the competition are its management.

is its management

The skill and level of analysts from every contracting company can vary greatly. However Accenture Senior Management staff have shown consistently high levels of skill and communication.

However, Accenture senior management staff has shown (staff is a collective noun, but practice varies between American and British English on this one)

Problems can happen with any corporate or government project. Rarely does everything go according to plan and often requirements change mid project. It is how a consulting company handles these changes that count.

according to plan, and often requirements change

Accenture sets its self apart in this situation.

sets itself apart

It's not the destination that matters but how you get there, Accenture(High Performance Delivered).

What?
If you are the one paying for the product, the destination is what matters most. For most of us, it's the only thing that matters.
This sounds like a hooker that blows you for a while and then stops to ask for more money. No, I'm not grateful to get halfway there.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[hey!]

Government procurement contracts pretty much preclude the government obtaining goods and services on the open market. Instead it must rely to a large degree on contractors and vendors who have the capability of handling all the special paperwork and requirements.

So if you're on a procurement committee you don't have much choice. Once you discard the vendors who (a) can't absorb the amount of money to be spent on schedule and (b) jump through the statutory federal contractor hoops, what you're left with is a rogues gallery of usual suspects.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[HangingChad]

EDS under a new name is the same old POS.

ZOMG that brings back horrible memories of NMCI. That was like the worst elements of outsourcing combined with the worst elements of in-house management. It would have been difficult to deliberately design a less functional system.

Re: Who would have guessed?

[postbigbang]

Let me premise this by saying I'm in no way defending HPE, who I otherwise find to be competent in some areas, and total nitwits in others.

At each stage in the procurement process are opportunities to screw things up. They often start at the needs analysis and systems analysis point that provides motivation for change. People aren't visionary and don't think well for five years down the road. Add in people that are looking for retirement plans, or who are plainly scared to try something new, or go out on a limb, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Then there's a bidding process, vendor qualification, the tender and win (perhaps a lose), and then a vendor is going to try to optimize profitability wherever possible, including using the cheapest labor they can find to meet the minimums of the requirements. You get very few stars, and mostly average people.

And they're all critics in one way or another. Some have a clue, some don't. Everyone can bitch and moan about a job, but few are competent enough to be valid critics of design. Everyone thinks they are, but few really do have the skills.

This said, I wish there were more motivators-- with teeth-- to protect the government's use of funding of projects in general, and IT specifically. Litigation is when everyone loses, despite any settlements. By the time litigation pays off, the problem is well past and now vastly more complex.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[Anonymous Coward]

funny about 10 years back i recall how the US Navy was getting boned by HP and they wanted to remedy this within the next couple years.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not always bribery. Sometimes it's a hot software sales rep.

Years ago I had an IT director give me all kinds of boxed software with instructions to implement ASAP, sometimes it would take months to roll out and it would suck like no one's business.

I would show him scripts I'd write that would the same thing, without rolling out software to every PC and server, but he'd nix them.

One day I was in his office when the CA rep showed up. Blond, short skirt, bosoms on display.

I quit a few months later to save my career.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[Greyfox]

They're really the only people who actually want to do Government contracts. For everyone else, it's just too much of a pain in the ass to be worth it.

Since it's, you know, those guys, I'm sure their IT solution for NASA involves Citrix somehow.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[bwcbwc]

Keep in mind: small to medium companies are also terrible at maintaining security patch levels. This isn't just an issue with government contracts and fortune 500 companies. If you look at the headline breaches and vulnerability disclosures over the past few years, most of those were under internal IT departments even if the breach came in from another source. And how does a corporate IT department/contractor fix a vulnerability on a device where the manufacturer hasn't issued a patch and all comparable products have similar issues? Think security cameras for example.

Regarding government contractors, my theory is that all of the contractors are equally bad. You can get horror stories about IBM, Accenture, CSC, and all of them.

The other factor is the state budgeting and hiring processes are not geared toward hiring large IT departments..No state has a large internal IT department to serve the entire state. Each administrative area has its own IT department. The same applies at the federal level. These agency IT departments could be permanently staffed for maintenance, but no legislature is going to fund enough IT personnel on a permanent basis for project work -- once a project is done you have all these extra employees sitting around, and they can't be fired except for cause.

Two ways out of this: Modify state hiring laws to allow term contracts of x months or y years so that government IT departments can directly handle project work with temporary hires. Also consolidate agency IT departments to a statewide department of IT services. That would give many of the benefits of contracting and centralized management, without the overhead of procurement, corporate profits etc.

The difficulty is that there are many interest groups who would oppose both of these initiatives. Government workers would oppose the term hiring provisions and agency heads would oppose having their IT departments pulled from their direct administration.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[bwcbwc]

Well the flip side of "you didn't pay us to do x" is that government contracts don't allow substitutions and providing services free of charge can be viewed as a form of "false statement" or even bribery -- you're supposed to document the exact work you perform and bill for it accordingly.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[skids]

Republicans seem much more willing to 'throw the bum out'

Were that true, Trump University in and of itself would have prevented the nomination of the Donald.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[Coren22]

Here on the west coast at least, if some IT system doesn't work, or some company isnt doing their end of the deal, you throw that sh1t out and go find one that does.

Sounds wasteful.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[RockDoctor]

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana

What if your memory doesn't go back far enough?

Then
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Carlos Santana"

(I always struggle to differentiate those two.)

Re:Who would have guessed?

[stealth_finger]

What if your memory doesn't go back far enough?

Write it down.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[OrangeTide]

I think this was covered in the movie Momento.

Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for them. They have Linux HA failover setup on single network cable going to the same switch from both nodes. And then they debate why both nodes became master. When it was pointed out by me they stonewall and bounce between teams like engineering vs server ops. Nothing gets done. Engineering is a joke, they only know how to install linux from a CD. No tuning at all. SAN storage, where do I start. They recruit kids who got certifications, who use production as learning platform.

Re:Not surprising

[shaitand]

"SAN storage, where do I start. They recruit kids who got certifications, who use production as learning platform."

Yup, I knew some of those kids while I worked in Albuquerque. HP would poach some of our greenest and youngest people.

Re:Not surprising

[segedunum]

Not surprised at all. I interviewed with them, and they really wanted me mainly because I got the impression they desperately needed someone who knew what he was talking about for something they really needed. However, HPE already have a massive reputation for casting employees aside and I wisely backed out. They are a company that simply don't do anything useful at all but get cash thrown at them for some reason. That's the result.

Re:Not surprising

[Anon-Admin]

So it has not changed from the time I worked there.

HPE is a joke, I would be willing to bet that these vulnerabilities are considered out of contract and remediation will be billed as T&M

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nothing. To save costs they collocated backup systems in the same physical facility with the main systems for many Navy east cost services.

Guess what happened?:
http://static.dvidshub.net/media/pubs/pdf_6736.pdf (link to an issue of "The Flagship", Vol 18, #19)

We (Navy) lost a lot of expensive data as a result..

Re:Not surprising

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Engineering is a joke, they only know how to install linux from a CD.

So you are saying they are more competent than a standard MCSE cert holder then.

This is why

[Anonymous Coward]

Some advice that was given to me years ago and has proven very accurate is to always be involved with the core business of anywhere you work. Never be a part of the support staff - accounting, IT, HR, etc.

If you make widgets, be a widget engineer or a widget assembler or a widget repairman.

Support staff is easily outsourced or replaced and you wind up bouncing from job to job and being cut any time your pay nears a livable level. If you work at N

ASA, have something to do with rocket launches or exploration and you'll be fine. IT? Not so much.

Re:This is why

[shaitand]

True but in tech there is no advancement in position anyway, the only way you get a pay increase you'll notice is to get hired at the current market rates by another company. Within 2-3 years you'll pay will have advanced only joke 1-3% amounts while new hires will make as much or more than you.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

Support staff is easily outsourced or replaced and you wind up bouncing from job to job and being cut any time your pay nears a livable level.

As an IT support contractor for 20+ years, I currently make $50,000+ per year and live in Silicon Valley.

Re:This is why

[Joe_Dragon]

50K is crap in SV

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

Within 2-3 years you'll pay will have advanced only joke 1-3% amounts while new hires will make as much or more than you.

I turned down a job when I ran into an old coworker during an interview. He was still making the same amount of money that I made when we worked together nine years earlier. If I had accepted the position, I would had made 80% more money than him for doing the same kind of work. Those 2% raises don't add up over the long run.

Re:This is why

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh can't fault the guy. Some people like the position they have currently and don't want to change/climb higher in the pay rank. I work with a couple of people who've been on the IT help desk for 18, 19 years and that's what they'll stay at because they just feel like it. More power to them. I'd rather keep learning/trying to climb higher.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

50K is crap in SV

Not if you're living a modest lifestyle. The mistake that most people make is chasing the American Dream: big houses, big cars, big toys, big women, big kids. That gets expensive in Silicon Valley.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

Some people like the position they have currently and don't want to change/climb higher in the pay rank.

I'm studying for my InfoSec certifications, as that is my current position in government IT. When the contract expires in three years, I'll make the jump to $100K with a new job.

Re:This is why

[HornWumpus]

Sorry dude, 50K is crap in Sacramento. It's a small piece of crap in SV.

Nobody should work hell desk for 20 years. If I couldn't find something better (pro mechanic?), I'd open my veins..

You are getting too old to live like an undergrad.

Re:This is why

[frank_adrian314159]

How's the cardboard box you're living in going? I figure that's about all you're going to afford in the Bay Area at that salary rate...

Re:This is why

[Fire_Wraith]

This is very, very true. If I'd stayed with my original position and company, I'd be making a fraction of what I am now.

At a minimum, getting an offer letter for a higher salary lets you negotiate more money than you'd otherwise get from simply going through a regular annual review.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

How's the cardboard box you're living in going? I figure that's about all you're going to afford in the Bay Area at that salary rate...

I rent a 470-sft studio apartment for $1,466 per month. I've been here for 11 years.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

Sorry dude, 50K is crap in Sacramento.

Are you kidding? I could get a three-bedroom house in Sacramento for what I pay for a studio apartment in Silicon Valley. If I moved out to Placerville, I could get a nice cabin with a deck above the snowline and watch the football-sized squirrel run around.

Nobody should work hell desk for 20 years.

I've done software testing, help desk, data center, PC refresh projects and, currently, computer security. I'm studying for my InfoSec certifications. Next job should be $100K per year.

If I couldn't find something better (pro mechanic?), I'd open my veins..

When God hands out lemons, do you make lemonade or suck your lemons? I make lemonade.

You are getting too old to live like an undergrad.

When I was an undergraduate, I lived in five-bedroom Victorian house with 12 other guys. A studio apartment is a palatial mansion in comparison. When I retire in 20+ years, I'll move into a trailer in Las Vegas that's slightly smaller than my studio apartment.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

But when people say they live "in silicon valley" it normally means you cannot pay the rent on a small place with $50,000 per year.

I live in San Jose and work in Palo Alto. Last time I checked, it was the heart of Silicon Valley.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

Err, so about half your take-home is for rent?

Less than half. I put away 20% in savings.

That's some poverty-level shit right there.

Poverty-level shit is owning a house with an underwater mortgage, still paying off the down payment borrowed from the wife's 401k plan, leasing two or three cars, and buying $180 blue jeans. That's my brother and his family. He's rich, I'm poor. But only one of us can afford to retire — and it ain't him.

Re:This is why

[The-Ixian]

The nice thing about IT work is that all sectors need IT workers.

So you don't have to restrict yourself to one market sector.

Some sectors pay more than others.

For me, it is always a trade off between freedom and burdensome restrictions.

Usually, the bigger the company, the more you can get paid as an IT worker and the less you need to know. However, you also have much less freedom to drive company policy or to even do your job (or what you view to be your job).

OTOH, the smaller the company, the less money you make as salary but the perks may be bigger (retirement, medical insurance, free parking, etc) and you have more freedom to involve yourself in more things (wear more hats). However, the work is harder and you need to know more.

I personally like the smaller companies. I don't make as much as my peers, but I do get to do a lot more interesting things on a daily basis.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

I believe you just made the point.

Making a living from IT support? Absolutely.

Re:This is why

[Chaos Incarnate]

Depends on the company. I've been with my current company for about five and a half years; we came in through an acquisition, where the old company had been lowballing everyone. I got a 10% raise at the time of the acquisition, and over the last five years I've gotten about a 115% raise beyond that. (No, that's not a typo, I'm making more than double what I was when we were acquired.)

Re:This is why

[nedlohs]

aka a cardboard box. Especially since most people with 20 years in a career have a kid or two (though likely not most who pay close to half their net salary to rent a studio apartment).

Re:This is why

[Sir_Eptishous]

Support staff is easily outsourced or replaced and you wind up bouncing from job to job and being cut any time your pay nears a livable level.

As an IT support contractor for 20+ years, I currently make $50,000+ per year and live in Silicon Valley.

Surely you jest.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

Except this is what is wrong with IT Security. People with papers without any actual experience doing the work.

I got 20+ years of IT experience and A+/Network+/MCP certifications from 15 years ago. My current job is computer security. I'm two years into a five year contract in government IT.

[...] a bunch of inexperienced, overpaid paper hangers [...]

Most people who get certifications don't know that they're supposed to get certified AFTER they get the experience.

Re:This is why

[shaitand]

True, there are ways, changing to a new position/title will also help but you still might make less than a new hire would in that same position because the company is all too aware of what they are already paying you. If the range for the new position is significantly higher than your current salary they know you'll be happy with the low end of that range no matter how qualified you are for the spot. A new company will make an offer based on how qualified they think you are.

Re:This is why

[HornWumpus]

Rents are _crazy_ these days. You might find a 3 br place in DPH for that. Perhaps a 2br in the tweaked out parts of Orangevale, North Highlands or S Sac.

Placerville has truly gone insane, it's a bedroom community for Folsom. Anything commutable is _expensive_.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

Especially since most people with 20 years in a career have a kid or two [...]

Each kid costing $250K to raise from birth to college.

[...] (though likely not most who pay close to half their net salary to rent a studio apartment).

A studio apartment, no. A three-bedroom house that they can't afford, absolutely.

Re:This is why

[unixisc]

Ahh can't fault the guy. Some people like the position they have currently and don't want to change/climb higher in the pay rank. I work with a couple of people who've been on the IT help desk for 18, 19 years and that's what they'll stay at because they just feel like it. More power to them. I'd rather keep learning/trying to climb higher.

50k is fine, but Joe is right. In Si Valley, you'd have to live in a dump w/ that pay

Re:This is why

[unixisc]

When I made $90k in Si Valley, even then half my pay went into rent/mortgage. That's standard if one is stuck in that shithole

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

Wow. That male prostitution business must be going very well.

I'm not in management. ;)

Re:This is why

[nedlohs]

Each kid costing $250K to raise from birth to college.

Only if you are an idiot. Yes they wear out clothes and eat food and you likely don't want to all be in a studio apartment. But the people without children subsidize their schooling by paying for government schools and avoiding stupidly expensive colleges is easy.

Obviously you are free to not want a family. Just as others are free to want a family. You are screwed if everybody doesn't want a family though, so luckily there are others willing to earn more money than you (relative to their cost of living location) and have children to prop up our economic system that relies on growth.

A studio apartment, no. A three-bedroom house that they can't afford, absolutely

That's funny, since 1466/month on 50000/year is into the "can't afford" range whereas lots of dual income three-bedroom house renters in low cost of living areas are well within normal historic affordability limits.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

In Si Valley, you'd have to live in a dump w/ that pay

When I moved into my apartment complex 11 years ago, it looked like a 1960's housing project and the neighbors smoked 20 different variety of weed. It was dirt cheap with $800 per month rent, $199 security deposit and a free microwave oven. Three corporate owners and multiple rent increases later, the complex is being renovated and marketed for its "luxury" apartment. Despite a brand new luxury apartment complex opening down the street, the rents haven't gone down despite being a 50-year-old apartment complex.

Re:This is why

[HideyoshiJP]

That's depressing. I make more than that in flyover country and pay $800 a month for double that. While I can envy some aspects of the Bay Area lifestyle, it's not enough to sacrifice what I have. Anyway, more power to you if you like where you are, and there's something to be said for stability.

Re:This is why

[scatbomb]

Silicon Valley is expensive even if you live a moderate lifestyle. I just moved into a 650 sqft 1 bedroom apartment in SJ that costs $2200/mo. I decided to move when my 800 sqft 1 bedroom rent was raised to $2800/mo.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

Obviously you are free to not want a family. Just as others are free to want a family.

What makes you think I have a choice about having a family?

You are screwed if everybody doesn't want a family though, so luckily there are others willing to earn more money than you (relative to their cost of living location) and have children to prop up our economic system that relies on growth.

We're all screwed in 2030 when the baby boomers are retired and outnumber workers (tax base), Social Security/Medicare will consume two-thirds of the federal budget, and taxes will have to go way up to pay for everything else.

That's funny, since 1466/month on 50000/year is into the "can't afford" range [...]

I'm not sure why some would consider that the "can't afford" range. At $50K per year, I'm putting 20% away in savings.

Re:This is why

[omnichad]

If you see 2 letters in caps, you should assume ISO 3166 country abbreviations (2-letter) not ccTLD. In that case, the same country, but not in every case.

Re:This is why

[Shortguy881]

You are some kind of terrible or just plain complacent. Neither should be held in high regard.

Re:This is why

[ryanmc1]

As a software engineer I made that right out of college, and that was 20 years ago. Today I am easily making 3x that (not counting my 12% yearly bonus), and I am in Utah.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

You are some kind of terrible or just plain complacent. Neither should be held in high regard.

Does your comment have a point that makes sense?

Re:This is why

[Reeses]

I live and work in SV. If you're making $50k with 20 years of experience, you really need to have a talk with your manager or look for another job.

Every job I've had in the area, $50k is what we pay people when we allow them to take the plastic protector off the sharp edge of the butter knives in the company kitchen. It's junior level pay. Or Uber-driver pay.

I know for a fact there are homeless people in the streets bringing home more than that.

Seriously dude, it might be worth reevaluating where your career is. Keep living frugally, that's admirable. But you're being taken advantage of.

Re:This is why

[zeugma-amp]

Good advise, not getting involved in anything not "core" to the business.

The problem is, sometimes that still doesn't help. I was employed by a company that was based almost purely on analytics. They hoovered information about their targeted area (yeah, I'm being intentionally vague), repackaged it and had their in-house 'analytic engines' massage the stuff before reselling it.

They were/are big sellers to government, business, and the press. Then some PHB got the smart idea of outsourcing their IT stuff to another company (who shall also remain nameless). Now, the only actual product of this company was the data itself. They had no manufacturing or similar operations. I would have thought that the IT stuff was in fact their 'core business', and to this day would argue the same.

Anyway, rather than saving anything at all, they merely instituted yet another layer of unaccountability. I most specifically do not call it any form of actual "accountability", as all it has done is elevated finger pointing and buck passing to an art form. Even though many of the former IT workers for the company were essentially 'sold' to the outsourced company, there was still a huge drain of institutional knowledge in all IT areas. My particular support group essentially evaporated within about 3 months of my leaving.

The people who took over our former responsibilities were almost entirely 'offshore assets', who had zero knowledge of the how/why of the environments. To the best of my knowledge, no actual money has been 'saved' by this outsourcing decision, and all it has essentially done is make the company that much slower to do anything because instead of having one level of bureaucracy to deal with, you now have two, and each of those two levels have conflicting missions. The vendor just wants to keep costs as low as possible, while the business just wants to get things done. Add to that, the fact that prior to this massive divestiture, you had groups with quite a bit of institutional knowledge in its area of responsibility, and these groups and the individuals within them took ownership of the areas they supported. Now, there is no institutional knowledge, and no ownership. People work on everything up to the various bright lines that demarcate what is "theirs" and what is "ours", and doesn't take initiative to actually try to figure out what is "best".

Over all, I'd say it's been a complete waste of time, money and effort. The company is still hobbling along on pre-existing momentum, but there is a big vacuum out there that someone else will eventually fill.

while I'm here ranting, I'd like to ask if anyone has ever actually seen one of these big IT deals like this that actually worked and made sense? I've seen a lot of weird goings on, over the past 40 years in different companies, and I can honestly say that sometimes I'm absolutely astounded that most of them have managed to stay in business. (The only one with a real clue didn't, because it was so well run that it was bought out by a criminal enterprise that was willing to leverage itself into oblivion to keep it's pozi scheme running.)

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

As a software engineer I made that right out of college, and that was 20 years ago.

I've always love it when someone rolls out the CS argument ("kids today make that kind of money right out of college"). Except that I spent eight years in Special Ed (misdiagnosed, of course), never went to high school, and got two associate degrees, A.A. in General Ed (1994) and A.S. in Computer Programming (2007). The only kind of work I can do in the tech industry is digging virtual trenches.

Today I am easily making 3x that (not counting my 12% yearly bonus), and I am in Utah.

You must feel really bad that kids make that kind of money right out of college.

Re:This is why

[nedlohs]

What makes you think I have a choice about having a family?

Because you gave cost as a downside of doing so, with no upside mentioned. So I figured they wouldn't want them,

I'm not sure why some would consider that the "can't afford" range. At $50K per year, I'm putting 20% away in savings.

35% is at the very top end of rent to income by most historic metrics, 1466/month and 50000/year is slightly above that. Bay area is super expensive for housing so that's not unexpected. It's not a disaster by any stretch and easy enough to make up in other areas, but the topic was that 50,000 means cardboard box, and your example rather than countering that is evidence for it.

Coincidentally enough (given you example) the three bedroom house I was renting last year, came to 16% of income - though that's counting a double income and it wasn't in San Francisco or even California.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

Every job I've had in the area, $50k is what we pay people when we allow them to take the plastic protector off the sharp edge of the butter knives in the company kitchen.

Unicorn companies tend to overpay for talent, like paying kitchen workers well above minimum wage. One company spent $25,000 per employee on perks.

It's junior level pay.

Since I'm working on a government IT contract, $50K is the national average. My subcontractor has my job title as Senior System Administrator. I've been trying to getting a cost of living adjustment for $100K per year. But the contracting officer is reluctant to do so since the SF and NYC folks will want a COLA.

Or Uber-driver pay.

Uber drivers make a little more than minimum wage.

http://time.com/money/3678389/uber-drivers-wages/

I know for a fact there are homeless people in the streets bringing home more than that.

During the Great Recession, a panhandler on a particular street corner in San Francisco made $85 per hour.

Seriously dude, it might be worth reevaluating where your career is.

Seriously, dude, your apple and oranages comparisons sucks.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

Because you gave cost as a downside of doing so, with no upside mentioned. So I figured they wouldn't want them,

We're talking about cost. I gave an example of cost. Cost has nothing to do with wanting a family. Plenty of people have children without considering the cost.

[...] the topic was that 50,000 means cardboard box [...]

So my home is a "cardboard box" because it doesn't fit the norm of a Silicon Valley McMansion? Pfft... You sound like my brother who complained about my father moving out of a two-bedroom house after our mother passed away, got rid of everything, bought a trailer home for $10,000 and lived in a trailer park for $400 per month. He couldn't understand why anyone would want to live BELOW their means.

Re:This is why

[Shortguy881]

20+ years at $50,000 in SV is just sad. My point was you are either a really bad IT professional only worth $50K a year or complacent to the point were you only value yourself at $50K a year.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

I give my pet rabbit more indoor space than that. :(

My brother's in-laws bought a $1M five-bedroom house in the Gilroy foothills. The wet bar was larger than my kitchen, the kitchen was bigger than my studio apartment. Very obscene. Especially since the in-laws had five bedrooms of family heirloom furniture that don't want to get rid of. They later moved out of state to buy a farm with a barn to store their furniture.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

20+ years at $50,000 in SV is just sad.

Twenty-plus years ago, I made $10K per year as a spaghetti cook. Today I make $50K per year as a senior system admin. Three years from now I'll be making $100K per year as an InfoSec tech.

My point was you are either a really bad IT professional only worth $50K a year or complacent to the point were you only value yourself at $50K a year.

You made a bad assumption of my past earnings history.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

Surely you jest.

Why would I jest? If you're amazed that I make $50K in Silicon Valley, consider the people who make minimum wage in Silicon Valley. Those hardworking people always amazes me.

Re:This is why

[shaitand]

"OTOH, the smaller the company, the less money you make as salary but the perks may be bigger (retirement, medical insurance, free parking, etc) and you have more freedom to involve yourself in more things (wear more hats). However, the work is harder and you need to know more."

I've done both and in my experience what you say is true. Small companies are where you learn what it's like to really know a technology and to rapidly absorb new technologies and really know them. If you drop someone who is used to enterprise into small company land and ask them to do something simple like build something from scratch they are usually lost. In enterprise land often the implementors, the architects, and the people who actually run and support a component are different people and even the different pieces like network, database, etc are all different people within those groups. It takes forever to actually change anything too with all the approval processes and overhead. Even the enterprise level products you use are specifically designed to thwart people who understand the underlying technology from just picking them up and figuring it them out in a few minutes while they install. Products are often intentionally obfuscated to encourage the sale of training/support and hide underlying technologies.

In a smaller company you maybe find out who can do the purchasing, tell them what to purchase, it shows up and you walk over to the rack and just do everything that is needed right then or maybe in the evening if it will disrupt something. Maybe you have a brainstorm session with a couple people and whiteboard up a plan while waiting for it to show up.

Really, I think everyone should spend a few years doing both. A small company rockstar who steps into enterprise will be overwhelmed with the scale and complexity not to mention the process. An enterprise only rockstar who steps into a small company will have too limited an exposure and won't know how to do things or rapidly figure things out. The best path is probably from small to mid to large enterprise, with a couple years in mid every decade. The person who has fought in all those trenches is going to be your MVP once he learns the environment every time.

Re: This is why

[turbidostato]

"To be fair, any number is a potential fraction."

How to show you wrong in one word: Pi.

Re:This is why

[whoever57]

I rent a 470-sft studio apartment for $1,466 per month. I've been here for 11 years.

So basically, you are OK until the next big rent increase?

Re:This is why

[whoever57]

A studio apartment, no. A three-bedroom house that they can't afford, absolutely.

I live in a nice 4-bedroom house in Silicon Valley, which, when I sell it, I expect it to pay back every penny that I have spent in mortgage interest, property taxes, maintenance, insurance, etc.. I expect its net cost over 15 years to be zero. Even if house prices drop dramatically in the next few years, I can still expect it to have cost less per year than your little box.

Re:This is why

[Shortguy881]

As an IT support contractor for 20+ years

You made some assumptions for us...

Re: This is why

[turbidostato]

"Is there a proof that it never ends?"

Yes.

Re: This is why

[skids]

He didn't say it specifically had to be a vulgar fraction.

"every irrational number, including pi, can be represented by an infinite series of nested fractions, called a continued fraction:"

Re:This is why

[nedlohs]

No cardboard box is just the hyperbolic of saying cheap or small. People on $50k don't live in literal cardboard boxes, that should be obvious enough. I'm not sure why you want to take what is obviously joking around about expensive real estate so personally.

I didn't "complain" about anything, and didn't say anything disparaging about "living BELOW their means". So I'm not sure what voices you are hearing there. You may notice I spend a lower percentage of my income on housing than you do - I'm the one "living BELOW their means" out of the two of us...

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

As an IT support contractor for 20+ years

You made some assumptions for us...

How so?

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

I'm not sure why you want to take what is obviously joking around about expensive real estate so personally.

This is California. A roommate and I had dead petunias in our front yard of a duplex that we rented prior to the dot com bust and the real estate market was sizzling hot. A little old lady came by to tell us that those dead petunias reduced the value of her home by $25,000. I asked her if she was selling her house. She said no. When I pointed out that she didn't know what her house was worth until she sold it, she walked off in a huff. If you rent, you get this kind of abuse all the time.

I'm the one "living BELOW their means" out of the two of us.

Not exactly. I'm living below my means relative to people in Silicon Valley, as $50K means I'm the working poor. Although the people who earn minimum wage and live in Silicon Valley would strongly disagree.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

I live in a nice 4-bedroom house in Silicon Valley, which, when I sell it, I expect it to pay back every penny that I have spent in mortgage interest, property taxes, maintenance, insurance, etc.

My older brother made that bet too with a three-bedroom house in Morgan Hill. Seven years after the Great Recession, he can't retire because the mortgage is still underwater and he's still paying off the down payment borrowed from his wife's 401k plan. He might have to work until the day he dies. What a tragedy.

Even if house prices drop dramatically in the next few years, I can still expect it to have cost less per year than your little box.

When I'm ready to retire to Las Vegas in 20+ years, I'm free to give my 30 day notice, buy a trailer and hit the road.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

So basically, you are OK until the next big rent increase?

Rent control in San Jose limits the rent increases to five percent per year (used to be eight percent until this year). I'm studying for my InfoSec certifications and planning to get a $100K per year job in three years. I'm certainly hoping to move out long before then. OTOH, I had a coworker in New York City who took 15 years to move out of his rent-controlled studio apartment. Moving is a PITA.

Re:This is why

[whoever57]

My older brother made that bet too with a three-bedroom house in Morgan Hill. Seven years after the Great Recession, he can't retire because the mortgage is still underwater and he's still paying off the down payment borrowed from his wife's 401k plan. He might have to work until the day he dies. What a tragedy.

That sucks. But I would argue that he made two bad decisions. I think that most Silicon Valley property is worth considerably more than at the peak just before the recent recession. Hence, apart from timing his purchase badly, the decision to buy in Morgan Hill was spectacularly bad.

It's my guess that cities that are on the outer reaches of commuting distance to the heart of Silicon Valley experience greater swings in value than those closer in. From a purely financial perspective, he should have realized this and compromised with a smaller house closer in.

I have seen peaks and troughs before, in the UK, one year, my house went up in value by approximately twice my annual salary and then, the following year, down by about my annual salary. I ended up OK, but some of my colleagues bought houses at the peak and were stuck with an underwater mortgage ("negative equity" as it was known in the UK) for many years. Having seen this, I was perhaps more cautious. Perhaps too cautious: I could have bought a house in Silicon Valley earlier and be sitting on more equity now.

You can polish a turd...

[D00MSlayer]

But it's still a piece of shit. Any level of support from HP should be dealt with great skepticism. They haven't had their stuff together for a very long time.

Bootstrapping a Global IT infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember reading a whitepaper with the above title in the late 90's, which was written by NASA IT technical leaders.
It was fascinating and lead to my working for a subsidiary of Level3 and still forms a basis of my work with multiple widespread organizations in many different industries.

It would be sad if such a progressive thought-leader in IT becomes just another outsourced has-been

Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[Archangel Michael]

If you outsource, you get what you pay for .. maybe.

If you keep it in house, you get what you pay for .. maybe.

The problem isn't outsourcing, it is leadership that is incapable of articulating needs correctly. Or even make a decision without having to have 18 meetings with people who don't give a rip and don't know anything.

Re:Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[chipschap]

Or even make a decision without having to have 18 meetings with people who don't give a rip and don't know anything.

When I becane an IT manager, I instituted a "two meeting" rule. The first meeting to broach and issue and discuss it, and the second meeting to complete the discussion and make a decision.

This enraged people, who wanted multiple meetings spread out over weeks. Great way to avoid accountability but I wouldn't allow it. So people then started coming to me individually, post-decision, trying to get me to reconsider or have another meeting.

Sorry. I would rather have risked a sub-optimal decision than have no decision at all---- and the additional dozen meetings very likely would have resulted in something worse, not better.

I only lasted a few years in that job. Too counter-culture. (I also --- gasp --- got rid of subordinate managers who weren't getting the job done.)

Re:Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[ranton]

The problem isn't outsourcing, it is leadership that is incapable of articulating needs correctly.

This, and the tendency for company leadership to feel outsourcing means they can offload all responsibility for project success. This is especially true when consultants are brought in for a project when in house staff has no expertise in one or more major aspects of the project. It's as if management believes an advisory role also includes ensuring overall project success.

Re: Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[Entrope]

"The customer('s management) couldn't provide requirements" is the excuse of incompetent contractors out to bleed the client dry. The customer almost never has very clear or necessarily realistic requirements -- if they knew enough to create those, they'd probably be able to do the work in-house. Good contractors need to be good at eliciting requirements, and be able to build a set of requirements that will support at least a minimum viable product.

Re:Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[coofercat]

And the constant repeating of completely bone-headed decisions that weren't right 10 years ago and aren't right now (T&M versus fixed price - I'm looking at you ;-)

The old adage: "you can't outsource a problem" springs to mind. For people to actually 'get it' though, they have to understand what their problem is. It's almost never the individual techies that do the grunt work.

This is a shame for Nasa though - they ought to be a major force in all things to do with space, and shouldn't be in the news for having crappy IT.

Re: Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[Luthair]

As someone who doesn't work as a contractor, this seems like an oversimplification to me. While its probably true for a small system, for large scale systems that approach is likely to result in a system that doesn't do what the customer needs it to.

The second half of this is of course that people make things too complicated, every business or agency isn't a special snowflake. Requirements get tacked on for arbitrary and political (in the case of NASA both internal and public politics) reasons that aren't really necessary and everyone could be placed into the same handful of buckets.

Re: Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[Archangel Michael]

'nobody working for the govrnment has any talent'

I am a libertarian. I would not say "nobody" (an absolute) has talent. That being said, you make a strong strawman argument!

I am convinced, that that there are enough incompetent or evil people in government that it makes it impossible to dodge all the raindrops. The problem with Government Employees that suck, that are incompetent, that are evil is that it is virtually impossible to rid them from the system. They exist, they remain, and everyone knows a few that cannot be fired.

The reason you outsource in Government is so you can terminate the incompetent by eliminating the whole staff. Everyone pays the price for the bad. And in that case, it appears that "nobody has talent" because in order to function, you have to fire everyone (absolute) just to rid yourself of those that shouldn't be there in the first place.

Re:Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[Archangel Michael]

I've seen this myself. The "Leaders" who can't make a decision. The ones I've seen, are trying to avoid responsibility for decisions, and passing those off to an "unknown" committee, they can't be held responsible for the bad decisions because ... they didn't make that decision. OR worse, wait for the last possible moment to decide, and find out ... the decision was already made (incorrectly) or it was actually too late to make a difference (fix the dike after it is flooding).

I call it the "Accountability avoidance decision making tree".

As for meetings, this is my view of most of them ...

http://www.bluedogposters.com....

Re:Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[Archangel Michael]

OR, in our case, spend $150K on "Consultants" to review and document our department's recommendation and put it in a TPS Report that nobody reads. Basically duplicating what our Department recommended, because we are too stupid to know what we are talking about.

You can read some interesting anecdotes of how people get around people who have to add their $.02 worth to every decision, just to seem important.

http://programmers.stackexchan...

Re: Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[Archangel Michael]

I once worked on a project, where the customer was quite clear about the requirements, and I created a system that fit the requirements perfectly, and probably better than intended. The problem was, they didn't like how it functioned, even though it did exactly what it was they asked for.

Basically I took a database TXT field that held a date, and converted it to a date field, so they could sort by date. But they didn't want a date field with MM/DD/YYYY (or variation of that format) they just wanted MM/YYYY and the extra DD part was ... too much data entry. They rather MANUALLY sort the data, than have to type two extra characters. I changed it back.

That person left the job, the person who took over the position loved the change, so I re-implemented it. Got paid 3 times for the job. Sometimes, people want change, but don't like it, and refuse to change, even when they want it.

Re: Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[Archangel Michael]

So, your basic excuse is ...

Everyone is doing it, so it is okay.

Cronyism is defacto standard, so keeping incompetent people is the price we are willing to pay to avoid it (never mind now you have career appointments for cronies)

Got it. Thanks for playing.

Re:Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[magarity]

The problem isn't outsourcing,

The problem isn't always outsourcing, but in this case I bet that HP themselves immediately re-outsourced it to an offshore firm that may or may not be also outsourcing it. The biggest outsourcing vendors do this trick all the time.

Re:Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[PCM2]

This, and the tendency for company leadership to feel outsourcing means they can offload all responsibility for project success.

Something I've seen firsthand is companies that are pathologically incapable of making important decisions internally, and that is why they bring in a consultancy. Consultants go around to the various stakeholders (who can't agree on anything), gather requirements from each, then make recommendations. Despite the fact that the recommendations are basically a micro-model of the stakeholders' existing points of view and the result is the same no-win scenario the company was facing to begin with, the recommendations are acted upon, either in whole or in part. When the result is the same mess that would have inevitably happened even before the consultancy was brought in, at least now it's the consultants' fault that their recommendations didn't work out. Managers can then stir up a big stink when it's time to renegotiate the contract, they win some petty, unimportant concessions from the consultancy, and it's time to rinse and repeat.

Re: Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[Entrope]

I am not sure what you are objecting to: The idea that customers don't have firmly stated requirements when they sign an outsourcing contract? The idea that good contractors should work with customers to clarify, elaborate, and refine requirements, resolving conflicts between stated requirements when they occur? The idea that contractors shouldn't blame the customer if they don't get a sufficiently complete set of requirements? The idea that an MVP can be deployed to help advance the overall contract's progress?

Conflicting requirements are a different problem than being unable to provide requirements (or articulate them correctly). It's lucky when a customer empowers exactly one person (at least for a given scope) to resolve such conflicts. More often, for the political reasons you mention, the customer wants to have too many cooks, and they spoil the requirements soup.

Re: Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[Archangel Michael]

The big difference is, if you replace the public sector Bosses, with new ones, you still can't get rid of the person. If you replace the Private sector person's boss, you can.

It has to do with ABILITY, and not DESIRE. In public sector, you can have all the desire in the world, and not be able to rid yourself of bad employees.

Re:Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[cwsumner]

It's called Beauracracy. It is a disease that infects large organizations. -Any- large organization.

Beware of it because it is fatal for the organization, unless some outside source keeps it alive.
(For instance, people's taxes.)

But it can be successfully fought against, if people are constantly alert for it.
Just consider it part of the "safety program".

Insider Info

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked at one of the NASA research centers when this contract was awarded. During the Due Diligence phase, HPE didn't even send a representative to our facility, and at other sites the reps were there for one day. We were incredulous; at our site alone there are 3,000+ people and a complex IT infrastructure. How can you do proper due diligence for a multi-billion dollar contract without even visiting the IT environment your going to be taking over, or talking with existing staff and customers?

Lockheed also competed for this contract and lost. (Lockheed was the incumbent on the expiring ODIN contract, and some of us suspected bias against Lockheed because of this.) Lockheed contested the contract award, which is something that is rarely done because you don't want to burn bridges with the government, and the United States government is Lockheed's customer for about 99% of all corporate revenue. Lockheed's position was something like, "you can't be serious! HPE has no idea what they are doing!" But NASA was insistent that they wanted HPE. It's been pure IT hell at NASA ever since.

MORE: During implementation, we found out that HPE's plan was to have a single HPE employee at our location! Any other staff would be outsourced or done via remote desktop sessions.

Re:Insider Info

[segedunum]

I worked at one of the NASA research centers when this contract was awarded. During the Due Diligence phase, HPE didn't even send a representative to our facility...

Because they knew it was a done deal. Palms greased, rounds of golf done, prostitutes paid.

Re:Insider Info

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Not surprising. I was at HP/HPE for a couple of years, at the original SABRE site. Almost everything was outsourced to Wipro/IBM. I had to step-by-step walk thier "systems administrator" through on installing IIS on a w2k box. To the point of "yes, now hit enter. Click here, no; you need to DOUBLE CLICK." It felt like IT Crowd "you do know what a button is, right? No, not on your trousers". I'll bet that "single HPE employee" was also a contractor. The only reason the SABRE site isn't 100% contractors is because AA won't let them. They "outsourced" the entire help-desk floor, even making LTE/FTE go to a contractor position at less pay and practically zero benefits. I was told stuff like medical insurance went from "employer paid" to "we can get you a discount"; just "good enough" to not get an ACA penalty. No vacation, no PTO. Some people had been LTE/FTE for over a decade. Everyone was outsourced, from the helpdesk Director on down. I got lucky and jumped out of the HD into the NOC just as it was announced, and managed to hang on for another 2 years...but at least I was FTE and got a severance package. Now I'm at a privately owned company, making $15k more a year and no longer feel like a replaceable part.

Re:Insider Info

[CaptnCrud]

EDS was just as crappy when I was working at JSC under CSOC back in 03...I remember us getting moved to a new room with a raised floor that hadn't been used in a while...come to find out there was nearly 100k in fiber spools just sitting there no one even knew about.

Re:Insider Info

[turbidostato]

"Because they knew it was a done deal. Palms greased, rounds of golf done, prostitutes paid."

Don't think so. I've been on my dose of these procurements and usually, no, they are not taken for granted. It really depends on the contract but you don't do (percieved) due diligence for two reasons:
1) Since you are not sure about winning the contract, pre-sales costs are a problem since you don't know if you'll recoup them, so you save them on on-site techs in order to expend on "hooks and booze" -which usually pays better at this stage.
2) You *positively* know these kind of contracts can't base their pricing on a honest cost-plus-margin valuation. They already come with a more or less fixed price so you only need a very rough ballpark go/no go valuation (usually mixed with some strategic considerations which make the real cost even more moot) -even worse, you usually have no time for anything better. In the end, since you know you are going to work backwards, why taking the effort? I mean, *if* you get the contract, you take the money, take out (at least) your expected profit and service it with whatever it remains, disregarding any real needs from the customer.

Obviously, this kind of approach rarely if ever offers good results.
Obviously, the hiring party absolutely knows it.
Astoundingly, they (both public or private entities) keep contracting that way.

The problems begin with the letters H and P...

[__aaclcg7560]

I talked to a recruiter a few years ago about an HP help desk position with a high turnover rate at an unnamed company in North San Jose. He refused to explain the turnover situation. I told him that I wasn't going to interview if I didn't know how bad the situation was. I had no problem cleaning up messes but I don't do lost causes. HP help desk at that unnamed company sounded like a lost cause based on what little the recruiter told me.They were also underpaying their techs.

Re:The problems begin with the letters H and P...

[edtice1559]

Which may be a big source of the turnover!

Re:The problems begin with the letters H and P...

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Good call. You couldn't "clean up the mess": It's far beyond the help desk's scope to fix the issues; issues like being forced to use the worst ticketing system ever (HPSM). Ass-backwards implementation of LEAN. Focusing on "call metrics" like it's a second-rate call center instead of a technical help desk. A knowledge-base that makes a burning pile of confetti look good. No support for your tools; I had to go to external forums and wind my way backwards to get support from some third-party for what supposedly was HP software. Tech leads busy playing MMORPG's on their personal laptops. Ridiculous levels of unchecked favoritism.

Re:The problems begin with the letters H and P...

[__aaclcg7560]

You couldn't "clean up the mess": [...]

I could but it would require firing everyone and bringing in a new crew. I've done it few times. Nothing more fun than working your way through a 900+ ticket backlog in 30 days.

NASA quote low bids

[turkeydance]

It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract. Alan Shepard Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quo...

Re:NASA quote low bids

[SteveSgt]

I don't know who stole from who, but during the telecast of the first space shuttle launch, a camera went live on Walter Cronkite when he wasn't expecting it, and he mused: "It must be a sobering thought to those brave astronauts, seated atop several million pounds of high-energy explosive, to realize that its contained in a vehicle built by a lowest bidder."
I noticed years later when I watched a documentary about the shuttle program, that line had been cut.

HP Contracts Are a Joke.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone who I have ever known who has had dealings with HP contracts has commented about how bad they are. I work as a (non HP) contractor for a government entity and HP just took some of our contract within this last year. There has been no communication from anyone on the HP side, even within their own organization. The people they've hired have *NO* qualifications and don't even have the required certifications to be allowed to do the work, so they sit in their cubicles... Watching YouTube videos and browsing Amazon all day... Making no effort to get certified, or contribute in any way. It must be nice to be paid to do nothing. Even if my work ethic would let me do nothing and get paid for it, I'd go out of my mind. I guess that's what you get for the taking the lowest bidder, but as a taxpayer it's infuriating. How they haven't been held in breach of contract is beyond me.

Re:HP Contracts Are a Joke.

[HexaByte]

Was on a team that did a security assessment in Puerto Rico several years ago. The IT team had a contract w HP for some of the system. Could never get questions answered, never got the same guy in to fix their messes, and it under-preformed for excessive costs.

Re:HP Contracts Are a Joke.

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

HA! I was tasked with filing out my teams "Business Impact Statements". As I used to work on the HPE helpdesk, I knew for certainty that the documentation I needed was in their knowledge base. However, their Director refused to let anyone outside of her fiefdom into it. I finally had to sneak upstairs at night, and take pictures with my phone of the old paper printouts in a filing cabinet. I then had to send those to my manager, who used that as "evidence" to force them to give us access for a couple of weeks. It went all the way up to the Director of Data Center Services; personally for me it was a political coup. We were both supporting the SAME CUSTOMER, just at different levels...I wondered out loud "what would our customer think if they knew our own internal divisions refuse to share the information they have given us to support them?" The customer didn't say "only the help desk can use this". I did get some karma later on when my ex-Director got involuntarily transferred to a team in the NOC and she almost passed out seeing me sitting there. She didn't last more than a few weeks lol.

But outsourcing is wonderful!

[whitroth]

Yeah, everyone who works for the government is incompetent, and business is *always* competent, and libertidiots are *sure* of this.

Btw, I work for a federal contractor, and I know as a matter of fact, not opinion, that my salary and benefits are comparable to the GS level I'd be at (well... except for, say, if the government shuts down, for Republicans, or snow, or whatever, I either have to make it up, burn vacation time, or take it without pay)... AND our tax dollars are not only being spent to pay me, but also my direct manager, and his manager, and so on up, and, oh, yes, however could I have forgotten, for my company to make a good profit.

See? So much saved money..... At least, I, and the folks I work with, actually know what we're doing.

              mark

Re:But outsourcing is wonderful!

[HornWumpus]

Who is incompetent here?

The company that gets paid or the government that puts out contracts and never gets value?

If it was only one government contractor that was incompetent, you could blame them, but it's all of them. Government doesn't know what the fuck it's doing.

Re:But outsourcing is wonderful!

[SlaveToTheGrind]

everyone who works for the government is incompetent, and business is *always* competent, and libertidiots are *sure* of this

How about: Governmental bureaucracies generally reward tenure over competence, and competitive businesses generally reward competence over tenure (for businesses where competition is reduced or eliminated through cozying up to governmental bureaucracies, all bets are off). Only those desperate to continue sucking off the governmental tit or otherwise sticking their heads in the sand pretend to doubt this.

AND our tax dollars are not only being spent to pay me, but also my direct manager, and his manager, and so on up

You can't honestly believe that governmental bureaucracies aren't filled with endless layers of middle management. Do those get paid out of the Magic Money Tree(TM)?

Re:But outsourcing is wonderful!

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

HPE rewards neither tenure or competence. Too much tenure and you get laid off; too much competence and you go insane running head-first into walls of idiots while trying to do your job.

Re:But outsourcing is wonderful!

[Shortguy881]

Seems like you are stretching for an excuse to hate on libertarianism. The key difference between a private company and a government pissing away money and man hours is one is using their own money and the other is using the tax payer's money (I'm lumping government contractors in with the government in that case).

The government is notorious for having so many layers of crap bureaucracy. Many companies do as well but when someone like HP waists money internally, who cares? They are a failing business anyways. When HP waists government money, however, then they are just as bad as the government squandering money.

Re:But outsourcing is wonderful!

[Shortguy881]

(for businesses where competition is reduced or eliminated through cozying up to governmental bureaucracies , all bets are off)

Did you read his post?

Re:But outsourcing is wonderful!

[jacobsm]

HPE rewards neither tenure or competence. Too much tenure and you get laid off; too much competence and you go insane running head-first into walls of idiots while trying to do your job.

Change HPE with Corporate America and you still have a true statement.

Re:But outsourcing is wonderful!

[cheesybagel]

You could as easily say that the private company is pissing away their customers or stockholders money. The problems the government has are the same problems any large bureaucracy has. I have seen competent and incompetent people working for both privates and government.

Re:But outsourcing is wonderful!

[skids]

The company that gets paid or the government that puts out contracts and never gets value?

False dichotomy, the answer is "both." Just because the contractor is some of the time also dishonest, does not mean they are not incompetent as well. While you could argue they are competent at getting payed, that does not make them a competent provider, just a thief.

Re:But outsourcing is wonderful!

[skids]

Governmental bureaucracies generally reward tenure over competence, and competitive businesses generally reward competence over tenure

I've seen zero evidence to support this contention. I've worked in state government and private edu, and have friends working in private com. We all have the same exact stories to tell about the crazy.

Re:But outsourcing is wonderful!

[skids]

The key difference between a private company and a government pissing away money and man hours is one is using their shareholders money and the other is using the tax payer's money

FTFY.

Re:But outsourcing is wonderful!

[Shortguy881]

Depends on where it came from, shareholder investment or reinvested profits.

Re:But outsourcing is wonderful!

[Shortguy881]

First of all, not all companies have stockholders. Secondly, it would depend on where the money came from, stockholder investment or reinvested profits.

Re:But outsourcing is wonderful!

[HornWumpus]

Gaming a contact written by a chump is not stealing. It isn't exactly admirable, but it's not stealing.

Re:But outsourcing is wonderful!

[Rakarra]

Who is incompetent here?

It depends on the political leaning of the answerer. Someone on the left wing will say that the private company is trying to cheat the government out of money, and/or if they can do it for cheaper it will be shoddy work or with underpaid/abused staff. Someone on the right wing will always find a way to pin wrongdoing on the government, no matter who did the work.

Found the problem:

[110010001000]

"the space agency signed a $2.5 billion services contract with HP Enterprise Services in 2011"

Someone hired HP to do work?

Must be nice to have no budget accountability.

[Jester998]

If I told my boss that I wanted to revamp our end user infrastructure for the low cost of $40K per user, I would probably be told to go home until I sobered up.

Thank you

[AndyKron]

Thank you please come again.

So...

[Cornwallis]

"...a Plan of Actions and Milestones (POAM) must be developed, approved, and tracked to closure."

But they never say anything has to actually work!

Re:So...

[tnk1]

True. They are not going to shut down their services or stop paying anyone because of this. They will simply not approve any of the tools for use until then. Which means they use the old stuff, or nothing at all, until the approvals are made. Since I doubt they plan on attempting to cancel the contract, this just means that NASA is fucked and HPE puts some project management monkeys on writing the paperwork. And the approvals will eventually come, whether or not the actual issues are fixed, just so that they can make use of some of what they paid for.

I hate to be jaded about the process, but that's pretty much what is going to happen. It's pretty shitty to have a rather complicated remediation process and then have it just be an exercise in meetings and paperwork while nothing has to change.

Re:So...

[pz]

And when the POAM is being tracked, and things aren't getting fixed .... oh, wait, *I* know, we'll put together a Selected Hurdles Integration and Testing Facility Engineering System Template to make sure the problems get resolved.

The deal is that once you've spent big money, you just can't back out and save face. They need a new leader, brought in from the outside, to shred the contract and tell HPE to go away.

Re:So...

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

If those "tools" involve HP Service Manager, then their better off using smoke signals, chiseling in rocks with copper tools, and pigeons with notes tied to their legs. It's the biggest mess of "jack of no trades, master of none" Java I've ever had to fight with. Notes on a chalk board updated by a drunk gorilla would work better. Having to go through 25+ required fields, 5-10 "pages" of searches, failed EDI transactions, etc every time your trying to create a ticket is more maddening than seeing Cthulhu naked.

Re:HPE?

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding. I currently work for HPE, though that is coming to an end soon. Upper management has no earthly clue on how to run the business and they're bleeding money. So, instead of hiring competent professionals the stated goal of upper management is to outsource 90% of all existing US IT positions.

Hell management is so damn cheap that even Argentina is now too expensive for IT support. Everything is going to Manila, Costa Rica and of course Curry land.

Of course Meg and her minions will cash out while giving the rest of the HPE employees the stinky stick.

I say good riddance to Meg and her minions.

The US gov tried their best

[AHuxley]

to ensure the people hired by the USA in 1950-90's after Operation Paperclip had the best skills to carry on the German vision of total internal quality control over any project.
What went wrong in the 1980-90's with the post German generations of US gov staff testing?
Top US universities educated many of the worlds best graduates based academic merit over the decades.
Did all the great people go to the private sector, starving the US gov of needed skills? Did the NRO make a better offer to the very top % considering gov work?
Who or what is holding back the best US graduates from finding top jobs and working on gov projects that once had effortless internal institutional support?

Re:The US gov tried their best

[JustNiz]

> Who or what is holding back the best US graduates from finding top jobs

Their money expectations combined with the stupidity of management that thinks everyone is interchangeable so why not just hire cheap H1Bs. The thing is, you get what you pay for.

Re:The US gov tried their best

[HornWumpus]

Have you ever worked a government job?

Top grads have their choice. Why would they want to work for a bureaucratic nightmare where promotions are handed out based on ethnic victimhood status combined with seniority?

Many managers in the private sector are almost as incompetent as government ones, but it's still a much better place to be.

Re:The US gov tried their best

[Grishnakh]

I think another factor is that in private industry, you can jump around pretty easily if you're any good at all. Tired of the horrible upper management at your company? No problem, just start interviewing and get a new job. Your company drives itself into the ground (or just your division)? No problem, just go find a new job. Your pay is stagnant, and/or you're tired of the incompetence or the IT infrastructure at your job? Start looking. Of course, getting a new job isn't *that* easy, but in a tech hub with lots of openings for your skillset it's not that hard. But when you work for the government, there is no jumping around, not that easily, and you won't get a big pay raise for doing so (unless you defect to the private sector of course).

Example of something working?

[Mysticalfruit]

Is there a SINGLE instance where a company that was given one of these government contracts actually delivered what was asked for and it wasn't a screeching shitshow?!? Maybe it's simply that the failures are all that get reported and there are companies doing a bang up job without any fanfare...

As much as the MCT will be what gets us to Mars, just as likely it will be because NASA will be hobbled by bureaucracy, bad tools and lack of vision.

Re:Example of something working?

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

The only one that comes to mind is SpaceX's recent contractual deliveries to the ISS. Musk seems to have gotten that down pat to the point the delivery is secondary to his reusable rocket program. But the actual rockets themselves from all the contractors seem to be pretty stable contractor-wise. It's just the IT stuff that the feds can't seem to sift out of the catbox.

Here's one example

[OrangeTide]

Grumman was won the contract to make the F-14 Tomcat, but that was in 1970. I can't think of any recent examples.

Re:Here's one example

[Grishnakh]

I can think of a few more: the A-10 Thunderbolt II ("Warthog"), and a couple of WWII bombers. Not to mention various other airplanes made during the 50s-60s which are now retired. Back then, it seems they were able to go from a vague idea to an excellent military aircraft design in full production in 4 years, back when design had to be done on paper/vellum rather than CAD. These days it takes 15 years and the final product has all kinds of problems.

Re:Here's one example

[cheesybagel]

Actually during WWII it took less than 4 years. Seems rather obvious but if the design took too long to get into production the war would be over by then. The examples usually used for quick projects in the US aircraft industry in WWII are the P-51 Mustang and the P-80 Shooting Star. I think there were several reasons for their success. The main reason IMO was that they were simple designs to begin with.

Modern aircraft development seems to spend more time doing software than actually producing the flight hardware. The F-35 is a rather infamous example of this. Especially because they decided to reimplement the entire software in the airplane. In the 1980s several of the 'teen' fighters like the F-16 were intentionally specified to use as little electronics and software as possible to make them cheaper to develop.

hire competent government employees

[Anonymous Coward]

>> How do they get contracts?

Golf maybe?

>> It's not like their incompetence isn't already legend.

I took part in a state-wide effort to avoid hiring Accenture for some kind of state voting system about ten years, based on their demonstrated inability to complete that kind of project (they were getting sued by other governments during bidding) and their 3-4x run-up of costs at the same time. Guess what happened? The state hired Accenture anyway...got screwed with a system they couldn't use...and got charged about 3x what they were told. Unfortunately as I got older, I noticed that this happens all the time.

Perhaps if the state would hire competent employees to manage their requirements rather than the State Representative's cousin Bubba Gump or this guy from the Sunday school class they wouldn't get screwed over.

Then there's the other way states get screwed and that's petty managers who can't decide what the fucking requirements are Manager A want's X functionality, Manager B wants X-prime functionality, and Manager C says X functionality is completely wrong and won't allow it at all. And all three of them are running their petty little empires and all three have sign off on the project. In the mean time the contractor keeps cashing their hourly check. And when the asshole who is senior to all three says Done--shit doesn't work.

And all Accenture has to do is kick back and do whatever task is assigned no matter how stupid and they know how stupid it is but they do what govt. wants because that's what they're paid to do. Then when government management finally decides that task is stupid, it's a change order and addendum to the project, Accenture cashes another govt. check and get's paid to change the previous requested work. And they keep very close track of what and how a task matches the contract requirements.

But that's what happens when the state hires good ol' boys.

Re:hire competent government employees

[g01d4]

rather than the State Representative's cousin Bubba Gump or this guy from the Sunday school class

Hiring could be a revolving door with industry or whatever buzzword and acronym (see summary) generating criteria the industry uses - their management often isn't much better. Managers who poorly manage large projects still have that mystical experience. Same goes for the company.

They are highly competent at getting contracts

[raymorris]

>How do they get contracts? It's not like their incompetence isn't already legend.

They are very good at what they do - they get contracts. They handle thousands of pages of government forms, years of meetings, and of course donating to the right organizations.

I was a contractor for a company which did most of the on-site work for HP, called TCML. HP's competence was getting government contracts. TCML's competence was finding and contracting somewhat competent techs. My competence was with servers, switches, desktops, etc.

I'm not competent at preparing a XYX-7273-HDH-98(b) package for a federal RFP. HP isn't competent at upgrading a router.

Re:They are highly competent at getting contracts

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, former TCML/HP here.
They sucked beyond belief and just added another mouth to feed in the middle with no benefit to anyone.

Re:They are highly competent at getting contracts

[Anonymous Coward]

... isn't competent at upgrading a router.

Many times, the bottom-tier contractors have the minimum level of skill. This is how the US government spends $500 million and yet some community-college graduate can't pay his bills: All the money is taken off the top and the real work is done for a skilled-labourer wage.

Re:HPE?

[RoscoeChicken]

I am in grad school with an HPE employee who is here on an L-1 visa.

God help you if you work with that bozo directly.

Outsourcing never works

[doggo]

Management (Who usually don't do the work, or even understand the work. Not only IT, any field from IT to janitorial) always wants to outsource because they think it'll save money. It nearly never saves money, and the service usually ends up being well below what is expected or existed previously. Sometimes the bottom line isn't the bottom line.

Outsourcing a national security risk? Shock!

[gestalt_n_pepper]

NOT!

Anyone who's not a moron or a well bribed congresscritter or defense contractor has figured out that getting people in foreign countries involved in American technology with military operations is a huge vulnerability.

Think China or Russia buy mass quantities of military hardware and software from the USA? Surprise answer. Almost none.

Guess why?

Re:HPE?

[unixisc]

And then Meg lectures us about why Trump is bad for the country, and endorses Hilary. Carly did the first, although not the latter (since she's now running for Reince's job) Tells me who to support, even if I knew nothing about politics

A: Because it breaks the flow of a message

[DNS-and-BIND]

Q: Why is starting a comment in the Subject: field incredibly irritating?

Re:Crazy

[Shortguy881]

Funny enough, HP's outsourcing company outsourced their work to these guys at NASA. It's like a big circle jerk with the taxpayers in the middle.

Now you know why Hillary set up her own server.

[technosaurus]

I was in the US Navy for over a decade and one of my biggest ongoing complaints was NMCI. It was horrible, undependable,outdated _and_ overpriced.
First off because of the time to write specs for government contracts is so long, by the time you got any hardware, it was already outdated and overpriced. The monthly rental fees were about the cost to outright buy similar COTS (commercial off the shelf) replacements - so let HP take the equipment back, it would cost nothing the first month and save bundles each successive month.

Software was the same way only the licensing put a lot of software in places where it was useless (but still paid for) and made it nearly impossible to get anything other than a few COTS software packages - open source was not even an option, even when it was markedly better than any competing products. Then there was the backbone, which I swear must have been made up of bread ties that were stripped and twisted together. The network would constantly go down for long periods of time and it was usually around high end dialup speeds... with mailbox limits that were in the tens of megabytes

This was in part due to their severe lack of security in the right places. I mean come on setting autoplay on by default, while preventing users from deleting print jobs out of their own spool ($$ for an extra service call because their crap screwed up) Firewalls? that actually got me into trouble, because I had a construction project that stated we would provide server space for uploading project management and other documents. Well NMCI decided they weren't going to support that particular software any more, nor anything similar to replace it, so I went on portableapps.com (though we couldn't install to HD, usb was fair game - even had autoplay locked on - how convenient?) and downloaded everything I needed to meet my contract requirements. It ran for quite a while with no errors or warnings poping up before they finally noticed and disabled my account and shut off my node.

-- I totally get why a Secretary of State wouldn't want this level of incompetence associated with her communications.

Manned Mars Mission ...

[PPH]

... rendering farm is behind schedule.

Tell me...

[publiclurker]

are you a high level pointy hair at Accenture or just one of their fluffers?

Re:Guess HP can't do CGI properly...

[Swave An deBwoner]

NASA tried but could never get the CGI video to look right. This was before George Lucas.

So in the end they had to admit defeat and instead send Armstrong, Aldin, And Collins to the moon in the Apollo 11 craft.

Sad but true.

Re:IBM?

[cheesybagel]

IBM has been sinking into the same cesspool ever since their new management got in. Well it has been divesting itself of businesses for decades now but the latest moves are particularly egregious.

Yes. Reading/writing 1,000 page proposal is work

[raymorris]

> All the money is taken off the top and the real work is done for a skilled-labourer wage.

True, for government contracts a small percentage of the money goes to people with screwdrivers in hand. ALSO, the people reading and writing 1,000 page documents are doing work. It would certainly be good if we could eliminate some of that work, but it's real work that is required by the federal processes.

Most of these requirements were created to encourage fairness of one kind or another. I personally can go buy a computer in just a few minutes. When the feds buy a computer with your money, you want to know they aren't buying it at triple the normal price from Hillary's brother, so there is process involved. Another taxpayer wants the feds to favor companies that are (nominally) owned by women, so there's more process involved. Another taxpayer wants them to favor people whose great-great-grandparents probably lived in Africa - more process, more work.

Of course organizing 1,000 contractors all over the country to upgrade all of the post offices is also real work.

Re:wow

[skids]

eeeeeeew! Trump says mean things. He's icky!

No, he's icky because he exploited financially vulnerable people with a fraudulent get rich quick scheme. He basically hard-sells the American Dream and then absconds with the money, delivering nothing in return -- not what he promised, and nothing else of value. And he's lent his name and done appearances for other multi-level marketing schemes basically just designed to trick people poor enough to seek supplemental income into giving up what little they already have.

This tells you a lot about what he thinks about the middle and lower classes -- they are just there for him to extract power, fame, and wealth from, and if he hurts them in the process, he really could not give a turd.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:wow

[unixisc]

That's a civil issue. What HRC has done to date is a criminal issue, and an act of corruption - trading in donations to her foundation for favors done as secretary of state

Re:wow

[skids]

That's a civil issue

No, It's a character issue.