But for a federal government fail, the alternative is to, what, move to Canada?
Well, actually, Germany for me. I looked around, decided it was much better run, and decided to do what it will take to work and live there. I'll send you a postcard. Assuming the U.S. postal service is still functioning.
I'm aware of that study, and of others, I believe including at least one from the OPM.
Also, the offsets you mentioned support my primary point, which is that it's not necessarily true that every job is more cheaply done by the private sector.
Do we have too many federal employees for the scope of government? I.e., is the problem their efficiency, or the mission?
If federal employees are getting less done than you'd like, is it because they're lazy/stupid/etc., could part of that be due to the insane set of regulations with which they're required to comply?
Sad as it is, it is too expensive. Federal employees in particular are pretty expensive.
Expensive compared to what? If they don't have to show a profit, etc., then can you objectively demonstrate that they're getting less done than a (potentially) lower-priced contractor?
Also, you fail to mention that there's a very open debate about if / when contractors are a better deal for the government than are civil servants. Partisan thinktanks have no problem making sweeping statements, but organizations specifically charged with reporting truthfully find that there's not enough data.
I hope you're also not going to compare the average salary of all public sector works vs. all private sector workers. Because for the most part, the government doesn't hire people to do low-skilled work. For example, at the military sites that I've been at, things like building cleaning, etc. was mostly done by private contractors.
They don't have to show a profit. They don't have to prove efficiency. They don't have to prove competency. They will simply take what they want from other people until it works.
As opposed to what contractors do? Good grief man, have you ever seen what private sector contractors do? I've seen plenty of silliness and inefficiency in civil servants, but I've seen countless times contractors milking / drawing out contracts, while often getting less done than the civil servants with whom they collaborate.
I suspect you have two basic problems. (1) You're so frustrated with the negative examples you've seen of civil servants, that you simply assume the private sector is more efficient. And (2), you're confusing your complaints regarding the breadth and intrusiveness of the government's self-granted scope, with the quality of work being done by civil servants.
When I left my last job (where I had root on a lot of servers), I had my replacement and staff watch my replacement enter the new root passwords (that only he knew), and delete my personal accounts.
I think that's a bit better than the person who's leaving continuing to know a shared secret.
Yeah, what you said. Except that in my personal experience, the MIT grads simply trumped everyone else, at least be a small margin. I'm only making that claim regarding my sample, not the whole population.
You're not differentiating between a trend being strong enough that it justifies using it as a heuristic, vs. the trend having no exceptions whatsoever.
Agreed. I'm not a top programmer, but I'm pretty good.
I avoid Facebook and Google+ for a few reasons: - It's a shallow way to interact. - It's distracting. - I find Facebook privacy policies unacceptable, given the info that could access. - Being friended by one too many ex-girlfriends.
Or to put it another way, my life probably nearly half over already. There's too much other stuff I want to get done in my remaining years.
I've worked with many software developers in the Northeast. Fun fact: skill correlated strongly with alma mater. All of the MIT-educated developers were better than all of the non-MIT-educated developers. After that, most of the ones from (Ivy League schools + Carnegie Melon) were better than most of the remaining developers.
Regardless of one's thoughts about the mechanism and/or fairness of things working that way, the aforementioned correlations definitely exist in my experience. And since most companies' missions is to get the job done well, rather than promote social equality, it seems reasonable to me that they use circle information if that helps. (And assuming it doesn't violate the privacy of any of Google+'s 50 users.)
And yet, Obama lets millions(?) of illegal immigrants take low-skilled jobs from U.S. workers, without consequence. He actually knowingly lets them stay; he even has the Border Patrol release them.
I was actually trying to give a number a little below that actual U.S. population in 2001, to account for people like you who shouldn't be part of that number. It seems I was wrong though; I just looked up the U.S. population for 2001, and got a number of 284.97 million. Sorry about that.
Agreed. It's one of the reasons I stopped trying to develop software within the government. Who wants to waste his career justifying a laptop purchase?
Slashdot Mirror
I still struggle with the ribbon, and I'm a techie. It's just stunningly unintuitive to me.
Sorry Facebook, I have prior art on the "automated writ response system", which I wrote 30 years ago:
10 PRINT "Fuck off"
20 GOTO 10
15 GOTO FederalPrison
REN
And if those advances are used to violate the Constitution and perhaps impose tyranny, are they still "a lot of good things"?
Well, actually, Germany for me. I looked around, decided it was much better run, and decided to do what it will take to work and live there. I'll send you a postcard. Assuming the U.S. postal service is still functioning.
I'm aware of that study, and of others, I believe including at least one from the OPM.
Also, the offsets you mentioned support my primary point, which is that it's not necessarily true that every job is more cheaply done by the private sector.
As a former DoD software developer, let's review your comments.
According to the best source of info I could easily find, federal salaries made up just 13.8% of the federal budget as of 2005.
You also neglect some important questions:
Expensive compared to what? If they don't have to show a profit, etc., then can you objectively demonstrate that they're getting less done than a (potentially) lower-priced contractor?
Also, you fail to mention that there's a very open debate about if / when contractors are a better deal for the government than are civil servants. Partisan thinktanks have no problem making sweeping statements, but organizations specifically charged with reporting truthfully find that there's not enough data.
I hope you're also not going to compare the average salary of all public sector works vs. all private sector workers. Because for the most part, the government doesn't hire people to do low-skilled work. For example, at the military sites that I've been at, things like building cleaning, etc. was mostly done by private contractors.
As opposed to what contractors do? Good grief man, have you ever seen what private sector contractors do? I've seen plenty of silliness and inefficiency in civil servants, but I've seen countless times contractors milking / drawing out contracts, while often getting less done than the civil servants with whom they collaborate.
I suspect you have two basic problems. (1) You're so frustrated with the negative examples you've seen of civil servants, that you simply assume the private sector is more efficient. And (2), you're confusing your complaints regarding the breadth and intrusiveness of the government's self-granted scope, with the quality of work being done by civil servants.
Perhaps the real difference is that those other countries didn't have the U.S. Congress involved.
Unfortunately, we even have to import the bananas.
Well, sure you have no bananas. You have no bananas today
Best Answer Ever.
It's spelled "Evar".
When I left my last job (where I had root on a lot of servers), I had my replacement and staff watch my replacement enter the new root passwords (that only he knew), and delete my personal accounts.
I think that's a bit better than the person who's leaving continuing to know a shared secret.
Cheesy joke.
Your password is 228ghx!@.
Kind regards,
Swiss Federal Intelligence Service.
Yeah, what you said. Except that in my personal experience, the MIT grads simply trumped everyone else, at least be a small margin. I'm only making that claim regarding my sample, not the whole population.
You're not differentiating between a trend being strong enough that it justifies using it as a heuristic, vs. the trend having no exceptions whatsoever.
Agreed. I'm not a top programmer, but I'm pretty good.
I avoid Facebook and Google+ for a few reasons:
- It's a shallow way to interact.
- It's distracting.
- I find Facebook privacy policies unacceptable, given the info that could access.
- Being friended by one too many ex-girlfriends.
Or to put it another way, my life probably nearly half over already. There's too much other stuff I want to get done in my remaining years.
I've worked with many software developers in the Northeast. Fun fact: skill correlated strongly with alma mater. All of the MIT-educated developers were better than all of the non-MIT-educated developers. After that, most of the ones from (Ivy League schools + Carnegie Melon) were better than most of the remaining developers.
Regardless of one's thoughts about the mechanism and/or fairness of things working that way, the aforementioned correlations definitely exist in my experience. And since most companies' missions is to get the job done well, rather than promote social equality, it seems reasonable to me that they use circle information if that helps. (And assuming it doesn't violate the privacy of any of Google+'s 50 users.)
Fucking traitors.
And yet, Obama lets millions(?) of illegal immigrants take low-skilled jobs from U.S. workers, without consequence. He actually knowingly lets them stay; he even has the Border Patrol release them.
I was actually trying to give a number a little below that actual U.S. population in 2001, to account for people like you who shouldn't be part of that number. It seems I was wrong though; I just looked up the U.S. population for 2001, and got a number of 284.97 million. Sorry about that.
No, he was just the scribe. It was done by 536 traitors, backed by 300 million cowards.
You're right, you should only apply as a last resort. It's absolutely soul-killing to work in that bureaucracy.
Agreed. It's one of the reasons I stopped trying to develop software within the government. Who wants to waste his career justifying a laptop purchase?
Simple answer, web developement is harder than rocket science!
I see it the other way around: most web developers aren't exactly rocket scientists.
Of course, I've also heard rocket scientists say that most rocket scientists aren't rocket scientists, so I'm not sure where that leaves us.
s/aren\'t/are
I don't believe communism and democracy aren't mutually exclusive. Communism != autocracy.