The people that give a shit are making 10x as much by not working for a public middle school.
Fire the current lot if you want, but they'll just be replaced by the next set of people who aren't skilled enough to make market rate.
Most non-core-business organizations can't afford to hire someone competent, and therefore hire someone else.
But obviously that person isn't going to say "Gee, I'm really not great at this computer stuff, but I'll do what I can." They say "Sure, I know all about all the computer stuff!"
And then you have their leadership (who doesn't know any details), taking whatever they report up at face value.
The governor probably believed he had a leg to stand on here, because I'm sure that's exactly what his people told him.
My money's on this being purely a political decision. And for that, considering who it is and their position in the political landscape, I think it's too early to definitively call it a blunder.
It's much easier to play political games on much more abstract issues where it's harder to evaluate the options.
Meanwhile, he's received national attention.
We'll see, but it may yet be a smart play, politically speaking. I'm not saying it for-sure is, I just don't think that result's anywhere near being off the table.
So having someone technically minded in your general blob of associations is generally enough for these sorts of obviously stupid moves to get politicians in serious trouble.
The stakes are a lot lower obviously - but this is a much clearer case of technical malpractice than anything having to do with Snowden and reminds me of Morris[1]'s case - basically it's complete BS and a misuse of the law.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris (I might be thinking of someone else - I thought there was a teenager that got the book thrown at them back in the early days of the web but maybe I'm just misremebering things)
Have you written about this anywhere? I'd love to hear more about the motivation (not that it's hard to guess possibilities) and what the process actually looked like. I hear people threatening to move to Canada all the time, but there don't seem to be too many who go through with it!
Additionally I was pleasantly surprised, when I moved up, to learn that Canada doesn't have the same culture of greed. I feel like, if you aren't making every cent possible in America that you could - if you aren't constantly extracting the absolute maximum revenue - you're looked down on. Up here I've found a much nicer focus on balancing work with interests.
The bigger problem is the risk of corruption when you start hiring 500k engineers.
[1] having just 1 creates lots of bigger issues ;
Availability (what happens when he's sick or on vacation).
Technical documentation (there is none, its all in his head).
Role transfer (when he leaves there is short intense handover, then nothing).
Opinioned design - he does it his way, no discussion necessary - some will be good, but some will be bad.
When he leaves, you can't replace him. 500k engineers won't work for a place where you just maintain the system the last guy designed and wrote - they want to design and write their own stuff from scratch.
I could go on, but programming depts of 1 are usually a bad idea...
That sounds reasonable, unless you're an elected government official in a state where salaries of government employees are public information. Local media outlets and your political opponents will have a field day over a government employee making a half-a-million dollar salary.
The public won't ever be able to understand or accept why one talented person should be made so wealthy in relation to the value they provide. However, the public will be fine with the same amount of money being spread out across 10 employees, since it still keeps all recipients in the poor house together with everyone else.
Do you or have you worked in a place where "engineers" make $500K? Have you thought about what they outsource to people making 1/10th or less, and why?