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Comment by acdha | Hacker News Reader

> Partly this is due to the concentration of wealth, inaccessible to taxing.

This has nothing to do with it. Contractors cost notably more, so if the goal was economizing it’d be an obvious step to cut out the middlemen by hiring staff directly.

The problem is that there’s an entire political ideology holding that government is inherently wasteful and its adherents will oppose any attempt to track market salaries because that allows them both to say they’re saving money at the time and later to cite the struggling/failed project as proof that they were right.

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Yup. When a VC-backed company goes bankrupt, no one bats an eye. When Solyndra's loans go bad, even though it was a tiny fraction of the government's green energy portfolio, you get headlines and congressional hearings.

How many middle class workers were robbed through income tax to pay for the $524million dollars lost on solindra? Government money totally ruins any private business, to the tune of a huge party where everyone takes as much as possible with no accountability

How many orders of magnitude more money is “robbed” by Comcast/Verizon/Charter, the medical industry, manufacturers who hiked prices up during the pandemic, etc.? Large organizations of all persuasion need oversight but that doesn’t mean we should give up on the concept any more than Enron meant we should give up on the stock market or private energy companies.

And when a big contractor has an 8+ figure write-off, they have a PR team working to prevent accountability and none of the people who were talking about private-sector innovation and efficiency will be asked whether they had a more realistic position now.

> This has nothing to do with it. Contractors cost notably more, so if the goal was economizing it’d be an obvious step to cut out the middlemen by hiring staff directly.

It certainly has something to do with it.

The market rates for engineers was distorted because FAANG had a lot of money to throw around, so therefore hiring staff at government pay rates is quite difficult and is subject to the General Schedule (https://federalnewsnetwork.com/pay-benefits/2023/12/biden-fi...).

Contractors work from bills and projects, where the money is carved out; I agree it’s terribly inefficient.

The other issue is how difficult it is to get into government vs getting in as a contractor.

I tried the former many times without success; the latter? Easier than FAANG or finance.

Yes, the GS scale is a problem. My point was that it’s not a problem because we’re trying to save money – if that were the case, someone would notice that raising the cap to allow a $300k civil service job is cheaper than allowing the same job to be performed by a $500k contractor who takes home less and is replaced more frequently.

Politics enters the picture because the pay cap is derived from the salaries for politicians rather than what expertise is valued at on the open market:

https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-admi...

Yes, but “saving money” is your point and strawman; I never said anything about saving money, nor did I imply it.

GS in general cannot grow when the market pay was distorted by both lack of tax funds; and when those driving market pay has a disproportionate amount of wealth to corner the labor market, in order to prevent the hiring of engineers by other industries.

I think you misunderstood: I agree that lack of tax funds is a problem in other areas but in this specific case it isn’t because the same or greater amount of money is already being spent.

I think it's more about greasy palms than political ideologies. No proof though.

> The problem is that there’s an entire political ideology holding that government is inherently wasteful and its adherents will oppose any attempt to track market salaries because that allows them both to say they’re saving money at the time and later to cite the struggling/failed project as proof that they were right

Why is it a surprise that employees who are essentially unfirable don't perform well? Aside from a very small percentage where the hiring culture is exceptional, it's almost universal. This is a problem with governments across at all levels in almost all countries.

How many times do we have to match this movie before realizing that just increasing the salaries won't make a difference, and instead will be wasteful.

> Why is it a surprise that employees who are essentially unfirable don't perform well?

This is a great example of that political dogma: notice that you’ve accepted as an article of faith the trope that government employees can’t be fired or disciplined or that this is not true of contractors, despite neither of those being true?

If your goal is successful projects, what you’re looking for is accountability and managerial discretion. The managers you think can’t direct civil servants directly aren’t magically more capable of selecting and overseeing contracts, either, and without technical staff they won’t have someone they can turn to for advice who doesn’t have a financial conflict of interest.

> This is a great example of that political dogma: notice that you’ve accepted as an article of faith the trope that government employees can’t be fired or disciplined or that this is not true of contractors, despite neither of those being true

Nice strawman. It is harder to fire govt employees than to fire private employees. Disagree?

Just look up at-will employment law that doesn't apply to government entities. Looks like you're the one following political dogma and accepting articles of faith and tropes.

Otherwise why would ignore that a very consequential law is different for private vs govt employees?

> The managers you think can’t direct civil servants directly aren’t magically more capable of selecting and overseeing contracts, either.

Where did I say they cannot? Please stop with the strawmen. They just don't have enough incentive because it's very hard to fire them, unlike managers in the private sector.

> Nice strawman. It is harder to fire govt employees than to fire private employees. Disagree?

Let’s see, so it’s not a straw man when you say government employees are “essentially unfirable” but it is when someone corrects you?

Lets ignore the personal back and forth, and get back to the argument.

It is harder to fire govt employees than to fire private employees. Disagree?

At-will employment law doesn't apply to government entities.

A very consequential law is different for private vs govt employees.

> The managers you think can’t direct civil servants directly aren’t magically more capable of selecting and overseeing contracts, either.

Never said in my comment they cannot direct civil servants. They just don't have enough incentive because it's very hard to fire them, unlike managers in the private sector.

That's like the farthest I've seen goalposts move within a span of two comments. You went from "essentially unfirable" to simply "harder to fire" and continues to act like you're so right. Like it's almost pointless to discuss something with someone who pretends those are even close to the same.

That's three comments where folks are attacking me instead of addressing the topic because they know they lost the argument. Sad to see that happen. And also look up the meaning of the word essentially.

> Lets ignore the personal back and forth, and get back to the argument.

I mean, were you not attempting to make an argument when you said that government employees were “essentially unfirable”? Your argument just sucked/was factually incorrect and you want to steer away from the “interpersonal” aspect of someone pointing that out.

It’s gauche to point this out on HN but you aren’t engaging in good faith here - wnd when someone else engages you in actual good-faith you fall back to juvenile debate-club attempts to frame them as the wrongdoer.

That’s highly rude and a bad attitude and approach to bring to this community. Act better and take some accountability for your own misbehavior.

I had two options, either continue the personal back and forth by debating that you folks don't understand the meaning of the word 'essentially', or take the high ground and debate the topic.

Sad that both you and the other poster lost the argument so hard that you have to resort to ad hominems and make it about me instead of the topic. Thats very telling. And also look up the meaning of the word essentially.

> Why is it a surprise that employees who are essentially unfirable.

A government needs employees right? One way to attract and retain employees is to offer competitive wages, another is to offer a relatively low workload and high job stability. Government worker salaries are easy targets and the people who set them are elected officials, so its not a surprise most governments today lean on job security over wages.

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