this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
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Right. This isn’t an issue with Microsoft, it’s an issue of getting a third party to do work when you have very different priorities. Microsoft’s priority is to make money, as all companies do. The governments priority is to have a safe and secure service. The two don’t match, so the government should have created and maintained a safe and secure service.
The biggest issue is that people don’t want the government to over-spend on anything, so they don’t want the government to pay tech people tech salaries. So even if they did just do it themselves, you can’t trust it’s done by the best people because it’s only done by those who are willing to work at 30% of the pay.
So the issue isn’t really with Microsoft, it’s with the government for not being aware of priorities, and not being willing to pay for what’s important.
Government spending 101:
Paying private sector rates? unnafordable!
Paying a private company who pays their employees those same private sector rates plus a huge margin on top? totally reasonable!
Sorry that's the lowest/only rate we got for tender, lol.
Or: the only way we could get this crazy group of senators whose votes we need is by devising the program in such a convoluted and inefficient way such that it’s politically un-killable (read: SLS).
I dunno, I think I'd consider having enough scruples to care more about what you produce than how much you get paid to be "The Best." Some of "The Best" programmers I have seen are fully on the Free Open Source Software bandwagon.
Because I can't trust that those who are profit-oriented are willing to bring "the best" without doing things exactly like in the article. "The Best" are busy nickel and diming you to death while hiding their best work from you. That's not the best, that's a selfish asshole who doesn't give a flying fuck about the future of humanity, only themselves. That's far from "The Best." That's just "Fuck you, got mine."
You’re not wrong. If I said anything that made it seem like those who get paid less are worse developers, that’s on me. But there are many who are amazing developers who can’t take a government job because the pay is too low. It seems odd to rule those people out. If we’re fighting for better pay for everyone, government jobs should set an example.
Many of the best developers are doing free open source work yes, but many great developers can’t because they have bills to pay and mouths to feed and charity &/or government work doesn’t pay well enough for that
If you give government more funding, the tech people salaries likely won't change. Those of a few more bureaucrats will likely.
But in case of such a long partnership like with MS it's likely still better.