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Comment by planteen | Hacker News Reader

Yep. I love space and science, but after working with NASA for a while, you see some of the problems. NIH syndrome is a huge problem, especially between GSFC and JPL. There are incompetent engineers who will have a well paying job at NASA for life. And then there the passionate, brilliant scientists and engineers the that dream and make it all work. A reduction in force of dead weight would go a long way but it will never happen.

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From what I hear the original "startup" NASA from the 60s was a no deadweight organization that efficiently cranked out world class space flight.

That it since followed the path of every other monopoly bureaucracy was of course unavoidable.

> ...it since followed the path of every other monopoly bureaucracy...

This is not really true, but you are taking it as axiomatic.

It's a heck of a lot more true than false. Of coarse if you use a roller you need to cut in with a fine brush.

To better appreciate what NASA does, I think it helps to look at its achievements in a different way. Instead of (just) marveling at the big rockets or the rovers on other planets, consider the amount of paperwork that was needed to do these things. Someone had to get approval to move a large amount of high explosive across several state lines, obtain permission to detonate a large amount of this explosive material in a wildlife refuge, coordinate with foreign military agencies to ensure that "yeah that thing you see on your radar going on ballistic trajectory toward your homeland TOTALLY isn't WW3", and mate with a space station partially constructed by a foreign power with which you have sanctions that limit your ability to exchange technical information.

Even though SpaceX has to do some of this, they get to reuse quite a bit of NASA paperwork.

Interestingly the Indian Space Research Organisation seems not to have followed this path.

A professor of mine who used to work at ISRO says that the place is choke full of bureaucracy.

Could tweet Trump and ask him to remove the deadweight.

i think that's true generally of any organization.

pareto -- 80% of work done by 20% of workers.

there's also some other law about the work being done by the square root of the total workers.

I agree the 80/20 is true of most organizations. But producing nothing and keep your job for life as long as you show up for work is not common in private industry. On the private side, I see developers get let go all the time for inadequate work.

This is an oft repeated trope, and it couldn’t be further from the truth.

I’ve personally worked at large private firms where incompetent folks coasted for decades.

When management’s clout is measured in headcount, you get this (whether in the private or public sector)

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