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Comment by abledon | Hacker News Reader

> Nobody wants to spend their life being dead weight.

Have you worked in Government?

edit: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26727803 for an example

I’ve personally never witnessed this, and I’ve worked in government and know people who work in government in other contexts, and I haven’t ever heard of an actual anecdote to that effect either.

I’m sure it exists, but the meme seems overblown. From what I’ve seen, government is more frugal than the private sector day to day, the main difference is that the government ends up supporting unprofitable programs and has additional burdensome regulations that drive up costs (eg buy American)

I definitely saw a lot of dead weight and waste in government work, more than I have ever seen in the private sector.

Part of it comes down to fact that it's harder to fire people.

Another part of it is that bureaucracies end up becoming dominated by people who serve the survival of the bureau (and it's budget) at the expense of its actual mission.

Another part is that government agencies are just not as easy to hold to account - with a private business your customer can often take their business elsewhere (and if they can't, well, the government just might be the reason for that). In theory the democratic process should hold these agencies accountable, but the democratic process is more indirect than voting with your feet. And there is generally a tendency to resist democratic influence (otherwise the agency would become political).

There are probably many other reasons as well.

> Part of it comes down to fact that it's harder to fire people

Yes, what I was getting at! Developers can coast and never be forced to improve or learn new skills. very very difficult to be fired.

I hate this take of "gobernment bad, capitalism good". As a consultant having worked for both large government agencies and large corporations, they are all the same.

I completely agree -- but it is remarkable how many Americans have bought into this idea that "government is bad".

We'll, it is true that our "ownership class" and its media and political mouthpieces have spent the better part of the last two generations drilling this notion into people's skulls will all the considerable power at their disposal.

I’ve held a job ever since I was 12 years old. And I worked before that under the table to pay for my things as a child. I’ve worked at many multinationals now that I’m middle aged. Yes, I’m American. And my view on this is completely contrary to conventional wisdom. Private enterprise is not only less efficient than government, it’s destructive.

Private enterprise doesn’t care about doing a good job or delivering quality product. It only cares about making money. It’s a perverse incentive that drives everything down to the bottom almost every time. The only way to circumvent that perverse incentive system is to have someone in charge that cares about something other than profits. And there just are not enough Steve Jobs or similar characters out there that cared about quality and legacy enough to make blind participation as a buyer in your favor.

Of course someone will say, that’s how you make money is by delivering quality. But that’s not true. You deliver money by monopolizing, putting in barriers to entry, or simply by cutting costs. By definition, if something you buy was cheaper to produce than the price you paid, you’re getting a bad deal. People just don’t see this because they have no other choice.

Now all that said, I also believe that it is the worst system, except for all the others. I think with sensible regulation to counterbalance abuse, the system is as good of one as I’ve seen.

This has been my experience too. As a youth I worked as a lifeguard, first for a company and then for the county government. The private company gave us an initial 8 hours of training once every three years. The government trained us every single weekend. In an emergency I would have been useless at the private company because I was so poorly trained. At the government I would have been very prepared to deal with the situation. It comes down to incentives, the company wanted to maximize profit, cutting training helps that. Emergencies are rare situations that can easily dealt with by shifting blame to the front line workers. The government didn't have these incentives and were able to invest in training.

Not saying gov good, private bad. Just saying that it is a lot more complicated than gov bad private good.

That's a great example.

I see that in my own job. We don't do any training. That's on my own time and dime. It has definitely hurt my productivity. Software is a great example of cost cutting to death. There's a couple sayings that apply. "What if we train people and they leave? What if we don't, and they stay?", and "slow down to go fast". For the owner, he's getting rich, so anything that works at all is good for him.

Most software joints I've worked at essentially need to be hiring top experts because otherwise there's no real support system to carry you when necessary. Everyone is overloaded with work, many are underpaid for how qualified they are if they're on visas, and most people are in really bad moods. My current place of work is largely toxic. It's just not the right way to go through life.

I've worked at exceptional workplaces that ran like a top, John Deere was one. I realize they have some right-to-repair woes. :) But the vast majority were pretty bad and definitely examples of slash-n-burn capitalism.

Another thing worth adding to this conversation is that privately owned enterprise tends to be better than public. Maybe not in how they treat employees, because the boss is closer to you usually in privately held companies. But definitely in the quality of the product. Public companies are the worst. While I'd prefer to work at a public company in general, I would almost never buy product from one, given the choice.

We really need more worker owned cooperatives. You have to work there to own a share, and one share equals one vote on matters. They may not work for venture capitalism, but for proven business models that aren't innovating, it really makes no sense to me why 7-Eleven out of Japan dominates our convenience stores. As opposed to those shops being owned by the people that work there. Proven business models have to move to that.

My goal in life, which I may never achieve, is to start a business, stabilize it, make my money and then sell it to my employees if they want it. Turn it into a democratically owned workplace. I think this is the only way to get the best of both worlds: high quality product, and fair treatment for employees. I'm a strong believer that people need "skin in the game" or they just won't care about the quality of their work. This model of 1 person taking it all really should only be done for unproven business models.

Cheers to a fellow child labor participant. I was grinding down spot welding tips before my paper routes that I got at 12. Grocery stores at least then let you bag groceries at 13. I worked on a farm. Done it all and I think it's a uniquely American experience. And probably Bangladesh.

That’s not the take, that’s just how you read it in a knee jerk reaction. It’s a comment about government employee productivity, not whether the government is bad.

You can both believe that government employees are extremely inefficient and that the government is good to run certain things.

>As a consultant having worked for both large government agencies and large corporations, they are all the same.

Absolutely not. Apart from catastrophic budget crises, a government doesn’t risk bankruptcy and a department has no need to bring in more than it costs. There is no real floor for how slow employees can be because the agency is getting its money either way.

> As a consultant having worked for both large government agencies and large corporations, they are all the same.

Large corporations are often indistinguishable from government agencies in part because all large, centralized organizations suffer similar problems, and in part because they become intertwined. The only difference is often whether your prison walls are gray or beige.

But capitalism is not just "large corporations". Capitalism is also startups, freelancers, small businesses, "mittlestand", cooperatives, family farms, etc. It is respecting property rights, and managing behavior through contracts and social norms rather than reams of regulations. Those things definitely are superior to government.

RE: your example, what exactly does that example have to do with the federal government? The guy threatened to sue, those laws apply the same in the private sector.

> I was told by our HR department that we could get rid of him, or at least demote him, if he failed two annual reviews in a row. Eventually he did, but we were then told by HR that he had to fail two annual reviews in a row in the same way; if he failed twice, but differently in the second year, that didn't count

Government HR processes make it _very_ difficult to be fired.

This is ignorant nonsense…

Edit: to be a little more clear, most govt groups (Treasury, Trade, etc.) are at the mercy of non-govt contractors in the private sector.

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