Comment by baazaa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by baazaa | Hacker News Reader

This is a problem across the civil service, although not as stark as this example usually.

The cult of the generalist has long meant that specific skills are considered almost worthless. Instead of the civil service being an assemblage of people with different skill-sets, it instead consists chiefly of administrators with no more skills than a high-school graduate (although they do have tertiary degrees). Jobs which require actual skill are then farmed out to contractors by these 'generalists'.

The problem is baked into the pay structure, which tends to be based on seniority and how many people you manage rather than skill. You can't just up salaries across the board because then you'd be paying all the unskilled 'generalists' far too much.

They need to completely reorient the civil service away from the notion of generalists, because they're not true generalists. If someone can't code in this day and age they're not a generalist. And if they have no other specialist skill-set besides (say law or accounting) then they shouldn't even be considered professionals. What we have today is a civil service made of pseudo-professionals who in fact do exactly the same sort of work once done by much cheaper clerical staff.

I seriously doubt that the head of cyber security at such a place would ever do any coding. The primary job would be administrative, the needed skill the management of people. 55k is a joke, but lets not pretend that this position requires l33t hacking skills. This is a job about hiring and firing people, about selecting policy and judging the qualification of prospective contractors. And it's a job about writing reports and presenting them to higher authorities and investigative committees, not the sort of things taught at bootcamps.

But if you never did any coding, you may not understand enough to effectively lead a team of people who do that.

For example, how are you going to understand what's going on or resolve technical conflicts? Just outsourcing all the decisions probably makes you much less useful.

Such skills are certainly a bonus, but they would not be a requirement. It is common thinking that every good general should first have been a good footsoldier. The reality is that the vast majority of great generals never were. The most important skills for senior leaders to succeed are rarely similar to those needed to succeed on the front lines of any project.

> The reality is that the vast majority of great generals never were.

There’s a fuckton of terrible generals that were never foot soldiers. How does that ratio relate to the number of terrible generals that were?

I have to ask, have you ever been a manager at any level at any company? Are you just imagining all these things?

Actually, was a manger in the private sector (legal) and am now in the public sector (military). I have seen both sides and have seen managers succeed and fail in both transitions.

The people this manager leads will also not be coders. Governments make virtually no software and any of that would be in a group that is still not connected to the group overseeing overall security.

If he has a windows machine he is familiar with what it does on Tuesdays.. From there its learning about CVEs, etc..

Can't talk about this department specifically, but the UK government does have a tech department (GDS, Government Digital Service), and they're actually really good, especially in accessibility.

So not true

Head of cyber security at a private company would be somebody with a career of hands-on security work, that has moved up into management. This person would absolutely know how to do the job of their reports.

Why should the government be any different?

Because this isnt a private company. This person first needs the skills to integrate and exist within a government structure. Management of public employees within a government is very different than at will employees within a private organization. Working under politically appointed or elected adminstrators is also very different than working for a CEO.

I’ve had the misfortune to work with Accenture acting on behalf of the UK government. They’ve somehow managed to stretch a software project 2 years past delivery date, bleeding the UK taxpayer dry the whole time. At no point have these people shown even a shred of professionalism or competence.

All the while I’m not even sure the boffins at Whitehall even realise they’re being robbed blind. But to be fair, if it wasn’t Accenture robbing them, it’d be some other firm doing the same thing in the same way.

Reminds me of how the HealthCare.gov website cost 2.1 billion and yet had countless issues when it was launched.

But you don't realize the name of the game in government is to "reasonably sabotage" projects to safeguard the existence of your own position. The costs this leads to are absolutely amazing because you cannot do anything, ever, anywhere. In one position I was baffled, but contacting someone reporting to me ... took a week. And not because he was being hired or on vacation.

This is why the government uses outside contractors in the first place.

the beaurocracy problem.... created to solve a specific need of the people, but once staffed, the goal of the beaurocracy becomes ensuring that its budget increases year over year.

How often is it the case that some official in government has an interest in Accenture, or whatever company, and it is in their interest for that company to win contracts, and then simply stretch those contracts out as long as possible, while the interested official continues their influence in retaining the contract? Or perhaps I'm overly cynical.

The british government has a parasitic relationship with consultancy companies. They hire consultants for £1,500 per day from PWC, Deloitte, etc.

https://youtu.be/ycVBoWsGLJs

There are 3 kinds of consultants - experienced civil service employees that were poached because they were underpaid - so now the consultancy pays them 80k instead of 50 but charges them out for a fortune.

Or they are generalists working for the consultancy, and are about as skilled as the civil servants themselves.

Only a small fraction of consultants are really so specialised that you only need the expertise occasionally and should be contracting them

Seems like a way for elites to maintain control.

Much like unpaid internships, the paths and positions of power are made unattractive to intelligent and hardworking people who lack generational wealth to work for free or far less than market value, especially when cost of living is so high.

Have you met many civil servants in the UK? Generational wealth isn’t a term I’d associated with them

I'm Canadian, but there is a difference between civil servants and the management.

I'm guessing that it's the same.

Your frontline civil servants aren't the wealthy ones, they are working a job. It's their bosses and directors, who control the budgets, and can decided who get's the juicy private contracts.

Isn't the PM from a very wealthy family? That's the sort of thing I am talking about, not the civil servant working at the DMV (or it's equivalent) counter.

PM has two parents who are doctors, which is far, far from poor, but not really generational wealth. He did marry into money, though. Neither of the last two came from illustrious backgrounds.

This is a heavily massaged story built for a life long politician. (One hole in the story is only giving I think his mothers family background. There was clearly ~500k to buy a pharmacy early after 'penniless' immigration)

Civil service is also government's secret graduate job creation program. Can't get hired by private sector beyond counter jobs, civil service welcomes you. It's a racket through and through

I think it's a more a case of "don't attribute to maliciousness what can easily be explained by stupidity"; i.e. the powers that be a trying to cut their way to success.

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