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Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

Anduril fires people. That’s why the government can give Anduril money. The government can’t do things that Anduril can.

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In the military though aren't people enlisted for specific amounts of time, so if the military no longer wanted them around it could just not allow them to reenlist when their current term expires?

Even if you have a lot of time left on your current enlistment period and they don't have cause to toss you out, couldn't they reassign you for the rest of your term to something else?

I mean, the government absolutely could fire people. They aren't giving money to Anduril because Anduril can fire people. They are giving money to Anduril because:

1. Anduril is more competent than the people they can afford to hire.

2. Giving Anduril money funnels funds into local enconomies and individuals that are important to political objectives.

3. Andruil sales are “friends” with people making decisions

Just asking, not accusing anyone of anything.

>"1. Anduril is more competent than the people they can afford to hire"

Interesting. They can't afford to hire person. But by paying to company like Anduril they somehow can afford not only salary of said competent person and a boatload of overhead. Kinda contradictionary.

It's notoriously difficult for the government to fire an employee. It can also be difficult to fire an employee in a defense contractor. From what I know of Anduril, part of their business model is that they've found a way to handle government procurement differently where they are not as constrained? They may well be able to fire people more easily, but I think they might also do a better job of hiring and retaining talent.

The government outsources things to contractors because they have no idea how to manage those projects. Do you want your mayor as the foreman for the crew paving your roads?

As with most businesses, the government has the money but not the know-how so they need to outsource or contract.

> They aren't giving money to Anduril because Anduril can fire people. They are giving money to Anduril because [...] Anduril is more competent than the people they can afford to hire.

Note that this is logically impossible; if they can afford to pay Anduril to hire those people, they can more easily afford to hire the same people themselves.

No, because there are pay caps for federal employees. Often private companies can hire at a pay equivalent to 1-3 grades higher (or more) than the billets the government has for their equivalent people.

GS-12/13 is a common working level for these jobs. Even on the cyber side which gets a 25% or so incentive pay on top, it's not competitive with what industry would pay. And only a handful of truly critical programs might, might, be able to get GS-14/15 billets for their technical staff, that'll still only be for SMEs with years of experience or certain key skillsets. Above GS you start requiring congressional appointments as well, and they aren't going to setup hearings so they can pay people over $200k, it's easier to get a contractor willing to pay that much.

That is a question of whether they're allowed to hire people, not whether they can afford to.

Then why did you write:

> if they can afford to pay Anduril to hire those people, they can more easily afford to hire the same people themselves.

They can't afford to hire the same people because they can't (as in, they legally cannot) pay the salaries those people are going to demand. That's what I was responding to. The gov't cannot afford to hire the same people themselves, they can hire other people at lower salaries but not the same people.

Because that's obvious? Hiring someone is always cheaper than hiring someone else to hire the original person.

You can't transform something into an affordability problem by wishing. Do you think giving the government more money would solve their hiring problem? No? Then their hiring problem isn't related to what they can afford.

13 is basically the max unless you get into management. There are a very few 14 positions and nearly no 15s.

Almost no one in tech gets into SES, and they wouldn't want to -- SESs don't write software.

You need cause to fire a federal employee, and that requires documentation. You often need to put them on a PIP first, giving them a chance to correct and avoid being fired. If they do something that can cause them to lose their clearance you can fast track this a bit, because the ability to maintain a clearance is part of their job requirements.

But this also requires supervisors willing to actually supervise. Often these folks just get shuffled around, they know no one wants them, but they know no one will go through the trouble of firing them either. Shameless, worthless people will happily suffer that indignity for years if they're also getting a low six-figure salary and know they'd get $0 outside of government because private companies would fire them with cause and they'd stop getting any salary.

Not really, government and academia can't fire people. Prior to Vietnam they could relieve them temporarily, but that's not the same. They get paid regardless.

The moment you can't fire people for not meeting a base level of competence is the moment your systems start failing.

Anduril is also more competent than the government's organizational structure; it isn't strictly a question of how competent individual people are. It might not even mostly be a question of how competent individual people are.

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