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Counter to that I’ve seen a £37m contract for a form on gov uk with absolutely no change in process, just going from a letter received to a online form

GDS went from an internal distruptor, breaking the consultancy oligopoly to being another entry gate.

The companies who capitalised on this (Kainos/Equal Experts/ScrumConnect) are now their own oligopoly.

It's just big guys charging arms/legs for average work again.

They most definitely won't spend time on military bases though, whereas Palantir devs will essentially live there.

GDS is amazing. However, unless we double/triple the GDS salary grades, it'll inevitably be hollowed out. From what I heard, that might've already happened.

Look for yourself, GDS is hiring a "Lead Technical Architect" for £67,126–£91,453 https://gds.blog.gov.uk/jobs/ . FAANG (and Palantir) pays up to triple that. How can GDS compete for talent?

But how many people can you attract, and how quickly can they get the stuff done? There are a lot of sacrifices you have to make working for the gov that not everyone will make.