My first job as a freshly-minted engineer was for one of the big defense companies, working on a major upgrade project for the Navy's carrier-based bomber.
When I worked on the Army staff in the Pentagon - it was a 2 year tour - I learned the Army was cancelling roughly 1 billion dollars' worth of programs every year. The GAO even issued a report on that while I was there. That is, AFTER a billion had been spent on R&D, on average, the Army would cancel a program. Every year. And that was when the Army's total budget for all such investments was $20B a year - so 5 percent. Every year. And that was just my eyeballs on that one part of the budget. There were a LOT of reasons why programs were cancelled, but it was never because they weren't needed or were failures. The primary reason was because something else came along that was a higher priority. I counseled program managers back then to "go faster, fail early and learn" rather than settle for the 10-year development timelines the defense contractors would advocate. They're STILL not doing that.
One SDI program I worked on used a streamlined management structure on the government side. When it "morphed," it became more traditional. My work output shifted substantially from real work to reporting, as in from 80/20 or even 90/10 to 50/50.
I spent 8 years working missile defense programs. When I first got to BMDO, we were lean and hard charging - risk taking, entrepreneurial and successful. Air Force Lt Gen Ron Kadish grew it into the Missile Defense Agency with many thousands more employees - ostensibly today a huge jobs program. The stories I could tell!
The never ending only increasing reckless spending and behavior will ultimately destroy the country. This administration is the first one in my lifetime that actually has the guts to look for waste and abuse and the guts to tackle it. Hopefully it’s not too late….
Before you cut staff, it would be prudent to make sure that you're cutting fat not muscle. The embarrassing episodes of having to rehire staff thanks to ill thought out DOGE cuts illustrates this.
You don't need their management to say that someone is "fat". Instead, you need to look at what staffs do and the value they bring. Otherwise, you are shooting in the dark and that results in situations which require rehires. It takes time to get it right. However, the government is not a business and many of the services it provides are essential.
Honestly, I'd rather them rehire people that are actually needed, rather than not do any cuts. Because if they did it the way you prefer there would be no cuts at all. At least, not for many years, and by then it could be too late
The private sector cuts and rehires all the time. It’s a technic to get rid of dead lethargic wood. Especially when management changes or changes course. Company sells, CEO changes, work load decreases. If you’re not actually walked out the front door your walked to an interview that gives you a chance at retaining your job. You better have had 5 very important things you accomplished last week. 😁
Having spent 45 years working at several of America's top companies, I am all too familiar with layoffs but recall only one example of a rehire. Perhaps, your experience has been different but I suspect that most businesses put a little more thought into deciding who to let go than has DOGE.
Is there any evidence that the "restraint" you're advocating would work? Government size, inefficiency, waste, fraud, corruption, and incompetence only ever seems to get worse, and every attempt to slow growth, let alone actually cut, is met with howls of doom.
Beyond that, you and I aren't really privy to the depth of thought behind DOGE cuts, are we? Mostly, we have the aforementioned howls of outrage and assertions of certain doom. Yes, some mistakes have been corrected, but your alternative is, I believe, nirvana fallacy and a prescription for failure.
List slash and burn cut examples here so far. So far it’s a bunch squeaky wheels with bad attitudes complaining about being asked to do a simple task that people in private sector jobs do everyday.
strangely, considering the left is supposedly the champion of the little guy, he made the impovrished more impovrished with his budget balancing trick...
DOGE is following the standard of every company in high tech industry I’m familiar with follows.
The company my husband works for now was sold twice and to retain his position he had to interview each time as if he was reapplying for his job. Now granted the fact that he has a reputation in the industry meant he wasn’t laid off first. Many people were but a large percentage of those were rehired within a few months both times the name on sign out front changed.
Seems likely that if one were to eliminate 20-50% of the existing 2.5 million, few citizens would even notice. You can be sure that at least 20% of these workers have effectively retired without telling anyone. When there is no risk of job loss it is human nature for many to become lazy and less responsible. Time to bring in the chain saw and prune out all the deadwood.
The gag, of course, is for the careerists to try and point the axe toward the popular, the productive, and the visible, in order to create bad will against the cuts.
That's Washington Monument Syndrome. Always close the national parks during crunches, not the useless bureaucracies.
I'm happy that Trump is telling Musk to be even more aggressive. The headwinds he faces are strong. And I've grown very rapidly tired of the people who are masquerading their hatred for Trump with supposedly "responsible" skepticism of cutting bloat.
On a related note, I learned this week why Zelensky was talking about little of the money appropriated for Ukraine actually getting there. It's because the funds went to defense contractors who then engaged in a building and hiring spree at our expense. Small wonder some in DC desperately want to keep the spigot flowing.
The Pentagon and the defense industry is the right-wing version of the welfare state -- all those good, patriotic conservative types living off of government contracts to make planes, ships, missiles and other assorted gadgets that are behind schedule, overbudget and don't work as advertised.
Why does America have huge trade deficits; why are our products so uncompetitive in world markets? Because huge segments of our technology and manufacturing industries have grown soft and lazy from politically protected cost-plus military contracts.
Example: Airbus owes its success to decisions of Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas to neglect or abandon the competitive commercial airplane business and focus on the guaranteed profits from military contracts. If those two companies had remained players in the airliner market, it would have been a lot tougher for Airbus to squeeze in (even with Euro subsidies).
Indeed. I used to call defense work "welfare for the middle class."
But, as you've probably read, I don't consider trade deficits to be any sort of relevant statistic or indicator.
Our weakness in the air transport sector is a matter apart from trade deficits. It's bad management in a high-cost-of-entry industry, and exacerbated by government's tipping the scales in favor of unions.
"But, as you've probably read, I don't consider trade deficits to be any sort of relevant statistic or indicator."
Yes, I think you said something like "I have a trade deficit with Costco and there is no problem". But if your "trade surplus" with your employer does not outweigh your deficit with retailers, you'll have problems.
In 1969 I was going to start engineering school, it was September and the University said that all engineers are now flipping hamburgers because the US will no longer need engineers. They had virtually all been fired. Yes, we landed on the moon, and that was the end of engineering. We’ve completed mankind‘s task in the engineering sphere.
I love science, thereby zI went to study biology became a cellular biologist. Now I know, that we don’t know anything about biology. Oh my goodness and we are on the wrong path. My my goodness we are on the path to sickness.
You worked on some interesting projects. A lot of money, time and manpower seems to get wasted on decisions made on a whim. Of course, it's not just the military industrial complex that is prone to waste in research and development just because of a shift to what's new and different. This is pretty much a fact in all areas of science and technology. Still, DARPA manages to draw the ideas of the best and the brightest annually if they happen to have far-reaching applications in defense. Putting a man on the moon or the internet(formerly ARPANET) got their starts due to the concerns of the military.....powerful concerns that they are,
Research is necessarily a crapshoot - if you are chasing inventions, you are apt to fail. But, this doesn't mean that we should carte-blanche public dollars in that regard. The private sector is historically FAR more innovative.
When I worked on the Army staff in the Pentagon - it was a 2 year tour - I learned the Army was cancelling roughly 1 billion dollars' worth of programs every year. The GAO even issued a report on that while I was there. That is, AFTER a billion had been spent on R&D, on average, the Army would cancel a program. Every year. And that was when the Army's total budget for all such investments was $20B a year - so 5 percent. Every year. And that was just my eyeballs on that one part of the budget. There were a LOT of reasons why programs were cancelled, but it was never because they weren't needed or were failures. The primary reason was because something else came along that was a higher priority. I counseled program managers back then to "go faster, fail early and learn" rather than settle for the 10-year development timelines the defense contractors would advocate. They're STILL not doing that.
One SDI program I worked on used a streamlined management structure on the government side. When it "morphed," it became more traditional. My work output shifted substantially from real work to reporting, as in from 80/20 or even 90/10 to 50/50.
I spent 8 years working missile defense programs. When I first got to BMDO, we were lean and hard charging - risk taking, entrepreneurial and successful. Air Force Lt Gen Ron Kadish grew it into the Missile Defense Agency with many thousands more employees - ostensibly today a huge jobs program. The stories I could tell!
The never ending only increasing reckless spending and behavior will ultimately destroy the country. This administration is the first one in my lifetime that actually has the guts to look for waste and abuse and the guts to tackle it. Hopefully it’s not too late….
Before you cut staff, it would be prudent to make sure that you're cutting fat not muscle. The embarrassing episodes of having to rehire staff thanks to ill thought out DOGE cuts illustrates this.
That's a great recipe for cutting nothing. No one will admit they or the people in their fiefs are "fat."
Besides, rehiring the erroneous cuts is actually a telltale that the cuts aren't blind.
You don't need their management to say that someone is "fat". Instead, you need to look at what staffs do and the value they bring. Otherwise, you are shooting in the dark and that results in situations which require rehires. It takes time to get it right. However, the government is not a business and many of the services it provides are essential.
Honestly, I'd rather them rehire people that are actually needed, rather than not do any cuts. Because if they did it the way you prefer there would be no cuts at all. At least, not for many years, and by then it could be too late
The private sector cuts and rehires all the time. It’s a technic to get rid of dead lethargic wood. Especially when management changes or changes course. Company sells, CEO changes, work load decreases. If you’re not actually walked out the front door your walked to an interview that gives you a chance at retaining your job. You better have had 5 very important things you accomplished last week. 😁
Having spent 45 years working at several of America's top companies, I am all too familiar with layoffs but recall only one example of a rehire. Perhaps, your experience has been different but I suspect that most businesses put a little more thought into deciding who to let go than has DOGE.
Is there any evidence that the "restraint" you're advocating would work? Government size, inefficiency, waste, fraud, corruption, and incompetence only ever seems to get worse, and every attempt to slow growth, let alone actually cut, is met with howls of doom.
Beyond that, you and I aren't really privy to the depth of thought behind DOGE cuts, are we? Mostly, we have the aforementioned howls of outrage and assertions of certain doom. Yes, some mistakes have been corrected, but your alternative is, I believe, nirvana fallacy and a prescription for failure.
Bill Clinton somehow managed to do it without doing slash and burn cuts which had to be fixed. When we have repeated examples of sloppy cuts requit
List slash and burn cut examples here so far. So far it’s a bunch squeaky wheels with bad attitudes complaining about being asked to do a simple task that people in private sector jobs do everyday.
NNSA and NWA come to mind.
What did Bill Clinton do?
strangely, considering the left is supposedly the champion of the little guy, he made the impovrished more impovrished with his budget balancing trick...
DOGE is following the standard of every company in high tech industry I’m familiar with follows.
The company my husband works for now was sold twice and to retain his position he had to interview each time as if he was reapplying for his job. Now granted the fact that he has a reputation in the industry meant he wasn’t laid off first. Many people were but a large percentage of those were rehired within a few months both times the name on sign out front changed.
What works in a tech business doesn't work necessarily when applied to government. https://www.wethebuilders.org/posts/move-fast-break-things-wont-work-here
You really want Trump and Musk to fail at this, don't you?
No. But I fear that will be the result.
Seems likely that if one were to eliminate 20-50% of the existing 2.5 million, few citizens would even notice. You can be sure that at least 20% of these workers have effectively retired without telling anyone. When there is no risk of job loss it is human nature for many to become lazy and less responsible. Time to bring in the chain saw and prune out all the deadwood.
The gag, of course, is for the careerists to try and point the axe toward the popular, the productive, and the visible, in order to create bad will against the cuts.
That's Washington Monument Syndrome. Always close the national parks during crunches, not the useless bureaucracies.
I'm happy that Trump is telling Musk to be even more aggressive. The headwinds he faces are strong. And I've grown very rapidly tired of the people who are masquerading their hatred for Trump with supposedly "responsible" skepticism of cutting bloat.
On a related note, I learned this week why Zelensky was talking about little of the money appropriated for Ukraine actually getting there. It's because the funds went to defense contractors who then engaged in a building and hiring spree at our expense. Small wonder some in DC desperately want to keep the spigot flowing.
Yeah. Open up a fire hose, a lot of "wet" goes where you don't want it to.
The Pentagon and the defense industry is the right-wing version of the welfare state -- all those good, patriotic conservative types living off of government contracts to make planes, ships, missiles and other assorted gadgets that are behind schedule, overbudget and don't work as advertised.
Why does America have huge trade deficits; why are our products so uncompetitive in world markets? Because huge segments of our technology and manufacturing industries have grown soft and lazy from politically protected cost-plus military contracts.
Example: Airbus owes its success to decisions of Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas to neglect or abandon the competitive commercial airplane business and focus on the guaranteed profits from military contracts. If those two companies had remained players in the airliner market, it would have been a lot tougher for Airbus to squeeze in (even with Euro subsidies).
Indeed. I used to call defense work "welfare for the middle class."
But, as you've probably read, I don't consider trade deficits to be any sort of relevant statistic or indicator.
Our weakness in the air transport sector is a matter apart from trade deficits. It's bad management in a high-cost-of-entry industry, and exacerbated by government's tipping the scales in favor of unions.
"But, as you've probably read, I don't consider trade deficits to be any sort of relevant statistic or indicator."
Yes, I think you said something like "I have a trade deficit with Costco and there is no problem". But if your "trade surplus" with your employer does not outweigh your deficit with retailers, you'll have problems.
In 1969 I was going to start engineering school, it was September and the University said that all engineers are now flipping hamburgers because the US will no longer need engineers. They had virtually all been fired. Yes, we landed on the moon, and that was the end of engineering. We’ve completed mankind‘s task in the engineering sphere.
I love science, thereby zI went to study biology became a cellular biologist. Now I know, that we don’t know anything about biology. Oh my goodness and we are on the wrong path. My my goodness we are on the path to sickness.
REMEMBER:
JOB LOSS IS OPPORTUNITIES GROWING
Wow, excellent Peter, thanks. I can definitely understand why you're a libertarian
I was a libertarian going in. My time in defense just reinforced it :).
You worked on some interesting projects. A lot of money, time and manpower seems to get wasted on decisions made on a whim. Of course, it's not just the military industrial complex that is prone to waste in research and development just because of a shift to what's new and different. This is pretty much a fact in all areas of science and technology. Still, DARPA manages to draw the ideas of the best and the brightest annually if they happen to have far-reaching applications in defense. Putting a man on the moon or the internet(formerly ARPANET) got their starts due to the concerns of the military.....powerful concerns that they are,
Research is necessarily a crapshoot - if you are chasing inventions, you are apt to fail. But, this doesn't mean that we should carte-blanche public dollars in that regard. The private sector is historically FAR more innovative.