This is not a rant, because it's the truth. To outsiders, this attitude seems hyper-negative because it's difficult to comprehend the level of ineptitude found in federal government IT. As a non-national who has done some (very non-sensitive) on-site IT work for the U.S. government, I experienced this firsthand for several years. (And before I get accused of elitism, my home country doesn't necessarily have the answers either.)
When all of the Snowden and PRISM stuff broke, my first thought was to chuckle and ask, "How?" Based on my experiences with federal IT workers, it's hard to imagine there is a room of crack coders underground in some basement or deep inside some mountain just knocking it out of the park.
The NSA recruits at some of the best graduate schools. In some quarters, the joke is that if you have a PhD in math, comp sci or software engineering and you're not teaching or doing post-doc work, you must be working in the black world, which includes NSA.
Agreed. A young woman sitting next to me at a Hadoop oriented class during the summer (right as the Snowden info was coming to light) had just left the NSA.
She was brilliant. Little coding experience outside of Perl, but was able to keep up on the exercises in Java with only minor hiccups due to her lack of familiarity. She had been recruited out of graduate school.
On the other hand, she became extremely hostile when the Snowden incident was mentioned by people next to us (they didn't know her former employer) and was stating repeatedly that "None of you know what you're talking about, and if I was allowed to I would correct you, but I can't." and "Do you really think people can just sit down at a computer and spy on people without their supervisor's approval?" (as it turns out, we were right, and she was profoundly wrong)
It was a revealing moment, because it demonstrated the group think that can permeate even the most brilliant mind. Of course, she also thought there was nothing wrong with mathematics education in the U.S., which in my opinion makes her clearly deluded.
I've known a couple of NSA programmers in the late-80s and through the 90s, and they were very good to the very best. I don't find it difficult to believe they can manage to get good people ... well, before Snowden et. al.
Whoever they got to do the power system for their new Utah site ... failed rather hard.
From memory there are regular power disruptions that cost "$100,000" each time. Now checking with Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=nsa+utah+power I see/remember this is delaying the opening of the site.
Comments
This is not a rant, because it's the truth. To outsiders, this attitude seems hyper-negative because it's difficult to comprehend the level of ineptitude found in federal government IT. As a non-national who has done some (very non-sensitive) on-site IT work for the U.S. government, I experienced this firsthand for several years. (And before I get accused of elitism, my home country doesn't necessarily have the answers either.)
When all of the Snowden and PRISM stuff broke, my first thought was to chuckle and ask, "How?" Based on my experiences with federal IT workers, it's hard to imagine there is a room of crack coders underground in some basement or deep inside some mountain just knocking it out of the park.
The NSA recruits at some of the best graduate schools. In some quarters, the joke is that if you have a PhD in math, comp sci or software engineering and you're not teaching or doing post-doc work, you must be working in the black world, which includes NSA.
Agreed. A young woman sitting next to me at a Hadoop oriented class during the summer (right as the Snowden info was coming to light) had just left the NSA.
She was brilliant. Little coding experience outside of Perl, but was able to keep up on the exercises in Java with only minor hiccups due to her lack of familiarity. She had been recruited out of graduate school.
On the other hand, she became extremely hostile when the Snowden incident was mentioned by people next to us (they didn't know her former employer) and was stating repeatedly that "None of you know what you're talking about, and if I was allowed to I would correct you, but I can't." and "Do you really think people can just sit down at a computer and spy on people without their supervisor's approval?" (as it turns out, we were right, and she was profoundly wrong)
It was a revealing moment, because it demonstrated the group think that can permeate even the most brilliant mind. Of course, she also thought there was nothing wrong with mathematics education in the U.S., which in my opinion makes her clearly deluded.
I agree 100% - however the alternative is just as worse. Going private means budget overruns, back room deals, and long delays.
Because in-house contracts never go overbudget.
I've known a couple of NSA programmers in the late-80s and through the 90s, and they were very good to the very best. I don't find it difficult to believe they can manage to get good people ... well, before Snowden et. al.
Whoever they got to do the power system for their new Utah site ... failed rather hard.
Can you elaborate on this?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/10/07/the-nsas-...
From memory there are regular power disruptions that cost "$100,000" each time. Now checking with Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=nsa+utah+power I see/remember this is delaying the opening of the site.