I loved this review. My contributions would be that:
>Hanania calls the current era “the racial spoils system”, where positions in the bureaucracy are based on the same kind of illegible morass as everything else (eg the FAA’s “biographical questionnaire”). He says every branch of government has become less effective as a result.
This DEFINITELY happens with the parts of the federal bureaucracy that I am involved with. I have daily contact with federal bureaucrats, and the recent hires/promotions are wildly more "diverse" (out of all proportion with the population honestly), and of very poor quality. So you have a lot of 55-65 year old white male civil servants of very high ability and intelligence, being replaced by pretty low capacity 30-40 year old minority women of startlingly poor intelligence and ability. On paper they have similar credentials, but they are not similar caliber people. In general obviously, there are exceptions in both cases. The preference HR policies clearly have *something* to do with it.
In the off chance some skilled white or Asian man finds his way into the civil service, you often find them leaving to go make more money as a consultant because their career is going nowhere and they are getting passed over for promotion by their idiot admin with the right diversity characteristics (I am only half exaggerating). So now you have this ineffectual federal staff who does little work, and is surrounded by a cloud of not very diverse consultants who are needed to get things done (due to procurement rules/preferences typically the owners of the consulting firms are also fairly diverse, but the consultants/SMEs themselves less so...after all somebody needs to know what they are doing).
And on the "disparate enforcement" front I would have the following nonsense to report.
One rule that is very common with federal awards is a rule requiring that all hiring on construction projects must *attempt* to first hire low income and disadvantaged people. I won't get too into the exact details, but we will leave it at that.
You need to have a plan and a policy and records for how you attempted to achieve this goal and reach out to these groups in your hiring, even if you were unsuccessful.
You might ask what about if I am hiring a lawyer or an engineer or an architect? Do I really want to hire a "low-income" engineer? YES! It includes all hiring. But wait I don't want to mess up my RFQ for a contract lawyer with a bunch of nonsense attempting to target "low-income lawyers"? Too bad!
And as far as "low-income construction workers" aren't we also supposed to pay prevailing wage rates (basically union rates), if we are paying that much anyway, we aren't ever going to find the low-income workers the most qualified. Well you have to at least try! OK how hard do we have to try? Who knows?!?!?"
What is the response to this nonsense that is basically not implementable?
Well there is little to no enforcement from the bureaucrats and almost no one takes the rules seriously, until the bureaucrats are mad at someone and want to nail them and then suddenly they act like of course everyone is expected to follow this rule that 98% of people aren't following.
A friend of mine in construction attended a "women owned business" social meetup. Not a single woman attended. All the businesses were 51% owned by the wife.
Consulting where governments (federal/state/local) are the main customers. (Well and the main main customers are other consulting firms, I subcontract as an SME a ton).
I've had the same experience in federal workplaces with newer hires showing shockingly low levels of intelligence and skill. Unlike what some other commenters said about people either "producing, or they're out", typically these people are rarely let go unless they do something egregious and will instead coast by for the entirety of their careers doing next to nothing. A handful of highly productive employees and contractors carry the lion's share of the workload. In my work area, I estimate that 10% of the people do at least 80% of the total work and 100% of anything even remotely complex.
I loved this review. My contributions would be that:
>Hanania calls the current era “the racial spoils system”, where positions in the bureaucracy are based on the same kind of illegible morass as everything else (eg the FAA’s “biographical questionnaire”). He says every branch of government has become less effective as a result.
This DEFINITELY happens with the parts of the federal bureaucracy that I am involved with. I have daily contact with federal bureaucrats, and the recent hires/promotions are wildly more "diverse" (out of all proportion with the population honestly), and of very poor quality. So you have a lot of 55-65 year old white male civil servants of very high ability and intelligence, being replaced by pretty low capacity 30-40 year old minority women of startlingly poor intelligence and ability. On paper they have similar credentials, but they are not similar caliber people. In general obviously, there are exceptions in both cases. The preference HR policies clearly have *something* to do with it.
In the off chance some skilled white or Asian man finds his way into the civil service, you often find them leaving to go make more money as a consultant because their career is going nowhere and they are getting passed over for promotion by their idiot admin with the right diversity characteristics (I am only half exaggerating). So now you have this ineffectual federal staff who does little work, and is surrounded by a cloud of not very diverse consultants who are needed to get things done (due to procurement rules/preferences typically the owners of the consulting firms are also fairly diverse, but the consultants/SMEs themselves less so...after all somebody needs to know what they are doing).
And on the "disparate enforcement" front I would have the following nonsense to report.
One rule that is very common with federal awards is a rule requiring that all hiring on construction projects must *attempt* to first hire low income and disadvantaged people. I won't get too into the exact details, but we will leave it at that.
You need to have a plan and a policy and records for how you attempted to achieve this goal and reach out to these groups in your hiring, even if you were unsuccessful.
You might ask what about if I am hiring a lawyer or an engineer or an architect? Do I really want to hire a "low-income" engineer? YES! It includes all hiring. But wait I don't want to mess up my RFQ for a contract lawyer with a bunch of nonsense attempting to target "low-income lawyers"? Too bad!
And as far as "low-income construction workers" aren't we also supposed to pay prevailing wage rates (basically union rates), if we are paying that much anyway, we aren't ever going to find the low-income workers the most qualified. Well you have to at least try! OK how hard do we have to try? Who knows?!?!?"
What is the response to this nonsense that is basically not implementable?
Well there is little to no enforcement from the bureaucrats and almost no one takes the rules seriously, until the bureaucrats are mad at someone and want to nail them and then suddenly they act like of course everyone is expected to follow this rule that 98% of people aren't following.
A friend of mine in construction attended a "women owned business" social meetup. Not a single woman attended. All the businesses were 51% owned by the wife.
My wife owns 51% of my business. It is frankly stupid not to, you lose so much work over it without that step.
Interesting, what industry?
Consulting where governments (federal/state/local) are the main customers. (Well and the main main customers are other consulting firms, I subcontract as an SME a ton).
I've had the same experience in federal workplaces with newer hires showing shockingly low levels of intelligence and skill. Unlike what some other commenters said about people either "producing, or they're out", typically these people are rarely let go unless they do something egregious and will instead coast by for the entirety of their careers doing next to nothing. A handful of highly productive employees and contractors carry the lion's share of the workload. In my work area, I estimate that 10% of the people do at least 80% of the total work and 100% of anything even remotely complex.