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Wooowooooo!

The Obama administration Sunday said it’s called on “the best and brightest” tech experts from both government and the private sector to help fix the troubled website at the root of the Obamacare enrollment problems.

Oh, they are SO boned now.

If you haven’t run across it today, allow me to introduce you to Brooks’ Law:
“Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.”

Which is exactly right, when you think about it. All those new people — no matter how good they are — have to come up to speed. The have to read the code, work out what’s happened so far and what’s gone wrong and plan a way out. And now the managers will have a much bigger team to communicate with. Think meetings, meetings and more meetings.

I think it was also Brooks who said nine women can’t make a baby in one month. Programming jobs can only be diced up in specific ways; you can’t just throw infinite smart people on the fire and put it out faster.

If these guys had ever, you know, actually DONE anything in their lives, they’d know good intentions and a can-do attitude don’t get the job done. Here’s Bruce at And Still I Persist on Lefties and wishful thinking. Good read, AND he got an NRO link out of it.

I’m hoping the website problems last long enough to disillusion a whole new generation on government, but not forever. Because nothing is going to help kill Obamacare faster than a functioning Obamacare.

Please god they get it up and running before the midterms.

Comments


Comment from QuasiModo
Time: October 21, 2013, 10:43 pm

What was it Napoleon said?…’never interrupt your enemy while he’s making a mistake’…heh.


Comment from QuasiModo
Time: October 21, 2013, 10:43 pm

Firsties! 🙂


Comment from QuasiModo
Time: October 21, 2013, 11:10 pm

‘Never have so many spent so much for so little’ 🙂

…I guess I’m in here by myself…is there something good on TV?…


Comment from sandman awaits the burning barrycades
Time: October 21, 2013, 11:22 pm

Hey and boo!


Comment from sandman awaits the burning barrycades
Time: October 21, 2013, 11:24 pm

How bout: Never have so few done so little with so much…

*insert smarmy leftist’s photo here*


Comment from Stark Dickflüssig
Time: October 21, 2013, 11:29 pm

good intentions

Haha! Of course, they have the very BEST of intentions. It’s not like they’re trying to fuck us, their little dicks just keep accidentally slippin’ in that there hole, gosh darn it.


Comment from QuasiModo
Time: October 21, 2013, 11:40 pm

Never have so few done so little with so much…

That’s good.

‘Never have so few done so little for so much money’


Comment from Steve Skubinna
Time: October 22, 2013, 12:03 am

The first ninety percent of a task will require ninety percent of the resources.

The final ten percent will use the other ninety percent of the resources.


Comment from kilroy182
Time: October 22, 2013, 12:13 am

We have ‘Top Men’ working on it right now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoy4_h7Pb3M


Comment from Randy Rager
Time: October 22, 2013, 12:30 am

pResident Pissypants couldn’t screw the pooch any harder if he had rocket powered underwear.


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: October 22, 2013, 4:26 am

What I find really interesting is that the Republicans were offering him a year’s delay, during which they (probably) could have fixed everything. I wonder how far up the chain the “this is shit” got turned into “this is fertilizer” got turned into ” it promotes growth”. Obviously no one dared to tell Obama or he wouldn’t have been so dumb as to turn them down…..would he?

http://www.netjeff.com/humor/item.cgi?file=ThePlan


Comment from tomfrompv
Time: October 22, 2013, 4:57 am

So when do the Indian programmers arrive? Thats how really screwed up projects get handled. The bean counters figure out that Desi labor goesfor 1/10 of American – so they contract out to HCL, TaTa, Wipro or some other sweatshop.

Then you get clash of cultures as well. I lived thru several of these, they always end in total disaster. But there is lots of fun.


Comment from Timothy S. Carlson
Time: October 22, 2013, 7:04 am

I’m surprised the phrase ‘Tiger Teams’ hasn’t been dragged out yet.

And the ratio of managers to actual coders has to be phenomenal. After all, it is a government project.

You are right, sweasel – it may be fun now to watch them struggle with the website, but that is not the core problem. High premiums, high deductibles, losing your current plan, losing your current doctor, poor service, denied procedures – those are just a few of the issues that will bring pain and suffering to the people.

Someone on twitter said: “If you think the website is bad now, just wait until they begin processing claims.”


Comment from Anonymous
Time: October 22, 2013, 2:16 pm

The Dims have been all about the “short game” on the Obamacare issue. Ttying to win the news cycle, instead of doing the correct thing.

The Repubs have been all about a longer game (excepting for the surrender caucus, of course).

I get a whole briar patch feeling about this as the Repubs “demanded” a delay of the implementation of the very thing that is not ready for implementation.

And the Dims basically said “If they are demanding it, it: 1. Must be wrong. And 2. Must be opposed. Even if this means that the government is shut down.”

And now, the Dims must blunder forward, having walled themselves off from ever considering ot implementing the sensible solution, out of partisan spite.

Well played, Tea Partiers! Well played.


Comment from J.S.Bridges
Time: October 22, 2013, 5:04 pm

“…Think meetings, meetings and more meetings.”

Also – reports, reports and more reee-ports!

All in double-spaced triplicate, with outlines and bibliographies and footnotes and multi-part, barbershop-quintet-or-more harmony and/or discord.

Been there, dun that – got the paper-cut scars to prove it.

Next up: PowerPoint presentations.

When they bring in the PowerPoint “experts”, all that’s left is the motivational speakers, the “organizational seminars”…and the unavoidable collapse that comes at the End Of Budget Plus Cost-Overruns.

Should be much fun to watch – if not for the fact that it’s our tax money (read: Big Gubment “revenue”) being burned, in ever-increasing gobs, to enable this whole destroy-the-system-to-(supposedly)save-it spiral to destruction.

Change nobody Hoped for.

Thrill a minnit, yes?…


Comment from Uncle Al
Time: October 22, 2013, 5:58 pm

The nappy– pointy-haired boss says, “We will have all-hands status meetings at 10:30 and 3:30 every day until we figure out why we’re missing deadlines.”


Comment from drew458
Time: October 22, 2013, 6:54 pm

all praise to Teh Onion …

http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-improved-obamacare-program-released-on-35-flop,34294/

Uncle Al – when I was doing software at AT&T and things went from Red Status to Bright Red, we’d do status meetings every hour. Every. Hour. I am not kidding.


Comment from Scubafreak
Time: October 22, 2013, 9:34 pm

The hilarious part is that they fumbled a GOLDEN opportunity to save their own asses on this one. If they had simply “caved” to Ted Cruz on the 1 year delay of the individual mandate, they would have been able to get people to fix the site quietly, while running around on the campaign trail screaming to their base about how it proves that Republicans want them to die in a ditch without healthcare…

They fucked up, WE dodged a bullet

And they OWN this one, Lock, Stock and Barrel


Comment from Bob Mulroy
Time: October 23, 2013, 12:11 am

I presold 500 copies of Microsoft “Jazz” for the McIntosh. It really hurt to pay back all that commission.


Comment from ed
Time: October 23, 2013, 12:29 am

Funny enough back in the DOS days Lotus-1-2-3 was having problems getting developed so the company added more and more developers to it until it was over 1,000 programmers. Huge steaming pile of fail.

Another major problem with simply adding more bodies is that each additional person requires a line of communication. One with the project manager, one with other team members, etc. Soon enough you have people that aren’t coding but instead are busy communicating with each other about, maybe, coding.


Comment from BJM
Time: October 24, 2013, 5:42 am

@SF They fucked up, WE dodged a bullet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOXtWxhlsUg

btw-Didja see that the dick Durbin is calling the WH liars?

We’re gonna need moar popcorn.


Comment from John
Time: October 30, 2013, 4:07 am

When I was a IT newbie back in 1981, I got handed a copy of ‘The Mythical Man Month’ and told ‘Read this!’

I rank it up there with the classic, How to Lie with statistics, and really think it would do the world good to have it added to the course curriculum of every ‘101 how the world actually works’ mandatory freshman into….but I dream

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