Every SWE knows DOGE can't rewrite Social Security in a few months

Anyone who has a vague idea of technical work or project management understands: this current effort doesn't appear interested in efficiency, it's seems focused on new software contract opportunism. Perhaps (deca/centi)gigabucks over many years. And, it doesn't necessarily have to create anything functional or better so long as large amounts of cash are extracted, because that's the primary objective.

Government program oversight:

1. Don't delegate decision-making to the consultants.

2. Don't hire consultants, hire staff in-house because it will be cheaper.

3. Involve customers early and continually through requirements definition, prototyping, testing, and UAT / Shewhart cycle.

4. Separate customer requirement needs from wants.

5. Have well-defined, specific, minimal mission goals.

6. Never rip and replace high-risk, working systems cavalierly.

POSIWID: He tells them it'll be a miracle, he'll have it done by the end of the sprint and it's gonna be perfect first time out the gate. They give him the mandate. None of his promises come true because of course they don't. So he goes back before the committee but this time he's already got the mandate to do this for SSA, he can't quit now because everything will go to shit if he quits (or so he says) and so they let him continue for however long it actually takes. Then it's established that part of what DOGE does is overhaul entire other arms of the government, they take as long as they need to take and they get whatever resources they need in order to make this happen. It doesn't matter if he fails because he's not there to succeed, he's there to steal.

This shouldn't be done. Nothing's materially wrong with the way things are now.

Good luck. I've gone through a project like this. After the 5th failed attempt over 3 years, we finally have a partially new system in place with > 50% of the users still relying on the old system for some things.

The Director got his bonus though...and promptly quit after launch.

Why does Social Security software codebase need to be larger than windows? 60 million lines of code is a ridiculous overestimation. I would like to see how the author came up with this number but based on the tone of the article, it is probably made up

Elon is what you get when you give the person who truly believes they are the smartest person in any room they walk into too much money.

The money is used to validate the idea. It's propped up by people who think they are the same as him, and any person who has the integrity to tell him his ideas are wrong is envious of his money and prestige.

Take that person, and give them the keys to the kingdom. He's used to thinking, "I am the boss, what I say goes" and snapping his fingers while his horde of sycophants and wagies (no matter how well paid, it's a valid term) rush to do his bidding lest they incur his ire and lose everything.

He says, "fix a system that has been undergoing continuous improvement for 70 years in a couple of months" and they break laws, violate the trust of Americans, and destroy decades of hard work from passionate and talented people in order to achieve his will and come up short.

They can't do it.

The system is too large.

There are so many edge cases, almost one for every human in the system.

But Daddy Musk will be sad if they fail, so the only option left is to completely destroy the system and try to rebuild it from the wreckage.

They fail.

Now thousands of people will suffer and quite possibly some will die while they point fingers.

Government isn't easy.

It's not convoluted because of power hungry Illuminati, it is convoluted because it is assembled from a core of a good idea and enough duct tape, paper clips, and spray foam to lock the heavens and the earth into a single nearly homogeneous manageable ball of goop.

No one can make Elon understand anything anymore.

And the one person with the power to stop him is a person who is deserving of every negative epithet I can think of. I wouldn't expect a failed baby-brained billionaire convict president or his man-child toadies to understand that.