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The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

(steveblank.com)
285 points ridruejo | 2 comments | 11 Nov 25 14:34 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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stackskipton ◴[11 Nov 25 21:26 UTC] No.45893105[source]▶
As someone who has some familiarity with this process, just like safety regulations are written in blood, Federal Acquisition rules are written in misuse of money, sometimes criminally.

Yes, we have swung too much towards the bureaucrats but I'm not sure throwing out everything is solution to the issue.

Move fast works great when it's B2B software and failures means stock price does not go up. It's not so great when brand new jet acts up and results in crashes.

Oh yea, F-35 was built with move fast, they rolled models off the production line quickly, so Lockheed could get more money, but it looks like whole "We will fix busted models later" might have been more expensive. Time will tell.

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astrange[dead post] ◴[11 Nov 25 23:18 UTC] No.45894255[source]▶
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1. JoshTriplett ◴[12 Nov 25 00:30 UTC] No.45894865[source]▶
> Among other things, elevators are much stricter and so less frequent than any other country

Speaking from experience with elevators in various countries: Let's keep the part where, for instance, elevators need a door. (And I'm sure I haven't experienced anywhere close to the long tail of bad elevators.) Some regulations make sense.

But if there are ways to make elevators substantially faster without being unsafe, that'd be lovely. What do US elevators fail to do that they could be doing?

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2. astrange ◴[12 Nov 25 00:40 UTC] No.45894955[source]▶
Mainly the minimum size requirements are much larger (requirements related to stretchers).

Also, in some/all places the elevator union got basically all manufacturing processes banned so they have to be assembled on site by union workers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/08/opinion/elevator-construc...

And in the US, nobody in the relevant unions or regulators cares about cities - elevator workers and firefighters are all suburbanite pickup-truck-Americans. So they're rarely personally interested in anything that isn't about driving a big car around really fast. This has a big impact on road layouts and the outside of buildings, because of course everyone listens to firefighters, but all they want to do is drive a big red truck everywhere with nothing stopping them.

(Which sometimes leads to them eg shutting down pedestrian safety improvements, and always leads to big wide access roads.)