(Politically speaking, this idea overlaps appealingly and naturally with the widespread low-information voter belief that a single sufficiently driven and common-sensical guy could “fix” the government–see, e.g., the movies Swing Voter, Dave, Man of the Year, or any interview with a swing Trump voter.)

But as the article pretty plainly demonstrates, D.O.G.E. is the highest-profile and most consequential example of how ineffective and destructive this idea is. The agency’s failure to succeed even on its own terms (it didn’t come anywhere close to making cuts of the size initially promised by Musk), and the fact that its legacy is, at best, the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of people around the globe, is about as clear an indication as possible that “put 10 cracked programmers in charge” (let alone just one) is not a good solution to basically any problem faced by any large organization, and especially not particularly complex and sensitive ones like the U.S. government. Farritor is certainly very smart, in the sense of being a good programmer and problem-solver. But working effectively at a high-level position within a complex bureaucracy requires not just “cracked” coding ability and work ethic but domain expertise, relevant experience–and even those widely derided “soft skills.”

FROM:

Max Read

The 'Cracked Coder' Fetish

Source