back to article GDS denim brigade flees GOV.UK after Web2.0rhea MESSIAH Bracken departs

A number of key Government Digital Service management bods resigned from their posts today, a little over a week since boss Mike Bracken confirmed his surprise departure. It has been speculated that the bloated headcount of nearly 700 full-time employees and contractors will be slimmed down in the autumn, when GDS could face a …

  1. Kubla Cant

    Gigital digital digital digital

    Government Digital Service Digital Group

    For the government, nothing can be too digital. I keep seeing ads for "Digital Developers"*. If I could get a job like that in the Government Digital Service Digital Group, I could be a Government Digital Service Digital Group Digital Developer.

    * As opposed, presumably, to those who code with their toes, or other appendages.

    1. 0laf

      Re: Gigital digital digital digital

      Digital is the new Cyber doncha-know?

      Cyber is old hat baby.

      1. BoldMan

        Re: Gigital digital digital digital

        We need some Digital Relief from all these Diabolical Digital Distractions!

      2. Trigonoceps occipitalis

        Re: Gigital digital digital digital

        Digiberia

        Doesn’t really work as a chain of coffee shops does it?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hundreds of people who've never delivered anything.

    There are piles of people calling themselves architects on 750 a day, who've never written a line of code worth having.

    All of them, to a man, Agiled up.

    The government doesn't want anyone who can deliver. They want loads of people who consider themselves middle class to vote for them too.

    I wouldn't mind, but it's my tax, they're bribing people who went into architecture because it's the way to get more money if you can't write software.

    1. <shakes head>

      Re: Hundreds of people who've never delivered anything.

      that is a bit like saying real Architects, the ones that spent years at uni, should have layed bricks and mixed concrete.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hundreds of people who've never delivered anything.

        > that is a bit like saying real Architects, the ones that spent years at uni, should have layed bricks and mixed concrete.

        Errm, yes, they should. How can you understand the material one works with if you've never worked with it?

        And that's definitely the case with large Government programmes; way too many people "designing" or otherwise opining whilst chewing the budget, with only a limited few building the code (and that's over-bloated as everyone sticks their oar in).

        AC 'cos I know this from first-hand experience :-(

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hundreds of people who've never delivered anything.

        Yes. I funded my years at Uni, ensuring lots of bricks were -laid-, with cement I mixed.

        The Lib Cons used the department to ensure noone was unemployed in the sector in the run up to the election. 400K a day of taxpayer's money is cheap at half the price to buy an election.

        You don't actually think they were valuable for their ability do you? If so, at 700 people to write 5 websites and f**k it up, they must be proud.

        Why do you think their recruitment was all about hoovering up these people? Anyone who said, agile is for w**kers who think their 200 lines of code and one feature a month is an achievement, didn't even get an interview.

        No one dare publish the reliable lines of code per k, for GDS.

      3. Grikath

        Re: Hundreds of people who've never delivered anything.

        "that is a bit like saying real Architects, the ones that spent years at uni, should have layed bricks and mixed concrete."

        Dunno about outside of the borders of our sub-sealevel estuary, or even the current state of affairs here, but used to be that even Uni-level aspirant-techies used to have mandatory hands-on courses in basic technology, usually in Workshop format, in the hope that at least some of the principles of [technology involved] would stick.

        I know for a fact that University of Delft still practises and encourages this, given the stuff they regularly show to the world. ( Solar Challenge, for instance.)

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hundreds of people who've never delivered anything.

        "[...] he ones that spent years at uni, should have layed bricks and mixed concrete."

        It amused me that a senior structural engineer at a local consultancy company was their specialist in boiler certification. Every summer while factories were closed for the holidays - he had don his overalls and crawl inside their boilers. He reckoned it was a hot and filthy job - but it needed someone with the right experience.

        Not surprisingly he was also their explosion expert. He described one of his architectural designs for a navy lab. In case of accidents one wall was designed to blow out - and the debris to be caught in submarine nets.

      5. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hundreds of people who've never delivered anything.

        "that is a bit like saying real Architects, the ones that spent years at uni, should have layed bricks and mixed concrete."

        In the 1920/30/40s the Junior Technical Schools were designed to prepare intelligent 13-15 year old kids to become apprentices in various engineering trades.

        After the 1944 Education Act the JTSs were superseded by the 11+ Secondary Technical Schools. These still gave their pupils a grounding in practical workshop engineering and laboratory science - but the aim was now to produce technical managers and scientists for industry. This career route was accomplished by either apprenticeships after GCE "O" Level examinations or via university after "A" Levels.

      6. bep

        Re: Hundreds of people who've never delivered anything.

        In Germany, I believe, you have to be a builder before you can become an architect. What a silly idea, why should people with a conceptual bent require any actual hands-on skills?

      7. Fat Northerner

        Re: Hundreds of people who've never delivered anything.

        Architecture is for middle class kids who like the building trade but couldn't make anything if their lives depended on it , to keep the money in house. Builders think they're wan×ers.

        Economics is for middle class kids who like sums, but can't count, to keep the money in house. Mathematicians think they're wan×ers.

        Politicians is for middle class kids who want to manage, but can't do anything, to keep the money in house. Company owners think they're wan×ers.

        Programme management is for middle class kids who want to sound more important.

        It's the nature of the useless to want to be hands off, and well paid for it.

        Software architecture is no different. The ones who can are obstructed by the ones who can't at every turn.

      8. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hundreds of people who've never delivered anything.

        I know I couple of structural engineers who would say yes to that,

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This guy Cashew-Nut has style

    How long before he has transformed all of GDS from Universal Credit developers to claimants? That's one way of getting the user numbers up

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    GDS Website development

    No no no. GDS fucks up far more than just websites. They're responsible for Government IA as well. They're only halfway through turning CESG into an Apple subdivision.

    Can't take anyone seriously that turns up to a meeting with a significant body of professional stakeholders looking like he's just got in from a night on the town wearing cowboy boots and dirty jeans. Yes that was one one of the names in the article.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: GDS Website development

      I've no problem with people dress scruffy. Geniuses are sometimes scruffy. Idiots think dressing scruffy liberates their inner genius. It takes about 5 seconds to spot the diff.

      The problem comes when the leadership are idiots and hire indiscriminately, ending up with mostly scruffy idiots. GDS - I'm looking at you.

      Idiots who make claims like 'our genius coder Fred over there saved the Ministry of [redacted] millions a year with 20 lines of JavaScript'. Fred may well have been a genius - at least he had the grace to look embarrassed when this tipper truck load of bullshit was dumped into the conversation. True, the conversation had been mostly bullshit to that point, but when the elephant in the room takes a dump, it's time to hold your nose and leave.

      After a quick round of resetting our dropped jaws, we said TTFN as politely as we could and got the flock out of there to the pub, where we resolved to never, ever touch anything from GDS except with the very longest of borrowed, and subsequently disinfected, bargepoles.

  5. Claire.P

    How To Deal With Love Withdrawal

    Can anyone here to suggest me?

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