DOGE Plans to Rebuild SSA Codebase in Months, Risking Benefits and System Collapse
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It's not a case of "seeing the code isn't perfect" but rather, not understanding the myriad problems the code is solving or mitigating.
I'm reminded of this shitshow:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Queensland_Health_payroll_system_implementation
Queensland is a state of about 3m people in Australia. Their health service employs about 100k people. They ended up spending about 900m USD to develop their payroll software and fix the fuck ups it caused.
I'm an accountant by trade, there's a classic "techbro does accounting" style of development we see a lot. Like if you hadn't spent a career learning how complex accounting can be, it would be easy to look at a payroll system and conclude "it's just a database with some rules".
Yea, that's a mich better way of putting it.
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how do you do this? probably good for all of us to know
First you need to log into your social security account. If you have never done this is can be a bit cumbersome, but better to get it figured out now than later. Then once you have been able to log in to "my Social Security" you will see a "Your Social Security Statement" on that landing page. It will allow you do download a PDF that has your projected benefit and your earnings records by work year.
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Oh Rust is great, and it's on my learning to do list...but its evangelists are annoying as shit.
Agree, one of the reasons I haven't even started trying
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These comments are completely missing the truth.
They have zero intention of rebuilding anything, this is just an excuse to destroy SSA ...
This is my suspicion as well.
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With Grok looking more and more like the only one working for Musk with enough (digital) balls to stand up to his boss, that might be better than the alternative of "Big Balls" and the rest of the Digital Oblivous Goons of Elon
They'll have it lobotomized in a few days.
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They're really playing with fire here.
So many MAGA supporters are seniors who are entirely dependent on OASDI. If Trump's minions break this, we're going to see torches and pitchforks strapped to electric scooters and golf carts coming out of Florida retirement communities in droves.
No they’d just blame the liberals and maintain 100% loyalty lol.
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Russia just wants musks boy toys to cripple the only checks and balances putin thinks he has.
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First you need to log into your social security account. If you have never done this is can be a bit cumbersome, but better to get it figured out now than later. Then once you have been able to log in to "my Social Security" you will see a "Your Social Security Statement" on that landing page. It will allow you do download a PDF that has your projected benefit and your earnings records by work year.
thank you!
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In theory, it wouldn't be a necessarily bad idea to port the COBOL code to something more modern, but I cannot trust Muskrat and a few vibe coder youngsters with this task.
If these people are good enough to redo federal codebases I should apply for a coding job already
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Old enough to collect benefits themselves
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Yeah, that's what they said, 20 years or so ago
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Yeah, that's what they said, 20 years or so ago
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Gonna blow up the database as many times as they blow up SpaceX rockets.
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In theory, it wouldn't be a necessarily bad idea to port the COBOL code to something more modern, but I cannot trust Muskrat and a few vibe coder youngsters with this task.
In theory it is a horrible idea. No port like this ever works out. An incremental approach has much higher chance of success but will take long.
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I've always known your world is complex, working closely with accountants and actuaries the last 4 years doing data applications further confirmed that, there's some legitimately complex math that shows up, and it's a lot of work to model that correctly.
"It's just a ..." Is a redflag to me, project's going to be a gongshow.
I find that mentality of not trying to understand the problem and its context totally counter to the engineering method.
Yeah, as you've said it's not the complexity that's the problem, it's that dunning Kruger style overconfidence that you're smarter than everyone else and can manage data better than these silly accountants.
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Made by IBM. We chose one of the worst company to do it.
Hah. It was IBM that was running the shitshow in Queensland too.
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Wont happen legacy systems more complicated than expected, well it wont happen functionally....
Won't happen functionally, as it's designed to. I feel for the US citizens, they'll break it all. From Canada where they had a new system, Phoenix or something for payroll I think, it caused a lot of hassle and was probably well intentioned, unlike this, but I never read much on it.
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Russia just wants musks boy toys to cripple the only checks and balances putin thinks he has.
Putin loves this but I suspect he's not directly planning every dumb thing the trump team is behind. Trying to get Musk and Trump to follow instructions is challenging
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Bring back lotus notes and the command line!
When I started at my workplace a few years back, I had to login to lotus notes to obtain some sort of ID code. I'd never heard or seen the software before, but after opening it, I let out an audible "what the fuck is this shit". Luckily they got rid of it completely a couple of years ago.
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If they planned a 1 month migration of a small component, 6 months to complete would be pretty lucky imo. Refactoring Legacy Code mentions the 2.0 approach they're taking. Spoiler alert, it doesn't work...
Just determining the requirements would be a nightmare.
