> If the problem is attracting better people, how would that get fixed just by making it easier to fire people?

Because most high quality employees don't want to work somewhere where low quality is rewarded.

Nobody said it's full of incompetent people that need to get fired. But they are there as they are everywhere. I disagree with the idea that getting rid of lower quality employees won't help. It ignores the reality of quality disparity and implicitly encourages low quality due to no accountability.

It should be noted this same problem exists at many entrenched, older, large companies as well.

Most places don't work like IT where workers have easily transferable skills across a large market -- getting rid of somebody who you can't easily replace is not rational, suboptimal is better than none. It's not the people it's the organization and incentives around it that matter -- things get really complicated in larger orgs and systems of orgs. In your post it's like there is an easy and clear cut solution to this. You do understand that in an organization you take orders top down or you have a lack of information at the lower levels to make a decision right? You get what you measure and no rank and file employee controls that process + career progression depends on adherence to whatever incentive structure is set up before you started. Also hard as it is to believe, governments don't deal in stupid little apps that are based around some gimmicks. Quality is hard to measure, either you set up an arbitrary hoop for people to jump through or do it based on past performance which is almost completely tied to the environment -- which coincidentally dictates what problems are available to work on which also coincidentally dictates the skills you develop; it's not like implementing a ranking system is a perfect art either. I'm not a fan either of how things are, I know more about the pharmaceutical procurement process and pharma regulations than I ever wanted to.

> It ignores the reality of how the government really works

Have you ever worked or contracted for the government? Are you trying to say they're not incompetent? I'm just wondering which division of NASA you worked for.