"The leadership team is clearly professional and tech-savvy.."

And yet they failed miserably.

I'm so sick of this attitude. Leadership never takes the fall, it is always the underlings who get the blame.

Their important high visibility project failed. The leadership failed. When you fail, that means you did not perform in a competent way.

I think you mistook me. I am clearly blaming the leadership team, but not for incompetence. For actual malice. They clearly knew what they should do, and decided not to. That should be something they are punished for, not their employees.

If you're claiming malice, what's the theory of malice? Who benefits from this?

I don't have a theory... I'm just noting that professional neglect at this level is malice, whether due to laziness or actual ill intent.

Like, if I sold someone a piece of software that I knew hadn't been tested and told them it worked great, that is malicious behavior, whether my motive was to make a quick and easy buck, to eat ice cream instead of doing actual work, or to ensure that my customer failed. The behavior is malicious independent of motivation.

Malice refers to intent, the idea of "malice... without ill intent" doesn't make sense. That's why Hanlon's Razor is worded as it is. By your definition, any shoddy work could be considered malicious.

I get your point though, I think we're just arguing semantics.

"negligence" is probably the word that's being sought here.

>Who benefits from this?

Probably one of the candidates who had a decent chance of winning the Iowa primary, but was not the most likely one to be picked. I don't like throwing accusations without concrete support for them, so I will just say that the whole involvement of Buttigieg's with the app, as well as his announcement of victory last night (way before votes got actually counted), seems at least suspicious.

Though it is just as likely as simple incompetence, probably even less, so i am leaning more towards incompetence, but I cannot fully dismiss the alternative in the light of all the recent DNC events.

Remember, however, this app was commissioned by the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP), not the DNC.

I mean they are clearly not as professional and tech-savvy as their "pedigree" would have us believe or they wouldn't have made so many amateur mistakes. But they clearly are good at convincing non-tech folks in a position to hire them that they are a lot more competent than they really are, so kudos on that?

Those of us who work in software understand that bugs happen even when you follow best practices. But if you don't even try to follow best practices for mission critical software, then roll out in production for the first time at a marquee event with millions watching, that's on you.

> Those of us who work in software understand that bugs happen even when you follow best practices. But if you don't even try to follow best practices for mission critical software, then roll out in production for the first time at a marquee event with millions watching, that's on you.

Exactly. And this kind of incompetence may be expected from someone who is actually an amateur good at selling themselves. However, the leadership is clearly not comprised of amateurs. Thus, this level of incompetence is professional, almost criminal, neglect.

Maybe. But I think it's more likely just another lesson in how far someone who is charismatic, well-connected, and self-promoting can advance, and how much credibility they can amass, while still essentially being a complete fraud who has none of the skills or experience they claim to have.

Some folks take "fake it 'til you make it" to an art form, and they keep right on faking it even after they've made it.

> the Clinton campaign -- highly competent individuals familiar with elections

I'm going to disagree with this premise.

I get the joke, but c’mon...

> So the argument is that former members of the Clinton campaign -- highly competent individuals familiar with elections -- put together a company comprised of 'amateur app coders' paid by 'clueless amateur voting registrars'?

Yes, that is exactly the argument. Just because you happened to be a member of some noteworthy organizations does not mean you are competent. People drift from golden parachute to golden parachute all the time, especially at an executive level where you get to benefit from people assuming "well he's an executive so obviously he knows what he's doing" and blame your underlings for your failures.

Highly competent is not a word heard that often about the failed 2016 Clinton campaign, especially not from people who realize that she lost under the exact same rules that was in place when Obama won.

What the involved people are is highly connected which is rarely the same as competent as demonstrated by the antics of the current crop of in office politicians, and it's a huge part of the reason why crazy outsiders like Trump have a base at all.

The stupid idea that people who's only achievement is climbing the rungs of an failed organization is super cometent and whose ultimate failure could only have been due to nefarious actions of supernaturally competent foreign enemies is silly and seen as such by an huge sway of the actual public as the kind of nonsense you would expect from North Korea or Russia.

> Highly competent is not a word heard that often about the failed 2016 Clinton campaign, especially not from people who realize that she lost under the exact same rules that was in place when Obama won.

One can be a competent presidential candidate and still lose. That is the point of democracy. Clinton's campaign could be competent while still more people in the right places want Trump to be president.

Yep but she lost which means that simply being an high ranking member of the 2016 Clinton's campaign cannot be proof of competency on it's own without the rational analysis of the campaign that's being successfully blocked by the emergence of a bunch of conspiracy theories recycled from the 1960ies as mainstream politics by the democratic party of America.

Competent people fail all the time for reasons outside of their control but it's also true that incompetent people can rise to the top of an organization based on luck, connections or by being associated with someone else. So you need something more detailed then having been a part of an failed bureaucracy to justify claims of extreme competency in running software projects.

Just because they were competent at something somewhat related, doesn't mean they were competent at this particular thing, or that they gave it the attention it needed.

A real-time vote transmission system that requires data integrity and validation is not quite the same as a consumer website, or an email marketing system.

> A real-time vote transmission system that requires data integrity and validation is not quite the same as a consumer website, or an email marketing system.

That's not at all what this was or sounds like. This was a data collection app, from everything I've read. It is meant to replace a phone call.

Ok. So, this is just a data collection app? Trying to have casual inexperienced users accept/trust a developer certificate? Both PINs and 2FA? This is beyond embarrassing.

"...Two people who work for Acronym, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to risk their jobs, acknowledged that the app had problems. It was so rushed, they said, that there was no time to get it approved by the Apple store. Had it been, it might have proved far easier for users to install.

Instead, the app had to be downloaded by bypassing a phone’s security settings, a complicated process for anyone unfamiliar with the intricacies of mobile operating systems, and especially hard for many of the older, less tech-savvy caucus chairs in Iowa.

The app also had to be installed using two-factor authentication and PIN passcodes. The information was included on worksheets given to volunteers at the Iowa precincts tallying the votes, but it added another layer of complication that appeared to hinder people..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/us/politics/iowa-caucus-s...

My assumption when seeing that is that those individuals you mentioned signed on to a company for profit and to use their connections thusly. Does not mean they were involved at all in the day to day.

> highly competent individuals familiar with elections

Is this a joke?

There's nothing suggesting competence here and everything suggesting casual nepotism.