19K views · Sep 16, 2014 · 28:14 · 1 HN recommender · 5 mentions · discussed 2015–2020
Mikey Dickerson's keynote at Velocity NY 2014, one year after the healthcare.gov launch failure. He recounts how a small team rescued the site and what the episode showed about government IT contracting.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN cites it as a firsthand account of how dysfunctional large IT projects can be, with about 50 contractors and no one in charge.
“I saw Mikey Dickerson give a great talk about his experience leading the completion of healthcare.gov”HN comment, 2020
“I saw Mikey Dickerson give a great talk about his experience leading the completion of healthcare.gov”
Great talk on leading healthcare.gov completion.
I saw Mikey Dickerson give a great talk about his experience leading the completion of healthcare.gov, and it sounds like you only saw a slice of it. This is the talk I attended: this video
“I think it shows just how insane the situation was.”
Shows how insane the initial recovery situation was.
I saw Mikey Dickerson talk about his experience in the initial recovery phase of healthcare.gov at Velocity in 2014. I think it shows just how insane the situation was. this video
“the work hours were pretty insane to fix healthcare.gov”
Talk about the insane work hours fixing healthcare.gov.
According to this talk, the work hours were pretty insane to fix healthcare.gov. From the 2014 Velocity Conference in New York City, Mikey Dickerson's keynote: "One Year After healthcare.gov: Where Are We Now? this video
“Mikey Dickerson talked about how there were ~50 contractor firms and nobody seemed to be in charge.”
About 50 contractor firms and nobody in charge.
Part of the issue is everyone who is present at every meeting gets billed for the time at the meeting for the project. Mikey Dickerson talked about how there were ~50 contractor firms and nobody seemed to be in charge. This is good for all contractors because if nobody's in charge then nobody gets in trouble. this video
“Wastage is immense in IT from the sounds of it in this talk”
Describes dysfunction and wastage fixing healthcare.gov.
>How do you switch from one strain to another? End up around people that already have that strain, get their attention, and become friends so you can learn and they can teach. You unfortunately just can't teach yourself everything. It sounds like another form of pedigree selection. Or maybe dividing the field up into "us vs. them". Pretty understandable sentiment if you get pushed into fixing Healthcare.gov like he describes in one of his talks and working with guys arguing about tickets not existing because they're on different ticket systems and people with zero motivation to build a decent product. Wastage is immense in IT from the sounds of it in this talk: this video
