I am not sure if you ever dealt with a very entrenched system that has been in place longer than you have been alive, but it is not easy. It is also not easy to hire to deal with these things. Especially at government rates which are lower than the private sector.
If you were the FAA and started up an internal startup to find only the best to replace systems that have been running forever you would face a lot of problems.
1. Nobody would give you the funding until something like what happened yesterday did
2. Your developers getting paid more than the FAA directors will get lots of political attention
3. Even a great internal engineering team would most likely take ages to do something like this. This isn't move fast and break stuff with a greenfield, it is painful deconstruction and analysis of a very complicated system.
4. Many people won't want to work on this no matter how much you are paying.
It is also out of the wheel house of an agency tasked with flight safety. So expensive contractors arise. Do they do a poor job often? Yes. But these are jobs that are really hard to scope and execute. If it is really a case of overpaid contractors coming in and not doing the work, people here should start a startup and hire a SEAL team six of 1970's computer system rip and replacers and make a lot of money.
If you were the FAA and started up an internal startup to find only the best to replace systems that have been running forever you would face a lot of problems.
1. Nobody would give you the funding until something like what happened yesterday did
2. Your developers getting paid more than the FAA directors will get lots of political attention
3. Even a great internal engineering team would most likely take ages to do something like this. This isn't move fast and break stuff with a greenfield, it is painful deconstruction and analysis of a very complicated system.
4. Many people won't want to work on this no matter how much you are paying.
It is also out of the wheel house of an agency tasked with flight safety. So expensive contractors arise. Do they do a poor job often? Yes. But these are jobs that are really hard to scope and execute. If it is really a case of overpaid contractors coming in and not doing the work, people here should start a startup and hire a SEAL team six of 1970's computer system rip and replacers and make a lot of money.