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US CTO Choice Down To a Two-Horse Race
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Jan 19, 2009 12:05 PM
from the i-swear-i'm-qualified dept.
from the i-swear-i'm-qualified dept.
theodp writes "Barack Obama apparently didn't return CmdrTaco's call. BusinessWeek reports that the choices for the first US CTO have narrowed, and it's now a two-horse race between Padmasree Warrior, Cisco's CTO, and Vivek Kundra, who holds the same title for the Government of the District of Columbia. Two very different resumes — which would you advise Obama to pick?" I just know I was #3 on the list.
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Politics: Bill Joy For New National CTO Post? 393 comments
jddeluxe writes "In an article in today's NY Times, John Doerr of Kleiner-Perkins proffered up Bill Joy's name when queried by Barack Obama for a recommendation for the position of Chief Technology Officer of the Unites States which Obama has promised to create and that the country is overdue to have.
I think that's a brilliant idea, and while you're at it, have the FCC report to him as well, why don't you?" If Bill is unavailable, I'll throw my hat in the ring, although I'm holding out for Secretary of Tubes.
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Cisco vs. Wash DC? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, Cisco sucks. And the government of D.C. sucks. So if I had to choose, I'd go by whoever was wearing the longest tie last time I met them.
Re:Cisco vs. Wash DC? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, the government sucks, so by no means should you consider working for the government, even if the point of the particular job they're offering you is to make the government less sucky. I guess the suckiness of government is somebody else's problem.
You know, your attitude sucks.
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Re:Cisco vs. Wash DC? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Cisco vs. Wash DC? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up. Never understood this particular American obsession with tearing down the government and then proudly claiming it sucks. Sounds insane to me.
Blame Ronnie Raygun. He popularized the idea that "government is the problem" [reaganlibrary.com], while blowing enormous quantities of money on militarization, possibly in hopes of bankrupting the federal government [thenation.com]. Never trust someone to run something when they believe it's a stupid idea to begin with, they'll usually just mess it up [nytimes.com].
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Re:Cisco vs. Wash DC? (Score:5, Informative)
an interesting aside to this aside...I googled that phrase to see when it first started to be used. There seems to be some sentiment that it used to mean 'work of the highest quality' but got changed to mean shoddy work somewhere along the way. Either way, it's had the negative connotation since at least the '60's.
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Re:Cisco vs. Wash DC? (Score:4, Informative)
"Blame Ronnie Raygun"
Oh lol, how original...
"He popularized the idea that "government is the problem"
Actually that idea was popularized by the founding fathers who knew that Government sucked so bad that it needed a leash (B.O.R) and that the 10th was needed to keep the federal government in its place. Having lived in two very Different states (NY and Minnesota) I can tell you tat some government suck less (Minnesota) than others (NY) but given the fact the states are to be laboratories of democracy the federal government almost always sucks.
"militarization, possibly in hopes of bankrupting the federal government."
Horse manure, link or not its still horse manure. RR was trying to bankrupt the Soviet government not the US government something he successfully did.
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Re:Cisco vs. Wash DC? (Score:5, Informative)
Uh-huh. You do realize that one of the first actions of our founding fathers was to buy up state debt to establish national credit, right?
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Yeah, leave Ronald alone (Score:4, Informative)
It took a Bush to bankrupt the USA[1].
[1] In fact, the USA declared bankruptcy on 15th August 1971, and it was Nixon wot did it.
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Re:Yeah, leave Ronald alone (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Cisco vs. Wash DC? (Score:5, Informative)
"That's true, the founding fathers fought a revolution against bad governments and once they ousted the British they invented the monarchy and named George Washington the ruler of the land and all our presidents since then have been his descendants."
Actually they revolted against a powerful government which was active in peoples every day lives and created a weak one which should seldom be seen..
"Also true, the soviets were doing so well under communism it seemed no one could stop them. Only the keen intellect of Ronald Reagan was able to find a way to undermine that fundamentally sound Marxist economy."
In the late 70's people believed the US would be crushed and the Soviets were not doing as badly as one might think. They did have a huge amount of oil and natural gas, the attitude among many were that they were a healthier economy than us..
"The founding fathers fought against unchecked hereditary power and created the government you hate so much. Communism defeated itself. Take some of those trickle down dollars and buy a clue."
Unchecked... Umm House of commons/lords means anything to you? The monarchy in England was under check for nearly a half millennium before the revolution.
The founders fought against a lack of representation *not* against hereditary rule. Many, *MANY*, people wanted George Washing to be a king in a constitutional monarchy not much different than the English monarchy and anyone who has studied Franklin knows that until he was humiliated in England by his enemies he was quite content to stay a part of great Brittan on the condition of representation and equality with English citizens.
Before you chastise others by telling them to 'buy a clue' maybe you should read a book..
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Re:Cisco vs. Wash DC? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Cisco vs. Wash DC? (Score:5, Informative)
Cripes. I never said "the government sucks."
At best, I said "the government of D.C. sucks". Is this like No Reading Comprehension Day on Slashdot? Do people not realize that the city of Washington D.C. has a government which is distinct from that of the Federal Government? WTF.
Some idiot puts words into my mouth and suddenly I'm Anti-Citizen Number 1.
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Re:Cisco vs. Wash DC? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Cisco vs. Wash DC? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, Cisco sucks. And the government of D.C. sucks.
Right, the government sucks, so by no means should you consider working for the government
I won't defend the guy's attitude, but if you RTFS (S = summary), one of the candidates worked for the Government of DC. So he wasn't saying "All governments suck so I wouldn't work for one," he was saying "the DC government sucks so I wouldn't promote one of their C?Os."
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Re:Cisco vs. Wash DC? (Score:5, Funny)
The problem is that replacing one person, even at the top, never seems to mitigate the suckiness.
The suck is spread wide and deeply entrenched, which is not nearly as fun as it sounds.
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Option 6 (Score:5, Funny)
How about... (Score:5, Funny)
The Iraqi Information Minister? He'd at least be entertaining..
Re:How about... (Score:5, Funny)
There's no Iraqi information minister here. There are no Iraqi information ministers within a hundred miles of this post.
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Why Not OffShore It? (Score:4, Funny)
Can't they off shore this position to Pune? What better choice for corrupt politicians than to choose Satyam? Sounds like a match made in... whatever.
Doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Either way, the position is going to be mostly a figurehead. Unless Obama delegates some serious executive power over the federal bureaucracy, this will just be a cushy job for the next several years.
The CTO needs to be able to override agency decisions, put mandates on them and punish them for non-compliance. I seriously doubt that Obama is going to go that far. One of the first ones should be to stop the Oracle lovefest, and make it federal policy to stop using Oracle on most federal systems that have less than a few hundred users.
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless Obama delegates some serious executive power over the federal bureaucracy, this will just be a cushy job for the next several years.
I completely agree. But, at the risk of suffering a crisis of cynicism, perhaps you could explain why you're so certain that Obama won't delegate serious power to this position?
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Answer is obvious? (Score:4, Insightful)
If I had to choose between the two, which apparently I would (not that my decision makes ANY difference whatsoever), I'd have to go with the dude from Cisco. He at least has his roots, however good they may be, in a business and not a "cushy government job."
Re:Answer is obvious? (Score:5, Informative)
the dude from cisco is a woman.
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Re:Answer is obvious? (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, that's totally bogus. Chicks can't be warriors.
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Re:Answer is obvious? (Score:5, Funny)
Dwight, is that you? Get off Slashdot and sell some paper.
- Jim
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Ungrateful twat (Score:5, Insightful)
You leeches, you scrimp on your taxes, never thank the government, and then have the gall to tar all public servents - people who spend their best years serving YOU - with the same, tired accusations. Tell me, how to you square the 'public service = cushy' claim with the 'US = most powerful country' circle? Do you think the infrastructure, social safety net, military, judiciary, etc., all just run on automatic?
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Re:Answer is obvious? (Score:5, Informative)
Padmasree Warrior is a woman.
Still, I don't trust most people from Cisco any further than I can throw a 6509. A few exceptions aside, their best people seem to leave to form other, more interesting (and ethical) companies. I know that sales people in general are not to be trusted, but Cisco reps seem to have carved their own special niche on that point.
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Re:Answer is obvious? (Score:5, Funny)
Padmasree Warrior is a woman.
And a Jedi.
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Re:Answer is obvious? (Score:5, Interesting)
The "dude from Cisco" is a woman. But she's not really "from" Cisco, she came there in the past year from Motorola. And my impression is that she didn't do that great a job at Motorola, and I haven't really heard anything worthwhile out of her while she's been at Cisco. So, I'd go with the other dude.
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Re:Answer is obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Answer is obvious? (Score:4, Insightful)
You're reading what are essentially press releases and deciding that they're qualified from that? One or both might well be the best person for the job, but I can write some pretty glowing words about myself that make me sound like the best fit for the job, too.
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Stimulate the economy! (Score:4, Interesting)
Does not matter who is chosen: the industry guy will tire of the endless petty bureaucrats and quit in 18 months. Then we get the government lacky anyway; and, we get free technology for everyone.
is this the best they can do? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:is this the best they can do? (Score:5, Informative)
I'll second that. I also worked for Moto during that time also and the only impressive thing that came out of the office of the CTO was the lack of innovation coming out of the office.
The CTO of the country doesn't need to be someone with an impressive resume who's never actually done anything or created anything substantial, it needs to be someone who has actual experience innovating and growing innovation.
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Humm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Two Indian born CTOs are the two top runners. Is this a statment about.
1. Diversity?
2. The lack of US citizens going into the tech sector.
3. Stereotyping?
Me I would vote for Vivek Kundra. I think he would see things from a customers point of view vs a vendors point of view.
Re:Humm... (Score:4, Interesting)
My mistake. Lack of native citizens going into the tech sector.
I am pretty sure that Vivek Kundra is a US citizen he has lived here since he was 11.
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True. Neither went from India straight into IT. (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe it's just a sign that the latent racism which assumes that just because someone was born in India they can't be a US citizen is coming to an end.
Heh. True.
Padmasree Warrior grew up in India and went to IIT, but she majored in Chemical Engineering and later got a masters in the same subject at Cornell. She started at one of Motorola's fabs and went on to management later. As far as I can tell, she's never been part of the software and systems side of the IT industry outside of management, instead working her way up through the fab side. (Much like I wouldn't consider John Sculley of Apple fame to have been an "IT guy" having an architecture major who went into marketing and management at PepsiCo before becoming an infamous Apple CEO.)
Vivek Kundra, while ethnically Indian, grew up in Tanzania not India, speaking Swahili. He came to the US at age 11, and I'd bet a dollar that he was a US citizen by the time he went to college. He has a BS in psychology and a MS in information technology from the University of Maryland. He also has private sector experience.
So, to sum up: One Indian-American never went into IT so much as into plant design and later management, and the other was not only probably a US citizen at the time, but was more African than Indian in cultural upbringing.
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Vivek (Score:5, Informative)
Is a big advocate of Google -- he transitioned the entire city government to Google Apps.
China (Score:4, Interesting)
what happened to bill joy as a possible choice? (Score:4, Insightful)
there's gonna be some oldtime hardliners who'll remember "a time when there wasn't a fancy-pants US CTO, and don't really see a need for one..." once the prejudice and ignorance are washed away, then the CTO will actually make a difference.
on a side note, what happened with talk of Bill Joy becoming CTO? not to taut nativism, but he is an American(born and bred), author of vi, backbone of the original BSD rollout and co-founder of Sun.
whats up with that?
There is only ONE choice! (Score:4, Interesting)
Kobayashi Maru (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you want to die by way of eaten by sharks, or would you rather have wolves?
I honestly don't think either candidate is qualified for the position. We already know that Cisco is willfully ignorant, even hostile, towards FOSS and I imagine quite a lot of that mindset is endorsed by the CTO's office.
Is it too late to clean the slate and start over?
Warrior == Poor (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Was a poor leader
2. Did not consider opinions other than her own on making decisions.
3. Was really not very knowledgeable
4. Was only out for her own advancement
Perhaps these are the attributes of many successful executives, but don't strike me as qualities you want in a civil servant.
Did you ever have contact with a person of real power/wealth/influence and come away thinking "How did they EVER get to where they are?" The older I get, the more I think success requires some work + many connections + a lot of luck.
It looks like the last might strike Ms. Warrior here again pretty soon.
google apps for whole government (Score:4, Interesting)
Kundra replaced all of D.C. gov's word and exchange infrastructure with google apps.
Wonder if he would push that for the whole federal government?
Kundra has been kicking butt in DC (Score:5, Informative)
Most posts here seem to be generalizations based on little to no facts, and I can't see how that's helping the discussion.
Can't speak for the Cisco lady, but Kundra has been kicking serious butt in DC. He's run tech start-ups and runs his agency the same way: aggressive, frugal, and with little tolerance for those that don't performance. Here's a Washington Post article on him from a few weeks ago: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/04/AR2009010401235.html [washingtonpost.com]
He created hundreds of data feeds in his first few months in office to make DC one of the most open governments around. Then a few months ago, he hosted an open competition with $20k of prizes for anyone to create innovative applications using these data feeds.
Re:Kundra has been kicking butt in DC (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Cisco Guvmint (Score:5, Informative)
On the basis that Cisco functions and makes money, while DC is a disaster, Cisco_guy++.
Have you ever worked with Cisco? I have and it was a nightmare. They are a horribly inefficient bureaucracy that makes money by leveraging their existing client base and giving purchasers all the hookers and blow they need to get them to sign. They owned 10% of a company I worked for, then decided to buy one of our failed competitors and try to compete against us. Said competitor failed for a reason, so when that flopped they tried to strong arm us into canceling our product in that market. When that failed they spent millions more to buy two more firms we had driven out of business because their products were so much worse than ours.
Their main problem is that they can make okay hardware, but they suck at software and they really, really, really suck at user interfaces and integration of products. Their corporate ethics are in the toilet with their standing layoffs policy and they're more than happy to push crappy solutions on all their "partners" and big customers while forgetting to mention that they won't touch the same solution with a ten foot pole for use on their own network.
So yeah they're terrible, which is still probably not as bad as Washington DC.
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Re:Cisco Guvmint (Score:5, Interesting)
So yeah they're terrible, which is still probably not as bad as Washington DC.
I'd like to point out that the guy from Washington DC also has private sector experience if you're worried about icky public sector cooties getting all over your new public sector employee. He's also very big on open and transparent government. His resume's a bit light to figure out how good he'll be, but he's probably got a huge leg-up on working with people in Washington.
The lady from Cisco, however, managed a doomed subsidiary of Motorola based on an uneconomical GaAs-on-Si technology before eventually presiding as CTO over the continued slow decline of a company that hasn't had an exciting product since the RAZR years ago before moving on to fill a position at Cisco which had been vacant for two years. While she does want to see more funding for fundamental research and development (not surprising given her fabrication background), the association with Motorola and Cisco does not scream the best and brightest of the private sector to me. Given her academic credentials, she's probably very brilliant, but I don't see how that's translated into success for her companies.
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Re:I vote other (Score:4, Informative)
USA (Brzezinski or whoever) did not create Al Qaeda. It is true that many Al Qaeda members fought Russia in Afghanistan and that the Afghan Mujahedeens were funded by USA through Pakistan -- But Al Qaeda is a much later group formed in Saudi Arabia (according to Bin Laden against US presence in Holy Land). Very different times, different places.
Rahm Emanual Dual-Citizenship allegation is baseless [wikipedia.org] according to Wikipedia.
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Re:Oh Boo Hoo (Score:4, Insightful)
Then I hope it starts to get better soon, because there's nothing particularly interesting here.
Actually I think all those are interesting factoids. Mind you, they aren't necessarily representative of Obama's appointees or for that matter as bad as ones Bush made.
So the AG is from the Clinton admin. So he isn't a gun nut. Cry me a river.
It isn't a matter of him being a "gun nut" and trying to paint people who interpret the second amendment sanely as "nuts" does nothing to help your case. Whether they want to admit it or not, the second amendment clearly presents gun ownership as a personal right and there is tons of supporting documentation for that interpretation while pretty much just wishful thinking from the opposing camp. People who claim otherwise are just playing politics and trying to justify unconstitutional actions and laws because they thing it will get them or their party votes (which it often does). If a person is willing to basically lie about what the constitution says and usurp rights it protects (rather than getting the amendment overturned) then they are being unethical. You also have to wonder how they will interpret other very clear subjects in the constitution when it is to their benefit to misinterpret them.
Wake me when they're championing torture, bribing commentators, and making shady business deals in secret.
This is the "we're not as bad as China" defense constantly used by the Bush administration to try to paint their unethical acts as not as bad as others and therefor acceptable. It didn't fly then and it doesn't now.
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