
Early lessons from the micro-purchase experiment - zeckalpha
https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/11/06/micro-purchase-lessons/
======
lutorm
HN is always full of news about startups that burn millions of dollars in
order to, perhaps, eventually, have enough of a product and enough exposure to
become a profitable business.

How is what the winner of this bid did any different from what all these
startups do every day? At least they staked _their own_ money to make a name
for themselves.

Isn't the term for this a "loss leader"?

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something123
There seem to be so many things wrong with this.

How about if the person didn't deliver? Would the project be delayed and
reauctioned?

Haven't the problems of lowest-bidder quality been illustrated over and over?

Wouldn't they garner a lot more good will if they just ask for volunteering?

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daveloyall
Previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10471677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10471677)

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aaron695
As per previous comment threads this is currently just an example of
experimental bias.

[http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3025](http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3025)

Although I have heard of this behaviour before in government bidding, the fame
makes it meaningless atm.

The 10th iteration will/would be interesting.

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zdw
I'm glad the US Government adheres to and pays the minimum hourly wage for
work such as this.

~~~
wslack
Quoting the blog post on the the $1 bid: "It was a plot twist that no one here
at 18F expected. This unexpected development will no doubt force us to rethink
some of our assumptions about the reverse-auction model."

* I work at 18F

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CaptSpify
The big question is: will this work on scale?

Sure, 1 programmer can use this donation to pad his resume, but will this work
if everyone is doing it?

~~~
unimpressive
Well if it doesn't scale, presumably the market price will converge on average
back towards what is actually fair.

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daveloyall
To anyone who might argue that the resume-building bidder has taken food off
the plates of other contractors, consider this: thanks to the low bidder, the
government can now afford to process that data, build that resume, pay the low
bidder, and give money away to the other bidders for free.

~~~
e12e
> and give money away to the other bidders for free.

I'm not sure what you mean. Surely the money will be spent, but this wasn't
some kind of lottery, the remaining money isn't split among those that lost
the auction...?

~~~
daveloyall
I was being facetious. There is no "remaining money" because the total cost of
that work was $1.

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femto113
"the experiment also validated the core concept that open-source micro-
purchasing can work, and it’s a thing we should try to do again"

This leap in logic seems entirely unsupportable. This was not a "purchase". It
was a donation, very much within the long tradition of donations to open
source projects.

~~~
wslack
There were plenty of bids before it dropped to $1 (Note: I work at 18F)

~~~
CaptSpify
But those other bids dont matter. Only the winning one does

~~~
wslack
My point is that the other bids offer some support to the concept, regardless
of the final bid and PR.

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nartz
Instead, the learning point here maybe is that, if you spend the time to spec
something out properly, and make it into a nice little package, and say its
for the good of the government and community, maybe you can get some altrustic
programmers to help out, if you give them sufficient credit.

Maybe instead you should think about how to better create a list of timeboxed
/scopedtasks that any programmer can come and submit a PR for, and how to
better reward those people with fame or other perks

\- Leaderboard of contributors, # of prs, dollars saved taxpayers?

\- Let users link to their contributions / put in resume?

\- personal letter from the mayor once you submit 3 successful PRs that are
accepted?

~~~
jdiez17
I'm not sure if your comment is sarcastic or not, but it actually wouldn't be
a bad idea. Working on a well defined, self-contained task in an open source
project can be very rewarding in itself.

~~~
nartz
not sarcastic at all.

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Jemaclus
They say that functional (and by all accounts fantastic) code was delivered
for the winning $1 bid, and then they claim that the experiment was a success.
But was it really? Is a $1 winning bid in the spirit of this? Couldn't someone
who just wants to pad their resume submit $1 bids for everything, thereby
"winning" 100% of the time and depriving of actual income these legitimate
businesses who might count on these contracts for survival?

I'm not making a judgment either way, but allowing a $1 bid seems... strange.
Are there other considerations that go into the "success" of the platform, or
success merely defined by the delivery of functional code for the price of the
winning bid?

~~~
vdavez
I'm the author of the blog post, but the claim of success is based on a number
of factors _other_ than the $1.

As we note re the $1: > "This unexpected development will no doubt force us to
rethink some of our assumptions about the reverse-auction model."

Also, the success is borne out of the data: > "Given these statistics, we
think it’s fair to say that there is a market for open-source micro-
purchasing, though we obviously will need to spend some time and effort
refining our methods.

The success is in validation of the idea, not the actual result in this case.
That said, the result is new, functional open-source software for the American
public. So that's still a pretty good outcome.

~~~
richard_mcp
If you don't mind me asking, do you have any plans to prevent extremely small
bids like this in the future?

~~~
brianmurphy
I hope they don't. In fact, I hope they encourage these kinds of small bids
from qualified individuals.

100% test case coverage for $1 is amazing and to the benefit of all taxpayers.

~~~
richard_mcp
I think they're great too. I'm just curious what 18f thinks about them.

