[simpaticoder]

I almost edited my comment to anticipate this comment. It is not large compared to the budget. Nothing is. It's large in absolute terms. $50M is a lot of spend compared to most businesses with a similar scope. The product is a database of information other people report, naively it seems like a lot. It doesn't have any of the complexity of most businesses. This is not to minimize the work of fixing messy input, reproducing and properly cataloging vulnerabilities, etc. That budget is ~250 workers (assuming $100k/year with 100% overhead), ignoring infra. More than anything I'm curious how the money is being spent because without knowing that it's impossible to judge whether it's bloated or not.

[thinkingtoilet]

>More than anything I'm curious how the money is being spent because without knowing that it's impossible to judge whether it's bloated or not.

Exactly. And it's totally fair for anyone to question the cost. However, the current administration is destroying things with the precision of a Jackson Pollack painting and no such reflection is happening.

[Braxton1980]

Question the cost how? By saying "is this alot?" Then performing no further investigation to confirm that or make a comparison basically leaving the question open which causes random to assume it's "alot"

[simpaticoder]

I can say "Gee whiz $335M per F-22 seems a bit much!" without being an expert in jets, military equipment, or going into the details of its production. I know a bit more about software so I can safely say something similar about MITRE. The fact that I don't want to spend my time doing (frankly, rather useless since I'm not a journo or in government or influential at all) investigative journalism into the specifics doesn't invalidate my opinion. Random people will read random things into whatever random content they consume; deep in an HN comment thread this is of little concern.

[Braxton1980]

>I can say "Gee whiz $335M per F-22 seems a bit much!..specifics doesn't invalidate my opinion.

You shouldn't and it does invalidate your opinion.

You're an engineer and this is HN so shouldn't making a comparison or judgment be backed up by some factual information?

>The fact that I don't want to spend my time

You don't have to make the comment.

>. Random people will read random things into whatever random content they consume..

Don't you feel that a comment akin to "government be spending alot" is almost like spam considering how often it's mentioned? If you had some information that showed that for what we are talking about then that would be substantial.