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Re: Cloud.gov

#71
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing says "we employ the best" like "fixed salary based on tenure and job function"

18F and other groups in government offer a great potential for impact, but we don't have the same flexibility in compensation policy because of universal federal rules. Speaking personally, I think there's a lot of room for policy folks to dig into how gov't can better hire and retain skilled talent, but that's not 18F's function.

For sure, I don't blame 18f, it is just super annoying to see things like this.

Re: Cloud.gov

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sorts of jobs are available there and what's the salary like? I currently do devops at a large Internet content company near Dulles and I've got federal government experience from many years ago.

We're recruiting actively across many disciplines. 18F employs a huge range of amazing people with diverse histories from both inside and outside of government. Everyone is an impact junkie. Salary is competitive with industry through a special hiring authority although capped at government levels without bonus, stock, etc. There are intangibles that come from actually being able to improve the way government approac…

> Open positions

> We're pausing applications while we evolve how 18F plans for open roles. We estimate that we’ll post new open positions at the end of June.

???

Re: Cloud.gov

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're recruiting actively across many disciplines. 18F employs a huge range of amazing people with diverse histories from both inside and outside of government. Everyone is an impact junkie. Salary is competitive with industry through a special hiring authority although capped at government levels without bonus, stock, etc. There are intangibles that come from actually being able to improve the way government approac…

For what it's worth, I applied to work with 18F late last year. I'm a web developer with a wide array of skills - front-end, back-end, and even UI/UX design, product design, and some marketing and management - with about 8 years of experience, mostly doing independent consulting with a couple years at a SF startup in there. I'm also very civic minded, doing a bunch of pro-bono work and (since) getting involved in com…

What is a Google-sized team?

Re: Cloud.gov

#74
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I know very little about this world) why do you need approvals to use open source software? Certainly the purse strings are tightly held, but why is use of free software restricted?

The way I see it, there are multiple grades of free software. There is difference between downloading a linux distro or apache project and downloading some dude's python library from pip. Any software used on government systems has to go through an accreditation process. This is to prevent you from pulling in some random code that may have security vulnerabilities or backdoors. Just because it is open source doesn't…

> Overall, GSA is one of the best agencies when it comes to open source. It has definitely come a long way, but still a long way to go.

I think it's never been a better time to get approvals/clarifications/etc for open source at GSA. GSA's CIO posted a supportive comment on this issue here, w/r/t the White House's proposed source code policy (and 18F's comment on it), and reinforced that GSA has an "open source first" internal policy for the enterprise on the books:

https://github.com/WhiteHouse/source-code-policy/issues/73#i...

Of course, policies only give people the space to spend energy making the policy really mean something -- which I encourage you to do. Find me on 18F's GitHub or GSA email any time if you have ideas you want to talk about.

Re: Cloud.gov

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're recruiting actively across many disciplines. 18F employs a huge range of amazing people with diverse histories from both inside and outside of government. Everyone is an impact junkie. Salary is competitive with industry through a special hiring authority although capped at government levels without bonus, stock, etc. There are intangibles that come from actually being able to improve the way government approac…

For what it's worth, I applied to work with 18F late last year. I'm a web developer with a wide array of skills - front-end, back-end, and even UI/UX design, product design, and some marketing and management - with about 8 years of experience, mostly doing independent consulting with a couple years at a SF startup in there. I'm also very civic minded, doing a bunch of pro-bono work and (since) getting involved in com…

If your in it for the mission, not the money consider applying as a Code For America fellow:

https://www.codeforamerica.org/do-something/work-with-us

There are a lot of cities that could use your help. I am in no way connected with them but am a huge fan of their mission.

Re: Cloud.gov

#76
post #39

I work in GSA as well, and I have a lot of trouble getting software approved that you use all the time, even getting nginx approved took a long time. Forget about vagrant, virtual box, recent versions of python, etc... How were you able to get ATOs to operate most of your systems and work through these policies?

They cheat. Edit: they ignore a lot of the rules that GSA (among others) mandate the rest of the government follow. One great example is cloud.gov, operating on the public Internet without finishing the fedramp approval process. It also doesn't comply with the TIC requirements GSA pushes on the rest of the .gov. The hard problems in government IT are being able to pay enough to attract top talent and dealing with all…

Hi Godel -

I’m Noah Kunin, the Infrastructure Director at 18F/GSA.

While the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) owns the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) policy and controls (https://www.dhs.gov/trusted-internet-connections) we’ve been working hard with DHS teams to clarify and improve implementation guidance.

We hear you - loud and clear - and understand there’s a lot of frustration.

Check out our updates with one of our pilot partners, Amazon Web Services:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikm5XsUuWR4&t=10m11s

* https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/fedramp-trusted-in...

Also please sign up for updates to our blog - hopefully you’ll see more news on this soon, but feel free to contact us directly as well.

https://18f.gsa.gov/blog/ 18F@gsa.gov

Re: Cloud.gov

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, I applied to work with 18F late last year. I'm a web developer with a wide array of skills - front-end, back-end, and even UI/UX design, product design, and some marketing and management - with about 8 years of experience, mostly doing independent consulting with a couple years at a SF startup in there. I'm also very civic minded, doing a bunch of pro-bono work and (since) getting involved in com…

What is a Google-sized team?

A team the size of Google.

Re: Cloud.gov

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, I applied to work with 18F late last year. I'm a web developer with a wide array of skills - front-end, back-end, and even UI/UX design, product design, and some marketing and management - with about 8 years of experience, mostly doing independent consulting with a couple years at a SF startup in there. I'm also very civic minded, doing a bunch of pro-bono work and (since) getting involved in com…

What is a Google-sized team?

My experience has all been with teams and companies The startup I worked on had 12 people at its height (before it was bought by a large tech company), and I was the first employee hire so I was in a position of some leadership.

He kept asking me strange questions that presupposed I knew how to negotiate with large entities like government agencies... as a developer.

That interview - plus the other two "groundhog day" interviews - were the strangest interview process I've ever experienced.

Re: Cloud.gov

#79
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See: https://pages.18f.gov/joining-18f/ I'll let @bmogilefsky describe the jobs. @18F as a whole hires engineers, designers, product managers, content writers, journalists, folks with non-traditional cross-functional backgrounds, etc. Salary depends on job grade. See [1] for an explanation of the grades within 18F. Then see the GS pay scale [2] to figure out the pay for your grade in your region. [1]: https://pages.1…

Right now I am in college, does 18F or USGS have flexible hours or work for me over the summer? I'd love to get involved, I'm mainly focused in software engineering. It seems like a great cause to partake in.

I can't give a comprehensive answer as to how we hire, but I can offer my personal experience: I was able to finish my last year of part-time law school when I started at 18F. I was working full time, and everyone was very respectful about having a life outside of work.

In the shorter term, do check out https://micropurchase.18f.gov. It's where we post very short term contract opportunities ($3,500 or less, and tasks typically take up to a week). I also happen to be a dev on this project, so feel free to reach out here or at micropurchase@gsa.gov if you have any questions.

Re: Cloud.gov

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look the domain up in domaintools, they run on top of AWS govcloud. https://whois.domaintools.com/cloud.gov

I wonder if they are just reselling: https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/

Cloud.gov is a PaaS based on Cloud Foundry. The idea is that it can run on pretty much any IaaS provider (as long as the Cloud Foundry plugins are written), certainly not limited to AWS.
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