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Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

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Re: Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

#21

I met some of the former Googlers working for the USDS. They seemed to be many pre-IPO SREs who decided that improving government was more important than being an LP at a VC fund. They were motivated by getting tens of millions of people healthcare, and along the way they encountered huge challenges - like figuring out how to reconcile VA and Pentagon records. Their passion was inspiring, and the work they do affects…

So I'm a software engineer in SF who would love to work on projects like you mentioned. Where do I look and what do I look for?

USDS is hiring! https://www.usds.gov/join

If you want to work remote from SF, check out 18F: https://pages.18f.gov/joining-18f/

Re: Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

#22
post #19

I met some of the former Googlers working for the USDS. They seemed to be many pre-IPO SREs who decided that improving government was more important than being an LP at a VC fund. They were motivated by getting tens of millions of people healthcare, and along the way they encountered huge challenges - like figuring out how to reconcile VA and Pentagon records. Their passion was inspiring, and the work they do affects…

The problem with gov is that everything is slow has hell / old tech on top of corporate contracts with the like of Oracle / SAP. I don't expect to improve things there because of all thoses problems + layers of bureaucracy.

I think that it's a problem of "outsource" vs "in-house." Government is like a microservice architecture where each service being built by a different corporation with a non-technical PM leading integrations. Then, it gets maintained by basically nobody and is expected to work in perpetuity.

From what I have observed, having an in-house technical team at the government - even small - aids all of these projects.

In fact, that's basically what this team is - SREs - professionals at running and maintaining code. A small integrations / uptime team that understands the implications of design decisions aids everything.

Re: Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

#23
post #5

Is it so hard to believe that one of the biggest tech companies in the country and the government wouldn't both respect success in the other's organizations?

Similar arguments are made when the close ties between the government and say Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street giants are discussed. There is a revolving door there too.

Even the most forgiving interpretation of the facts implies that Google and Goldman Sachs and other corporations have massive influence in government. There is no need to posit a conspiracy theory. It's just that the same people flow back and forth between the government and those corporations, and there are friendships as well as shared perspectives and ideals, all creating a close relationship that is highly beneficial to those corporations.

Re: Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

#24

I met some of the former Googlers working for the USDS. They seemed to be many pre-IPO SREs who decided that improving government was more important than being an LP at a VC fund. They were motivated by getting tens of millions of people healthcare, and along the way they encountered huge challenges - like figuring out how to reconcile VA and Pentagon records. Their passion was inspiring, and the work they do affects…

So I'm a software engineer in SF who would love to work on projects like you mentioned. Where do I look and what do I look for?

Binti makes software that is transforming child welfare services administration. We work together in SF and are growing rapidly. Info in profile.

Re: Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

#25
post #9
post #6

I would love to see numbers for other companies. I would be surprised if large defense contractors like Northrup Grumman and Lockheed Martin didn't have way more than 250. Also ... government has been notoriously bad about grokking software. They just couldn't manage large projects effectively at all, and they were completely getting fleeced by their usual contractors (witness the initial launch of healthcare.gov). S…

A lot of info at: https://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/top.php?display=I

Not really - it's just a pie chart by industry. It doesn't say anything about other companies.

If you search by organization you can get some numbers but it's not comprehensive. For example, it says that only 28 people (not hundreds) are profiled with "google", 30 with "microsoft" and 1 for "hewlett packard", etc.

Re: Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

#26
Google has a huge number of interactions with regulations. Whether or not there is a revolving door ought to be orthogonal to your opinion on whether or not Google is in the right on many of its legal positions.

Like many other companies, Google uses the Double Irish to minimize its tax bill. Assuming the law were updated to affect all Double Irish users equally (like to e.g. Facebook), do you think we should prevent such tax evasion? The answer seems to me obviously yes, regardless of your political persuasion. Clearly lobbying must have some impact on its favorable tax treatment.

In a manner of bundling similar to other tech companies, Google promoted Chrome on www.google.com. It seems reasonable to describe that promotion as using its dominance in the search market to become dominant in the browser market. Likewise, its complex deal with Android manufacturers results in Google Search (among other applications) being the default on their phones. The EU is in the process of sanctioning Google for the later. Supposing the spirit of anti-trust law were applied equally to application bundlers (like to e.g., Apple), do you think we should prevent such bundling from occurring? The answer to me seems to be yes: I think unbundling software makes the software ecosystem healthier and more innovative. Clearly lobbying in the U.S. must have some impact on its favorable anti-trust treatment versus the E.U.

Like few other funnels, Google monetizes content in ways that minimize the value to the producer. This could mean monetizing copyrighted material, like searches that lead to movie torrents or whole copies hosted on YouTube. Or its dominant place in search makes previously subscription-only newspapers have to go free on-the-web, because news cannot be copyrighted and anyone can read an NYTimes article and write a free (but plagiarized) destination for search results. How much value should go to producers, and to the extent that it extracts a rent from the transaction, should Google be the entity that transfers the value from the producer to the consumer? The answer to this question isn't obvious. But Google has won a complex set of legal victories, like the Google Books Search settlement lawsuit and lawsuits by newspaper publishers around the world. It's likely, though not as clear, that its extensive relationship with government (and for that matter, consumers) has earned it a favorable view of its rent extraction from producers.

The controversy ought not to be the revolving door. You would have to be a real blowhard to believe that Google doesn't receive favorable treatment from the government. Furthermore, you should be allowed to campaign against Google's favorable treatment without simultaneously campaigning against Apple, Facebook, and all of corporate America.

Instead, I think the controversy should be whether or not you actually think Google is in the right on these matters.

Re: Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

#29
post #28

Matt Cutts, who was/is a semipublic Google employee wrote on Quora today about his work at USDS. https://www.quora.com/session/Matt-Cutts/1 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Matt_Cutts

It is crazy to me that Googlers no longer even "revolve the door" to shift back and forth to working for the government. Matt Cutts is merely 'on leave'. Similarly, Eric Schmidt is on a panel at the DoD while simultaneously still in his position at Google.

It's impossible for someone to make the best decisions for American citizens while they're simultaneously employed by a giant international corporation which is evading billions of dollars in taxes, causing the rest of us to have to pick up all the slack.

Re: Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

#30

I met some of the former Googlers working for the USDS. They seemed to be many pre-IPO SREs who decided that improving government was more important than being an LP at a VC fund. They were motivated by getting tens of millions of people healthcare, and along the way they encountered huge challenges - like figuring out how to reconcile VA and Pentagon records. Their passion was inspiring, and the work they do affects…

So I'm a software engineer in SF who would love to work on projects like you mentioned. Where do I look and what do I look for?

Also check out adhocteam.us. I don't work there, but they're doing important work for HHS and VA.
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