Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

watchdog.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 107 posts

Re: Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

#51

Post by noobermin »

philip1209 wrote: post #11

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…

I feel okay hearing about improving backups, may be some automation, etc, but "age" should not only imply these things. Age seems can often also imply "understood."

Re: Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

#52

Post by [deleted] »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #36
hueving wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the examples in the article are non-technical. High level advisory roles for policy advise.

I don't really understand why having people who know about technology advise in the creation of technology policy and strategy is a bad thing.

[deleted]

Re: Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

#53

Post by JustSomeNobody »

johnchristopher wrote: post #40
gnu8 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your specific background, including current salary and years of experience, will ultimately determine your pay. U.S. Digital Service salaries are set in accordance with the General Schedule Pay Scale, which is capped at $160,300. All of the Googlers you've met who work for USDS are already well funded from their previous companies. Who in their right mind would go to work for the government, for minimum wage, unles…

$13,000 a month is minimum wage ?

It's capped at 160K. This means most are likely making less.

Re: Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

#54

Post by jzwinck »

justinlardinois wrote: post #49

> More than 250 people have moved from Google and related firms to the federal government or vice versa since President Barack Obama took office. Google has over 30,000 employees in Mountain View alone, and that's just a portion of its workforce. The term "Obama administration" in the headline is somewhat misleading considering that the above quote says it's surveyed from "the federal government," which is a huge wor…

Some back of the envelope math:

50% of total staff are at Mountain View. Of 60k staff, maybe 20-25k are engineers. So in the US it's probably 10-15k engineers total.

In my experience, software engineer attrition is around 20% per year in firms with good employee satisfaction. That's 2-3k engineers excited to be tackling new opportunities each year. In 8 years: 16-24k employees.

Of course Google is a great place to work and they weren't as large 8 years ago, so let's guess 10-15k employees turned over. Of that, 250 is 2%.

The government says around 2700 people work for the executive [1]. That is 0.002% of the total workforce in the US.

Google could replace the entire executive with castaway engineers every year.

[1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-docu...

Re: Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

#55

Post by toomuchtodo »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #53
johnchristopher wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$13,000 a month is minimum wage ?

It's capped at 160K. This means most are likely making less.

For a data point, I was offered $130k for a position at the IRS (as a USDS employee) working on taxpayer authorization, authentication, identity management.

Re: Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

#56

Post by morgante »

Articles like this are a great example of why the so-called revolving door is a good thing.

Government technology has been a disaster for quite some time. I think we can all agree that the best technologists aren't usually looking to accept a low-pay, low-prestige job in government.

So the Obama Administration has taken steps to try to improve government technology, primarily through USDS but also with direct White House hires. Of course many of the best technologists are employed at Google, so you'll see a lot of people coming from there. Especially since there are significant network effects in recruiting.

Naturally, the best technologists aren't typically interested in a long-term government career. So they shift back out after their "tour of duty." In fact, I believe 18F explicitly requires limited term contracts.

Despite good intentions (including willingness to take substantial pay cuts), people inevitably attack these attempts.

I wonder how much of the "Google Transparency Project" funding is coming from existing federal contractors. Perhaps they should be transparent about themselves for a start.

Re: Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

#57

Post by ocdtrekkie »

oxymoron wrote: post #31

I think the Google Transparency Project needs some transparency: http://fortune.com/2016/04/27/google-transparency-project/

This article contains no data. Merely speculates or insinuates that if it's investigating Google, clearly it has to be part of some plot against them. I know it's hard to imagine, but sometimes people may just want to know what a giant evil international conglomerate is doing in backrooms with the most powerful people on the planet.

Re: Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

#58

Post by Buge »

CydeWeys wrote: 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…

>I would be surprised if large defense contractors like Northrup Grumman and Lockheed Martin didn't have way more than 250.

Especially since those type of jobs often require security clearance. Once someone has clearance, they are more likely to take more jobs in the future that also require clearance, because the clearance is a valuable part of their resume.

Re: Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

#59

Post by traek »

The "Google Transparency Project" [1] seems like a deliberately misleading name. They're not at all associated with Google yet they're going as far as using Google's logo in their logo. I wonder how legal that is, and if Google's comms team is aware of them.

[1] http://googletransparencyproject.org/

Re: Google employees have enjoyed revolving door during Obama administration

#60

Post by manav »

gnu8 wrote: post #33
philip1209 wrote: post #11

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…

> Your specific background, including current salary and years of experience, will ultimately determine your pay. U.S. Digital Service salaries are set in accordance with the General Schedule Pay Scale, which is capped at $160,300. All of the Googlers you've met who work for USDS are already well funded from their previous companies. Who in their right mind would go to work for the government, for minimum wage, unles…

Effectively they are paying even less if you consider taxes (which go back to the federal government). Maybe a clever tax scheme can incentivize it.
Post reply on HN