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

Staying with the US Digital Service

mattcutts.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 251 posts

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#201

Post by Matt_Cutts »

vonmoltke wrote: post #196
toomuchtodo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No questions, just a compliment. After going through the USDS interview process and declining an offer, I have nothing but appreciation for those who serve there knowing what's involved to be selected, onboarded, and what the day to day looks like. Best of luck as your journey there continues.

I don't want to be too negative here, but I had the opposite experience. I didn't like the little bit of the process I actually got to experience, did not get a good feeling from either the job description or the one interview I had what the USDS is actually looking for, and found the canned rejection email to be a bit condescending.

Just wanted to say sorry that you had a bad experience. Would you mind if I asked when you applied and went through the process? I'm curious whether your experience was a recent bad one.

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#202

Post by Matt_Cutts »

dschep wrote: post #175
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First I'll add the disclaimer that this is my personal opinion. I'm not speaking for anyone other than myself. I think the mission of the US Digital Service is fundamentally non-partisan: we want to make government work better for the American people. When a veteran can apply for health benefits online, they have a better experience. But it also saves the money from them driving to see someone in person. There's so m…

> I think the mission of the US Digital Service is fundamentally non-partisan: we want to make government work better for the American people. Couldn't most agencies claim the same?

Yup. The next level down of detail would be "using technology or best practices from the tech industry."

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#203

Post by Matt_Cutts »

chris11 wrote: post #81
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First I'll add the disclaimer that this is my personal opinion. I'm not speaking for anyone other than myself. I think the mission of the US Digital Service is fundamentally non-partisan: we want to make government work better for the American people. When a veteran can apply for health benefits online, they have a better experience. But it also saves the money from them driving to see someone in person. There's so m…

How do you think the USDS is going to change in the next few months since you sit in the office of the president? I'm not asking for your personal opinion of the next administration, but I'm really not expecting a smooth transition. So are you expecting any major changes?

A lot of people are coming up on the end of their one or two year terms, so we'll be managing that transition. I will say that to the degree the next administration is interesting in modernizing technology in the government, there's a ton of great work that can be done. I believe there's a solid interest in that.

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#205

Post by vonmoltke »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #201
vonmoltke wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to be too negative here, but I had the opposite experience. I didn't like the little bit of the process I actually got to experience, did not get a good feeling from either the job description or the one interview I had what the USDS is actually looking for, and found the canned rejection email to be a bit condescending.

Just wanted to say sorry that you had a bad experience. Would you mind if I asked when you applied and went through the process? I'm curious whether your experience was a recent bad one.

It was eight or so months ago. If I recall correctly I got the interview because someone here flagged my application.

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#206

Post by zeveb »

Jtsummers wrote: post #148
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the USDS project selection criteria is that we prioritize work that based on what will do the greatest good for the greatest number of people in the greatest need The USDS is a taxpayer-funded public entity. The "greatest good..." is determined by the law, written by our duly elected representatives. You don't get to serve the public and selectively reject the law. If the Congress passes a law you disagree w…

> You don't get to serve the public and selectively reject the law. You kind of do. If you're ordered to do something that seems in conflict with the law and/or Constitution, you have a responsibility to not leave, to oppose that unlawful or unconstitutional action. That may require you remaining in place. If you leave, all that's left behind are the sort of non-thinking automatons I was surrounded by at one job for…

You neglect the possibility of a legal, constitutional order with which one disagrees (neither the law nor the Constitution forbids all bad things). For a member of the civil service, one's choice, then, is to obey or to resign.

For the military, of course, there is no choice: one obeys.

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#207

Post by avar »

dejawu wrote: post #187
jconley wrote: post #186

Just a warning for everyone from California, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, etc. They do require you to certify for the background screening that you have not done any federally illegal drugs in the last 12 months, and possibly do drug tests. Might not want to spend too much time on it if that applies to you. https://www.usds.gov/join#who

This is such a shame. I remember the NSA and FBI having trouble finding techies because basically everyone they interviewed had smoked weed sometime in the last five years.

Which, particularly for those agencies, comes about due to the most absurd of reasons:

1. We'd treat drug using employees really seriously

2. Therefore you must not do drugs

3. Because we're so serious about this this becomes a major blackmailing vector.

4. So we need to make really sure you're a drug user.

It's an entirely manufactured problem that could be solved overnight by them just saying "hey, don't show up high on the job, but what you do in your own time is your own business, and we won't pro-actively investigate it anymore than any other citizen".

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#208

Post by kchoudhu »

avn2109 wrote: post #191
1888franklin wrote: post #10

Howdy Matt - will you build a Muslim registry if Trump orders it or Congress passes it?

>> "...will you build a Muslim registry..." I don't support Trump or the unconstitutional American deep state, but you realize there is already a Muslim registry right? In fact there are probably several competing implementations in various intelligence agencies, with substantially overlapping contents. Probably almost every agency has the capability to run select first_name, last_name, home_address from us_residents…

I've filled out multiple hundreds of pages of visa and immigration forms, and I have never had to tell them what religion I am. Barring the use of country of origin or other specious proxies for religion, the feds still have no idea what religion I am.

Heuristic searches for muslims definitely exist - but they aren't as simple as you make them out to be.

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#209

Post by owenversteeg »

jhayward wrote: post #174
potatosoup wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The registry was already there under Obama: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article... Also, it would be silly to assume that we didn't have a database of "country from" for immigrants or visitors. "Muslim" is not a country, it's a religion, so you'd need some serious behavior profiling for that -- probably FB/Google are ones you should be after. (Disclaimer: am immigrant, am minority.)

Please post direct links to the article rather than aggregators like google amp. Thanks!

AMP is not an aggregator, it's a opt-in program to speed up pages. Personally, I prefer when someone posts an AMP link, because it is the exact same page and content but loads substantially faster. In this case, the AMP page took me 4.95 seconds to load while the non-AMP link took 10.73 seconds. Again, AMP is an opt-in program implemented by the website owner, is controlled by the site owner, and of course provides the same ad revenue for the site owner.

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#210

Post by nickpsecurity »

dragonwriter wrote: post #195
mc32 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many advanced countries require people of a certain age to do a stint in the military. I think a volunteer force is preferable to a conscripted force.

A volunteer force is definitely superior if you want to limit the concern of the general population about wars and make making war politically easier for the ruling class, which was a major consideration in the US switching to an all-volunteer force.

About 80+% of people join the military for money, college, and other benefits. The well-off people don't need the military for that. So, a volunteer military naturally selects for a make up of lower classes to be sent to die overseas to largely protect wealth of upper classes.

If there was a lottery, pushback from casualties would come from more people in upper classes that could cause real problems for politicians and generals. Could even be their own kids sent there. Switching to a "volunteer" military in an increasingly-shitty economy sweeps lots of their problems under the rug. ;)

Post reply on HN