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

241–250 of 251 posts

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#241

Post by mbellotti »

walrus01 wrote: post #224
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

further warning, if you apply for a secret or ts clearance (which many, many IT jobs in the federal government require and particular anything that interacts with the DoD), you will be put through a polygraph... It's even more intrusive now and the background check is even more thorough in the post-snowden era.

Actually not completely true. It depends on the agency that sponsors your clearance and it has more to do with the agency's involvement in the intelligence community. The White House does not require it.

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#242

Post by dnesting »

easychewie wrote: post #19
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…

> First I'll add the disclaimer that this is my personal opinion. I'm not speaking for anyone other than myself. And there it is. One of many reasons I'll never work for the government again. The government is so PC-sensitive that dude can't even post on HN without a mildly disguised form of legalese. When I was in the Air Force, everything I said had to be prefaced with The views expressed in this article are those…

There exist people that are happy to take a personal statement and attribute it to the author's employer to score political points at the author's expense. When I use this disclaimer it's chiefly for my own benefit.

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#243

Post by dnesting »

jschulenklopper wrote: post #103
Keverw wrote: post #13

I wonder how the USDS is different than the 18F? Seems like they both are doing the same thing, why not just merge them?

Here's a write-up on the differences (and similarities) that I've found: http://ben.balter.com/2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f-... .

This was written not long after USDS was founded, and I recall thinking even then that many of his comparisons were not entirely accurate. The comments you read here are going to be more complete and up to date.

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#244

Post by dnesting »

usds_app_throw wrote: post #193

As a new grad, the USDS was my top choice but I was constantly stonewalled by recruiters saying that I wasn't experienced enough. For the USDS engineers on the thread--does the work really require 5+ years of work experience? Is there really no place for a passionate and moderately-experienced junior engineer in the organization? I would quit my job in a heartbeat if I got an offer.

The projects in which we are most successful are those where we have been able to quickly bring a lot of relevant experience to the table, not just knowledge and skill.

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#245

Post by dnesting »

eikenberry wrote: post #60
spoon16 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live outside of Seattle. But nearly all of the work I do with USDS requires me to be physically present. So I travel a lot (4/5 days a week). You aren't going to find a badly broken technology project in the Federal Government that is able to leverage remote people effectively.

I'm a developer and devops guy. If I have to be physically present for anything, something is very wrong.

Government is not a place where modern collaboration tools thrive. This has less to do with "broken IT" (though that's part of it) and more to do with the government's unique legal, oversight, and compliance burdens, and a lack of modern collaboration tools that can accommodate them.

The projects in which we are most successful are also not projects where people can easily contribute remotely. Some agency teams allow remote work but the jury's still out in my opinion as to whether these people are as effective as others.

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#247

Post by landryraccoon »

zeveb wrote: post #206
Jtsummers wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I certainly hope you are wrong about the military. If the generals that lead the military attempt a coup to overthrow the democratically elected government of the US I would expect every loyal soldier to disobey those orders.

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#248

Post by jhayward »

owenversteeg wrote: post #209
jhayward wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

If amp were not an aggregator the URL would not point at amp.google.com.

I'm well aware of amp's purpose, function, intent, implementation, and effect. I strongly prefer not to have third parties mediating and obfuscating my browsing.

So please use direct urls rather than 3rd Party aggregators. Thanks.

Re: Staying with the US Digital Service

#249

Post by webmaven »

walrus01 wrote: post #230
webmaven wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the background check is even more thorough in the post-snowden era. Why is that? I mean, this would be a case of "shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted" except that Snowden would pretty clearly have passed a more thorough background check. His background wasn't the problem. The only thing I can think of that might actually have preemptively filtered him (or those like him) out would be some sort of ps…

because knee jerk reaction, assuming logical reasons for well thought out responses on the part of the federal government dinosaur apparatus will only make your head hurt.

Hmm. I guess I thought ramping up the number of polygraph tests and re-evaluating which systems are accessible by people with various roles, responsibilities, and clearances would be a much higher priority.

Background checks are obviously a necessary and useful tool, I am just not sure I understand which dotted lines (regardless of their logic or illogic) connect "Snowden" to "more background checks" in a knee-jerk reaction.

Post reply on HN