Some people might not have realized USDS is still around since it was best known for the Healthcare.gov rescue under Obama. But it's still here, and still hiring people to work on problems like this www.usds.gov/join
Hmm.... I apply every 6 months or so and get the thumbs down. Not sure what they're looking for. I've got 30 years of every kind of experience (dev, DBA, network, security, product mgmt, analytics/data science, business mgmt, and more) with good credentials and they never bite. I wish I knew more what the ideal profile was; I'd love to help out!
"over qualified" a.k.a too old and will want a competitive salary.
I agree. I'd probably look at it from TCP layer shortly after initial failures to diagnose if not from he start. Especially when dealing with communication between a cloud provider and on-prem gear and infrastructure. However, it's tempting to exhaust all other avenues depending on how likely the on-prem ops folks are to punt the issue.
I actually did look at the TCP layer early on. However, I didn't pay close attention to the TS Val. From the packet dumps, it just appeared that the TCP window had stopped sliding. I couldn't conclude that NSOC's router was at fault. Getting NSOC on-board is a big deal. After all, they deal with the entire VA network with 100,000+ employees. If you think about it from their perspective, why is USDS' TCP connections s…
I applaud you for not putting the obvious work-around in place:
- Inserting "sleep 300" into the startup process.
- Adding a cronjob to reboot the servers once a week.
I kid, but I'm sure we've all seen hacks like this.
Its amazing to see how "solving" the problems can often not solve the problem. Immediately when faced with a error that happened after five minutes I might just put a sleep(301) in the startup script, but that totally would have masked the issue for others. Also amazing foresight by the kernel team to think ahead and make this wrap explicit.
Author here. Completely agreed. My jaws dropped when I saw the INITIAL_JIFFIES. The kernel developers really saved our butt. I could not imagine debugging this problem if INITIAL_JIFFIES was randomized. It may takes days/weeks/months for this bug to appear.
I actually did look at the TCP layer early on. However, I didn't pay close attention to the TS Val. From the packet dumps, it just appeared that the TCP window had stopped sliding. I couldn't conclude that NSOC's router was at fault. Getting NSOC on-board is a big deal. After all, they deal with the entire VA network with 100,000+ employees. If you think about it from their perspective, why is USDS' TCP connections s…
Network level troubleshooting is incredibly difficult, especially for individuals who don't have a networking background. Even showing someone how to read wireshark often isn't enough. I just wanted to politely point out though, in this case, I think there should have been an indications of a network failure in this analysis early on, from the standpoint that TCP frames were sent to the server which were not acknowle…
True, but Wireshark will highlight dodgy TCP frames (retransmits, dups, etc) which should give a small clue to look further. I agree that it is necessary to understand how TCP works (or have access to someone who does) in order to run Internet services.
I think that startup mentality might bite them in the arse. I saw "React on Ruby" and winced. There is nothing wrong with that platform as a "We are in a market where things will change radically in two years" but for the VA? Where things might change once a decade, that's a recipe for pain. Look at where the Web was 5 years ago (hell React didn't exist) never mind 10. Angular is 7 years old, KnockoutJS is 7, jQuery…
To me, this looks like the bigger potential problem: >U.S. Digital Service members join us for what we call a tour of duty. We are seeking candidates interested in joining the U.S. Digital Service fulltime, ideally for at least 12 months. In some cases, we can accommodate candidates who can only commit to a shorter amount of time. Three months is the minimum time commitment we can accommodate. All members of the U.S.…
What also concerns me about that is maintenance. You're constantly bringing in new people to build new things who have no knowledge of what people in previous "tours" built. The overheard of all the handoffs and knowledge transfers that needs to happen seems unfortunately high.
They're probably looking for much kids/fewer years experience (they keep bloviating about being startup like after all). Based on GS pay they cap out at a salary that is not very high for an industry veteran (they talk about steps being skipped only in "exceptional" circumstances). I guess they assume that if you've got all those years and are still applying you must not be very good. A GS15 is only 128k in the costl…
I am turning 34 coming this September. Not much of a kid anymore (even though I act like one). Not true. GS15 caps at 161k at DC area. It is a very respectable salary. http://www.fedweek.com/pay-tables/2017-gs-pay-table-washingt... For engineering, USDS predominately hires senior engineers with years of experience. The reason is because we help troubleshoot some of the biggest crises in the government.
Sure, but isn't 161k the max, and there's no room to grow beyond that? For many people who work in the SF bay area (for example) and have 10+ years of experience, even 161k may represent a pay cut. DC is certainly cheaper cost-of-living-wise, but not by a lot. And if 161k is the max, where do you go from there, especially if you won't have a job after a few years due to how their "tour of duty" thing? Spend even more of your own money to move back to the bay area, and try to reestablish your old salary from before you left?
Some people might not have realized USDS is still around since it was best known for the Healthcare.gov rescue under Obama. But it's still here, and still hiring people to work on problems like this www.usds.gov/join
Hmm.... I apply every 6 months or so and get the thumbs down. Not sure what they're looking for. I've got 30 years of every kind of experience (dev, DBA, network, security, product mgmt, analytics/data science, business mgmt, and more) with good credentials and they never bite. I wish I knew more what the ideal profile was; I'd love to help out!
I got the impression they are looking for Agile evangelists mixed with... something. I really don't know.
Author here. Completely agreed. My jaws dropped when I saw the INITIAL_JIFFIES. The kernel developers really saved our butt. I could not imagine debugging this problem if INITIAL_JIFFIES was randomized. It may takes days/weeks/months for this bug to appear.
Similarly, Unreal Engine 4 offsets platform time (a double) by some large value so if it's stored in a float, accuracy errors will be exposed almost immediately. Looking it up, the offset starts out large enough that the epsilon is two seconds.
Do you have a link with more info? I'd love to read more about this.
Similarly, Unreal Engine 4 offsets platform time (a double) by some large value so if it's stored in a float, accuracy errors will be exposed almost immediately. Looking it up, the offset starts out large enough that the epsilon is two seconds.
Do you have a link with more info? I'd love to read more about this.
Sorry, no. It's not something documented other than a cryptic comment in the source code ( FPlatformTime::Seconds() ) assuming some knowledge of floating point number gotchas.
Author here. Completely agreed. My jaws dropped when I saw the INITIAL_JIFFIES. The kernel developers really saved our butt. I could not imagine debugging this problem if INITIAL_JIFFIES was randomized. It may takes days/weeks/months for this bug to appear.
Here's the patch that applies this: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/...
Nice! I was looking for it, and it predates git. Thank you!!