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Join the U.S. Digital Service

whitehouse.gov

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Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#131

Post by vpeters25 »

wpietri wrote: post #6

I have met some of the 18F folks here in San Francisco, and I have gradually become convinced that there is a lot of substance to this effort. People, apparently including people at the highest levels, recognize that information technology has made enormous leaps in the private sector, and they are serious about helping government catch up. One of the most interesting bits to me was something said by Todd Park, a for…

I had managers yell at me when at the sprint review meeting we realize we were going the wrong way and decide to scrap some of the work of the last few weeks...

Imagine politicians with a stake in the project's failure hearing that: they will go full Benghazi on it.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#132

Post by Roritharr »

domoarevil wrote: post #110
mattste wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I have the chance to work with talented industry veterans, I'd absolutely love to do a tour of duty after I graduate.

This not a jaunt to Korea or Vietnam, holy moly.

No, but its arguably more important. Less risky, but as a good developer the opportunity cost might be high aswell.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#133

Post by bkeroack »

trhway wrote: post #103
wpietri wrote: post #6

I have met some of the 18F folks here in San Francisco, and I have gradually become convinced that there is a lot of substance to this effort. People, apparently including people at the highest levels, recognize that information technology has made enormous leaps in the private sector, and they are serious about helping government catch up. One of the most interesting bits to me was something said by Todd Park, a for…

>suspicious that Washington's culture could really accept a lot of the Agile and Lean notions that are commonplace in the high-tech world. given my experience with thorough, to the letter, under supervision of no-expenses-spared-top-notch experts implementation of Agile/Lean/Scrum - 2 years non-stop across pretty much the whole company, only very-super-important-critical-projects got exception - the government would…

I agree and share your cynical view of Agile/Scrum, at least how it's often used in top-down organizations.

In my experience there are two factors required for a successful project:

a) Developer autonomy sufficient to modify core design/implementation if necessary--and developers experienced and talented enough to recognize when this is necessary.

b) Developer ownership of the project. By that I mean minimal power difference between "stakeholders"/"business owners" and the developers actually building the product. You don't want developers to feel like consultants working on someone else's project because they won't care when bad decisions are made and they will naturally do the least amount of work possible to satisfy each Scrum ticket.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#135

Post by 14113 »

vpeters25 wrote: post #131
wpietri wrote: post #6

I have met some of the 18F folks here in San Francisco, and I have gradually become convinced that there is a lot of substance to this effort. People, apparently including people at the highest levels, recognize that information technology has made enormous leaps in the private sector, and they are serious about helping government catch up. One of the most interesting bits to me was something said by Todd Park, a for…

I had managers yell at me when at the sprint review meeting we realize we were going the wrong way and decide to scrap some of the work of the last few weeks... Imagine politicians with a stake in the project's failure hearing that: they will go full Benghazi on it.

Better a few weeks than a couple of years and millions of funding.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#136

Post by Bahamut »

kalvin wrote: post #75

(I've been working on Healthcare.gov for the past year and know some of the people at USDS; I was also YC S11 and appreciate the great parts of startup culture even more now) PSA: I know it's not easy to tell from the outside, or from a website, but this is the real deal. Things are starting to change; by government standards, at ludicrous speed. The Healthcare.gov crisis really started a useful fire. Todd Park, Mike…

Interestingly, I went west from DC to the Valley within the past year - I have found that DC (industry) is surprisingly savvy, and much better at process management & leadership overall than the Valley. DC also seems to have a wealth of talented designers compared to the Valley that I have seen.

However, government is indeed a different world. One of my friends complains how he has to file a request in order to get permission to do anything (he is a contractor for the Department of Energy) - this is normal based on all I have heard from my ~4 years in the area. I heard in another organization, they are forced into short product cycles by the requests of representatives and senators for investigations. One forward thinking VP of Engineering came into a different organization and shored up a lot of the tech & brought a modern stack to the organization, making all of the developers very happy, but was ultimately sacked (I forget the exact reason told to me, but I remember it not reflecting well on the federal government).

Also, when a consumer of software created by government contractors finds a critical bug that causes a non-functional app and reports exactly what is failing (important scripts not loading), good luck getting the contractor to fix it - I've seen it take 10 months to get an acknowledgement of the problem, which affected the entire Marine Corps in not being able to satisfy a required class for that duration since it was required to complete it online.

The federal government needs to change how it runs things - I'm hoping that the USDS can make waves, but having been in the federal government world myself, I don't want to touch that beast without much better compensation & work environment.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#137

Post by wallawe »

_cudgel wrote: post #45
gyardley wrote: post #27

Let's say it's January 2017 and President Bush or Rubio or Paul or Walker is being inaugurated. Does the 'U.S. Digital Service' actually keep getting funded? If it does, do the staff actually want to stay? Will any of them be willing to work on government objectives that might not be in line with their personal politics? I'll believe this is actually what it claims it is when I see it and its staff persist through a…

This was exactly my concern as well. The "party first, country second" mindset on "both sides of the aisle" is the most absurd and counter-productive thing in US politics, and the most likely thing IMO to derail any productive gains that could be made.

"There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution."

-John Adams

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#138

Post by ex_govt_it »

_cudgel wrote: post #47

Does joining the US Digital Service require a clearance, and if so does occasional marijuana consumption automatically disqualify you?

I worked for a different agency which required a Public Trust and the answer is yes.

For a basic public trust it was just a credit, background and drug test (the same treatment you would get at any employer who didn't trust their employees).

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#140

Post by T3RMINATED »

inmygarage wrote: post #8

I saw Mikey Dickerson (in the video) speak to a group of ~200 people last summer about the work that he and his team did on healthcare.gov. He was at Google for nearly 8 years and left to run the recovery team for healthcare.gov. Their team is the real deal -- they saved the site in just a few months and now over 6 million people have signed up. Read the Time Magazine story for the full account. He does not seem like…

but... millions of people still got screwed with the healthcare plan... so they are part of the problem... not the solution. Traitors.
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