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Join the U.S. Digital Service

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Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#181

Post by ripb »

debacle wrote: post #172
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…

The Internet is enabling a government of the people for the first time since our population exploded in the last century. Things are bad right now, but they're getting better. As long as the Internet remains an open and free place, society as a whole will continue to progress and grow at a faster and faster pace.

>The Internet is enabling a government of the people for the first time since our population exploded in the last century.

Is that you, Obama? What is this nonsense?

>Things are bad right now, but they're getting better.

Things - socially, politically and economically - are continuing to get worse for the average person.

What world are you living on?

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#182

Post by Duhveed »

Someone1234 wrote: post #160
rfrey wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working for change from within the system is definitely a legitimate position to take. That said, the objections I'm reading here are centered around supporting a government that actively tortures political activists and captured enemies. I think the phrase "if you [disagree] with their political views" trivializes that position.

> That said, the objections I'm reading here are centered around supporting a government that actively tortures political activists and captured enemies. I think the phrase "if you [disagree] with their political views" trivializes that position. Unless you're designing some kind of torture software, I think you're massive reaching to make one apply to the other. Nothing about doing better e.g. tax software, road pla…

Without actually proffering an opinion on the government, your argument has a problem. To the extent that streamlining some bit of the government with software frees up resources to be used elsewhere in the org chart by folks engaged in activities with which you disagree, a software developer would absolutely have enabled the offending activity.

I suppose you could counter that the abhorrent practice of intentionally wasting resources to ensure that subsequent budgets don't shrink will tend to prevent the torturers from getting the additional funds you free up with your advanced tax or road planning software, but there remains a good chance you'd free up resources for something within the department that would cause someone to be worse off than they were before. The only winning move is not to play. (OK, that was an opinion on the gov't)

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#183

Post by scarmig »

chucksmash wrote: post #149
Roritharr wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I believe parent was balking at the appropriation of "tour of duty" to describe taking a government job for a couple of years. The phrase carries strong connotations for a certain subset of people and it would be pretty tone deaf of us as a community to repurpose it to mean "writing instructions for computers the government owns."

Unpopular opinion that needs to be said: plenty of people spend their military "tour of duty" writing instructions for computers. Even more are glorified paper pushers or janitors. Only a small subset actually ever see their lives at risk--being a fisherman is more dangerous. The main substantive difference is that in theory you can't quit on a whim.

We need to stop promoting an idea of martial valor over all other forms of work, and stop coddling those who demand that everyone grant their line of work more respect than everyone else.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#185

Post by adelevie »

BrandonY wrote: post #70
ipsin wrote: post #40

Two things I wonder about: 1) Is an outfit like the U.S. Digital Service considering people who don't have undergraduate degrees, but have a consistent track record or are a part of established teams? 2) Is the salary roughly comparable with what's available in the private sector? I understand that the government might pay less in return for some of the perks of government work, but how close are they coming these da…

I have no expertise here, but here's my understanding: 1) Yes, especially if you've worked for some big name, non-government tech companies. 2) Absolutely not. The salary is MISERABLE compared to what you could get in the private sector. That's the real problem. The government desperately needs world class software engineers, but the private sector can effectively buy them all away. Who would try and fix the busted o…

I'm on a team working on immigration at 18F. Not sure why you assume it's miserable. Anyways, we're using a modern Rails/Postgres/Elasticsearch stack and the work is incredibly rewarding and motivating. Here's a nice description:

> 18F is working with a number of different federal departments. One of the biggest projects it has taken on is designing the website for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. That's the agency that processes applications from people hoping to become citizens and those covered under the president's executive actions who hope to obtain work permits. Godbout says the concept for the USCIS website is to make a virtual welcoming statement.

> He thinks of it as an "online Statue of Liberty. This idea of how do we present ourselves to people coming to America. Our digital process should be that beautiful, too."

source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2015/01/28/382178...

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#186

Post by nether »

chiph wrote: post #130
nether wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try applying for a hiking permit. Some CA ranger stations take only snail mail or, wait for it, fax.

> hiking permit Wait, what? Is this like a yearly state park pass? Or is this paid every time you want to go take a walk in the woods?

No, it's a free permit to hike in a park for a day. They want to track trail usage, and sometimes implement quotas to prevent overuse. There are occasionally rangers who patrol the trails and check for permits, but it's pretty rare. You may also need a separate parking permit for national forests (adventure pass), but apparently it's been ruled unconstitutional by the CA supreme court. Many trails in national forests/state parks in California require day hike permits (generally the good forested ones do).

You can see what a dayhike permit application looks like at the very bottom of this page: http://www.sgwa.org/permit.htm. Overnight (camping) permits are separate.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#187

Post by tymekpavel »

nadams wrote: post #158
BrandonY wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no expertise here, but here's my understanding: 1) Yes, especially if you've worked for some big name, non-government tech companies. 2) Absolutely not. The salary is MISERABLE compared to what you could get in the private sector. That's the real problem. The government desperately needs world class software engineers, but the private sector can effectively buy them all away. Who would try and fix the busted o…

> The salary is MISERABLE compared to what you could get in the private sector. That all depends. Many comp sci students are brainwashed to think that if a salary isn't at least 100k then it's not worth their time. The fact is that it depends on location and cost of living. For example - if you get hired to work for Google in their HQ in CA then you are guaranteed to get at least 100k salary. However, 90% of that wil…

90%? If you're willing to commute from Redwood City (15min CalTrain ride to MV, 35 minute CalTrain tride to SF), you'll be paying $1500-2000/mo for a 1br-2br/1ba. That comes to 24% of salary, and you'd be hard-pressed to spend more than another 6% on food.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#188

Post by jasonjei »

ripb wrote: post #181
debacle wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet is enabling a government of the people for the first time since our population exploded in the last century. Things are bad right now, but they're getting better. As long as the Internet remains an open and free place, society as a whole will continue to progress and grow at a faster and faster pace.

>The Internet is enabling a government of the people for the first time since our population exploded in the last century. Is that you, Obama? What is this nonsense? >Things are bad right now, but they're getting better. Things - socially, politically and economically - are continuing to get worse for the average person. What world are you living on?

> What world are you living on?

Before asking OP what world OP is living on, perhaps you should ask that of yourself before trolling others. This isn't reddit or Slashdot.

I would beg to differ that things getting worse. I would much rather live in a world where the Internet exists and information flows relatively freely than 50 years ago where information was controlled by a few world leaders. Living and work conditions sucked 100 years ago for many people. Things, on the whole, have gotten better.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#189

Post by Shog9 »

ripb wrote: post #181
debacle wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet is enabling a government of the people for the first time since our population exploded in the last century. Things are bad right now, but they're getting better. As long as the Internet remains an open and free place, society as a whole will continue to progress and grow at a faster and faster pace.

>The Internet is enabling a government of the people for the first time since our population exploded in the last century. Is that you, Obama? What is this nonsense? >Things are bad right now, but they're getting better. Things - socially, politically and economically - are continuing to get worse for the average person. What world are you living on?

You're both trading slogans and saying nothing. What "things" are bad / improving / getting worse? Access to shelter? Food? Medicine? Where?

Even anecdotes are better than this nonsense. Here's one for you: even the poorest people I know, those without regular shelter, have access to communication services that would've been prohibitively expensive a generation ago, allowing them to find assistance when "things" - lack of food and shelter, for instance - get really bad.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#190

Post by Bahamut »

BrandonY wrote: post #70
ipsin wrote: post #40

Two things I wonder about: 1) Is an outfit like the U.S. Digital Service considering people who don't have undergraduate degrees, but have a consistent track record or are a part of established teams? 2) Is the salary roughly comparable with what's available in the private sector? I understand that the government might pay less in return for some of the perks of government work, but how close are they coming these da…

I have no expertise here, but here's my understanding: 1) Yes, especially if you've worked for some big name, non-government tech companies. 2) Absolutely not. The salary is MISERABLE compared to what you could get in the private sector. That's the real problem. The government desperately needs world class software engineers, but the private sector can effectively buy them all away. Who would try and fix the busted o…

The salary is not as good as you can get elsewhere, but it's pretty good compared to most careers still. There is also the additional benefits of the pension system if you are directly under the federal government and liberal days off/remote work when snow hits (the federal government has shut down with 0" of snow in the past in anticipation of snowstorms, and sometimes even with 1" of snow). On the contracting side you can make a lot of money though - it is not unheard of for developers to make over $150k, and combined with the cost of living of the region, one can live pretty comfortably.

Miserable, boring work is all in the eye of the beholder - there is a lot of work that many here on HN do that some others would consider boring, even in the startup world. Even companies such as Facebook or Google also have boring work.

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