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Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

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Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

#161

Post by walshemj »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #76
walshemj wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have to be 100% right but say an accounts system must reconcile.

A google query? What does it even mean for a google query to be "100% right"? I'm not sure that's even a thing. But I think you misunderstand software engineering and the nature of engineering skill or fields of experience. There may be no such thing as "100% right" when it comes to which hits are included in the result set for a google query, but I have no doubt that nearly any google engineer needs to write all sor…

Ah so hobby programmers then and given some of the quality of the published google apis's I am not surprised.

Sorry after having been one of my country's 3rd line osi team I take a fairly hard line on correctness.

Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

#162

Post by walshemj »

noir_lord wrote: post #67
Kephael wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calculating a pension and building a billing system is rather basic CRUD work compared to scaling software to handle millions of concurrent users. Google's hiring bar is relatively high compared to any government position in terms of quantitative skills you'd need to demonstrate.

Last year there where 279 changes to the federal tax code. That system handles hundreds of millions of people and trillions of dollars. Calling it "rather basic CRUD work" is incredibly myopic and/or arrogant.

Quite Google can take a relaxed view about things eg getting geoloaction wrong 1 time in thousand on a query.

Calculate 1 in a 1000 tax returns or bank statements wrong and some one will want blood.

Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

#163

Post by simoncion »

jchrisa wrote: post #159
simoncion wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the p2p sync software that you've been working on for the past seven years? (This is a part/spare-time project, yes?)

Sorry I didn't want to be too spammy, link from my profile: http://developer.couchbase.com/mobile/

No worries. I deeply appreciate people who don't spam their projects in every single comment they write. :)

Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

#164

Post by beatpanda »

com2kid wrote: post #160
beatpanda wrote: post #126

I would love it if anyone repeating the tired talking point, that solutions for rich people's problems will magically transmogrify into solutions for real problems with actual impact on human potential and quality of life, could name even one example of this that's come out of U.S. technology startups in the last ten years. I would also love it if anyone could explain why so many people don't feel compelled to do any…

> I would love it if anyone repeating the tired talking point, that solutions for rich people's problems will magically transmogrify into solutions for real problems with actual impact on human potential and quality of life, could name even one example of this that's come out of U.S. technology startups in the last ten years. Android. It was a technology startup purchased by Google. Stripe, it has enabled small worki…

Stripe wasn't trying to solve rich people's problems. Stripe was started for the explicit purpose you just stated -- to enable small vendors who couldn't otherwise afford credit card processing to take credit cards. It's a great example of what can happen when you actually apply effort to a real problem instead of hoping that some side effect of what you're doing will solve a real problem.

I don't really see where you're going with Android.

Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

#165

Post by jrochkind1 »

walshemj wrote: post #161
jrochkind1 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A google query? What does it even mean for a google query to be "100% right"? I'm not sure that's even a thing. But I think you misunderstand software engineering and the nature of engineering skill or fields of experience. There may be no such thing as "100% right" when it comes to which hits are included in the result set for a google query, but I have no doubt that nearly any google engineer needs to write all sor…

Ah so hobby programmers then and given some of the quality of the published google apis's I am not surprised. Sorry after having been one of my country's 3rd line osi team I take a fairly hard line on correctness.

what the heck are you on about, man.

Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

#166

Post by walshemj »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #165
walshemj wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah so hobby programmers then and given some of the quality of the published google apis's I am not surprised. Sorry after having been one of my country's 3rd line osi team I take a fairly hard line on correctness.

what the heck are you on about, man.

Googles code quality isn't all its cracked up to be and you have a least heard of OSI? You know the other networking standard that was at least a decade ahead of the internet back then.

Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

#167

Post by nacin »

acabrahams wrote: post #44

I'm sure this is a stupid question, but after a few minutes of googling I am still unclear on the answer so I thought I'd ask it here. I am about to start studying in the US (college), so I was wondering if the USDS accepts non-American citizens? Even without a green card? (I'm British, btw).

18F can hire legal permanent residents.

Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

#168

Post by nacin »

ryanSrich wrote: post #137
nacin wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're embedded directly in project teams at agencies. I spent five years working remotely and running a major open source project before joining the U.S. Digital Service in January. I love remote work and enjoy extolling its virtues, but very simply, we could not do this job remotely, at least not for the time being. Our friends at 18F ( https://18f.gsa.gov ) have a lot of people working remotely, as well as offices…

I really appreciate the reply. I'd be interested in learning about the restrictions at USDS that prevent it from going remote. Perhaps taking the conversation off thread is best. I imagine it's a combination of being embedded at agencies and perhaps a clearance issue?

Conceptually, I think everyone at the U.S. Digital Service would be comfortable with working on a remote team. Many of us have done it, and since we're scattered across agencies, the group itself operates in a fairly distributed fashion on a day-to-day basis.

Remote work does work at 18F, where they are often shipping projects that are self-contained and executed in-house. It's also a lot easier to build a remote-friendly culture if you start on day one, which 18F did. It's really just about the nature of the work we do, embedded on these agency projects, that necessitates being in D.C. The role of USDS HQ is simply different -- we're often grafted onto existing 'culture' elsewhere (I work on a floor with more than a hundred of product and engineering folks who were here years before we arrived), and are then tasked with helping to advise/fix/transform those projects as quickly and effectively as possible. (I'd also read https://blog.newrelic.com/2014/03/26/depth-look-team-saved-h..., which was a precursor effort.)

If you're interested in serving in the U.S. Digital Service but are in a position to be only able to work remotely, 18F is a pretty great option.

Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

#169

Post by jrochkind1 »

walshemj wrote: post #166
jrochkind1 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what the heck are you on about, man.

Googles code quality isn't all its cracked up to be and you have a least heard of OSI? You know the other networking standard that was at least a decade ahead of the internet back then.

Okay, that's cool, if you want to talk on the internet about how you're obviously a better programmer than anyone that works at Google becuase you worked on an ancient over-engineered standard that basically ended up losing out to TCP/IP... who am I to stop you?

Ah so hobby programmers then.

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