Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service
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Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service
1–10 of 169 posts
Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service
#2I didn't catch this part- why did the author leave? Was it just a term end and he chose not to renew it?
Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service
#3I didn't catch this part- why did the author leave? Was it just a term end and he chose not to renew it?
They do "tours of duty", since I think they found people had a hard time moving to DC permanently. Using this, they've managed to get a lot of people to take sabbaticals from their Google/FB/etc jobs.
"Quit your high paying job and indefinitely work for the government" is a hard sell; "come do something awesome for 6 months then go back" is much easier.
Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service
#4I didn't catch this part- why did the author leave? Was it just a term end and he chose not to renew it?
They do "tours of duty", since I think they found people had a hard time moving to DC permanently. Using this, they've managed to get a lot of people to take sabbaticals from their Google/FB/etc jobs. "Quit your high paying job and indefinitely work for the government" is a hard sell; "come do something awesome for 6 months then go back" is much easier.
I.e. the revolving door.
Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
They do "tours of duty", since I think they found people had a hard time moving to DC permanently. Using this, they've managed to get a lot of people to take sabbaticals from their Google/FB/etc jobs. "Quit your high paying job and indefinitely work for the government" is a hard sell; "come do something awesome for 6 months then go back" is much easier.
I.e. the revolving door.
No, “the revolving door” refers to people spending time working as legislators/executive officials, and then going to work in the same industry they were regulating, and basically getting time-shifted favors/salary in return for their help while in office.
Spending 6 months or whatever working as a programmer for the US Digital Service and then going back to a job in industry is something quite different.
Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service
#6"Helping rich people get taxis easier". As a Lyft and Uber driver, I count among my rides: getting a rough looking fellow (who has spent years in prison after accidentally killing someone in a bar fight) get to the only job that would take him - affordably and on-time (he would have been fired otherwise). I've given an enlisted navy family from Oklahoma (husband was deployed) get home from a late night run to a distant Walmart - the military pay for an e-3 is low and I imagine tough to support a family of three and there are few other options without a college degree.
It's crazy to read about this guy who wonders if this all matters... The amount of money that the government spends to get a marginal improvement on society beyond basic functions of the government should be even more dismaying.
And it's incredibly patronizing to despair from on high that tech doesn't do any good for society.
Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service
#7"Helping rich people get taxis easier". As a Lyft and Uber driver, I count among my rides: getting a rough looking fellow (who has spent years in prison after accidentally killing someone in a bar fight) get to the only job that would take him - affordably and on-time (he would have been fired otherwise). I've given an enlisted navy family from Oklahoma (husband was deployed) get home from a late night run to a dista…
A good part of the reason that they spend that money is because they've been discouraged and hamstrung from developing those expertise in-house.
Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service
#8"Helping rich people get taxis easier". As a Lyft and Uber driver, I count among my rides: getting a rough looking fellow (who has spent years in prison after accidentally killing someone in a bar fight) get to the only job that would take him - affordably and on-time (he would have been fired otherwise). I've given an enlisted navy family from Oklahoma (husband was deployed) get home from a late night run to a dista…
A good part of the reason that they spend that money is because they've been discouraged and hamstrung from developing those expertise in-house.
Don't forget the mechanism by which government spends money - it issues a bond, which gets converted to dollars. The bond comes with interest, and the interest payments go to rich people (banks).
Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
I.e. the revolving door.
No, “the revolving door” refers to people spending time working as legislators/executive officials, and then going to work in the same industry they were regulating, and basically getting time-shifted favors/salary in return for their help while in office. Spending 6 months or whatever working as a programmer for the US Digital Service and then going back to a job in industry is something quite different.
Won't argue that doesn't happen, but it's overstated. People from industry go into government for the same reason people join the digital service: because they think that the skills and knowledge they gained in industry can let them do the job better than the government can without them.[1] And these appointments are temporary for the same reason digital service appointments are temporary: people are only so willing to sign on for salary-capped government positions for so long.
The only difference is the intent and motivation you're ascribing to the respective actors.
[1] I think very few people would disagree with the assertion that a Googler knows tech better than anyone in government. The fact is that pretty much everyone in every industry feels the same way. Everyone thinks that the public interest would be served if only the government folks in charge were people who "get it" like they do.
Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service
#10I didn't catch this part- why did the author leave? Was it just a term end and he chose not to renew it?
They do "tours of duty", since I think they found people had a hard time moving to DC permanently. Using this, they've managed to get a lot of people to take sabbaticals from their Google/FB/etc jobs. "Quit your high paying job and indefinitely work for the government" is a hard sell; "come do something awesome for 6 months then go back" is much easier.
So I was aware of their tours of duty, but I thought that was not a carrot for outsiders to come in, but rather a way to circumvent the traditional hiring process. Probably doesn't hurt that the commitment is temporary.
From what I understood, rather than go through the job listing process with position writeups, giving veteran and disability preferences, dealing with HR on the certification process, getting various new office reorganizations approved by congress (they literally have to approve each individual office creation) and so on, they simply got an approval for 200-300 "innovation specialists" (that's what everyone's job title is there) and then they can informally cherry-pick whoever they actually want without going through the red tape. The mechanism is like having a standing approval for hiring 20 French speaking translators at all times, since that's a specialized standing volume-based need.
Anyhow, guess my question was more about the author's motivation for not choosing to extend the tour. It wasn't really spelled out in the post.