Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Would you give the same leeway to a supporter of Hitler? Stalin? Pinochet?
US Tech Force
241–250 of 320 posts
Re: US Tech Force
#242Re: US Tech Force
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
No 401k can ever match the beauty that is the TSP.
Left federal and my private 401k is 150% match up to 6%. Better than TSP in everything except fees, which are slightly higher. But that mattered a lot less than my pay, I was a GS-15 in a leadership role and took a role in the private sector for a 30% pay increase back into an individual contributor role. So much less work and a huge pay increase.
3 dollars for every 2 up to 6% of pay? So you could get up to 15% of pay into the 401k (or the annual limit, whichever comes first)?
That’s by far the best I’ve ever heard of. Usually employers screw us by keeping the majority of the max annual contribution, which only they can make, out of our reach with crappy “50% match up to 3%” policies or whatever (even a 100% match means you can’t hit the actual annual max, it has to be higher than that).
Re: US Tech Force
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is all of ND Studio's work so severely AI/'tech/crypto bro'/SF-billboard-vibe coded?
That's what an oligarchy looks like, 'careers' consist of trying to glaze whatever moneyed person in power you can in hopes of getting a contract
I’d bet this whole initiative exists only as an interface to issue fat “AI” contracts to pals.
Re: US Tech Force
#245Awful
Re: US Tech Force
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
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This feels like it needs a MAGA vs Republican distinction. There are plenty of Republicans who (privately) have issues with some things Trump is doing.
by and large the "anti-trump republican" has ceased to be a relevant political bloc. they have either vote for trump / pro trump candidates and are functionally indistinguishable from MAGA, vote for the most moderate democrat possible, or have given up politics entirely. I suspect you didn't mean this, but the largest group of self identified republicans who have an issue with trump are angry he isn't far right enough (ie groypers, klansmen, neonazis, and like).
Re: US Tech Force
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe the new grad DOGE employees were GS-15s. So yes, it seems likely that they plan to hire at GS-14 or GS-15.
Nothing like putting in a multi decade civil service career and coming in one day to find a 20-something installed over you whose primary qualification was being hired at a "friendly" tech company and making the right kind of joke around the CEO. ... although that seems depressingly like it would also be the experience with new administrators being installed in executive agencies every 4 years, except they're slightl…
That’s the life of a civil servant though
By function a GS will ALWAYS be subordinate to a political appointee and there’s nothing they can do about it
I posted elsewhere that I left a govt career as a military officer precicely because of this reality. It’s like a old boring joke now that politicians are corrupt and worthless.
I will tell you from the inside that not only is it true but it’s 10 times to 100 times worse than you think it is.
I have multiple stories of operational systems, functions, whatever you wanna call them that we’re working exceptionally well had good backing, good funding and were completely wiped out because whoever became the deputy under secretary for that budget line decided they didn’t want to do it anymore. and completely shelved decades worth of work. Like literally I remember having to unplug a server that was running life-critical beacons for POWs because they weren’t being used enough.
As if that weren’t enough that same development problem then shifted over to some new hot organization that is in the politicians jurisdiction and then they start over from scratch with none of the learning from the previous admin.
There is no positive system that can be affected by the United States government
It does not exist, they cannot functionally or structurally exist, because the government of the United States but is not and has never been built on supporting citizens or the global community it is built and has always been built to support wealthy politicians and that’s all.
I’m not aware of how every other countries work but the ones I’ve seen the inside are the same
Going into the government for the “mission” is probably the most intentionally ignorant thing somebody could do given the plethora of easily accessible data proving exactly this
Re: US Tech Force
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah my first thought was that this already existed, was doing great work, and got canned by DOGE in favor of what appears to be a MUCH MUCH more expensive version of it here.
I was having a conversation with a Trump-supporting relative, who was genuinely asking me, “Don’t you think it’s great that they put a bunch of [DOGE] engineers into the government to fix things?” When I said, “Well, we already had that - the USDS. And what has DOGE done, specifically, to fix things?” it just went right over her head. Did not even land.
Most people have very little idea how anything works. Especially in the government, but it’s fairly true in general.
Something like half of US adults don’t know how marginal income tax rates work, which is one of the very most-relevant-to-them-personally things for them to know about the federal government. The loudest ordinary citizens complaining about foreign aid or the estate (“death”, as republicans rebranded it on strategist advice) tax can’t tell you a halfway accurate thing about either, they’re just repeating what they heard, or some assumption they made (“well if [talking head] is complaining about it this much it must be really bad!”)
This doesn’t get better for any other program or tax or whatever that you can think of. Folks have no idea how anything works and the media figures and politicians they trust lie to them constantly, and are rewarded for it.
Re: US Tech Force
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is President Trump going bigger than President Nixon. You don't say...
I wonder if there are living people who don't interpret it as a sign of something __REALLY__ weird going on here. I view Trump as a clinical case of narcissism, bad upbringing, screwed-up mentors, but too late for treatment anyways. But man, the crowd that lick his boots in public for a position or some coins... They should be shunned for life. This level of sycophancy would destroy one's reputation for ever in my cu…
Enormous amounts of money and 30ish years (about 1980 or a bit after, to 2016) were spent building the largest web of propaganda distribution probably ever, to make this happen. Plus pioneering PR and crisis management strategies and testing the limits of voters’ tolerance for bullshit (very important post-Nixon—an early major experiment was the Iran-Contra scandal, and it went great for them)
After 30 years it was so good it could make Republicans who’d been making fun of Trump as a notorious failed businessman, clownish self-parody, conman, and philanderer five minutes earlier (and I mean common voters, not politicians) do a 180 on a dime and send the dude money.
None of this was built for Trump, but in priming their base to never consider voting for a democrat, they made them both way too right-wing and also made them wonder why Republican politicians weren’t going after democrats way harder (they’re so terrible, after all!) which teed up a coup within the party just perfectly.
Re: US Tech Force
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, USDS was about modernizing the government's tech systems in general. This one is about jamming AI into shit: > Tech Force will be an elite group of ~1,000 technology specialists hired by agencies to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) implementation and solve the federal government's most critical technological challenges.
And apparently implementing a Central Bank Digital Currency using TrumpCoin. > Backed by the White House, Tech Force will tackle the most complex and large-scale civic and defense challenges of our era – from administering critical financial infrastructure at the Treasury Department to advancing cutting-edge programs at the Department of Defense – and everything in between. Also, surprised their AI reviewer allowed t…
They couldn't even get the fucking US flag right on the AI-generated images.
These are incompetent buffoons who simply don't care about anything.