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US Tech Force

techforce.gov

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Re: US Tech Force

#301

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

PacificSpecific wrote: post #288
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had two such chats with Trump supporters, and one said in great detail that this statement is true. He acknowledged that Trump has done a number of ethically and legally problematic things, and that supporting Trump means enabling this, but feels that he has to accept that necessary evil in order to achieve his policy goals on various issues. (The other flatly denied that Trump has ever done anything wrong and r…

What were the policy goals?

Reducing illegal immigration seemed to be the primary one. Some stuff on civil rights too, but I'm not sure if that was a big concern for the guy I was talking to or an attempt to find common ground where he knew I'd be more sympathetic.

Re: US Tech Force

#302

Post by mothballed »

square_usual wrote: post #299
mothballed wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Googling average Federal worker income in DC, every number I came up with was the above the average for DC, and DC is higher than every other state/territory. I find nothing supporting your assertion but plenty opposing it. Feds are not only pulling it up, but the biggest group of people doing so.

Yeah, it's marginally above average for DC, but that doesn't mean they're "raking it in". The average (which is a bad metric for income) is dragged up by the wealthy in DC balancing out the poor in DC, not hordes of Federal Workers (most of whom live outside DC in Maryland/Virginia, FWIW) making $120k.

What number do you have for median federal worker income in DC then? The median representing the 'hordes' were making $120+k from what I saw, not just the average.

Re: US Tech Force

#303

Post by ipython »

zbentley wrote: post #254
ipython wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For DOGE specifically? Would be interested to hear of those DOGE employees who truly deserved to be GS-15s due to their extensive experience in both tech and government.

> extensive experience in both tech and government. The USDS (group that was renamed to a part of DOGE) has previously hired with an emphasis on non government experience: http://govciomedia.com/usds-developing-innovative-approach-t...

The USDS and DOGE had completely different mandates. Non government experience makes sense when you’re trying to learn the lessons of industry to improve gov website accessibility, performance and ux.

On the other hand, trying to slash spending with no understanding of the agencies you’re working at- let alone any life experience for a lot of these folks- is a very different mandate.

Re: US Tech Force

#304

Post by mothballed »

Centigonal wrote: post #300
mothballed wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DC has the highest per capita income of anywhere in the US (vs other states/territories), so when you realize federal workers are producing the most value for America the economics are at least a little better. If you look at relative economic slackers like workers of NYC and the private industry where less value is per capita created, it's a bit rougher.

This is a distorted comparison and you know it. DC in unique among US states and territories in that it encompasses a major metropolitan area with no rural regions. In this comparison, DC also leads the country in population density, average building height, public transit usage, latte consumption, and any other correlate of living in a city. If you compare DC against other major metropolitan statistical areas, the l…

>If you compare DC against other major metropolitan statistical areas, the leadership disappears -- see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_metropol...

No it doesn't, not according to the linked data you're proposing. I sorted by per-capita income of MSAs on the second table of that page, it shows DC MSA blowing the other metropolitan areas away. Might not still be accurate as that's a 2010 census, but you're the one insisting on it.

Looks like you're the one, distorting your own citations, mate and you "know it." Methinks this a case of psychological concept known as 'projection'.

Re: US Tech Force

#305

Post by lux-lux-lux »

lumost wrote: post #95
jotux wrote: post #58

>What is the expected compensation for participants? Compensation varies based on experience level and agency placement. Annual salaries are expected to be in the approximate range of $150,000 to $200,000. Benefits include health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, and eligibility for performance-based awards. >Tech Force will primarily recruit early-career technologists So "early-career" but they're going to…

At least in 2010, it was common for new grads to get GS-14/GS-15 pay for in-demand tech skills. It's a bit odd that early career folks would start out at the max of the pay band, but it is what it is. These were for roles which required a clearance.

This was absolutely not true, and I don’t know where you’re getting this. A newly minted CS PhD with a top end clearance would have gotten a GS-13 at most, anything less would have been much lower. Where I worked, STEM bachelors were generally hired on as GS-7s or 9s.

Re: US Tech Force

#306

Post by ActorNightly »

redbluered wrote: post #181
ActorNightly wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. I have hired people to work under me. Generally, if someone can pass the interview and do the job, I don't care that much about your views unless you are very outwardly with them. The only time I had to filter out a candidate was due to a quick check of his public social media where he was "enthusiastically" pro Palestine with questionable posts. That being said, having interviewed plenty of ex government…

> The only time I had to filter out a candidate was due to a quick check of his public social media where he was "enthusiastically" pro Palestine with questionable posts. Sounds like a place I wouldn't want to work (and filtering for the reverse stance would be equally problematic). Do you think things will work better if we have pro-Israel and pro-Palestine companies with the two groups never talking?

I think it would be best to work with people that I could trust to be civil and not to scream at or enact physical violence on another person, while wearing the hoodie with my companies name on it.

Or at the least, I don't want to have to wonder if I hire a Jewish coworker if there are gonna be any issues.

Re: US Tech Force

#307

Post by ActorNightly »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #216
ActorNightly wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. I have hired people to work under me. Generally, if someone can pass the interview and do the job, I don't care that much about your views unless you are very outwardly with them. The only time I had to filter out a candidate was due to a quick check of his public social media where he was "enthusiastically" pro Palestine with questionable posts. That being said, having interviewed plenty of ex government…

If you're asking candidates to write threaded code in an interview, you are doing it wrong.

Lol?

Even before LLMs, most coding problems really are a test of efficient pointer manipulation. You either move a pointer to character in words, pointer to data in array, or traverse n-node linked lists.

This level of pointer manipulation is rarely ever needed these days, as things like sorting, searching, and parsing are all handled by functions. An LRU cache is literally a function decorator in Python.

What I care more is if someone can understand that network calls take time, that data processing is fast, and how to optimize that pipeline. Threading is not a requirement, they can do it with async as well, or even without async with just smart scheduling.

The core of the problem that makes it LLM proof is that the problem doesn't disclose anything about network latencies or data structure. So standard iterative solutions from LLM usually end up taking longer because they get stuck waiting on a single network response. And so you can clearly tell who understand the core operations at hand, versus someone who just memorized a bunch of patterns and/or using LLMs.

Re: US Tech Force

#308

Post by ActorNightly »

dabockster wrote: post #110
ActorNightly wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. I have hired people to work under me. Generally, if someone can pass the interview and do the job, I don't care that much about your views unless you are very outwardly with them. The only time I had to filter out a candidate was due to a quick check of his public social media where he was "enthusiastically" pro Palestine with questionable posts. That being said, having interviewed plenty of ex government…

> Most people who work for the government show up expecting to be told what to do, then do it - very few can independently think for themselves. I see this a lot in the private sector too here in Seattle. It's hurting us badly.

Im all for it. Software job markets are inflated. Id be 100% willing to take a lower salary if that meant a reduction of all salaries across the board. Younger people need to be going into things like EE or MechE instead of CS in hopes of getting a six figure job out of college, living in downtown highrises, while working on something that is essentially funded by ads.

Re: US Tech Force

#309

Post by Centigonal »

mothballed wrote: post #304
Centigonal wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a distorted comparison and you know it. DC in unique among US states and territories in that it encompasses a major metropolitan area with no rural regions. In this comparison, DC also leads the country in population density, average building height, public transit usage, latte consumption, and any other correlate of living in a city. If you compare DC against other major metropolitan statistical areas, the l…

>If you compare DC against other major metropolitan statistical areas, the leadership disappears -- see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_metropol ... No it doesn't, not according to the linked data you're proposing. I sorted by per-capita income of MSAs on the second table of that page, it shows DC MSA blowing the other metropolitan areas away. Might not still be accurate as that's a 2010 cen…

I thought you had to realize that comparing DC to a state like California wasn't going to be an apples-to-apples comparison, which is why I wrote, "and you know it." I'm sorry for making assumptions.

You're also right, I was sloppy with my citation. I looked into the source data, and I believe Wikipedia's second table may be wrong here. Here is B19301 from the 2010 census. The Bridgeport MSA is first: https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT5YSPT2010.B19301?q=b19301...

Unfortunately, the table on Wikipedia is uncited (beyond the 2010 census) and was added by an anonymous IP address editor, so I don't know how they got their numbers. I'll double check my work and update the article if I don't find anything else.

Generally, though, my point is that if you compare the states and DC, you'll find that DC is an outlier on a lot of dimensions. If you compare the DC metro area with other MSAs, a lot of that exceptionalism goes away.

Re: US Tech Force

#310

Post by [deleted] »

ethbr1 wrote: post #275
platevoltage wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name any currently serving?

That's part of it: many felt the winds and simultaneously made the choice to "focus on family" and step back from politics during the 2nd Trump administration. But the wheel turns, and there's going to be a lot of folks in the party with very sharp axes to grind during the lame duck period.

[deleted]
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