You don't get to be one of the largest corporations in the world without co-opting the government in your favor. This is exactly what ancaps are missing.
Ancaps really? I'm sure Google is co-opting with the government in some sense, but you obviously have to at that scale, but what kind of tin foil hat do you need to start believing ancaps are missing.
I believe cjrjfufjdvfhz is not saying that ancaps are involved in some sort of scheme but rather that anarcho-capitalist ideology is deficient in that it does not take this idea into account ("You don't get to be one of the largest corporations in the world without co-opting the government in your favor").
I don't get what that has to do with anarcho-capitalism, though. In a world where governments exist and are powerful, it will be in the interest of a corporation to get the government to do things for it. Fine. What does that have to do with a philosophy that advocates moving towards a world without governments?
Is it so hard to believe that one of the biggest tech companies in the country and the government wouldn't both respect success in the other's organizations?
Similar arguments are made when the close ties between the government and say Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street giants are discussed. There is a revolving door there too.
Even the most forgiving interpretation of the facts implies that Google and Goldman Sachs and other corporations have massive influence in government. There is no need to posit a conspiracy theory. It's just that the same people flow back and forth between the government and those corporations, and there are friendships as well as shared perspectives and ideals, all creating a close relationship that is highly beneficial to those corporations.
The most forgiving interpretation doesn't imply massive influence at all.
US gov't needs help regulating banks. Employees with experience in finance will likely have an easier time navigating things. Same argument for tech.
Is it really that shocking that you hire former finance people to regulate the finance industry? Experience in the domain means knowledge about how things work. It's the same argument as putting a technical person as PM for a technical project.
Of course, this doesn't work in the "regulation as punishment" mindset. But gov't regulators aren't looking to kill banks, they're looking to keep the economy healthy. Yes, that means working with banks to improve things (see regulators coordinating the purchase of failed banks by other ones).
Inversely, you are Goldman Sachs. You need help navigating regulation... a guy with regulation experience sounds good right?
Of course there are potential conflicts of interest to watch out for.
But regulation is supposed to provide an impartial set of rules that defines how people go about their buisness fairly.
One of the great criticisms of regulation is that incumbents with access to government can influence the rules to favour themselves and avoid competition. Having employees of particular large companies work as beaurocrats encourages this, especially if they return to those companies.
In it's early phase -- such as with these googlers in the US gov, the revolving door brings dynamism. But over time it brings stagnation because parties have an interest in making current practice the only thing allowed.
I would love to see numbers for other companies. I would be surprised if large defense contractors like Northrup Grumman and Lockheed Martin didn't have way more than 250.
Also ... government has been notoriously bad about grokking software. They just couldn't manage large projects effectively at all, and they were completely getting fleeced by their usual contractors (witness the initial launch of healthcare.gov). So it's good that they're getting competent people to be in charge of things now, which I suppose naturally means they'd be getting people from the top tech companies in the world.
Not really - it's just a pie chart by industry. It doesn't say anything about other companies.
If you search by organization you can get some numbers but it's not comprehensive. For example, it says that only 28 people (not hundreds) are profiled with "google", 30 with "microsoft" and 1 for "hewlett packard", etc.
>I would be surprised if large defense contractors like Northrup Grumman and Lockheed Martin didn't have way more than 250.
Especially since those type of jobs often require security clearance. Once someone has clearance, they are more likely to take more jobs in the future that also require clearance, because the clearance is a valuable part of their resume.
I met some of the former Googlers working for the USDS. They seemed to be many pre-IPO SREs who decided that improving government was more important than being an LP at a VC fund. They were motivated by getting tens of millions of people healthcare, and along the way they encountered huge challenges - like figuring out how to reconcile VA and Pentagon records. Their passion was inspiring, and the work they do affects millions without much glamor.
If you think healthcare.gov was a mess, in the USA there are more branches of federal government, 50 state governments, and countless local governments whose technology is inadequate for serving its constituents.
Things like healthcare, visas, and electricity all rely on aging software projects. Yet, some of these systems don't have strong backups, are not automated, and may run on infrastructure like Windows XP. Some parts are ticking timebombs in terms of security and upkeep costs.
I don't feel this gets enough focus. When you're working at a place of high prestige and global impact, you're going to want to keep that up where you skills can continue to benefit many (whether your original employer is one or ther other).
Binti's main SaaS web product is a conventional monolithic Rails/Postgres app that delivers value in heaps and heaps, and remains super fun to hack on. We're building the monolith up higher and higher, and looking forward to soon chipping off a service or two (perhaps in Elixir?). Specific engineering roles we have open are for someone that is highly-opinionated on the front-end stack/practices, a security specialist, and a UX/a11y specialist. We're using Kubernetes for cluster management.
Interesting. Thanks for the info. Is no recent rails experience an issue? I have django experience (years worth) but anything recent with rails (nothing after rails 2).
Also check out Nava-- we're a part of the original team and continuing to improve Healthcare.gov and work on other projects, and we're actively hiring for software engineers in SF and DC. See profile for details!
The problem with gov is that everything is slow has hell / old tech on top of corporate contracts with the like of Oracle / SAP. I don't expect to improve things there because of all thoses problems + layers of bureaucracy.
I think that it's a problem of "outsource" vs "in-house." Government is like a microservice architecture where each service being built by a different corporation with a non-technical PM leading integrations. Then, it gets maintained by basically nobody and is expected to work in perpetuity.
From what I have observed, having an in-house technical team at the government - even small - aids all of these projects.
In fact, that's basically what this team is - SREs - professionals at running and maintaining code. A small integrations / uptime team that understands the implications of design decisions aids everything.
That's one problem, and it's a total drag. Another one I encountered was the sheer weight of the crushing mediocrity. Everybody just punching in, staring at their computers, going through the motions, and punching out to commute home. Nobody cared enough to try to make anything better, it's just keep your head down, collect your pension in 40 years, don't cause too much of a kerfuffle.
I would imagine that silo'ing all these projects in outsourced contracts and agencies really exacerbates this whole mess. It would be far better to centralize the IT infrastructure of the federal government, perhaps even into its own agency. For compliance, cross-integration, security, and just efficiency, doing it in house would make far more sense.
I've seen the distributed approach done at a university and it was a total bureaucratic don't step on my toes mess - when they centralized, things got organized very quickly.
I've seen it do the opposite at a college. I would say always allow room for external auditing. Every few set of years. To disallow for coderot and even "developermold" which essentially produces coderot. I believed the same.
I think we need maybe either a tech branch or sub-branches per branch of government. Contracting is great and all but we need consistent development not one time fixes. I'm sick of hearing about how our government got hacked here or there every now and then.
> Your specific background, including current salary and years of experience, will ultimately determine your pay. U.S. Digital Service salaries are set in accordance with the General Schedule Pay Scale, which is capped at $160,300.
All of the Googlers you've met who work for USDS are already well funded from their previous companies. Who in their right mind would go to work for the government, for minimum wage, unless they were already independently wealthy?
For a data point, I was offered $130k for a position at the IRS (as a USDS employee) working on taxpayer authorization, authentication, identity management.
That's about the number that my contact as a non-USDS employee (they seem to try to hire people for other orgs --"oops, sorry, we're actually full up, but do you want to work for the VA?" - no, no I do not, under any circumstances) was floating at me.
Ex-USDS here. Did 6 months at USDS, still federally employed as a USDS reserve.
Just wanted to chime in on "Who in their right mind would go to work for the government, for minimum wage, unless they were already independently wealthy?" GS-15 pay is nowhere near minimum wage. If you actually think so, I'm sorry to say that you are out of touch with society. And while some USDS employees may be independently wealthy, the majority certainly aren't.
There are also the nice perks of USDS, like working on things that critically matter to the lives of millions of the neediest demographic (both domestically and internationally), and collaborating with a bunch of A+ human beings who, despite the personal sacrifices, passionately want to do what they can to improve the welfare of others.
I feel okay hearing about improving backups, may be some automation, etc, but "age" should not only imply these things. Age seems can often also imply "understood."
TFA mentions ex-Googlers in the FCC, the FTC and the DOD, which are different branches of government from the USDS. TFA also says "there have been at least 15 moves between Google and its lobbying firms and those commissions." The "lobbying firms" probably had people doing less, um, technical things.
"Amey said he’s not as concerned about programmers moving over – and quite a few data engineers who worked on Obama’s re-election campaign have ended up in White House jobs – but top level executives changing jobs can raise “red flags.”"
"TFA mentions ex-Googlers in the FCC, the FTC and the DOD,"
FWIW: Some of the folks they are counting are interns, AFAICT.
Otherwise, i have trouble seeing what the hullaboo is about.
For example, Matthew Bye (Disclaimer: i've worked closely with Matthew for years) is someone they claim went from the FTC to Google.
He got a job at the FTC out of law school for a few years.
Then he went to Wilson Sonshini for 3 years.
Then he went to Google, where's he's been 7 years (started regular counsel, now a director).
Not sure what is supposed to be wrong with this.
Moving between private law firms and corp counsel is common, people trade off "partner track millions with crazy hours" for "sane hours and reasonable pay".
Moving between government and private law firms is common too (note: there are specific legal ethics rules that cover this in both directions. I make no claim they are perfect, but they do exist!). People often start out idealistic, or in government, because they have a ton of jobs. Especially in a tough legal market, it's a good place to be. They get tired of the politics or whatever, and go elsewhere.
Some to private firms, some to corp counsel.
If you want a more mundane example:
Eric Hysen is listed in the data. I hired him (first as an intern, then as a regular employee) and he worked for me until I left the DC office.
He left mainly because he specifically wanted to help government get better, and USDS was a very hard thing to turn down in that regard.
Again, don't see what is wrong with that.
Staring at the actual US data, i'm also not sure who the "lobbying firms" are supposed to be.
Because the data doesn't list any[1]
So either they are incorrectly marking those folks as "Google" (they aren't. The lobbying firms are not exclusive to Google in any way, shape or form. It also doesn't even claim the folks who went from the lobbying firm ever handled google as a client), or it's not in the data they give.
The data also doesn't say when they left google vs when they joined government. If you click the linked in links, there are often multi-year gaps here where they worked for others.
> Otherwise, i have trouble seeing what the hullaboo is about.
In every regulated industry there tends to be a small cadre of people who rotate through the most elite jobs in both the private and public sector. So if you're aware of that, it's no surprise that Google and the rest of the tech industry work the same way.
I think the cause of the hullabaloo may be that a lot of people didn't realize this has been going on since time immemorial. Perhaps they assumed that the people governing them were more like them, and were not, for example, financial or tech CEOs looking for a change of pace. In an age of great information transparency they are now starting to figure this out. It is part of a growing awareness that surprisingly small cadres of elites run basically everything and reap large rewards at a time when class mobility is at a low, wealth inequality is peaking, the political system is dysfunctional, the economy is sluggish, etc.
And so you get the Brexits and the Trumps, and a new level of scrutiny into just what exactly those wealthy techies are up to. Different people will render different judgments on the phenomenon but in my view it is absolutely all part of a trend where the silent majority starting to make some noise.
From my understanding, Wilson Sonshini counts Google as a client, and works heavily in antitrust matters. Can you not see the issue with someone in the FTC then being handed a position at Google's antitrust lawyer, and then Google itself? Would a FTC member doing their job, being critical of companies like Google, be offered a job with Google's defense?
Similarly, after paid Google shill (literally by his own admission) Joshua Wright finished his stint as the FTC Commissioner (amazingly, an investigation against Google disappeared during his term), he then recently got a job with Wilson Sonshini as well.
Again, you see these people as "the places they work for".
He wasn't "handed a position".
He applied for a job, got interviewed, and took it. What favor do you think happened here, or anywhere? What evidence do you have of this?
No, i can't see a general problem with antitrust lawyers, or really, any lawyer deciding where to work.
Private law firms hire people with government experience precisely because they know how it works. Not because they want favors, but because they have experience. The same is true of Google, Microsoft, Facebook, whoever. This is no different than hiring from "industry". The industry of antitrust lawyers includes government lawyers. You try to hire the best, regardless of who they work for.
If your goal is to prevent favors from being done, prevent favors from being done[1]. I don't see why that has any general relation to job mobility.
People either have integrity or not. Either they make decisions and voice opinions without regard to future career mobility or not.
If they generally don't, you are pretty much screwed no matter what you do here - you need to fix people, you aren't really going to fix the process[1].
If they generally do, than you should just worry about the outliers..
[1] Imagine for a second, you go so far as to have a neutral committee review every person who changes jobs, including all correspondence, video tapes of interviews, whatever.
Do you believe this would fix it?
No, of course not, it'll just drive any bad behavior further into the dark. It would literally not stop any problem.
If you ban job mobility, would that stop any problems?
Given the number of senators/congressman/etc indicted for having their houses renovated for free, etc, i'm going to go with "no".
If your problem is integrity, people without integrity are going to be much more creative about the favors they get, how they are done, etc.
Changing job mobility will not change this.
As evidence: It literally hasn't, in the past 200 years.
We're talking about people who directly move in and out of Google or Google contractors, and places which have a immediate and direct conflict of interest with Google. Which inexplicably, almost without other justification, seems to avoid any sort of legal action against it. And this isn't a one-off case of one employee moving around. It's a significant, recurring process.
And in the case of Joshua Wright, long before he revolved his way into an FTC position, he was already receiving money under the table to fabricate "academic studies" supporting Google's antitrust position, which they then used as expert references to their claims. We already have a corrupt individual who's engaged in unethical practices on Google's behalf, which then also moved into a government position where he had an extreme ability to protect Google from government action.
We've long understood that transparency in government in terms of where money changes hands, where people are employed, and similar factors are key in preventing corruption. People may not be the places they work for, but they are representatives of their employers. If this wasn't understood, political donations wouldn't require the disclosure of a donor's employer.
You seem to be suggesting we should dismiss our entire understanding of how corruption occurs, because the evidence points very clearly that corruption is happening between our government and Google. Honest people, unfortunately, are not involved here.
Note for other readers: DannyBee is a Googler and claims in his profile to be a lawyer, so presumably has worked with the Google, FTC, and WSG&R people discussed here.
These sorts of career moves are extremely common. I work in the IT department of an AmLaw 200 firm and our attorneys regularly leave to work for clients and vice versa.
> "Amey said he’s not as concerned about programmers moving over
But the article is. The very first thing in the article is Mikey Dickerson's face. To call him a "top level executive" at Google is not even close to true, even if he has a high rank in his new role.
Google has a huge number of interactions with regulations. Whether or not there is a revolving door ought to be orthogonal to your opinion on whether or not Google is in the right on many of its legal positions.
Like many other companies, Google uses the Double Irish to minimize its tax bill. Assuming the law were updated to affect all Double Irish users equally (like to e.g. Facebook), do you think we should prevent such tax evasion? The answer seems to me obviously yes, regardless of your political persuasion. Clearly lobbying must have some impact on its favorable tax treatment.
In a manner of bundling similar to other tech companies, Google promoted Chrome on www.google.com. It seems reasonable to describe that promotion as using its dominance in the search market to become dominant in the browser market. Likewise, its complex deal with Android manufacturers results in Google Search (among other applications) being the default on their phones. The EU is in the process of sanctioning Google for the later. Supposing the spirit of anti-trust law were applied equally to application bundlers (like to e.g., Apple), do you think we should prevent such bundling from occurring? The answer to me seems to be yes: I think unbundling software makes the software ecosystem healthier and more innovative. Clearly lobbying in the U.S. must have some impact on its favorable anti-trust treatment versus the E.U.
Like few other funnels, Google monetizes content in ways that minimize the value to the producer. This could mean monetizing copyrighted material, like searches that lead to movie torrents or whole copies hosted on YouTube. Or its dominant place in search makes previously subscription-only newspapers have to go free on-the-web, because news cannot be copyrighted and anyone can read an NYTimes article and write a free (but plagiarized) destination for search results. How much value should go to producers, and to the extent that it extracts a rent from the transaction, should Google be the entity that transfers the value from the producer to the consumer? The answer to this question isn't obvious. But Google has won a complex set of legal victories, like the Google Books Search settlement lawsuit and lawsuits by newspaper publishers around the world. It's likely, though not as clear, that its extensive relationship with government (and for that matter, consumers) has earned it a favorable view of its rent extraction from producers.
The controversy ought not to be the revolving door. You would have to be a real blowhard to believe that Google doesn't receive favorable treatment from the government. Furthermore, you should be allowed to campaign against Google's favorable treatment without simultaneously campaigning against Apple, Facebook, and all of corporate America.
Instead, I think the controversy should be whether or not you actually think Google is in the right on these matters.
I remember when Google had basically pledged to stay out of politics. Then the Government sued them. You see, when you've got that kind of money, politicians don't allow you not to bribe them.
It is crazy to me that Googlers no longer even "revolve the door" to shift back and forth to working for the government. Matt Cutts is merely 'on leave'. Similarly, Eric Schmidt is on a panel at the DoD while simultaneously still in his position at Google.
It's impossible for someone to make the best decisions for American citizens while they're simultaneously employed by a giant international corporation which is evading billions of dollars in taxes, causing the rest of us to have to pick up all the slack.
Recalling from what I was told when I went through the interview process at 18F (got to the point of the gigantic "dump your whole life in a massive form" bit, right after the OPM hack was news, and decided not to do that), the positions are legally time-limited: it's a two-year contract which can be renewed once. So maximum of four years in the job, and then you're out.
Also USDS is a bit more "do this mission" style job: basically you're being dropped into a federal agency to try to turn their tech story around. 18F is there to promote longer-term change in the model of how the federal government does technology.
Check out the 18F website; tours of duty are typically 6 months. The recruiter who contacted me about 18F told me to apply for a leave of absence from my job. Simultaneous employment is the only realistic way for most software developers who don't want to jump into a stressful job search.
This article contains no data. Merely speculates or insinuates that if it's investigating Google, clearly it has to be part of some plot against them. I know it's hard to imagine, but sometimes people may just want to know what a giant evil international conglomerate is doing in backrooms with the most powerful people on the planet.
I think it's a little suspicious that they won't reveal who is funding them.
More importantly, I don't see any clear reason to target a specific company. There are lots of organizations like The Center for Responsive Politics which investigate lobbying and corruption without doing targeting a specific company with whatever they can find.
This organization clearly seems to have an axe to grind. For example, what is the point of naming and shaming programmers who dared to quit their cushy Google jobs to come work for USDS? [0] This is symptomatic of a hatchet job:
> suggests that many former Google employees working for USDS today may return to their Google jobs tomorrow with inside knowledge and relationships that could prove invaluable in securing large IT contracts for Google.
The notion that programmers are going to work for Google so they can secure IT contracts is ludicrous. I know people working for USDS—they definitely are not interested in making a career out of government consulting.
If this group cares so much about transparency, they should be transparent about who is funding them. I suspect it's several corporations which are even more corrupt than Google.
It's hard to imagine big IT contracts isn't a part of it. Bear in mind, Google Cloud Platform is Google's big push these days, and they're currently in a distant third place. Now, with all those Google employees who are then also going back to Google after their USDS stint... how many of them do you think will recommend or even consider Azure or AWS when they recommend a cloud platform for the government project they're working on? Google Apps for Government is a thing too.
And at the end of the day, basically all Google wants is... all your data. Good way to accomplish that is getting your employees to write the software too.
It's really hard for me to imagine regular Google software engineers doing stints in government just to procure IT contracts. Do you really think that's how things work? It amazes me that people will look for corruption in anything. Is it really that implausible that people might not just feel a civic duty to help improve government?
For the record, 18F and USDS both seem to have pushed for multiple cloud solutions, including their own cloud.gov.
Many of these aren't "regular Google software engineers". Eric Schmidt is the former CEO and is on an advisory board at the DOD, while still chairman of the board for Google. Matt Cutts, USDS and still employed formally at Google as well, is one of the most public faces of the biggest and most profitable division Google has. If Google was a single color, I'm confident Matt Cutts would bleed it.
I'm not "looking for corruption in anything". I'm looking for corruption in one of the biggest lobbyists in Washington DC that has very close ties with our administration, and strangely, has managed to avoid any sort of legal action against them, despite the fact that almost every other first world power finds cause to do so.
The previous FTC Commissioner, who is tasked by our government to regulate companies like Google, was a former paid Google shill who fabricated pro-Google "studies". After being paid under the table by Google, and then squashing an FTC investigation against Google during his term there, he's now working for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a law firm who has a notable client... Google.
I'm not "looking for corruption in anything". It's just that it's incredibly implausible that Google does not have a corrupt relationship with the government.
You didn't answer my question about why you think Google software engineers would work for government just to sell Google products. Instead, you pointed to much higher-level and isolated cases. The vast majority of the 250+ Googlers working in government are likely mid-level employees without significant policy responsibility.
I gave a specific link to this "Transparency Project" targeting mid-level Google engineers. [0] You seem to think the people on this list are mercenaries working in government just to sell Google contracts.
Since you seem to be uninterested in having a conversation on this and instead have an axe to grind, I'll see myself out.
> More than 250 people have moved from Google and related firms to the federal government or vice versa since President Barack Obama took office.
Google has over 30,000 employees in Mountain View alone, and that's just a portion of its workforce. The term "Obama administration" in the headline is somewhat misleading considering that the above quote says it's surveyed from "the federal government," which is a huge workforce regardless of where you draw the boundaries.
Statistically, is it really that anomalous that ~250 people flowed between the two in 8 years?
50% of total staff are at Mountain View. Of 60k staff, maybe 20-25k are engineers. So in the US it's probably 10-15k engineers total.
In my experience, software engineer attrition is around 20% per year in firms with good employee satisfaction. That's 2-3k engineers excited to be tackling new opportunities each year. In 8 years: 16-24k employees.
Of course Google is a great place to work and they weren't as large 8 years ago, so let's guess 10-15k employees turned over. Of that, 250 is 2%.
The government says around 2700 people work for the executive [1]. That is 0.002% of the total workforce in the US.
Google could replace the entire executive with castaway engineers every year.
You're reading the table (egregiously) wrong. It says around 2.7 million people work for the executive branch of government. That is about 1.8% of the employed US workforce. 2700 doesn't pass the smell test, anyways.
I got the same impression. It would be worth taking a second look at if the vast majority of those 250 people were top executives:
>> Regulation watchdogs may be just as keen about the moves between Google and the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission. Those government bodies regulate many of the programs that are at the heart of Google’s business, and there have been at least 15 moves between Google and its lobbying firms and those commissions.
>> The 18 people involved in the revolving door listed in this story are just the tip of the 251-plus name iceberg, though in some cases people among that 251 are low-level employees.
So they looked at ~20 people in the article who moved from Google to the government. Given the size of Google, that number seems to be barely significant.
"Google employees have enjoyed good employability" seems like a better title, unless there's something major that I've missed.
Yes, the impression the article wants you to have is that those people are top (or at least important) execs at both google and the government who are able to make decisions that benefit one or the other or themselves.
The reality, if you dig into the data, is that the vast majority are not.
Articles like this are a great example of why the so-called revolving door is a good thing.
Government technology has been a disaster for quite some time. I think we can all agree that the best technologists aren't usually looking to accept a low-pay, low-prestige job in government.
So the Obama Administration has taken steps to try to improve government technology, primarily through USDS but also with direct White House hires. Of course many of the best technologists are employed at Google, so you'll see a lot of people coming from there. Especially since there are significant network effects in recruiting.
Naturally, the best technologists aren't typically interested in a long-term government career. So they shift back out after their "tour of duty." In fact, I believe 18F explicitly requires limited term contracts.
Despite good intentions (including willingness to take substantial pay cuts), people inevitably attack these attempts.
I wonder how much of the "Google Transparency Project" funding is coming from existing federal contractors. Perhaps they should be transparent about themselves for a start.
The "Google Transparency Project" [1] seems like a deliberately misleading name. They're not at all associated with Google yet they're going as far as using Google's logo in their logo. I wonder how legal that is, and if Google's comms team is aware of them.
And a color scheme somewhat similar to Google's. Well, there's "Campaign for Accountability" logo in the header, however, it's probably still a bit too deceiving than it should be.
> "it’s hard to know for sure how more than 250 people moving between Google and the federal government since 2009 compares to other corporations, but “it sounds like it’s a very significant number.”"
Considering we're talking about a time span of 7 years and Google has over 50,000 employees (took a rough average from the crazy range of source I saw) I'm surprised it's not more. The quote above seems to be someone guessing without any type of information to back up their assertions.
I'd love to see the numbers for other companies but this article is somewhat lackluster and seems to be trying to point to a possible conflict of interest
> Amey said he’s not as concerned about programmers moving over – and quite a few data engineers who worked on Obama’s re-election campaign have ended up in White House jobs – but top level executives changing jobs can raise “red flags.”
I can understand this a bit more. Not sure there is any direct evidence of conflicts of interest but like the investigation I could see it easily appearing so regardless of the truth. Hard to avoid though. After working in the government space they need lots of help.
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[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 181 ms ] thread- Senator Orin Hatch; Chairman of Senate Judiciary Committee
https://books.google.com/books?id=WYIlAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA87&lpg=P...
Even the most forgiving interpretation of the facts implies that Google and Goldman Sachs and other corporations have massive influence in government. There is no need to posit a conspiracy theory. It's just that the same people flow back and forth between the government and those corporations, and there are friendships as well as shared perspectives and ideals, all creating a close relationship that is highly beneficial to those corporations.
US gov't needs help regulating banks. Employees with experience in finance will likely have an easier time navigating things. Same argument for tech.
Is it really that shocking that you hire former finance people to regulate the finance industry? Experience in the domain means knowledge about how things work. It's the same argument as putting a technical person as PM for a technical project.
Of course, this doesn't work in the "regulation as punishment" mindset. But gov't regulators aren't looking to kill banks, they're looking to keep the economy healthy. Yes, that means working with banks to improve things (see regulators coordinating the purchase of failed banks by other ones).
Inversely, you are Goldman Sachs. You need help navigating regulation... a guy with regulation experience sounds good right?
Of course there are potential conflicts of interest to watch out for.
One of the great criticisms of regulation is that incumbents with access to government can influence the rules to favour themselves and avoid competition. Having employees of particular large companies work as beaurocrats encourages this, especially if they return to those companies.
In it's early phase -- such as with these googlers in the US gov, the revolving door brings dynamism. But over time it brings stagnation because parties have an interest in making current practice the only thing allowed.
Also ... government has been notoriously bad about grokking software. They just couldn't manage large projects effectively at all, and they were completely getting fleeced by their usual contractors (witness the initial launch of healthcare.gov). So it's good that they're getting competent people to be in charge of things now, which I suppose naturally means they'd be getting people from the top tech companies in the world.
If you search by organization you can get some numbers but it's not comprehensive. For example, it says that only 28 people (not hundreds) are profiled with "google", 30 with "microsoft" and 1 for "hewlett packard", etc.
Especially since those type of jobs often require security clearance. Once someone has clearance, they are more likely to take more jobs in the future that also require clearance, because the clearance is a valuable part of their resume.
If you didn't want this to happen perhaps you should make it illegal?
If you think healthcare.gov was a mess, in the USA there are more branches of federal government, 50 state governments, and countless local governments whose technology is inadequate for serving its constituents.
Things like healthcare, visas, and electricity all rely on aging software projects. Yet, some of these systems don't have strong backups, are not automated, and may run on infrastructure like Windows XP. Some parts are ticking timebombs in terms of security and upkeep costs.
If you want to work remote from SF, check out 18F: https://pages.18f.gov/joining-18f/
We're briefly pausing accepting new applications while we evolve how 18F plans for open roles.
https://www.codeforamerica.org/do-something/work-with-us/fel...
Also hiring in sales and customer success.
Background: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/the-se...
Jobs: http://navahq.com/careers
From what I have observed, having an in-house technical team at the government - even small - aids all of these projects.
In fact, that's basically what this team is - SREs - professionals at running and maintaining code. A small integrations / uptime team that understands the implications of design decisions aids everything.
I've seen the distributed approach done at a university and it was a total bureaucratic don't step on my toes mess - when they centralized, things got organized very quickly.
I think we need maybe either a tech branch or sub-branches per branch of government. Contracting is great and all but we need consistent development not one time fixes. I'm sick of hearing about how our government got hacked here or there every now and then.
All of the Googlers you've met who work for USDS are already well funded from their previous companies. Who in their right mind would go to work for the government, for minimum wage, unless they were already independently wealthy?
They probably are making less than they could in the private sector, but calling it "minimum wage" is just ludicrously out of touch.
Just wanted to chime in on "Who in their right mind would go to work for the government, for minimum wage, unless they were already independently wealthy?" GS-15 pay is nowhere near minimum wage. If you actually think so, I'm sorry to say that you are out of touch with society. And while some USDS employees may be independently wealthy, the majority certainly aren't.
There are also the nice perks of USDS, like working on things that critically matter to the lives of millions of the neediest demographic (both domestically and internationally), and collaborating with a bunch of A+ human beings who, despite the personal sacrifices, passionately want to do what they can to improve the welfare of others.
"Amey said he’s not as concerned about programmers moving over – and quite a few data engineers who worked on Obama’s re-election campaign have ended up in White House jobs – but top level executives changing jobs can raise “red flags.”"
FWIW: Some of the folks they are counting are interns, AFAICT.
Otherwise, i have trouble seeing what the hullaboo is about.
For example, Matthew Bye (Disclaimer: i've worked closely with Matthew for years) is someone they claim went from the FTC to Google.
He got a job at the FTC out of law school for a few years. Then he went to Wilson Sonshini for 3 years. Then he went to Google, where's he's been 7 years (started regular counsel, now a director).
Not sure what is supposed to be wrong with this.
Moving between private law firms and corp counsel is common, people trade off "partner track millions with crazy hours" for "sane hours and reasonable pay". Moving between government and private law firms is common too (note: there are specific legal ethics rules that cover this in both directions. I make no claim they are perfect, but they do exist!). People often start out idealistic, or in government, because they have a ton of jobs. Especially in a tough legal market, it's a good place to be. They get tired of the politics or whatever, and go elsewhere. Some to private firms, some to corp counsel.
If you want a more mundane example: Eric Hysen is listed in the data. I hired him (first as an intern, then as a regular employee) and he worked for me until I left the DC office. He left mainly because he specifically wanted to help government get better, and USDS was a very hard thing to turn down in that regard.
Again, don't see what is wrong with that.
Staring at the actual US data, i'm also not sure who the "lobbying firms" are supposed to be.
Because the data doesn't list any[1] So either they are incorrectly marking those folks as "Google" (they aren't. The lobbying firms are not exclusive to Google in any way, shape or form. It also doesn't even claim the folks who went from the lobbying firm ever handled google as a client), or it's not in the data they give.
The data also doesn't say when they left google vs when they joined government. If you click the linked in links, there are often multi-year gaps here where they worked for others.
[1] Edit: Oooh, finally found one person they list from a "Google lobbying firm" : http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/227736-obama-hi...
Not sure what that has to do with Google in any way (here's the linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marty-paone-90853718)
In every regulated industry there tends to be a small cadre of people who rotate through the most elite jobs in both the private and public sector. So if you're aware of that, it's no surprise that Google and the rest of the tech industry work the same way.
I think the cause of the hullabaloo may be that a lot of people didn't realize this has been going on since time immemorial. Perhaps they assumed that the people governing them were more like them, and were not, for example, financial or tech CEOs looking for a change of pace. In an age of great information transparency they are now starting to figure this out. It is part of a growing awareness that surprisingly small cadres of elites run basically everything and reap large rewards at a time when class mobility is at a low, wealth inequality is peaking, the political system is dysfunctional, the economy is sluggish, etc.
And so you get the Brexits and the Trumps, and a new level of scrutiny into just what exactly those wealthy techies are up to. Different people will render different judgments on the phenomenon but in my view it is absolutely all part of a trend where the silent majority starting to make some noise.
Similarly, after paid Google shill (literally by his own admission) Joshua Wright finished his stint as the FTC Commissioner (amazingly, an investigation against Google disappeared during his term), he then recently got a job with Wilson Sonshini as well.
No, i can't see a general problem with antitrust lawyers, or really, any lawyer deciding where to work.
Private law firms hire people with government experience precisely because they know how it works. Not because they want favors, but because they have experience. The same is true of Google, Microsoft, Facebook, whoever. This is no different than hiring from "industry". The industry of antitrust lawyers includes government lawyers. You try to hire the best, regardless of who they work for.
If your goal is to prevent favors from being done, prevent favors from being done[1]. I don't see why that has any general relation to job mobility.
People either have integrity or not. Either they make decisions and voice opinions without regard to future career mobility or not.
If they generally don't, you are pretty much screwed no matter what you do here - you need to fix people, you aren't really going to fix the process[1].
If they generally do, than you should just worry about the outliers..
[1] Imagine for a second, you go so far as to have a neutral committee review every person who changes jobs, including all correspondence, video tapes of interviews, whatever. Do you believe this would fix it? No, of course not, it'll just drive any bad behavior further into the dark. It would literally not stop any problem.
If you ban job mobility, would that stop any problems? Given the number of senators/congressman/etc indicted for having their houses renovated for free, etc, i'm going to go with "no".
If your problem is integrity, people without integrity are going to be much more creative about the favors they get, how they are done, etc.
Changing job mobility will not change this. As evidence: It literally hasn't, in the past 200 years.
The only thing it does is hurt the honest people.
And in the case of Joshua Wright, long before he revolved his way into an FTC position, he was already receiving money under the table to fabricate "academic studies" supporting Google's antitrust position, which they then used as expert references to their claims. We already have a corrupt individual who's engaged in unethical practices on Google's behalf, which then also moved into a government position where he had an extreme ability to protect Google from government action.
We've long understood that transparency in government in terms of where money changes hands, where people are employed, and similar factors are key in preventing corruption. People may not be the places they work for, but they are representatives of their employers. If this wasn't understood, political donations wouldn't require the disclosure of a donor's employer.
You seem to be suggesting we should dismiss our entire understanding of how corruption occurs, because the evidence points very clearly that corruption is happening between our government and Google. Honest people, unfortunately, are not involved here.
Note for other readers: DannyBee is a Googler and claims in his profile to be a lawyer, so presumably has worked with the Google, FTC, and WSG&R people discussed here.
But the article is. The very first thing in the article is Mikey Dickerson's face. To call him a "top level executive" at Google is not even close to true, even if he has a high rank in his new role.
Like many other companies, Google uses the Double Irish to minimize its tax bill. Assuming the law were updated to affect all Double Irish users equally (like to e.g. Facebook), do you think we should prevent such tax evasion? The answer seems to me obviously yes, regardless of your political persuasion. Clearly lobbying must have some impact on its favorable tax treatment.
In a manner of bundling similar to other tech companies, Google promoted Chrome on www.google.com. It seems reasonable to describe that promotion as using its dominance in the search market to become dominant in the browser market. Likewise, its complex deal with Android manufacturers results in Google Search (among other applications) being the default on their phones. The EU is in the process of sanctioning Google for the later. Supposing the spirit of anti-trust law were applied equally to application bundlers (like to e.g., Apple), do you think we should prevent such bundling from occurring? The answer to me seems to be yes: I think unbundling software makes the software ecosystem healthier and more innovative. Clearly lobbying in the U.S. must have some impact on its favorable anti-trust treatment versus the E.U.
Like few other funnels, Google monetizes content in ways that minimize the value to the producer. This could mean monetizing copyrighted material, like searches that lead to movie torrents or whole copies hosted on YouTube. Or its dominant place in search makes previously subscription-only newspapers have to go free on-the-web, because news cannot be copyrighted and anyone can read an NYTimes article and write a free (but plagiarized) destination for search results. How much value should go to producers, and to the extent that it extracts a rent from the transaction, should Google be the entity that transfers the value from the producer to the consumer? The answer to this question isn't obvious. But Google has won a complex set of legal victories, like the Google Books Search settlement lawsuit and lawsuits by newspaper publishers around the world. It's likely, though not as clear, that its extensive relationship with government (and for that matter, consumers) has earned it a favorable view of its rent extraction from producers.
The controversy ought not to be the revolving door. You would have to be a real blowhard to believe that Google doesn't receive favorable treatment from the government. Furthermore, you should be allowed to campaign against Google's favorable treatment without simultaneously campaigning against Apple, Facebook, and all of corporate America.
Instead, I think the controversy should be whether or not you actually think Google is in the right on these matters.
https://www.quora.com/session/Matt-Cutts/1
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Matt_Cutts
It's impossible for someone to make the best decisions for American citizens while they're simultaneously employed by a giant international corporation which is evading billions of dollars in taxes, causing the rest of us to have to pick up all the slack.
Also USDS is a bit more "do this mission" style job: basically you're being dropped into a federal agency to try to turn their tech story around. 18F is there to promote longer-term change in the model of how the federal government does technology.
More importantly, I don't see any clear reason to target a specific company. There are lots of organizations like The Center for Responsive Politics which investigate lobbying and corruption without doing targeting a specific company with whatever they can find.
This organization clearly seems to have an axe to grind. For example, what is the point of naming and shaming programmers who dared to quit their cushy Google jobs to come work for USDS? [0] This is symptomatic of a hatchet job:
> suggests that many former Google employees working for USDS today may return to their Google jobs tomorrow with inside knowledge and relationships that could prove invaluable in securing large IT contracts for Google.
The notion that programmers are going to work for Google so they can secure IT contracts is ludicrous. I know people working for USDS—they definitely are not interested in making a career out of government consulting.
If this group cares so much about transparency, they should be transparent about who is funding them. I suspect it's several corporations which are even more corrupt than Google.
[0] http://googletransparencyproject.org/articles/us-digital-ser...
And at the end of the day, basically all Google wants is... all your data. Good way to accomplish that is getting your employees to write the software too.
For the record, 18F and USDS both seem to have pushed for multiple cloud solutions, including their own cloud.gov.
I'm not "looking for corruption in anything". I'm looking for corruption in one of the biggest lobbyists in Washington DC that has very close ties with our administration, and strangely, has managed to avoid any sort of legal action against them, despite the fact that almost every other first world power finds cause to do so.
The previous FTC Commissioner, who is tasked by our government to regulate companies like Google, was a former paid Google shill who fabricated pro-Google "studies". After being paid under the table by Google, and then squashing an FTC investigation against Google during his term there, he's now working for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a law firm who has a notable client... Google.
I'm not "looking for corruption in anything". It's just that it's incredibly implausible that Google does not have a corrupt relationship with the government.
I gave a specific link to this "Transparency Project" targeting mid-level Google engineers. [0] You seem to think the people on this list are mercenaries working in government just to sell Google contracts.
Since you seem to be uninterested in having a conversation on this and instead have an axe to grind, I'll see myself out.
[0] http://googletransparencyproject.org/articles/us-digital-ser...
Google has over 30,000 employees in Mountain View alone, and that's just a portion of its workforce. The term "Obama administration" in the headline is somewhat misleading considering that the above quote says it's surveyed from "the federal government," which is a huge workforce regardless of where you draw the boundaries.
Statistically, is it really that anomalous that ~250 people flowed between the two in 8 years?
50% of total staff are at Mountain View. Of 60k staff, maybe 20-25k are engineers. So in the US it's probably 10-15k engineers total.
In my experience, software engineer attrition is around 20% per year in firms with good employee satisfaction. That's 2-3k engineers excited to be tackling new opportunities each year. In 8 years: 16-24k employees.
Of course Google is a great place to work and they weren't as large 8 years ago, so let's guess 10-15k employees turned over. Of that, 250 is 2%.
The government says around 2700 people work for the executive [1]. That is 0.002% of the total workforce in the US.
Google could replace the entire executive with castaway engineers every year.
[1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-docu...
>> Regulation watchdogs may be just as keen about the moves between Google and the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission. Those government bodies regulate many of the programs that are at the heart of Google’s business, and there have been at least 15 moves between Google and its lobbying firms and those commissions.
>> The 18 people involved in the revolving door listed in this story are just the tip of the 251-plus name iceberg, though in some cases people among that 251 are low-level employees.
So they looked at ~20 people in the article who moved from Google to the government. Given the size of Google, that number seems to be barely significant.
"Google employees have enjoyed good employability" seems like a better title, unless there's something major that I've missed.
The reality, if you dig into the data, is that the vast majority are not.
Government technology has been a disaster for quite some time. I think we can all agree that the best technologists aren't usually looking to accept a low-pay, low-prestige job in government.
So the Obama Administration has taken steps to try to improve government technology, primarily through USDS but also with direct White House hires. Of course many of the best technologists are employed at Google, so you'll see a lot of people coming from there. Especially since there are significant network effects in recruiting.
Naturally, the best technologists aren't typically interested in a long-term government career. So they shift back out after their "tour of duty." In fact, I believe 18F explicitly requires limited term contracts.
Despite good intentions (including willingness to take substantial pay cuts), people inevitably attack these attempts.
I wonder how much of the "Google Transparency Project" funding is coming from existing federal contractors. Perhaps they should be transparent about themselves for a start.
[1] http://googletransparencyproject.org/
https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/
Considering we're talking about a time span of 7 years and Google has over 50,000 employees (took a rough average from the crazy range of source I saw) I'm surprised it's not more. The quote above seems to be someone guessing without any type of information to back up their assertions.
I'd love to see the numbers for other companies but this article is somewhat lackluster and seems to be trying to point to a possible conflict of interest
> Amey said he’s not as concerned about programmers moving over – and quite a few data engineers who worked on Obama’s re-election campaign have ended up in White House jobs – but top level executives changing jobs can raise “red flags.”
I can understand this a bit more. Not sure there is any direct evidence of conflicts of interest but like the investigation I could see it easily appearing so regardless of the truth. Hard to avoid though. After working in the government space they need lots of help.
You can't cast aspersions like that on users here, especially not in response to such an obviously substantive contribution.