That's quite distressing. 18F delivered a lot of really important software (identity.gov, for example) and I hoped that the quality of their products would usher in a new era of open-source-first government technological advancement.
The fact that the current administration put a full hiring stop, and that 18F had everyone on 2 year contracts, seems to have been much more important.
If everyone’s contracts run out after 24 months, and you can’t re-hire them, of course you’ll lose 50% of employees in 12 months.
I thought it was done as a kind of 'tour of duty' equivalent in public services, where you'd leave your company for a few years, and then go back, so you only took a salary hit for a short time?
Exactly. The attrition rate part of the article is wrong. 18F hires on two year terms renewable for a second two years. At the end then, you are required to leave. So by definition the minimum attrition rate is 25%.
But during the Obama administration, they were backfilling. It sounds like a lot of people are electing not to do that second term, and they're not backfilling open positions.
I did mean to use the word "but". Like I said, during the Obama administration, they were hiring to replace the people who were termed out, or simply did not renew for a 2nd term. That's not happening now.
Compensation in government jobs is almost always lower than what the same person could make in the private sector.
18F's problem is that the appeal of government work is in benefits other than salary: solid health coverage, a pension, job security. But those are really only of interest if you're planning on staying there long term, and 18F's pitch has always been "take a year or two off from your real job and come work with us." It's the Peace Corps for techies, and nobody joins the Peace Corps for the retirement plan.
GS-15 is more than many pay, maybe not bay area or top, top companies. But I had friends there who made $160k-ish and had a hard time moving back to SF to mid-size startups because he would have had to take a pay cut (but with equity filling the gap). Plus it was pretty high impact work, and the ability to work remote on demand, so was hard to find something comparable if you're very mission driven or want a more "relaxed" lifestyle.
It's not a bad deal if you're young and single. It wasn't tenable for me to bring my wife and daughter to share a townhouse with a bunch of other USDS [+] staff making $130k/year.
[+] I'm aware that USDS and 18F are independent branches.
Yeah that probably depends on your personal situation of course. But I met many 18F'ers and USDS'ers through my friends, lots of people coming on between startups for a few months, some staying for years. They seem to match your current salary up to the federal civilian max, which appears to be $161,900. So that's not exactly a small amount, especially considering the additional benefits like excellent health care and blameless vacation-taking. Though you won't be getting catered lunches or free drinks/swag. Really just seems to depend on what you value. I've considered joining myself.
It's not bad if you're just comparing base salaries, but it's hundreds of thousands lower than quite a few private sector jobs if you compare total compensation.
Of course given the compensation and maximum length of tenure I imagine that most people are not doing it for the money.
Woah, in all seriousness please let me know where $161k + great benefits is "hundreds of thousands" lower than similar private sector SWE jobs in total comp. I will be applying today. (I'm obviously assuming you're not comparing compensation for a swe at 18F with head of BeyondCorp or something, because that would be disingenuous and you seem like a reasonable person)
"hundreds of thousands" is a bit of a stretch, but SWE w/security clearance at a small outfit will net you significantly more. Lots of tiny PO Box'd contractors around DC.
I wasn't selling myself anything. I could barely get non-government contractors to even give me an interview, and nobody in the government space offered me anywhere near that much. I managed to get to $95k via same-company salary progression before I escaped to the private sector (and a better metro area).
You can use Facebook's annual report to find that the average annual stock based compensation at Facebook is around $188k. That's real, liquid stock that you can turn around and sell. It's not monopoly money. Add salary and bonus and you're well over $300k in total compensation.
Is it hard to believe that some are going to be hitting more than $200k above the 18F numbers?
Note that we're comparing the absolute max for GS employees to the average at Facebook.
Some people at Facebook can be extended to some people at other companies too. I specifically picked a large, visible example where the information is publicly available.
Perhaps GP misread "quite a few private sector jobs" as "most private sector jobs"?
Can you give an example? For a GS-15 Making max salary, which is 164K. That is the base. It goes up quite a bit if you include 5% 401k match and retirement. So the total compensation is quite more than just 164K.
So what's total comp as a GS-15? At megacorp I was making a bit more than $164k, but total comp worked out to over $210k.
I've commented on the who's hiring thread about the US Digital Service's post. GS-15 base pay doesn't seem so bad, but drug testing, no relocation stipend (work from DC only), and no bonuses were all pretty big black marks.
The median household income in DC is 75k. So you are making 130-160k you are way above the median. Everyone doesn't make 300k. Its like HN exists in its own universe.
Regardless of whether you're making above the median and your skills have more value, that should not require you to suffer a pay cut to spend 1-2 years doing thankless work.
Regardless of DC median wages, housing is very expensive to be reasonably close to where you'd be working onsite for 18F or USDS assignments.
The median household income also includes many people doing unskilled labor. Attempting to compare skilled labor to unskilled labor like that only serves to drive down wages.
I was a GS-15 (Step 5) at 18F based in SF, so near the pay cap when you factor in the location adjustment (the government considers the Bay Area the most expensive region in the nation).
Pay was about similar to Twitter (not counting sizable stock based compensation and bonuses, so of course a big pay cut all in all). Pay was significantly better than startups. When I worked at Google I was leveled quite low, so the comparison wouldn't be fair.
Zero perks (no free coffee, etc). Retirements benefits only kick in after 3 years of government service.
I definitely didn't join 18F for money. I was in for the mission and potential impact. I also liked the idea of being able to move around the country if necessary while keeping the same job.
It's unfortunate that the Trump administration doesn't recognize the power of technology to act as a lever. You can invest in agile technology teams, thereby actually reducing headcount of the government overall in the long term.
The Republican Party position for the last two decades has been that government is incompetent to do anything except defense and transfer money to the rich. Therefore, headcount can always be reduced without any particular balancing efficiency gain -- the government just stops doing that function.
Doing things more efficiently is a threat to that worldview, so it must be stopped.
Two is an understatement. We're in 2018, it brings us to 1998.
Reagan's "Nine Most Terrifying Words" quip (I'm from the government and I'm here to help) dates back to August 1986, so this was already a well-entrenched enough view that a sitting president could express it during a news conference[0] — and more state that he's "always felt" that way and that all attendees would know about it. And AFAIK no one batted an eye.
The reality is that it's always been a strong overcurrent of american conservatism and the GOP, it went under during the New Deal period (Eisenhower was a new deal-er despite being a republican) but resurged into the 50s alongside people like Goldwater, who pined for the days of the Hoover administration (whom Goldwater considered a friend).
> The Republican Party position for the last two decades has been that government is incompetent to do anything except defense and transfer money to the rich.
It's closer to five decades; to be honest, the Republicans have been something of a party of moneyed industrial interests since not long after the Civil War, but that didn't start transitioning into being really anti-government until they were up against Roosevelt and the New Deal Coalition, which promoted something of a realignment which made both parties more ideological and less regionally focussed. And the anti-government focus came into even more sharp relief after LBJ signed on to federal civil rights legislation, which led to the Republican Southern Strategy to reorient policy to pick up disaffected Southern Racists. To avoid overtly racist appeals, this largely focussed on anti-government appeals against federal policy.
But, while it understates the case in one sense, the “two decades” comment may be right in another: while the general orientation of the party has been in that direction for closer to five decades, the realignment between the parties was still a gradual thing, and it wasn't until the mid-1990s that the realignment had reached the point where that was hthr clear and consistent orientation of the party to which there was no significant dissent from major office holders, where it had passed from the usual stance of the party to the unquestionable dogma of the party.
"...after LBJ signed on to federal civil rights legislation, which led to the Republican Southern Strategy..."
Actually, Republicans voted for the Voting Rights and Civil Rights acts at a higher propensity than Democrats did. Neither would have gone anywhere without substantial Republican support, including for cloture.
Republicans don't "transfer money to the rich". They advocate for letting the rich keep money they've obtained. You might object to how the rich obtain their money, but that's different.
Redistribution of income and redistribution of wealth are respectively the transfer of income and of wealth (including physical property) from some individuals to others by means of a social mechanism such as taxation, charity, welfare, public services, land reform, monetary policies, confiscation, divorce or tort law. The term typically refers to redistribution on an economy-wide basis rather than between selected individuals.
Thanks, Wikipedia.
Now, the Republican policies take less than has previously been taken from the rich, and take more than has previously been taken from the middle-class and poor, but not just yet, so it actually increases the deficit by a trillion dollars in order to make it more palatable.
So, yes, the Republican policy as exemplified in what they actually pass is to transfer money to the rich and borrow money to do so.
You are quite obviously unfamiliar with how the military-industrial complex works.
Republicans do transfer money to the rich. And they do it hand-in-hand with the Democrats. They will even do it right in front of your face, as they are claiming to be transferring money to the poor.
Where, pray tell, do you think all that annual budget actually goes? Most of it isn't ending up in the pockets of the people actually doing the work that the money is ostensibly buying. Military spending is not going into soldier's paychecks. Medicare and Medicaid spending is not going to physicians and nurses. There is an entire ecosystem of middlemen that do little more than subtract the politics and volatility out of the government money and turn it into a reliable cash flow. For this, they keep a fraction. It is every bit as legit as the finance wizards on Wall Street that can turn market chaos into investment-grade securities by mathematically separating risks from returns, and the people doing it with gummint dosh can get just as rich.
It is entirely due to the semi-privatization of government services. Rich people grow richer by operating a privately-owned business that serves only one customer, who frequently asks them to name their own price, and then doesn't bother to haggle or shop around.
For every young genius that strikes the jackpot with a unicorn startup, there are hundreds of banal and unremarkable suit-fillers reaping mere millions just from knowing a guy that knows a guy with an inside line on appropriations, and from having enough money to credibly submit a contract proposal.
While what you're saying is correct, I have little confidence in the federal government's ability to increase headcount in technology to reduce headcount in another area.
"This sharp decline represents a significant erosion of technical talent in the federal government and, if it continues, will likely impede the ability of the Trump administration to use technology to implement its agenda over the next few years."
This is . . . bad?
But in the larger scheme, this is bad, since it seemed like 18F was actually making some headway in improving the government's use of internet technology.
It seems pretty unlikely to me that 18F would routinely be called upon to implement a specifically Trumpian agenda. From the little I know of what they do, it's about making government effective in service to the American people. That should be a politically neutral goal.
To the extent that even Trump's administration is focused on that, I can support it. However, the evidence I've seen so far strongly suggests to me that it's not.
> It seems pretty unlikely to me that 18F would routinely be called upon to implement a specifically Trumpian agenda. From the little I know of what they do, it's about making government effective in service to the American people. That should be a politically neutral goal.
In government, “in service to the American people" in the mission of an agency means, in practice, “in service to the priorities of the current political leadership”.
Notionally, democratic accountability should make the latter approximate the former, but in practice results are quite mixed.
Let me put it this way: is getting veterans prompter, better access to VA health care a Democratic issue or a Republican issue? Hopefully you'll agree it's both (or neither).
Now you could look at improvements we might make to the VA at this time and oppose them, saying that any improvements we make to the government during a Trump administration legitimizes his administration and priorities.
As for me, I've had enough of that. It's the "party of 'no'" all over again. If you think the 18F is doing something specifically nefarious, name it. Otherwise, if something is a benefit to the American people, I support 18F, the Digital Service, or whoever taking it on--and I suspect that most of their work falls into this relatively uncontroversial category.
It's nigh impossible for a political leader to make an effort to "make government effective" only for operations with bipartisan/mltipartisan support. Why would a leader intentionally subvert their own power?
Sometimes the most logical conclusion is one that incorporates politics. I get HN likes to beat around the bush until after the fact, but in this instance I don't think pointing out a political motivation is all that uncalled for.
I wonder how many people interested in and competent at 18F's mission would be familiar enough with enlisted job codes in the Army to make that connection.
Yeah, I'm not saying no one would, but of the cross section I mentioned, how many would make the nominal connection and find it negative enough to dissuade them from applying knowing there's no actual functional connection. Not 0, but I wouldn't say 'lots of people'.
This was my big fear when I was going through the extremely and unnecessarily long interview process (started interviewing in May, was told I got the job in July, was given a start date for late October in late September...I took a different job in the meantime) there a few years ago. That, yeah, cool, Obama is forward looking and stuff but 18F just seems like a prime target for the chopping block for a Republican administration.
Which is a shame, because the only reason that would be is "because Obama did it, so we must be against it." This kind of forward-thinking technology group is exactly what the government needs more of.
That was my major question in the interview process too: "how do you stay relevant across administration changes". His answer was (paraphrase): we save the government money, how could anyone be against that?
As someone who worked in a DOC agency for 5+ years doing security work, much of my job consisted of reviewing software for compliance and security before acquiring/installing it in our systems. Every time someone showed up with something 18F was doing, it involved far more bleeding edge cloudy stuff than we were able to accept.
In short, the shiny object that was 18F had a really hard time doing its job of integrating with the resistant, crusty old pillars of Federal Agency policy and technology.
As someone who works for a company that works with the DoD, the push mentioned in the second to last paragraph is making it's way down the chain and we are seeing a greater acceptance of cloud tech. There isn't widespread adoption yet but they are open to projects moving in that direction.
This was true when I left two months ago, but the challenge, for us anyway, was how we extend our security boundary to encompass cloud technology without breaking the bank. Anything managed at levels higher up and offered as a "service" typically proved to be stringent to operate inside of.
US federal government really needs its own cloud computing agency full of stick-up-the-butt security and reliability fanatics. 99.999% availability. Formally verified code everywhere. Built on a real-time OS. Guaranteed periodic permanent backups.
Anything the gummint does pretty much needs to scale immediately to 400 million users, can never experience a data breach, and needs to stay available constantly, possibly for decades, or maybe even forever.
The loss of the 1890 census records by fire is still significant today. If every copy of the quarterly reports for GE from 1982 were lost, the impact would be much smaller. The current cloud service offered commercially today are plenty good enough for even some of the hugest public companies, but not quite good enough for an entity with vastly different goals and needs. The different flavor of requirements might mean that private sector business will never offer a suitable class of service. Currently, some agencies run their own data centers, so the necessary expertise certainly exists, but that is not currently contributing in any way to a common infrastructure.
This. When "left-pad" messes up some Facebook-for-dogs startup, that's bad. When "left-pad" messes up the social security system, the army, etc., that's really really bad.
You think our government websites aren’t already messed up? Look at the ACA site for example. There are plenty of websites that suffer from mundane reliability and maintenance problems.
18F was a crucial step in modernizing our infrastructure and attracting people to work for their government who would normally never touch this Byzantine nonsense with a 10 foot pole.
God bless the people still in the government fighting for good tech.
Yeah it's easy to worry about potential "left-pad" issues blocking deployments once every however-so-many-years but ignore how many government websites currently close for several hours each day as "maintenance".
The article talks about how new people aren’t being recruited in the new administration. 18F under Obama was a major recruitment effort for quality talent.
It still beggars belief that anyone would add a critical external dependency to their product in order to save themselves the time of writing something like "left-pad". Depending on libraries that auto-update from "the cloud" and could completely remove or subvert vital utilities? What the hell.
Mostly in agreement, but the sin IMO is absolutely not in depending on left-pad. Code reuse is good, and it could have been any package, including something like your Postgres adaptor. The sin is not running an npm mirror under company control, that can do things like audit open source licenses and protect against npm outages.
Agreed - my issue is not with using whatever libraries make your life easier, it's with having those libraries under the control of a third party. So if you run your own npm mirror and vet updates (and can roll back versions if an update does break something) then you're good. Anyone who complained that they got to work one morning and their production code was broken because of a change to something external to their building should be sacked.
With as easy as it is to setup your own repository server I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't be running something like nexus or proget to proxy all their packages.
I see the point you're making, but you have to consider the other side of it as well. Most of these agencies are running ancient software, on ancient OSes, with decades of kludges layered on top to address requirements that change every six months. It's not the precise, time-tested COBOL you're imagining. Think in terms of "enterprise-ready" languages with tons of obscure, expensive, and undocumented modules. No automated testing, no documented REST APIs, no version control or package management.
Developing on top of these systems is extremely difficult and has lead to many high profile budget overruns-- Sometimes to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Keep in mind that the head of Social Security was actually called in front of congress to explain how things got so bad [1], and the prospect of using modern development processes seems like a pretty good idea.
This is common in the Fortune 500 as well. Plenty of IT and line of business development shops that build Kotlin apps and use React also have z-series cabinets in their data centers running code that has been nurtured for decades. If you think the business case for doing that hasn't been considered carefully, you're wrong.
This isn't a fedgov pathology. It's a business process reality. Unit tests, version control and package management are nice to have, but 3 decades of reliably executed business process are more important.
That's a middlebrow dismissal. Obviously there are bad processes everywhere (including in industry). The VA is notoriously bad even for FedGov. That does not mean you can evaluate a line of business application based on whether it has version control and package management. To a pretty significant extent, any time an F-500 company procedurally cuts a recurring check, comparatively ancient mainframe code is implicated.
You want to see chaos and calamity? Rewrite all those applications, or even a significant fraction of them, with modern processes. See what happens.
I consider rumors of 18F's demise to be greatly exaggerated.
It may take a few years for a shift in power to occur which results in better funding, but the momentum they have already built has inspired myself as well as many others, and I consider that to be a great success.
Code For America and 18F: Thank you for your many sacrifices, don't be discouraged. Keep it up.
Off-topic, but this page's `article` tag has its `title` attribute set to the article's title. Event though it sounds reasonable, that's not how it's supposed to work... :)
As a result, I get a useless tooltip when placing the cursor almost anywhere on the page.
This article seems off the mark. I currently work at 18F and in some ways I see what it's trying to say but it's missing important details.
1) 18F positions are filled in 2 year terms (Schedule A), with the possibility of a two year extension. 18F is about four years old and many people are terming out. My impression is that most people enjoy the work and would prefer to stay, they just can't.
2) Backfilling positions was severely hurt by the hiring freeze. That's been frustrating, but that's not specific to 18F or a judgement on 18F's work.
3) Recent changes in leadership disappointed many people because we appeared to be getting into a good rhythm. But the new commissioner loves the work we're doing and is planning to grow the team by 100 new people - bringing us back to peak levels.
Are there challenges? Sure. But there are challenges at every organization and the challenges of 18F are complex and interesting. I love my job and I am working with incredible colleagues. The projects themselves are fascinating and we get to wrestle with complex problems. We lead with technology, but the goal is usually to transform the way an agency or department works. That's massive! The pay is actually pretty good: GS-15 is $164,200 for Bay Area, which is not the highest, but we're hardly struggling.
most GS-15s I knew grewing up in the DC area didn't have PHDs (and most PHD government employees I knew weren't GS-15s as GS-15s in research fields are rare)
As an aside (apologize for the semi humble-brag), I get a lot of mileage out of the fact that I'm the only person who was a GS-1 than many people have ever met, considering if one has a HS diploma, one is automatically a GS-2 :)
That hiring freeze screwed over a lot of government agencies. People in the pipe to be hired but who hadn't signed were kicked to the curb. The agencies did nothing wrong, but people have to eat. So they lost a lot of good, qualified candidates.
Then in order to fill the vacancies created by that (and attrition since so much of the federal workforce is retiring every year) they've basically just grabbed anyone with a pulse who applied.
Any vacancy (18F may be different) left open too long results in losing the position completely. So they have to fill them or risk never being able to fill it in the future.
Hiring is not done on a rolling basis. Each position has a window in which it can be public (usually a couple days or weeks). HR is working through the last batch of applicants. Check regularly and you'll see more positions opening up.
Schedule A positions mean a different thing in the US Federal Government employment context than the IRS context... Schedule A just means a term-limited position. Those are W2 employees, not contract.
This isn’t a bad thing. I’ve worked in (not fed) .gov for many years. Most government jobs are structured as career jobs, not gigs or places for mid/high level individual contributors to land.
When you want more senior talent with specific skill sets, you need contractors or short term appointed people who work for the government, but don’t have all of the rights or need to climb the ladder that career employees do.
"Federal Government civilian positions are generally in of the competitive civil service. To obtain a competitive service job, you must compete with other applicants in open competition. OPM provides excepted service hiring authorities to fill special jobs or to fill any job in unusual or special circumstances under "Schedules A (external link), B, C (external link), and D." These excepted service authorities enable agencies to hire when it is not feasible or not practical to use traditional competitive hiring procedures, and can streamline hiring."
If 18F is hiring, do you know why their hiring page states that there are no open positions? I was surprised by the mention of that in the article, especially since I had attended an event during the hiring freeze
18F always had the air of a demonstration project in all but name: in the long term, government IT needs either are so different from industry that hiring short-tour private industry vets the way 18F is structured to is nonsense, or (and I think this is more likely) are similar enough that what needs to happen is that government hiring and treatment (including, but not limited to, pay) of IT staff (including IT managers, not just technicians) needs to improve so that they are more competitive across the board in hiring the best people, not just having a place where they attract a few people to try to fix the messes that the rest are making, whether through inadequate technical skills or poor management of tech programs and staff. So it probably should have withered, one way or the other.
But what seems to be happening is neither of those, but just general neglect. But that is kind of par for the course in this Administration when the office isn't one with enough connection to hot-button partisan issues to be the target of outright malice.
One aspect the article doesn't seem to cover is how hard it is for the current team to recruit anyone to join. Think about it. They all joined during Obama, and presumably supporting him and Dem principles in place. Now that Trump is the supreme ruler, the current team is slowly leaving, as the article has pointed out. Imagine trying to hire someone to replace you, when you can't tell them with a straight face that if given a choice, you would stay for a second term because you can't wait to leave. Thus lack of hiring.
It could be that. Or it could be that, you know, their career page simply states: We don't have any open positions right now. That would make recruiting a bit difficult.
From this article, it remains unclear to me what 18f is doing and how it's doing it differently from any other IT shop of any other governmental body. I mean, I get that they do it in agile, modular and user-friendly fashion (did you ever see anybody declare otherwise - that they're going to develop in monolithic, lazy and user-hostile fashion? everybody knows the buzzwords) - but what specifically they do and why it is so important to keep doing whatever they do?
Also, it looks like the leadership issues come from the fact that the leader(s), despite declaring themselves to be apolitical, were very much political (they just expected their policy to win so they can pose as apolitical while doing exactly what they wanted), got triggered by Trump being elected and rage-quit the job. Which is entirely within their rights, nobody is obligated to work for Trump or the govt, especially if they hate the guy, but it's not exactly a sign of problems within 18F as such.
18F is part of the General Services Administration and was ostensibly tasked to not just work on IT (for GSA, and others) but to develop and promulgate best practices across the federal agencies.
> The [Presidential Innovation Fellows] program was a success, and soon after a group called 18F was created within the General Services Administration (GSA) not only to house the PIFs, both physically and bureaucratically, but also to continue and augment their efforts — to centralize forward-thinking technologists in government under one administrative umbrella, and to provide a vehicle for change that wasn’t tied so closely to the administration and the highly political world in which it operates on a daily basis
The difference is that 18F builds technology the way they want, on a consulting basis to (non-tech) agencies that need tech. The old way was that non-tech agencies build/buy tech, with all the incompetence that comes from that route.
>Keverw: I wonder how the USDS is different than the 18F?
>>Matt_Cutts: USDS and 18F serve in pretty different roles. USDS often comes in when there's a crisis or a high presidential priority, because the organization sits in the office of the President. 18F is located in the General Services Administration and is especially strong when looking at the medium- to long-term goals of an organization [continues]
"Apolitical" never exists. What is called "apolitical" really means "supported (or better: ignored but funded) by all major power players". In the case of an Obama-backed initiative alongside the modern GOP philosophy (with "anti-Obama" has a key platform plank), "apolitical" certainly can't apply. Apolitical is for whatever VA internal paperwork management process that is run without photo-ops with the President.
It seems unfair to compare 18F attrition to GSA, as people in tech generally have a lot more options than people in other government sectors. For comparison, the ~2 year average retention at 18F is among the best of the big tech companies [1]. Not to say there aren't issues, but this article seems to make things sound worse than they probably are.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 177 ms ] threadIf everyone’s contracts run out after 24 months, and you can’t re-hire them, of course you’ll lose 50% of employees in 12 months.
18F's problem is that the appeal of government work is in benefits other than salary: solid health coverage, a pension, job security. But those are really only of interest if you're planning on staying there long term, and 18F's pitch has always been "take a year or two off from your real job and come work with us." It's the Peace Corps for techies, and nobody joins the Peace Corps for the retirement plan.
* Job security only for your 2 year term (unless you renew by another 2 for a max of 4 years). After that, you need to leave government service
* Health care coverage was similar to major tech companies in the Bay Area. However, vision / dental benefits were worse.
* Pension benefits only start after 3 years of government service, so most working for 18F will likely not receive these.
But I agree that for other government positions these are good perks.
[+] I'm aware that USDS and 18F are independent branches.
Of course given the compensation and maximum length of tenure I imagine that most people are not doing it for the money.
Also, "hundreds of thousands" is a gross exaggeration. Most software engineers nationwide don't make that to begin with.
YMMV of course, but even without a clearance you are selling yourself short here.
Is it hard to believe that some are going to be hitting more than $200k above the 18F numbers?
Note that we're comparing the absolute max for GS employees to the average at Facebook.
"Some people at Facebook" is a much smaller set than "quite a few private sector jobs", which the statement GP was responding to.
Perhaps GP misread "quite a few private sector jobs" as "most private sector jobs"?
I've commented on the who's hiring thread about the US Digital Service's post. GS-15 base pay doesn't seem so bad, but drug testing, no relocation stipend (work from DC only), and no bonuses were all pretty big black marks.
Regardless of DC median wages, housing is very expensive to be reasonably close to where you'd be working onsite for 18F or USDS assignments.
Pay was about similar to Twitter (not counting sizable stock based compensation and bonuses, so of course a big pay cut all in all). Pay was significantly better than startups. When I worked at Google I was leveled quite low, so the comparison wouldn't be fair.
Zero perks (no free coffee, etc). Retirements benefits only kick in after 3 years of government service.
I definitely didn't join 18F for money. I was in for the mission and potential impact. I also liked the idea of being able to move around the country if necessary while keeping the same job.
Trump seems pretty adept at using the power of technology to act as a lever - look at the power of his Twitter usage for example.
Doing things more efficiently is a threat to that worldview, so it must be stopped.
Reagan's "Nine Most Terrifying Words" quip (I'm from the government and I'm here to help) dates back to August 1986, so this was already a well-entrenched enough view that a sitting president could express it during a news conference[0] — and more state that he's "always felt" that way and that all attendees would know about it. And AFAIK no one batted an eye.
The reality is that it's always been a strong overcurrent of american conservatism and the GOP, it went under during the New Deal period (Eisenhower was a new deal-er despite being a republican) but resurged into the 50s alongside people like Goldwater, who pined for the days of the Hoover administration (whom Goldwater considered a friend).
[0] http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=37733
It's closer to five decades; to be honest, the Republicans have been something of a party of moneyed industrial interests since not long after the Civil War, but that didn't start transitioning into being really anti-government until they were up against Roosevelt and the New Deal Coalition, which promoted something of a realignment which made both parties more ideological and less regionally focussed. And the anti-government focus came into even more sharp relief after LBJ signed on to federal civil rights legislation, which led to the Republican Southern Strategy to reorient policy to pick up disaffected Southern Racists. To avoid overtly racist appeals, this largely focussed on anti-government appeals against federal policy.
But, while it understates the case in one sense, the “two decades” comment may be right in another: while the general orientation of the party has been in that direction for closer to five decades, the realignment between the parties was still a gradual thing, and it wasn't until the mid-1990s that the realignment had reached the point where that was hthr clear and consistent orientation of the party to which there was no significant dissent from major office holders, where it had passed from the usual stance of the party to the unquestionable dogma of the party.
Actually, Republicans voted for the Voting Rights and Civil Rights acts at a higher propensity than Democrats did. Neither would have gone anywhere without substantial Republican support, including for cloture.
Thanks, Wikipedia.
Now, the Republican policies take less than has previously been taken from the rich, and take more than has previously been taken from the middle-class and poor, but not just yet, so it actually increases the deficit by a trillion dollars in order to make it more palatable.
So, yes, the Republican policy as exemplified in what they actually pass is to transfer money to the rich and borrow money to do so.
Republicans do transfer money to the rich. And they do it hand-in-hand with the Democrats. They will even do it right in front of your face, as they are claiming to be transferring money to the poor.
Where, pray tell, do you think all that annual budget actually goes? Most of it isn't ending up in the pockets of the people actually doing the work that the money is ostensibly buying. Military spending is not going into soldier's paychecks. Medicare and Medicaid spending is not going to physicians and nurses. There is an entire ecosystem of middlemen that do little more than subtract the politics and volatility out of the government money and turn it into a reliable cash flow. For this, they keep a fraction. It is every bit as legit as the finance wizards on Wall Street that can turn market chaos into investment-grade securities by mathematically separating risks from returns, and the people doing it with gummint dosh can get just as rich.
It is entirely due to the semi-privatization of government services. Rich people grow richer by operating a privately-owned business that serves only one customer, who frequently asks them to name their own price, and then doesn't bother to haggle or shop around.
For every young genius that strikes the jackpot with a unicorn startup, there are hundreds of banal and unremarkable suit-fillers reaping mere millions just from knowing a guy that knows a guy with an inside line on appropriations, and from having enough money to credibly submit a contract proposal.
And move 17 blocks west to F&35?
This is . . . bad?
But in the larger scheme, this is bad, since it seemed like 18F was actually making some headway in improving the government's use of internet technology.
To the extent that even Trump's administration is focused on that, I can support it. However, the evidence I've seen so far strongly suggests to me that it's not.
In government, “in service to the American people" in the mission of an agency means, in practice, “in service to the priorities of the current political leadership”.
Notionally, democratic accountability should make the latter approximate the former, but in practice results are quite mixed.
Now you could look at improvements we might make to the VA at this time and oppose them, saying that any improvements we make to the government during a Trump administration legitimizes his administration and priorities.
As for me, I've had enough of that. It's the "party of 'no'" all over again. If you think the 18F is doing something specifically nefarious, name it. Otherwise, if something is a benefit to the American people, I support 18F, the Digital Service, or whoever taking it on--and I suspect that most of their work falls into this relatively uncontroversial category.
I mean, the name is already not too well designed I'd say.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18F
Looks like folks can be.
In short, the shiny object that was 18F had a really hard time doing its job of integrating with the resistant, crusty old pillars of Federal Agency policy and technology.
Anything the gummint does pretty much needs to scale immediately to 400 million users, can never experience a data breach, and needs to stay available constantly, possibly for decades, or maybe even forever.
The loss of the 1890 census records by fire is still significant today. If every copy of the quarterly reports for GE from 1982 were lost, the impact would be much smaller. The current cloud service offered commercially today are plenty good enough for even some of the hugest public companies, but not quite good enough for an entity with vastly different goals and needs. The different flavor of requirements might mean that private sector business will never offer a suitable class of service. Currently, some agencies run their own data centers, so the necessary expertise certainly exists, but that is not currently contributing in any way to a common infrastructure.
18F was a crucial step in modernizing our infrastructure and attracting people to work for their government who would normally never touch this Byzantine nonsense with a 10 foot pole.
God bless the people still in the government fighting for good tech.
Developing on top of these systems is extremely difficult and has lead to many high profile budget overruns-- Sometimes to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Keep in mind that the head of Social Security was actually called in front of congress to explain how things got so bad [1], and the prospect of using modern development processes seems like a pretty good idea.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/social-security-it-project-cost...
This isn't a fedgov pathology. It's a business process reality. Unit tests, version control and package management are nice to have, but 3 decades of reliably executed business process are more important.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/05/politics/veterans-administrat...
You want to see chaos and calamity? Rewrite all those applications, or even a significant fraction of them, with modern processes. See what happens.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13711187
There’s a healthy balance between shiny object syndrome and jdk1.1 projects. Cloud isn’t bleeding edge. It was 10 years ago though.
It may take a few years for a shift in power to occur which results in better funding, but the momentum they have already built has inspired myself as well as many others, and I consider that to be a great success.
Code For America and 18F: Thank you for your many sacrifices, don't be discouraged. Keep it up.
As a result, I get a useless tooltip when placing the cursor almost anywhere on the page.
1) 18F positions are filled in 2 year terms (Schedule A), with the possibility of a two year extension. 18F is about four years old and many people are terming out. My impression is that most people enjoy the work and would prefer to stay, they just can't.
2) Backfilling positions was severely hurt by the hiring freeze. That's been frustrating, but that's not specific to 18F or a judgement on 18F's work.
3) Recent changes in leadership disappointed many people because we appeared to be getting into a good rhythm. But the new commissioner loves the work we're doing and is planning to grow the team by 100 new people - bringing us back to peak levels.
Are there challenges? Sure. But there are challenges at every organization and the challenges of 18F are complex and interesting. I love my job and I am working with incredible colleagues. The projects themselves are fascinating and we get to wrestle with complex problems. We lead with technology, but the goal is usually to transform the way an agency or department works. That's massive! The pay is actually pretty good: GS-15 is $164,200 for Bay Area, which is not the highest, but we're hardly struggling.
Don't you need a Ph.D. for most GS-15 jobs though?
As an aside (apologize for the semi humble-brag), I get a lot of mileage out of the fact that I'm the only person who was a GS-1 than many people have ever met, considering if one has a HS diploma, one is automatically a GS-2 :)
Then in order to fill the vacancies created by that (and attrition since so much of the federal workforce is retiring every year) they've basically just grabbed anyone with a pulse who applied.
Any vacancy (18F may be different) left open too long results in losing the position completely. So they have to fill them or risk never being able to fill it in the future.
Why does 18F do contract positions only? Why not W2? The article does mention the 2 year terms, but doesn't explain why.
This isn’t a bad thing. I’ve worked in (not fed) .gov for many years. Most government jobs are structured as career jobs, not gigs or places for mid/high level individual contributors to land.
When you want more senior talent with specific skill sets, you need contractors or short term appointed people who work for the government, but don’t have all of the rights or need to climb the ladder that career employees do.
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/hiring-information...
But what seems to be happening is neither of those, but just general neglect. But that is kind of par for the course in this Administration when the office isn't one with enough connection to hot-button partisan issues to be the target of outright malice.
(Source: https://18f.gsa.gov/join/)
Also, it looks like the leadership issues come from the fact that the leader(s), despite declaring themselves to be apolitical, were very much political (they just expected their policy to win so they can pose as apolitical while doing exactly what they wanted), got triggered by Trump being elected and rage-quit the job. Which is entirely within their rights, nobody is obligated to work for Trump or the govt, especially if they hate the guy, but it's not exactly a sign of problems within 18F as such.
A 2015 blog post about "The difference between 18F and USDS": https://ben.balter.com/2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f...
> The [Presidential Innovation Fellows] program was a success, and soon after a group called 18F was created within the General Services Administration (GSA) not only to house the PIFs, both physically and bureaucratically, but also to continue and augment their efforts — to centralize forward-thinking technologists in government under one administrative umbrella, and to provide a vehicle for change that wasn’t tied so closely to the administration and the highly political world in which it operates on a daily basis
>Keverw: I wonder how the USDS is different than the 18F?
>>Matt_Cutts: USDS and 18F serve in pretty different roles. USDS often comes in when there's a crisis or a high presidential priority, because the organization sits in the office of the President. 18F is located in the General Services Administration and is especially strong when looking at the medium- to long-term goals of an organization [continues]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14672837
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/employee-retention-rate-top-t...