3 ms·

Arguable, and they are still working within/for the government. I have little to no faith.

by ProAm 9y ago

wslack 9y ago
Old reputations are hard to shake. This speech[1], by the first administrator of USDS, is my favorite to quote on the topic: > Some of you, not all of you, are working right now on another app for people to share pictures of food or a social network for dogs. I am here to tell you that your country has a better use for your talents. [...] > The Social Security Administration mails checks from a mainframe running COBOL, which might kind of be OK except that more than half of the workforce that maintains it is at or near retirement age. What happens then? The Department of Veterans Affairs has a serious backlog of disability claims. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service processes permanent resident applications and everything else on paper. If you lose your green card, it will take you 6–8 months to get a new one and in the meantime you will not be able to prove you have the right to be in the country or get a job. > All of these are design and information processing problems and all of these are matters of life or death to millions of citizens and all of them are things you can fix if you choose to. Think about the response to the hurricane this weekend - that's a government function, and we need talented people serving to make sure that people who lose their homes retain access to shelter. [1]: https://medium.com/the-u-s-digital-service/mikey-dickerson-to-sxsw-why-we-need-you-in-government-f31dab3263a0 https://medium.com/the-u-s-digital-service/mikey-dickerson-t...
rconti 9y ago
Fine. The only person I know who works for USDS is one of the most talented engineers I've ever met. He's a foreign national but was recently naturalized. He made boatloads of money off of stock options and loves the idea of solving these kinds of problems. He owns a house in a western state but maintains an apartment in DC and jokes that he "loses money" by working for the government. I'm sure not everybody's like him, but come on, give USDS a chance.

Arguable, and they are still working within/for the government. I have little to no faith.

by ProAm 9y ago

Arguable, and they are still working within/for the government. I have little to no faith.

Old reputations are hard to shake. This speech[1], by the first administrator of USDS, is my favorite to quote on the topic: > Some of you, not all of you, are working right now on another app for people to share pictures of food or a social network for dogs. I am here to tell you that your country has a better use for your talents. [...] > The Social Security Administration mails checks from a mainframe running COBOL, which might kind of be OK except that more than half of the workforce that maintains it is at or near retirement age. What happens then? The Department of Veterans Affairs has a serious backlog of disability claims. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service processes permanent resident applications and everything else on paper. If you lose your green card, it will take you 6–8 months to get a new one and in the meantime you will not be able to prove you have the right to be in the country or get a job. > All of these are design and information processing problems and all of these are matters of life or death to millions of citizens and all of them are things you can fix if you choose to. Think about the response to the hurricane this weekend - that's a government function, and we need talented people serving to make sure that people who lose their homes retain access to shelter. [1]: https://medium.com/the-u-s-digital-service/mikey-dickerson-to-sxsw-why-we-need-you-in-government-f31dab3263a0 https://medium.com/the-u-s-digital-service/mikey-dickerson-t...

rconti 9y ago

Fine. The only person I know who works for USDS is one of the most talented engineers I've ever met. He's a foreign national but was recently naturalized. He made boatloads of money off of stock options and loves the idea of solving these kinds of problems. He owns a house in a western state but maintains an apartment in DC and jokes that he "loses money" by working for the government. I'm sure not everybody's like him, but come on, give USDS a chance.