7 ms·

When is...dear educated technologists...the last time you even slightly considered working for city government? Alas, our best and brightest aren't serving the

When is...dear educated technologists...the last time you even slightly considered working for city government? Alas, our best and brightest aren't serving the people. They toil at advertising.

mLuby 8y ago
This is something the public can control. Make government positions competitive with corporate ones and you'll get a bunch more talented (and patriotic) "educated technologists" working in government. Likewise with teachers. It's not difficult, just costly.
- garmaine 8y ago
  Not just competitive, but better paying. Take Taiwan and other East Asian countries—government service is desirable, high paying, and a really prestigious job. And lo and behold, their government services really do work very well.
  - dmix 8y ago
    This is why I'm fiscally conservative while also believing public servants should make market rates. Which also means pushing back against obsessing about total employment counts at x rate but rather focusing on the specific utility of individual agencies, policies, and projects. Sadly public salaries and jobs in general are low hanging fruit targeted by short-sighted political campaigns while all other gov spending tends to be a black hole with zero measurable ROI and countless professional public grant/gov money consumers well aware of the lack of measurable ROI and crony/who-you-know-in-gov nature of spending. Or worse the phony claims of adopting 'private industry' to side step accountability via public-private arrangements which feature none of the benefits of markets (true competition, state anointed monopolies, market dominance disconnected from value provided to consumers, etc). Most of which could be blanketly solved by hiring good people (the people who dispense and use the money) and not creating quid-pro-quo incentive systems by underpaying public servants.
    - ekianjo 8y ago
      why should they make market rates? they have job security forever? Risk in the private sector should be rewarded somehow.
      - dantheman 8y ago
        also the people attracted to job security forever are rarely the best. and the best want to work with the best.
      - pc86 8y ago
        If you could do all of the following as part of a single bill it would go a long way toward getting brilliant people into government roles. 1. Pay for all the below by strategically cutting military spending some low-to-mid single-digit percentage.[0] 2. Eliminate public sector unions and most Civil Service classifications, both of which make it harder to fire low performers. 3. Peg government payroll for all positions to (if it exists) their private-sector counterpart, plus a healthy percentage, say 15%.[1] 4. Eliminate government pensions and match government employee 401(k) contributions up to a large percentage, e.g. 10% of salary. 5. Allow all government employees to enroll in Medicare. [0] The military is already getting projects it doesn't want as pork, most of these cuts could be to those programs. [1] There are legal caps to salary for the executive branch but there are already ways around those (e.g. as contractors).
        dylan604 8y ago
        Sadly, any senator/congressperson putting a bill like this would not hold their position after the very next election cycle. The lobbyists are too strong. However, I would vote for someone that ran on this platform.
      - garmaine 8y ago
        Why should they have job security more than anyone else?
        ekianjo 8y ago
  - TheCapeGreek 8y ago
    This doesn't always work out. Case in point with Greece. Decades of cushy government jobs and tons of people flocking to those positions to be lazy and do nothing, with policies that amount to tenure so they'll never be fired. I do agree that government jobs should be more competitive in the job market, just with caution.
    - garmaine 8y ago
      > with policies that amount to tenure You've identified the problem.
- ada1981 8y ago
  I imagine there are a whole bunch of “gov is inefficient” types who like having non-competitive rates so reinforce the narrative. This makes it easier for the public to support dismantling gov programs, etc.
Nasrudith 8y ago
I tried to do so but never made it past their interviewing - which was glacially slow and involved a 1/10th chance all things equal even when there were multiple identical positions open. From what I could gather in many cases the agencies were often at the mercy of poor organization from above.
- rosseloh 8y ago
  Hey, same here. I live in a very low cost state, so the pay was fantastic (especially compared to what I get now), the job security was there, the benefits were amazing... Unlike some folks, I'm perfectly willing to work for the government (mostly for the benefits). They really wanted me in that job, too. But then the state froze hiring and several months later the posting expired. It hasn't been re-listed since then and it's been nearly a year now.
ekianjo 8y ago
the government, serving the people? Since when? Do you think they install cash grabbing radars on the roads to better serve us?
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  There's one neat trick to stop 'them' getting your money. It's so easy you'll be amazed! It's "not speeding" /savedyouaclick
  - chrismeller 8y ago
    Sure that's a bad example, but he does kind of have a point. In the blog post he estimated it's saved $60,000 in fines. That's a drop in the bucket at the scale we're talking about (a quick Google says the proposed 2018 budget for Chicago was $10.1 billion), but still a decrease. Not only would it cost the government money to employ someone to go through this data and find hotspots like this, someone to go out and evaluate the signs, presumably several someones during the approval process to change signage, and finally people to make and install that signage, but the end result would be to purely cost them more money by decreasing revenue from fines. I don't personally think governments are inherently evil (though some do seem to try harder than others), but even from a purely capitalistic viewpoint that's a hard sell for anyone who cares about their budget. At the very very best I could see it becoming a token effort that's mostly marketing ("look, we're using big data to make your life better!").
    - fbender 8y ago
      The government is the only entity that does not have to (and never should) follow capitalistic rules. The government is for the people, and capitalism, by definition, is not.
      - maxerickson 8y ago
        What are "capitalistic rules"? Governments absolutely should be looking to make profits, it's just that they don't necessarily have to make them in dollars. So say you were able to objectively measure the value a program produced (costs are usually already known). If a program costs 10 units for every unit of value it produces, maybe it isn't a good program. If it produces modestly more value than it costs, it's making society a profit.
mikeklaas 8y ago
Around two years ago. I applied for a data scientist role with the city of SF and never got a response.
Bartweiss 8y ago
I'm curious what job I would apply for to improve this situation. I've made an effort to work for local governments. I've even made an effort to volunteer for local governments, and do this sort of technology work directly for them instead of as a FOIA-enabled personal project. I've never seen a flicker of interest, or found a job posting that would leave any room for this sort of work. I've only ever seen indifferent hostility to the volunteering offers, and while I understand why that could be worse - bureaucratically - than paying staff, it's still not exactly systems making an effort to serve the people. The US Digital Service was a brilliant and wonderful project to get technologists doing exactly this. It hired a lineup of top-notch staff and got a lot of great stuff done. And, yes, it paid government salaries and appealed to civic duty to recruit. It sounds like a wonderful place to work. Outside of that one national-level pet project from Obama? I mean, I got involved with a local technology/privacy group. They're currently considering suing the town for not following its own surveillance-restricting ordinances about street-facing cameras, because the town found implementing them too hard - and isn't hiring anyone who can, and wouldn't accept volunteer labor to do the work. It's not just that advertising pays better, it's that advertising doesn't actively avoid working with people for this sort of task.

When is...dear educated technologists...the last time you even slightly considered working for city government? Alas, our best and brightest aren't serving the people. They toil at advertising.

mLuby 8y ago

This is something the public can control. Make government positions competitive with corporate ones and you'll get a bunch more talented (and patriotic) "educated technologists" working in government. Likewise with teachers. It's not difficult, just costly.

garmaine 8y ago
Not just competitive, but better paying. Take Taiwan and other East Asian countries—government service is desirable, high paying, and a really prestigious job. And lo and behold, their government services really do work very well.
- dmix 8y ago
  This is why I'm fiscally conservative while also believing public servants should make market rates. Which also means pushing back against obsessing about total employment counts at x rate but rather focusing on the specific utility of individual agencies, policies, and projects. Sadly public salaries and jobs in general are low hanging fruit targeted by short-sighted political campaigns while all other gov spending tends to be a black hole with zero measurable ROI and countless professional public grant/gov money consumers well aware of the lack of measurable ROI and crony/who-you-know-in-gov nature of spending. Or worse the phony claims of adopting 'private industry' to side step accountability via public-private arrangements which feature none of the benefits of markets (true competition, state anointed monopolies, market dominance disconnected from value provided to consumers, etc). Most of which could be blanketly solved by hiring good people (the people who dispense and use the money) and not creating quid-pro-quo incentive systems by underpaying public servants.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    why should they make market rates? they have job security forever? Risk in the private sector should be rewarded somehow.
    - dantheman 8y ago
      also the people attracted to job security forever are rarely the best. and the best want to work with the best.
    - pc86 8y ago
      If you could do all of the following as part of a single bill it would go a long way toward getting brilliant people into government roles. 1. Pay for all the below by strategically cutting military spending some low-to-mid single-digit percentage.[0] 2. Eliminate public sector unions and most Civil Service classifications, both of which make it harder to fire low performers. 3. Peg government payroll for all positions to (if it exists) their private-sector counterpart, plus a healthy percentage, say 15%.[1] 4. Eliminate government pensions and match government employee 401(k) contributions up to a large percentage, e.g. 10% of salary. 5. Allow all government employees to enroll in Medicare. [0] The military is already getting projects it doesn't want as pork, most of these cuts could be to those programs. [1] There are legal caps to salary for the executive branch but there are already ways around those (e.g. as contractors).
      - dylan604 8y ago
        Sadly, any senator/congressperson putting a bill like this would not hold their position after the very next election cycle. The lobbyists are too strong. However, I would vote for someone that ran on this platform.
    - garmaine 8y ago
      Why should they have job security more than anyone else?
      - ekianjo 8y ago
- TheCapeGreek 8y ago
  This doesn't always work out. Case in point with Greece. Decades of cushy government jobs and tons of people flocking to those positions to be lazy and do nothing, with policies that amount to tenure so they'll never be fired. I do agree that government jobs should be more competitive in the job market, just with caution.
  - garmaine 8y ago
    > with policies that amount to tenure You've identified the problem.
ada1981 8y ago
I imagine there are a whole bunch of “gov is inefficient” types who like having non-competitive rates so reinforce the narrative. This makes it easier for the public to support dismantling gov programs, etc.

Nasrudith 8y ago

I tried to do so but never made it past their interviewing - which was glacially slow and involved a 1/10th chance all things equal even when there were multiple identical positions open. From what I could gather in many cases the agencies were often at the mercy of poor organization from above.

rosseloh 8y ago
Hey, same here. I live in a very low cost state, so the pay was fantastic (especially compared to what I get now), the job security was there, the benefits were amazing... Unlike some folks, I'm perfectly willing to work for the government (mostly for the benefits). They really wanted me in that job, too. But then the state froze hiring and several months later the posting expired. It hasn't been re-listed since then and it's been nearly a year now.

ekianjo 8y ago

the government, serving the people? Since when? Do you think they install cash grabbing radars on the roads to better serve us?

pbhjpbhj 8y ago
There's one neat trick to stop 'them' getting your money. It's so easy you'll be amazed! It's "not speeding" /savedyouaclick
- chrismeller 8y ago
  Sure that's a bad example, but he does kind of have a point. In the blog post he estimated it's saved $60,000 in fines. That's a drop in the bucket at the scale we're talking about (a quick Google says the proposed 2018 budget for Chicago was $10.1 billion), but still a decrease. Not only would it cost the government money to employ someone to go through this data and find hotspots like this, someone to go out and evaluate the signs, presumably several someones during the approval process to change signage, and finally people to make and install that signage, but the end result would be to purely cost them more money by decreasing revenue from fines. I don't personally think governments are inherently evil (though some do seem to try harder than others), but even from a purely capitalistic viewpoint that's a hard sell for anyone who cares about their budget. At the very very best I could see it becoming a token effort that's mostly marketing ("look, we're using big data to make your life better!").
  - fbender 8y ago
    The government is the only entity that does not have to (and never should) follow capitalistic rules. The government is for the people, and capitalism, by definition, is not.
    - maxerickson 8y ago
      What are "capitalistic rules"? Governments absolutely should be looking to make profits, it's just that they don't necessarily have to make them in dollars. So say you were able to objectively measure the value a program produced (costs are usually already known). If a program costs 10 units for every unit of value it produces, maybe it isn't a good program. If it produces modestly more value than it costs, it's making society a profit.

mikeklaas 8y ago

Around two years ago. I applied for a data scientist role with the city of SF and never got a response.

Bartweiss 8y ago

I'm curious what job I would apply for to improve this situation. I've made an effort to work for local governments. I've even made an effort to volunteer for local governments, and do this sort of technology work directly for them instead of as a FOIA-enabled personal project. I've never seen a flicker of interest, or found a job posting that would leave any room for this sort of work. I've only ever seen indifferent hostility to the volunteering offers, and while I understand why that could be worse - bureaucratically - than paying staff, it's still not exactly systems making an effort to serve the people. The US Digital Service was a brilliant and wonderful project to get technologists doing exactly this. It hired a lineup of top-notch staff and got a lot of great stuff done. And, yes, it paid government salaries and appealed to civic duty to recruit. It sounds like a wonderful place to work. Outside of that one national-level pet project from Obama? I mean, I got involved with a local technology/privacy group. They're currently considering suing the town for not following its own surveillance-restricting ordinances about street-facing cameras, because the town found implementing them too hard - and isn't hiring anyone who can, and wouldn't accept volunteer labor to do the work. It's not just that advertising pays better, it's that advertising doesn't actively avoid working with people for this sort of task.