4 ms·

I heard this same story at the recruitment event. Something about creating a PDF document translator for the VA? It seemed like grunt work to me that was lauded

I heard this same story at the recruitment event. Something about creating a PDF document translator for the VA? It seemed like grunt work to me that was lauded as making a difference when it reality it likely didn't matter. The problem is, I'm not willing to work below market rate -- for anyone. The government has a lot of resources, they are just used inappropriately. I'm not willing to work for beans for the government, and billing it as a "service to your country" is just a way to get people to feel like they aren't being taken advantage of. Pay people what they are worth. Be honest. Provide a good working environment. Treat people with respect. Put a little effort into the recruitment events like you actually care about people. If the government wants to attract good technical talent, they need to offer the same or similar benefits that tech companies do, and they need to pay people what they are worth. Who would have thought?

ajross 7y ago
> I'm not willing to work below market rate -- for anyone. So your argument is that the USDS is bad because you personally don't want to work there?
- j88439h84 7y ago
  Seems likely that other people feel the same.
- iamleppert 7y ago
  My argument is that progress made by asking people to work for less than what they are worth for a large institution like the government who has the resources to pay people a fair wage, is wrong on first principles. If your entire operational model relies on taking advantage of others, asking people to make huge personal sacrifices because you don't want to properly fund a program, there's something wrong. It's the classic "ends justify the means" argument.
  - ajross 7y ago
    Doesn't that rule out intern positions too? Apprenticeship relationships? Formalized pay grade schemes like the military's? Collective bargaining? Minimum wage laws? "Cost of living" wage adjustments for location? You're making this kind of absolutist argument that to my eyes is just ridiculous on its face. Different people want different things, and are willing to accept different raw salary numbers for them. The whole point of having an employment market is precisely to allow different people to make these choices and come to an appropriate equilibrium. If you personally don't want to work for the government for lower pay than you could get in the private sector, that's fine. But that's not a principled argument about wage structures, it's just your choice. And empirically, it's not everyone's.
    - iamleppert 7y ago
      Interns and apprenticeships should be paid too. They should be paid a market rate that is enough to live comfortably on. Not sure how you can argue against the simple fact that people need to be paid a decent, fair wage. At all levels of your career, including your first job. A startup doesn't get a pass just as the government shouldn't get a pass for "mission based" worked. Everything and everyone has a mission, but that is separate from the fact people need to be paid (& treated) fairly.
- dang 7y ago
  "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - ajross 7y ago
    But... but... I swear I was. It wasn't a quip, there's an expanded version already downthread, and it was there before you flagged my comment. Sometimes, I gotta be honest, I don't think I can get a break with you. I just don't see you taking this tact with anyone else. The forum is filled with single-line responses like this. And I... well, I gotta be honest, I don't see you making this kind of correction to other posters. There really does seem to be something about me specifically that's setting you off. How can I fix that?
    - dang 7y ago
      I appreciate your saying this, because I really don't want you to feel like I'm picking on you personally. In this case, all I looked at was your reply to the GP. The GP comment was too irritable to be a good HN contribution, but reducing it to "USDS is bad because you personally don't want to work there" seemed like an obvious violation of the plausibility guideline (which is basically just the principle of charity). So I replied with the guideline, as I often do [1, 2]. It's really a shallow and mechanical response, which frankly most HN moderation responses are, and which I suppose most things are that one repeats so often. For us most moderation interactions are stateless, because we do thousands of them, which sandblasts the brain [3] and scrubs it of previous state. That creates an asymmetry: because individual users interact with moderators only rarely, they're more likely to remember the interactions. Plus there's the authority thing: it sucks to be reprimanded by authority, no matter how mildly, even on a trivial playground like an internet forum, so inevitably that impresses itself on the memory, usually with a lot of extra torque. None of us is immune from that psychology. We try to mitigate it but we're not perfect, plus we can't mitigate what we're not conscious of. Then there's the quantity issue: even if we never slept, we could never moderate every violation of the site guidelines or even read all the comments to find them all. So every regular reader of HN is going to run across comments that should have been moderated but weren't. It's irresistible to give that an interpretation—nobody looks at it and says to themselves, "Ah, randomness". Instead they see confirmation of whatever bias they fear the mods are secretly governed by—usually a political or ideological bias, sometimes a personal one, occasionally something on the long tail of beyond-weird. In reality, all we see is a random sample of comments plus the ones that readers bring to our attention by flagging and/or emailing. That leaves a large corpus of unmoderated material that provides way more than enough sourdough-starter for every perception that is out there to feed on. The natural human response is to construct a story about what happened: what the moderators did, why we did it, what we were thinking and feeling when we did it. These stories are basically all made up, because making up stories is what we all do all day; the brain is a compulsive curve-fitter, and there is almost never more than a handful of beans for data. I can tell you that, to the extent that I recognize your username, I associate it with someone who has improved their HN commenting style over the years—which FWIW is a high-praise bucket in my mental hashtable. But if you really want to be relieved of the issue that "I don't see you making this kind of correction to other posters", the surest way would be to read backward through https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang until you can stomach no more of it. 1. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20newsguidelines&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... 2. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20strongest%20plausible&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... 3. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20sandblast&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
dkhenry 7y ago
There was a project to convert a PDF to a website that enabled millions to get health care, so yeah maybe grunt work, but grunt work to give millions of people access to health care ( and not theoretical million, we kept metrics and had a score board ). However that wasn't me, I was tasked with moving the VA out of its 300+ data centers and into the public cloud providers. We designed and architected the cloud deployment for the entire VA ( the worlds largest hospital chain, insurance company, and benefits organization all wrapped into one ). We had to throw out the plans that the AWS and Microsoft Engineers presented us with because they were trash and wouldn't actually work and then a handful of engineers from the USDS designed the system, showed the VA how to use Terraform and Ansible to provision and secure their systems, deployed it, and got an ATO for it. If that weren't enough since one of the values of the USDS is "Create Momentum" we took one of the "mobile applications" that was almost non-functional and running in a legacy data center costing millions, and used it as a showcase as to how you can take a legacy application and move it to the public cloud to both improve its usability and reduce the cost by a factor of 10. People who are driven by personal gain, and comfort will never make it at the USDS. The work is hard and thankless, its exhausting and there are never enough people for the amount of work that needs to be done. The hours are long. You have no tools, and really odd and limiting restrictions you have to deal with. If you are concerned about any of those things stay away, you are not good enough to join. You need to have unquestionable technical credentials and the mental fortitude to deal with whatever gets thrown at you. You have to be able to stand up to Secretaries, Generals, Members of Congress, and Presidents and tell them what should be done. Its ok if you can't do it there aren't many who can, but if you can you will change the world.
- lucumo 7y ago
  > If you are concerned about any of those things stay away, you are not good enough to join. Who is your target audience with this little speech? 14 year old boys? I'm asking, because I stopped responding to "Prove you're not yellow, you coward" nonsense about that age, and I was pretty slow...
  - dkhenry 7y ago
    Its not some kind of reverse psychology. Having one bad employee can ruin years of work by a team to build trust and goodwill. Having to rebuild trust after someone burns an career executive because they were disgruntled about pay or working conditions can take years. If you know you are motivated by pay or working conditions then don't join, you won't be happy. This is the same thing I tell people who are thinking about joining a startup, if you are just in it for office perks go join Facebook, they have great BBQ.
ineedasername 7y ago
It's not an uncommon topic here on HN that people give up pay or other things to work at a "mission driven" organization, like SpaceX for example, where pay may not be as great and hours might be long etc., but you get the feeling of doing important work. In short, that work fulfillment is in demand, so organizations selling it can "charge" more for it by paying employees less. And from the sound of it, the USDS is attracting good talent. What you're saying is that they need to put in more effort if they want to attract you. But you may exist at that nexus of talent that is good, but also wants to be wooed a bit. There's a problem with that though: It wouldn't be selling the reality of working with the USDS. As a group they may be great, but you're dropped into areas, like the VA, that may be dysfunctional. They can't try recruiting people like you who want the slick office spaces and amenities and fancy recruiting events, because you're not a good fit for the environment you'll be working in. Your work would be part of the effort to improve that situation, but it takes people willing to put up with it.
- iamleppert 7y ago
  I think those are wrong too. I used to believe that way, but having worked in the tech industry for over 10 years now, I've been around the block and I see it for what it really is -- taking advantage of others. You can try and wrap it up however you want with a pretty bow of "changing the world" but if you have to take advantage of people as a business or institution, it's still taking advantage of people. At best it's hiding the true cost of something by not paying people what they are worth. Pay people what they are worth! You don't have to pay Netflix salary but it at least needs to be in the range of market rate. It disturbs me that there are those here on HN that seem to fetishize suffering when there are so many resources. People don't need to suffer needlessly to do good work and get things done and "change the world". In fact, when you allow people to live a decent life you'll find they are happier and more productive employees.
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. I disagree somewhat with the idea that "mission oriented" jobs must pay the same amount, but it's not an unreasonable idea. Personally I don't think of it as such jobs paying less: I view that more as the baseline. I mean, fulfilling work should be a given. When it isn't, a pay increase acts as a sort "hazard pay" premium.
mike00632 7y ago
To continue with what you're saying. The government doesn't just pay people like they're not valuable but also treats them like they're not valuable. Expecting market value is about more than just what you're paid.

ajross 7y ago

> I'm not willing to work below market rate -- for anyone. So your argument is that the USDS is bad because you personally don't want to work there?

j88439h84 7y ago
Seems likely that other people feel the same.
iamleppert 7y ago
My argument is that progress made by asking people to work for less than what they are worth for a large institution like the government who has the resources to pay people a fair wage, is wrong on first principles. If your entire operational model relies on taking advantage of others, asking people to make huge personal sacrifices because you don't want to properly fund a program, there's something wrong. It's the classic "ends justify the means" argument.
- ajross 7y ago
  Doesn't that rule out intern positions too? Apprenticeship relationships? Formalized pay grade schemes like the military's? Collective bargaining? Minimum wage laws? "Cost of living" wage adjustments for location? You're making this kind of absolutist argument that to my eyes is just ridiculous on its face. Different people want different things, and are willing to accept different raw salary numbers for them. The whole point of having an employment market is precisely to allow different people to make these choices and come to an appropriate equilibrium. If you personally don't want to work for the government for lower pay than you could get in the private sector, that's fine. But that's not a principled argument about wage structures, it's just your choice. And empirically, it's not everyone's.
  - iamleppert 7y ago
    Interns and apprenticeships should be paid too. They should be paid a market rate that is enough to live comfortably on. Not sure how you can argue against the simple fact that people need to be paid a decent, fair wage. At all levels of your career, including your first job. A startup doesn't get a pass just as the government shouldn't get a pass for "mission based" worked. Everything and everyone has a mission, but that is separate from the fact people need to be paid (& treated) fairly.
dang 7y ago
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ajross 7y ago
  But... but... I swear I was. It wasn't a quip, there's an expanded version already downthread, and it was there before you flagged my comment. Sometimes, I gotta be honest, I don't think I can get a break with you. I just don't see you taking this tact with anyone else. The forum is filled with single-line responses like this. And I... well, I gotta be honest, I don't see you making this kind of correction to other posters. There really does seem to be something about me specifically that's setting you off. How can I fix that?
  - dang 7y ago
    I appreciate your saying this, because I really don't want you to feel like I'm picking on you personally. In this case, all I looked at was your reply to the GP. The GP comment was too irritable to be a good HN contribution, but reducing it to "USDS is bad because you personally don't want to work there" seemed like an obvious violation of the plausibility guideline (which is basically just the principle of charity). So I replied with the guideline, as I often do [1, 2]. It's really a shallow and mechanical response, which frankly most HN moderation responses are, and which I suppose most things are that one repeats so often. For us most moderation interactions are stateless, because we do thousands of them, which sandblasts the brain [3] and scrubs it of previous state. That creates an asymmetry: because individual users interact with moderators only rarely, they're more likely to remember the interactions. Plus there's the authority thing: it sucks to be reprimanded by authority, no matter how mildly, even on a trivial playground like an internet forum, so inevitably that impresses itself on the memory, usually with a lot of extra torque. None of us is immune from that psychology. We try to mitigate it but we're not perfect, plus we can't mitigate what we're not conscious of. Then there's the quantity issue: even if we never slept, we could never moderate every violation of the site guidelines or even read all the comments to find them all. So every regular reader of HN is going to run across comments that should have been moderated but weren't. It's irresistible to give that an interpretation—nobody looks at it and says to themselves, "Ah, randomness". Instead they see confirmation of whatever bias they fear the mods are secretly governed by—usually a political or ideological bias, sometimes a personal one, occasionally something on the long tail of beyond-weird. In reality, all we see is a random sample of comments plus the ones that readers bring to our attention by flagging and/or emailing. That leaves a large corpus of unmoderated material that provides way more than enough sourdough-starter for every perception that is out there to feed on. The natural human response is to construct a story about what happened: what the moderators did, why we did it, what we were thinking and feeling when we did it. These stories are basically all made up, because making up stories is what we all do all day; the brain is a compulsive curve-fitter, and there is almost never more than a handful of beans for data. I can tell you that, to the extent that I recognize your username, I associate it with someone who has improved their HN commenting style over the years—which FWIW is a high-praise bucket in my mental hashtable. But if you really want to be relieved of the issue that "I don't see you making this kind of correction to other posters", the surest way would be to read backward through https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang until you can stomach no more of it. 1. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20newsguidelines&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... 2. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20strongest%20plausible&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... 3. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20sandblast&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

dkhenry 7y ago

There was a project to convert a PDF to a website that enabled millions to get health care, so yeah maybe grunt work, but grunt work to give millions of people access to health care ( and not theoretical million, we kept metrics and had a score board ). However that wasn't me, I was tasked with moving the VA out of its 300+ data centers and into the public cloud providers. We designed and architected the cloud deployment for the entire VA ( the worlds largest hospital chain, insurance company, and benefits organization all wrapped into one ). We had to throw out the plans that the AWS and Microsoft Engineers presented us with because they were trash and wouldn't actually work and then a handful of engineers from the USDS designed the system, showed the VA how to use Terraform and Ansible to provision and secure their systems, deployed it, and got an ATO for it. If that weren't enough since one of the values of the USDS is "Create Momentum" we took one of the "mobile applications" that was almost non-functional and running in a legacy data center costing millions, and used it as a showcase as to how you can take a legacy application and move it to the public cloud to both improve its usability and reduce the cost by a factor of 10. People who are driven by personal gain, and comfort will never make it at the USDS. The work is hard and thankless, its exhausting and there are never enough people for the amount of work that needs to be done. The hours are long. You have no tools, and really odd and limiting restrictions you have to deal with. If you are concerned about any of those things stay away, you are not good enough to join. You need to have unquestionable technical credentials and the mental fortitude to deal with whatever gets thrown at you. You have to be able to stand up to Secretaries, Generals, Members of Congress, and Presidents and tell them what should be done. Its ok if you can't do it there aren't many who can, but if you can you will change the world.

lucumo 7y ago
> If you are concerned about any of those things stay away, you are not good enough to join. Who is your target audience with this little speech? 14 year old boys? I'm asking, because I stopped responding to "Prove you're not yellow, you coward" nonsense about that age, and I was pretty slow...
- dkhenry 7y ago
  Its not some kind of reverse psychology. Having one bad employee can ruin years of work by a team to build trust and goodwill. Having to rebuild trust after someone burns an career executive because they were disgruntled about pay or working conditions can take years. If you know you are motivated by pay or working conditions then don't join, you won't be happy. This is the same thing I tell people who are thinking about joining a startup, if you are just in it for office perks go join Facebook, they have great BBQ.

ineedasername 7y ago

It's not an uncommon topic here on HN that people give up pay or other things to work at a "mission driven" organization, like SpaceX for example, where pay may not be as great and hours might be long etc., but you get the feeling of doing important work. In short, that work fulfillment is in demand, so organizations selling it can "charge" more for it by paying employees less. And from the sound of it, the USDS is attracting good talent. What you're saying is that they need to put in more effort if they want to attract you. But you may exist at that nexus of talent that is good, but also wants to be wooed a bit. There's a problem with that though: It wouldn't be selling the reality of working with the USDS. As a group they may be great, but you're dropped into areas, like the VA, that may be dysfunctional. They can't try recruiting people like you who want the slick office spaces and amenities and fancy recruiting events, because you're not a good fit for the environment you'll be working in. Your work would be part of the effort to improve that situation, but it takes people willing to put up with it.

iamleppert 7y ago
I think those are wrong too. I used to believe that way, but having worked in the tech industry for over 10 years now, I've been around the block and I see it for what it really is -- taking advantage of others. You can try and wrap it up however you want with a pretty bow of "changing the world" but if you have to take advantage of people as a business or institution, it's still taking advantage of people. At best it's hiding the true cost of something by not paying people what they are worth. Pay people what they are worth! You don't have to pay Netflix salary but it at least needs to be in the range of market rate. It disturbs me that there are those here on HN that seem to fetishize suffering when there are so many resources. People don't need to suffer needlessly to do good work and get things done and "change the world". In fact, when you allow people to live a decent life you'll find they are happier and more productive employees.
- ineedasername 7y ago
  I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. I disagree somewhat with the idea that "mission oriented" jobs must pay the same amount, but it's not an unreasonable idea. Personally I don't think of it as such jobs paying less: I view that more as the baseline. I mean, fulfilling work should be a given. When it isn't, a pay increase acts as a sort "hazard pay" premium.

mike00632 7y ago

To continue with what you're saying. The government doesn't just pay people like they're not valuable but also treats them like they're not valuable. Expecting market value is about more than just what you're paid.