15 ms·

US Tech Force

228 points by purple_ferret 10mo ago

jamesgill 10mo ago
What an AI slopfest of a website. Also: the "United States DOGE Service"? Really?
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- mandevil 10mo ago
  That's its official name. Obama had created the US Digital Service (USDS) back in 2014- it was essentially a formalization of the "Tiger Team" that had fixed Healthcare.gov the year before. The idea was that you would take mid-career to senior SDE's, PM's, UX people, DevOps, etc. from industry, and bring them into the government for a 2-3 year period, where they would jump into a specific government IT thing and fix it up, revamp and improve, and then after a few years leave the USDS and go back to industry. It was part of the Executive Office of the President, though it was funded by Congress through 2024 (and then via CR like the rest of the government until the shutdown). It wasn't a large group, and they weren't really responsible for much so they never got much attention. They would just try and fix a few specific pain points at a time. I only knew about it because one of the best PM's I ever worked for did a stint exactly like it was supposed to work- she joined the USDS, worked for the American people for a few years, then left and went back to industry. And then on January 21st, 2025, his first full day in office, Trump renamed the USDS to the United States DOGE Service, because USDS had money to pay salaries and since it was part of the EotP he could easily hire new people without civil service restrictions. So he could bring in new people (Big Balls etc.) easily enough. By February, essentially everyone who had been in the USDS on the last day of Biden's term were either laid off or resigned. And since then the USDS has been entirely DOGEified.
pavel_lishin 10mo ago
> Are there any other benefits? > Additional benefits include professional development opportunities, networking with government and industry leaders, and a pathway to continued public service or private sector careers. Given the lack of mention of any benefits prior to this, it sure sounds like "you'll get lots of exposure!" edit: not sure if they just added it, or if I just missed it, but there is an FAQ entry on compensation: > Compensation varies based on experience level and agency placement. Annual salaries are expected to be in the approximate range of $150,000 to $200,000. Benefits include health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, and eligibility for performance-based awards.
- afavour 10mo ago
  Yeah, given the primary benefit of government jobs like this is usually the stability, pension etc when you’re offering absolutely none of that you really need to look down the back of the couch for some benefits.
  - boredatoms 10mo ago
    Is it stability when funding bills dont pass?
    - bee_rider 10mo ago
      I think the stability is the traditional perk of government work (in exchange for a smaller salary). The funding trouble does make it seem like less of a fair trade…
  - placatedmayhem 10mo ago
    For me as someone that would potentially be interested in and qualified for one of these roles, the DOGE actions earlier this year and ongoing firing of nonpartisan & non-appointed that don't tow the current ruling party line ruined the stability benefit. I think it also casts doubt on the pension aspect, but I know less about what's required to get pension in US fed positions.
  - phantasmish 10mo ago
    I was super-interested in this years ago. My interest vanished when I encountered the “tour of duty” concept. I don’t make FAANG money so the pay was roughly a lateral move for me if it’d included retirement, but having it be time-bound rather than career-oriented was a huge turnoff. Was ready to make that my whole deal, potentially for the rest of my life. The US going politically totally batshit crazy shortly after ended up making it for the best that I did’t join, but still, it struck me as weird that they had to set it up with that extra sting of “we have to make sure this is a sacrifice”.
- UncleOxidant 10mo ago
  > "you'll get lots of exposure!" "Backed by the White House" I don't think this is the kind of exposure most people are going to want, nor will they want this on their resume.
1986 10mo ago
So they gutted and destroyed USDS in order to... Create it again?
- martythemaniak 10mo ago
  No, USDS became DOGE, which is still there, as is the GSA. This is probably just some dude's fief (Sacks perhaps?)
  - justin66 10mo ago
    Ugh. I didn't realize until looking at the "US Tech Force" FAQ that USDS is now "United States DOGE Service." Somehow I assumed it had just faded away when all the good people left.
  - afavour 10mo ago
    > So they gutted and destroyed USDS > No, USDS became DOGE To me these statements are not contradictory
  - devrand 10mo ago
    Is DOGE still there? The latest reporting [1] I've seen is that it's leaderless and has more or less just been absorbed into other organizations. This aligns with DOGE not posting anything for several months now. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/doge-doesnt-exist-with-eight-months-left-its-charter-2025-11-23/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/doge-doesnt-exist-with-eigh...
- azemetre 10mo ago
  This looks like a way to force a few key players to gobble up all the federal dollars by forcing many executive controlled agencies to be force fed these LLM solutions because these same key players cannot sell their wares to the public so they need to steal public money, once again.
  - exceptione 10mo ago
    Jup, the official term is Elite Capture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_capture The difficulty for any party to want to govern after this is... there is no government. It is all oligarch captured, the candidates are oligarch sponsored, and don't count on the media to sound the siren because, well, you know why. This is a plane that is never gonna fly again. The only way is to build a new plane, as impossible as that might sound.
nozzlegear 10mo ago
> No, Tech Force positions are not political appointments. Participants are hired as federal employees based on their technical qualifications and serve in non-partisan roles focused on technology implementation. Will you be forced to set a politically biased out-of-office message that blames the Other Side when you're inevitably furloughed during the next funding crisis?
- martythemaniak 10mo ago
  No one will force you do to such a thing, because no one who will not enthusiastically do this on their own accord will be hired.
  - ivape 10mo ago
    lol. This is not even a parody.
- curt15 10mo ago
  They might as well be political appointments after Trump v Slaughter is decided since the unitary executive maximalists would swallow all for-cause job termination protections that have defined the professional civil service.
- jshier 10mo ago
  Given the current administration's desire for unmitigated power, and SCOTUS' inclination to give it to them, there's really no such thing as a non-partisan role anymore. When you can be fired at any moment for any action the regime deems disloyal, you can't be nonpartisan.
2OEH8eoCRo0 10mo ago
Sounds like the same thing as US Digital Service.
- iAMkenough 10mo ago
  Which was rebranded to DOGE. Republicans love playing shell games while they rob taxpayers blind.
jihadjihad 10mo ago
> Backed by the White House Somehow it hits differently than the similar phrase, "backed by the full faith and credit of the US Govt."
- xg15 10mo ago
  Because in this administration, I guess it is different. The "US Government" are the people and agencies that DOGE tried to get rid of and that were taken out of their jobs or unable to provide any services due to the shutdown. Whereas "The White House" is Trump and his buddies. Welcome to the autocracy...
- bestoutoftwo 10mo ago
  [dead]
b0sk 10mo ago
This is not a political appointment, but if you have mentioned something even mildly negative about a certain person in the past, not only we'll walk you out, we'll probably arrest you!
- reaperducer 10mo ago
  Also, try not to be brown.
  - stevenwoo 10mo ago
    [flagged]
justin66 10mo ago
What companies are participating in Tech Force? The initial roster of private sector partners includes Adobe, Amazon Web Services, AMD, Anduril, Apple, Box, C3.ai, Coinbase, Databricks, Dell Technologies, Docusign, Google Public Sector, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle, Palantir, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Snowflake, Robinhood, Uber, Workday, xAI, and Zoom. This list will expand over time. Are there any companies on that list who haven't made gross public displays of servitude towards the current administration?
- isk517 10mo ago
  Every one of them will also be tripping over each other to try and push their software as the solution to any and every problem. I'd wager a hefty sum that at the end of the day every US government department is going to have it's own unique software stack that will be ill-suited for their needs, incompatible with what adjacent departments use, and offer no robustness in the event of an emergency.
- starkparker 10mo ago
  Interesting to see AMD on there and not Intel.
smallnix 10mo ago
> at the Department of Defense *Department of War
- pavel_lishin 10mo ago
  Oddly, one of the FAQs does call it the Department of War.
  - reaperducer 10mo ago
    Oddly, one of the FAQs does call it the Department of War. Not odd at all. That's what it's called now. Complete with new URL: https://www.war.gov https://www.war.gov
    - tekla 10mo ago
      Its an authorized secondary term. It still the DoD
    - pavel_lishin 10mo ago
      The odd part is the inconsistency on the page.
ulrashida 10mo ago
Figures this comes from the National Design Studio (https://ndstudio.gov/ https://ndstudio.gov/) which ironically also ignores the government's own advice on web standards and correct use of identifying headers. One can assume the US Tech Force will perceive itself as also unfettered by those silly rules and good practices.
- torginus 10mo ago
  Do those standards mandate a correctly rendered US flag?
  - mxfh 10mo ago
    New memo is one star, but compensate with 5 squares for what could be a simple rectangle. That logo's SVG is weird.
    - torginus 10mo ago
      I didn't mean the logo (honestly didn't even notice). I was talking about the robot guy's t-shirt - it does have 13 stripes, but the number and layout of stars look rather play-it-by-ear.
      - ajs1998 10mo ago
        If you scroll to the bottom there's another image of the robot with lights/dark stripes flipped. And his head is different. This government is a joke.
        wmeredith 10mo ago
        AI slop
- amarcheschi 10mo ago
  Click on America by design initiative "What's the biggest brand in the world? If you said Trump, you're not wrong. But what's the foundation of that brand? One that's more globally recognized than practically anything else. ... This is President Trump going bigger than President Nixon" Jesus christ, man
blurbleblurble 10mo ago
[flagged]
- YesThatTom2 10mo ago
  Hello and greetings from the third plant from the star we call Sol! We call our planet Earth. Where are you from?
- ivape 10mo ago
  Oh come on, quality of life has improved so much in the world in the last 50 years! With progress like that, it's fine to set aside your values for a few years at a time ... Gotta bust that nut.
verst 10mo ago
How is this different from 18F (a group within GSA which Elon killed), US Digital Service (which Elon kind of converted to DOGE) or Defense Digital Service (DDS)? Is the only difference that the current government can claim they started this (completely ignoring they dismantled the previous programs)?
- pimlottc 10mo ago
  Fortunately that's addressed in the extremely fine FAQ: > How is Tech Force related to other government technology programs, including ones at GSA or the United States DOGE Service? > While Tech Force will coordinate across all of government, it is distinct from other technology initiatives within government, including the United States DOGE Service and programs managed by GSA. These programs differ in their mandates, structure, required skillsets, and ability to convert to the competitive service. Any questions?
  - Igrom 10mo ago
    I was prepared to fume here until I checked your comment history. I guess it is true that sarcasm occasionally fails to get across the cable.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - jfindper 10mo ago
    How are they different? Well, they're different. That's how.
    - exceptione 10mo ago
      Maybe it is all LLM generated, as in: "Eat your own dog shit"
- vkou 10mo ago
  I'm assuming that unlike 18F or USDS, you'll likely be asked to do ethically-compromising things?
alsetmusic 10mo ago
Space Force, Tech Force, Ass Force. What a stupid timeline. I've been promoting government work (state, not federal) to my friends ever since I landed a sweet gig. It's awesome. Guess what job I won't seek.
johnwatson11218 10mo ago
If you want to know what you are up against I highly recommend - https://www.amazon.com/Recoding-America-Government-Failing-Digital-ebook/dp/B0B8644ZGY/ref=sr_1_1 https://www.amazon.com/Recoding-America-Government-Failing-D... This book discusses the IT systems at the IRS and VA and shows the kind of push back you can expect from entrenched players.
- exceptione 10mo ago
  I don't know the book, but I hope it isn't yet another complaint about bureaucracy in need of "business thinking". I.e., how deep are they digging to find the real players? Because you can bet your home this "AI" initiative is just another instance of Elite Capture¹ here. The last thing any government needs right now is letting its policies and implementations being steered by (and made dependent on) hallucinating "AI", whose ownership ultimately is in the hands of the democracy destroying tech oligarchs. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_capture
  - johnwatson11218 10mo ago
    They talk about the specific systems in terms of legacy code and how far removed government agencies are from automated testing and other modern, best practices. It has been a couple of years since I read it but I recall a part about a business process at the IRS that that people don't start learning until they have been there for about 17 years - due to the complexity. It talks about how there had been failed attempts to migrate to a new database, some of the data is now duplicated but the upgrade is de-funded so all the new code has to be aware that data may be duplicated. I'm not sure if this book got into it but I've also read that the IRS has assembly code from the 1960s that is very optimized and only a few devs can work on it. ChatGPT knows a lot about this history as well.
  - zbentley 10mo ago
    It’s not that. It’s a several-years-old (and still very good) book by one of the original leaders of the USDS, a group which put many of the proposals described therein into practice.
frepubtards 10mo ago
[dead]
embedding-shape 10mo ago
> Participants will work on high-impact technology initiatives including AI implementation, application development, data modernization, and digital service delivery across federal agencies. > The initial roster of private sector partners includes Adobe, Amazon Web Services, AMD, Anduril, Apple, Box, C3.ai, Coinbase, Databricks, Dell Technologies, Docusign, Google Public Sector, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle, Palantir, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Snowflake, Robinhood, Uber, Workday, xAI, and Zoom. This list will expand over time. Ever wanted to get involved in government-sanctioned espionage technology? This seems like an recruitment effort for that. Applicants beware. Remember that in just 3 years this will stop helping you to get hired, and will probably look like a blemish on your CV when you eventually need to get a new job.
- orochimaaru 10mo ago
  Bullshit. There is no company in the US that refuses to hire defense contractor employees, ex military or anyone who has worked in defense earlier. Edit: this seems like the usds with private sector participation. I know “doge” is basically just usds.
  - vineyardmike 10mo ago
    There’s no company with a policy to refuse, but there are plenty of individual hiring managers and interviewers with personal opinions or bias.
- transcriptase 10mo ago
  Right… because those definitely don’t already assist three-letter agencies and the presence of the largest tech companies on the planet on your CV will definitely somehow become a net negative because uh, orange man bad? I assume that’s what the 3 year window is about?
- tptacek 10mo ago
  This is a thing you can only say if you know very little about the talent pipeline for actual espionage technology in the USG, which: they do not have a lot of problems there. Lots of people don't share your precise values about espionage or about espionage technology, and the real jobs in this field are extremely high-status. There's competition to get them.
afavour 10mo ago
> Tech Force will primarily recruit early-career technologists > Tech Force will include centralized organization and programming and serve as a recruiting platform post-employment. Be prepared to struggle at the end of your two year placement because you have no idea how this is going to look on your resume two years from now. Maybe it’ll have the gravitas of having worked at the former USDS. But maybe it’ll be the black mark of having worked at DOGE. The latter feels much more likely than the former. You will have no control over this outcome. If I had to bet I’d say they will take advantage of your junior status to get you to do the kind of wildly irresponsible hacking, slashing and AI injecting that a more senior engineer would object to and you’re going to face some tough questions in subsequent job interviews.
- redbluered 10mo ago
  Employers would have to be pretty spiteful to look at it the way you purposed. I wouldn't want a spiteful employer. The flip side is that a lot of government jobs lead to pretty good private sector opportunities working with those same agencies. If you want to contact to DOE, knowing how it works in the inside and knowing people there definitely helps. A lot of military contractors are former military. Who better to design something for a soldier than a soldier?
  - afavour 10mo ago
    > Employers would have to be pretty spiteful to look at it the way you purposed I disagree. If a persons resume contains description of blatantly harmful work how else can I interpret it but negatively? At best you’d have to chalk it up to “just following orders” but I don’t want blind obedience in a prospective employee either. The destruction caused by DOGE is evident to anyone with eyes, as is the agency’s complete lack of achievement. I would absolutely be asking questions about why someone remained there.
    - quantified 10mo ago
      These employees will be hired by the companies they helped integrate. Not a single one will look on them poorly. They will have domain knowledge, turf knowledge, and they won't argue about working with MAGA for money.
mxfh 10mo ago
The flash of unstyled text when it goes from serif Times New Roman to grotesk FF Neue Montreal is so jarring. Elite of the elite needs no sans-serif fallback font. Just when I thought this was on brand to the new "anti-woke" font style guide.
jotux 10mo ago
>What is the expected compensation for participants? Compensation varies based on experience level and agency placement. Annual salaries are expected to be in the approximate range of $150,000 to $200,000. Benefits include health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, and eligibility for performance-based awards. >Tech Force will primarily recruit early-career technologists So "early-career" but they're going to get paid GS-14/15 pay[1] in DC? New grad engineers in DC are going to be GS-7/9 at best. This is either a blatant lie, or created by someone who has no idea of how federal pay works (or both). As an aside, I was a fed for >10 years and left last year for industry but stay in touch with friends still working federal jobs. Before this administration recruiting was extremely difficult and candidate quality was low. I've heard that it's nearly impossible now and in the last 18 months they've only been able to hire a single person. Federal jobs used to be considered stable, with good benefits, but low pay. Now they're unstable, the current administration is actively working to make benefits worse, and the pay is still really low. [1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/25Tables/html/DCB.aspx https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...
- pavel_lishin 10mo ago
  I'd wager that the "approximate" in that sentence is going to be doing a lot of heavy lifting.
- neilv 10mo ago
  > Before this administration recruiting was extremely difficult and candidate quality was low. I've heard that it's nearly impossible now and in the last 18 months they've only been able to hire a single person. Federal jobs used to be considered stable, with good benefits, but low pay. Now they're unstable, the current administration is actively working to make benefits worse, and the pay is still really low. Also, many people took pride in the service they provided to their country (or to the people, or as part of a team that did good, however they thought of it). I don't have high hopes for this new thing. After recent treatment of federal employees, and other things going on in the US this year, including how USDS as DOGE was weaponized against the US... I'd expect this new thing to only be able to recruit from these categories: 1. Outright bad people, with anti-US, looter/saboteur intent, as we've seen from other facets recently. They will focus on their own bad-person individual interests. 2. People who aren't bad, but who are so cognitively impaired, that they still don't realize that they're probably going to get screwed personally and/or directed to be the baddies. They will be bad at everything they do. 3. People who are intelligent and pro-US, and have no illusions about what they're signing up for, but who desperately need the income, after being screwed earlier this year. They won't be inspired to execute well on whatever anti-US directives they're given.
jcoder 10mo ago
There are two attempts to render an American flag on that page and they’re both wrong
- schlauerfox 10mo ago
  The Emoji ones top and bottom or the animated banner?
  - jcoder 10mo ago
    The illustrated “hackers” clothing
adamwong246 10mo ago
> Backed by the White House Yeah, that's going to be a hard pass from me
- beefbombaystyle 10mo ago
  [flagged]
mads_quist 10mo ago
Is this backed by YC?
zkmon 10mo ago
Why only 2 years? Why can't it be a permanent employment?
- givemeethekeys 10mo ago
  My guess is that they want young and ambitious people who will use this job as a springboard to bigger and better things.
- Jtsummers 10mo ago
  It looks like this is trying to fit into the same space as the former USDS and F18 which had term appointments. The key idea behind those was the industry partnership (recruiting experienced people from industry) and the knowledge/skills transfer that came with it. If you look at some other programs (Peace Corps, for instance) you'll see a similar thing. 2-year terms with extensions up to maybe 5 total years. What's funny is the retirement benefits won't apply to most 2-year term employees. Unless they were prior military or civil service, or come back later, two years is not long enough to keep the TSP match (three year vesting period) or to qualify for the pension (five years). (EDIT: Funny because they explicitly list it as a benefit, but these folks won't qualify for it.)
- rozap 10mo ago
  The funny thing here is that the short (often 1-3 years) tenure that's so common in the industry leads to some absolute dogshit software. Good things take time. By limiting terms to 2 years you almost guarantee that outcome. The biggest red flag on engineering resumes is never sticking at something for more than 2 years. Your bad decisions never catch up to you.
jeffbee 10mo ago
You can go ahead and add this to the list of job experiences that will earn you a "Definitely Not" rating from me in the hiring committee, along with doge, palantir, coinbase, etc.
- SirMaster 10mo ago
  You assume any of them would even want to work for/with you... I know I wouldn't want to work for or with someone or some company so close-minded as to use this sort of thing as some sort of candidate filter.
  - nxobject 10mo ago
    You're right – close-minded is immediately blacklisting. Thoughtful is: "What did you do at $PLACE_CURRENT_ADMIN_LIKES, and what, in retrospect, did it actually accomplish that made people and society freer, more empowered, and their lives richer?" At which point you can say "I made an interface to let anyone with access scrape ALPRs around the nation, and I genuinely didn't think about what people would do with it", and then that speaks for itself.
- ApolloFortyNine 10mo ago
  It seems absolutely crazy to me not to hire someone because you don't like a company they worked for. I don't love seeing that you're far from the only person to mention it here. It's just shouting "I'm biased and I'm proud" from the top of your lungs.
  - jeffbee 10mo ago
    A person who willingly worked for doge or whatever has a lot of explaining to do. All you know about them on paper is that they are either a clueless dupe, or a closet nazi. Either way why would you want them in your repo?
- zbentley 10mo ago
  That’s your choice, though please consider that many people who worked for those places may have done so before the behavior you disagree with started. Also consider that there are reasons to work for an organization other than “paycheck” and “alignment with organization priorities”, and that it is entirely possible (and sometimes uniquely possible) to do important, beneficial work while employed by an organization with which you fundamentally do not agree; the majority of my resume lines fit this description, I think. Reasonable minds can differ as to whether that constitutes unethicality or hypocrisy.
soared 10mo ago
This makes feel a bit queasy for some reason https://americabydesign.gov/ https://americabydesign.gov/
- neogodless 10mo ago
  > This is President Trump going bigger than President Nixon. You don't say...
  - exceptione 10mo ago
    I wonder if there are living people who don't interpret it as a sign of something __REALLY__ weird going on here. I view Trump as a clinical case of narcissism, bad upbringing, screwed-up mentors, but too late for treatment anyways. But man, the crowd that lick his boots in public for a position or some coins... They should be shunned for life. This level of sycophancy would destroy one's reputation for ever in my culture and I just don't want to believe it wouldn't in American culture. But even the official government channels have been turned into fan pages run by six year olds. Not even the most backward countries in the world do look so stupid, so overtly corrupt, so I am at a loss: why does the USA? Is this really considered acceptable? Maybe some Americans can explain how this is being perceived in cultural terms.
    - gopher_space 10mo ago
      If people can tell you’re a republican from your resume alone it’s already in the trash can.
      - nebula8804 10mo ago
        No one is getting hired anyway these days, does it even matter?
    - phantasmish 10mo ago
      Enormous amounts of money and 30ish years (about 1980 or a bit after, to 2016) were spent building the largest web of propaganda distribution probably ever, to make this happen. Plus pioneering PR and crisis management strategies and testing the limits of voters’ tolerance for bullshit (very important post-Nixon—an early major experiment was the Iran-Contra scandal, and it went great for them) After 30 years it was so good it could make Republicans who’d been making fun of Trump as a notorious failed businessman, clownish self-parody, conman, and philanderer five minutes earlier (and I mean common voters, not politicians) do a 180 on a dime and send the dude money. None of this was built for Trump, but in priming their base to never consider voting for a democrat, they made them both way too right-wing and also made them wonder why Republican politicians weren’t going after democrats way harder (they’re so terrible, after all!) which teed up a coup within the party just perfectly.
aprct 10mo ago
It’s amusing that this initiative from “America by Design” uses the Neue Montreal typeface.
- bdbdbdb 10mo ago
  If you're looking for a semantic argument, Montreal is in America
workfromspace 10mo ago
I was just browsing this website and found that the jobs are actually listed at https://www.usajobs.gov https://www.usajobs.gov I think. The latter website, job search, job details and help center look actually nice. Unfortunately I'm living in EU and not an American citizen, but I wish EU did something similar. (There is https://eures.europa.eu https://eures.europa.eu but just like almost any other EU website, the design is very confusing and cluttered)
Havoc 10mo ago
Very curious whether things are actually changing. US administration seems to be making lots of moves and aggressively changing stance...but is this actually translating to real change?
gorgoiler 10mo ago
Top level hiring is a close knit network. The FAQ I wanted to see answered: who’s onboard already, and how do I know them / how might I have heard of them / what have they done before? I’m going to make a guess that the answers are missing for a reason.
blackjack_ 10mo ago
Did I miss congress passing a new set of laws creating the US Tech Force? I'm confused, as this seems like a direct and open violation of the Appointments Clause.
- lubujackson 10mo ago
  oh no I wonder what will happen
  - blackjack_ 10mo ago
    You're being facetious I see, but I assume there will be litigation brought up against it being illegal, and then it will be stuck down as blatantly illegal in the next 6 months, and people involved will not get paid and be fired / dissolved.
cdrnsf 10mo ago
Building tech for a bunch of kleptocrats and fascists. If I saw this on someone's resumé I'd immediately refuse or dissolve any involvement with them.
- steve-atx-7600 10mo ago
  I bet that will convince them to think differently
alexpotato 10mo ago
Is this just US Digital Service V2? https://www.usds.gov/ https://www.usds.gov/
- viccis 10mo ago
  Yeah my first thought was that this already existed, was doing great work, and got canned by DOGE in favor of what appears to be a MUCH MUCH more expensive version of it here.
  - nxobject 10mo ago
    And with Trump-aligned people running it, of course, not like the purged USDS. One of the perks is "networking" after all.
  - Esophagus4 10mo ago
    I was having a conversation with a Trump-supporting relative, who was genuinely asking me, “Don’t you think it’s great that they put a bunch of [DOGE] engineers into the government to fix things?” When I said, “Well, we already had that - the USDS. And what has DOGE done, specifically, to fix things?” it just went right over her head. Did not even land.
    - phantasmish 10mo ago
      Most people have very little idea how anything works. Especially in the government, but it’s fairly true in general. Something like half of US adults don’t know how marginal income tax rates work, which is one of the very most-relevant-to-them-personally things for them to know about the federal government. The loudest ordinary citizens complaining about foreign aid or the estate (“death”, as republicans rebranded it on strategist advice) tax can’t tell you a halfway accurate thing about either, they’re just repeating what they heard, or some assumption they made (“well if [talking head] is complaining about it this much it must be really bad!”) This doesn’t get better for any other program or tax or whatever that you can think of. Folks have no idea how anything works and the media figures and politicians they trust lie to them constantly, and are rewarded for it.
mNovak 10mo ago
I know it's annoying now to nitpick over what's AI generated, but I'm noticing their robot mascot has two different incorrect American flags on its sweater..
- exasperaited 10mo ago
  Like this administration cares about little things like how many states there are. L'état, c'est Trump.
- munificent 10mo ago
  It's the perfect metaphor for a Trump-era group whose aim is to jam poorly-thought-out AI in to random bits of the government.
Animats 10mo ago
Like 18F, but pro-Trump?
nobodyandproud 10mo ago
How is this different from the formerly-great USDS?
- r_lee 10mo ago
  well, it's going to be incredible. Its gonna be something like you've never seen before. I've never seen anything like it. In fact, I hear many say it's going to be one of the greatest Tech Forces they've ever seen, maybe even the greatest.
- ipython 10mo ago
  it has the Trump stench all over it, apparently. :(
exasperaited 10mo ago
==> We are going to build infrastructure with teams of people who won't stay longer than two years. Nobody has thought about this long enough to realise this might be a problem.
nrmitchi 10mo ago
> Participants are hired as federal employees based on their technical qualifications and serve in non-partisan roles focused on technology implementation. "non-partisan" lol okay sure
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
xaxaxb 10mo ago
Doge 2.0
dragonwriter 10mo ago
I don't know, with almost thirty private contracting firms already identified (and a note that that list will grow) and a target of ~1,000 federal employees, seems like all the actual “Tech Force” public sector staff are going to be in contract management, oversight, and related roles.
lubujackson 10mo ago
> Tech Force will primarily recruit early-career technologists Baking in the ageism right from the start. Few want to work for this government, but at least they can keep those unsavory 30+ year olds out!
- timeon 10mo ago
  > ageism This is DEI talk to them.
  - Spivak 10mo ago
    So is hiring young people over a better qualified senior applicant. You wouldn't have to make it a point if recent grads would win in a meritocracy. It's fine to hire a bunch of juniors but then you're kinda explicitly not looking for the best. But at $150k-ish they'll get mid career and senior devs from low CoL areas pouring in.
- mixmastamyk 10mo ago
  Last Day, Capricorn 25s, this is Carousel…
hntway2594 10mo ago
Funnily enough I had recently been thinking something like this would be a good idea. Like if the govt. created a department with the soul goal of developing open tech for the public good. I guess you could say they kind of already do this with research grants but something with more clear focus could be a good thing. It's too bad this was created by an absolute dumpster fire admin that will 100% use this for malicious ends.
- BurnTheBoss 10mo ago
  Im pretty sure this was one of the goals of the USDS before it was gutted and turned into DOGE. Also 18F (RIP)
netfortius 10mo ago
This will work perfectly with the approach used by candidates: https://www.interviewquery.com/p/tech-workers-gaming-ai-hiring-tools https://www.interviewquery.com/p/tech-workers-gaming-ai-hiri...
baconner 10mo ago
That's a nice idea, so nice in fact that it already existed as 18F until they closed it under the guise of efficiency earlier this year and are now starting over.
- starryex 10mo ago
  And USDS, which was specifically 2 year terms just like this, for actual experienced engineers at the top of GS15 pay. They destroyed USDS to pretend to reinvent it but with new worse humans.
  - fuckinpuppers 10mo ago
    This is just their attempt to destroy USDS, started by Obama, and rebrand with a Trump-created effort. Just like everything. He wants credit for everything. I am shocked he isn’t calling this Trump Digital Government Services or something.
westmeal 10mo ago
Awful
fivre 10mo ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46277687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46277687 mentioned Recoding America as "what you're up against", omitting the important "people had learned what they were up against and were well into the process of building collaborative effort between civil servants the book _is_ good, but it's rather disheartening that all the people discussed (and many more that couldn't fit into the book) on the federal side were summarily fired to clear space for sycophants and toadies round one (the DOGE broccoli hair kids siphoning off sensitive data and doing some casual corruption) are putting out this as sycophants and toadies round two: _lasting_ corruption in partnership with the least scrupulous bits of private industry the people in the book are https://18f.org/ https://18f.org/ and spent the last decade building useful relationships, familiarity with public sector quirks, and standard software toolkit items for government tech. they got tossed for the crime of working with the Biden admin and wanting to work towards building tech entirely for public good under the auspices of the law. whatever branding and whatnot this comes wrapped in i don't trust this admin nor whatever bits of the private sector are looking to work with it in the slightest to not stand up something that works in the public interest. we're gonna get new and exciting forms of graft and revolving door exploitation of sensitive data
PostOnce 10mo ago
If you'll cut one corner to save money, you'll cut another. https://techforce.gov/footer-robot.png https://techforce.gov/footer-robot.png This is an example of a cut corner. AI slop with irregular pixels for the face, thumb melted into finger, ipad not subject to gravity. I wonder what the next cut corner will be?
beej71 10mo ago
With my opinion of the current administration, I doubt I'd qualify.
insane_dreamer 10mo ago
I still can't decide whether DOGE was a genius steal "hit job" to steal a bunch of data and place people into key positions under the pretext of waste reduction, or whether it was just truly an exercise in rushed "kill them all!" style incompetence that was never properly thought through or executed.
insane_dreamer 10mo ago
Or, they could have just kept 18F and USDS :/ Good luck trying to hire those people back, or people like them!
Centigonal 10mo ago
Hahahaha, they just updated the website to address the criticisms on this page! Fair play, NDS employee reading this thread.
ThinkBeat 10mo ago
It seems like an effort to hire newly educated people for a two year program, to work on various efforts in the federal government as something close to on the job training. Once you are done you can pair up with one of the private partners you had contacted with during your program. (If they want you). This does not appear to be an effort to hire people to the federal government, but to get cheap labour from new grads who hope to work on something cool. (But yes they will have to hire the framework people)
HardwareLust 10mo ago
You know what they say about a million monkeys on a million typewriters.

US Tech Force

228 points by purple_ferret 10mo ago

jamesgill 10mo ago

What an AI slopfest of a website. Also: the "United States DOGE Service"? Really?

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
mandevil 10mo ago
That's its official name. Obama had created the US Digital Service (USDS) back in 2014- it was essentially a formalization of the "Tiger Team" that had fixed Healthcare.gov the year before. The idea was that you would take mid-career to senior SDE's, PM's, UX people, DevOps, etc. from industry, and bring them into the government for a 2-3 year period, where they would jump into a specific government IT thing and fix it up, revamp and improve, and then after a few years leave the USDS and go back to industry. It was part of the Executive Office of the President, though it was funded by Congress through 2024 (and then via CR like the rest of the government until the shutdown). It wasn't a large group, and they weren't really responsible for much so they never got much attention. They would just try and fix a few specific pain points at a time. I only knew about it because one of the best PM's I ever worked for did a stint exactly like it was supposed to work- she joined the USDS, worked for the American people for a few years, then left and went back to industry. And then on January 21st, 2025, his first full day in office, Trump renamed the USDS to the United States DOGE Service, because USDS had money to pay salaries and since it was part of the EotP he could easily hire new people without civil service restrictions. So he could bring in new people (Big Balls etc.) easily enough. By February, essentially everyone who had been in the USDS on the last day of Biden's term were either laid off or resigned. And since then the USDS has been entirely DOGEified.

pavel_lishin 10mo ago

> Are there any other benefits? > Additional benefits include professional development opportunities, networking with government and industry leaders, and a pathway to continued public service or private sector careers. Given the lack of mention of any benefits prior to this, it sure sounds like "you'll get lots of exposure!" edit: not sure if they just added it, or if I just missed it, but there is an FAQ entry on compensation: > Compensation varies based on experience level and agency placement. Annual salaries are expected to be in the approximate range of $150,000 to $200,000. Benefits include health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, and eligibility for performance-based awards.

afavour 10mo ago
Yeah, given the primary benefit of government jobs like this is usually the stability, pension etc when you’re offering absolutely none of that you really need to look down the back of the couch for some benefits.
- boredatoms 10mo ago
  Is it stability when funding bills dont pass?
  - bee_rider 10mo ago
    I think the stability is the traditional perk of government work (in exchange for a smaller salary). The funding trouble does make it seem like less of a fair trade…
- placatedmayhem 10mo ago
  For me as someone that would potentially be interested in and qualified for one of these roles, the DOGE actions earlier this year and ongoing firing of nonpartisan & non-appointed that don't tow the current ruling party line ruined the stability benefit. I think it also casts doubt on the pension aspect, but I know less about what's required to get pension in US fed positions.
- phantasmish 10mo ago
  I was super-interested in this years ago. My interest vanished when I encountered the “tour of duty” concept. I don’t make FAANG money so the pay was roughly a lateral move for me if it’d included retirement, but having it be time-bound rather than career-oriented was a huge turnoff. Was ready to make that my whole deal, potentially for the rest of my life. The US going politically totally batshit crazy shortly after ended up making it for the best that I did’t join, but still, it struck me as weird that they had to set it up with that extra sting of “we have to make sure this is a sacrifice”.
UncleOxidant 10mo ago
> "you'll get lots of exposure!" "Backed by the White House" I don't think this is the kind of exposure most people are going to want, nor will they want this on their resume.

1986 10mo ago

So they gutted and destroyed USDS in order to... Create it again?

martythemaniak 10mo ago
No, USDS became DOGE, which is still there, as is the GSA. This is probably just some dude's fief (Sacks perhaps?)
- justin66 10mo ago
  Ugh. I didn't realize until looking at the "US Tech Force" FAQ that USDS is now "United States DOGE Service." Somehow I assumed it had just faded away when all the good people left.
- afavour 10mo ago
  > So they gutted and destroyed USDS > No, USDS became DOGE To me these statements are not contradictory
- devrand 10mo ago
  Is DOGE still there? The latest reporting [1] I've seen is that it's leaderless and has more or less just been absorbed into other organizations. This aligns with DOGE not posting anything for several months now. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/doge-doesnt-exist-with-eight-months-left-its-charter-2025-11-23/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/doge-doesnt-exist-with-eigh...
azemetre 10mo ago
This looks like a way to force a few key players to gobble up all the federal dollars by forcing many executive controlled agencies to be force fed these LLM solutions because these same key players cannot sell their wares to the public so they need to steal public money, once again.
- exceptione 10mo ago
  Jup, the official term is Elite Capture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_capture The difficulty for any party to want to govern after this is... there is no government. It is all oligarch captured, the candidates are oligarch sponsored, and don't count on the media to sound the siren because, well, you know why. This is a plane that is never gonna fly again. The only way is to build a new plane, as impossible as that might sound.

nozzlegear 10mo ago

> No, Tech Force positions are not political appointments. Participants are hired as federal employees based on their technical qualifications and serve in non-partisan roles focused on technology implementation. Will you be forced to set a politically biased out-of-office message that blames the Other Side when you're inevitably furloughed during the next funding crisis?

martythemaniak 10mo ago
No one will force you do to such a thing, because no one who will not enthusiastically do this on their own accord will be hired.
- ivape 10mo ago
  lol. This is not even a parody.
curt15 10mo ago
They might as well be political appointments after Trump v Slaughter is decided since the unitary executive maximalists would swallow all for-cause job termination protections that have defined the professional civil service.
jshier 10mo ago
Given the current administration's desire for unmitigated power, and SCOTUS' inclination to give it to them, there's really no such thing as a non-partisan role anymore. When you can be fired at any moment for any action the regime deems disloyal, you can't be nonpartisan.

2OEH8eoCRo0 10mo ago

Sounds like the same thing as US Digital Service.

iAMkenough 10mo ago
Which was rebranded to DOGE. Republicans love playing shell games while they rob taxpayers blind.

jihadjihad 10mo ago

> Backed by the White House Somehow it hits differently than the similar phrase, "backed by the full faith and credit of the US Govt."

xg15 10mo ago
Because in this administration, I guess it is different. The "US Government" are the people and agencies that DOGE tried to get rid of and that were taken out of their jobs or unable to provide any services due to the shutdown. Whereas "The White House" is Trump and his buddies. Welcome to the autocracy...
bestoutoftwo 10mo ago
[dead]

b0sk 10mo ago

This is not a political appointment, but if you have mentioned something even mildly negative about a certain person in the past, not only we'll walk you out, we'll probably arrest you!

reaperducer 10mo ago
Also, try not to be brown.
- stevenwoo 10mo ago
  [flagged]

justin66 10mo ago

What companies are participating in Tech Force? The initial roster of private sector partners includes Adobe, Amazon Web Services, AMD, Anduril, Apple, Box, C3.ai, Coinbase, Databricks, Dell Technologies, Docusign, Google Public Sector, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle, Palantir, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Snowflake, Robinhood, Uber, Workday, xAI, and Zoom. This list will expand over time. Are there any companies on that list who haven't made gross public displays of servitude towards the current administration?

isk517 10mo ago
Every one of them will also be tripping over each other to try and push their software as the solution to any and every problem. I'd wager a hefty sum that at the end of the day every US government department is going to have it's own unique software stack that will be ill-suited for their needs, incompatible with what adjacent departments use, and offer no robustness in the event of an emergency.
starkparker 10mo ago
Interesting to see AMD on there and not Intel.

smallnix 10mo ago

> at the Department of Defense *Department of War

pavel_lishin 10mo ago
Oddly, one of the FAQs does call it the Department of War.
- reaperducer 10mo ago
  Oddly, one of the FAQs does call it the Department of War. Not odd at all. That's what it's called now. Complete with new URL: https://www.war.gov https://www.war.gov
  - tekla 10mo ago
    Its an authorized secondary term. It still the DoD
  - pavel_lishin 10mo ago
    The odd part is the inconsistency on the page.

ulrashida 10mo ago

Figures this comes from the National Design Studio (https://ndstudio.gov/ https://ndstudio.gov/) which ironically also ignores the government's own advice on web standards and correct use of identifying headers. One can assume the US Tech Force will perceive itself as also unfettered by those silly rules and good practices.

torginus 10mo ago
Do those standards mandate a correctly rendered US flag?
- mxfh 10mo ago
  New memo is one star, but compensate with 5 squares for what could be a simple rectangle. That logo's SVG is weird.
  - torginus 10mo ago
    I didn't mean the logo (honestly didn't even notice). I was talking about the robot guy's t-shirt - it does have 13 stripes, but the number and layout of stars look rather play-it-by-ear.
    - ajs1998 10mo ago
      If you scroll to the bottom there's another image of the robot with lights/dark stripes flipped. And his head is different. This government is a joke.
      - wmeredith 10mo ago
        AI slop
amarcheschi 10mo ago
Click on America by design initiative "What's the biggest brand in the world? If you said Trump, you're not wrong. But what's the foundation of that brand? One that's more globally recognized than practically anything else. ... This is President Trump going bigger than President Nixon" Jesus christ, man

blurbleblurble 10mo ago

[flagged]

YesThatTom2 10mo ago
Hello and greetings from the third plant from the star we call Sol! We call our planet Earth. Where are you from?
ivape 10mo ago
Oh come on, quality of life has improved so much in the world in the last 50 years! With progress like that, it's fine to set aside your values for a few years at a time ... Gotta bust that nut.

verst 10mo ago

How is this different from 18F (a group within GSA which Elon killed), US Digital Service (which Elon kind of converted to DOGE) or Defense Digital Service (DDS)? Is the only difference that the current government can claim they started this (completely ignoring they dismantled the previous programs)?

pimlottc 10mo ago
Fortunately that's addressed in the extremely fine FAQ: > How is Tech Force related to other government technology programs, including ones at GSA or the United States DOGE Service? > While Tech Force will coordinate across all of government, it is distinct from other technology initiatives within government, including the United States DOGE Service and programs managed by GSA. These programs differ in their mandates, structure, required skillsets, and ability to convert to the competitive service. Any questions?
- Igrom 10mo ago
  I was prepared to fume here until I checked your comment history. I guess it is true that sarcasm occasionally fails to get across the cable.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- jfindper 10mo ago
  How are they different? Well, they're different. That's how.
  - exceptione 10mo ago
    Maybe it is all LLM generated, as in: "Eat your own dog shit"
vkou 10mo ago
I'm assuming that unlike 18F or USDS, you'll likely be asked to do ethically-compromising things?

alsetmusic 10mo ago

Space Force, Tech Force, Ass Force. What a stupid timeline. I've been promoting government work (state, not federal) to my friends ever since I landed a sweet gig. It's awesome. Guess what job I won't seek.

johnwatson11218 10mo ago

If you want to know what you are up against I highly recommend - https://www.amazon.com/Recoding-America-Government-Failing-Digital-ebook/dp/B0B8644ZGY/ref=sr_1_1 https://www.amazon.com/Recoding-America-Government-Failing-D... This book discusses the IT systems at the IRS and VA and shows the kind of push back you can expect from entrenched players.

exceptione 10mo ago
I don't know the book, but I hope it isn't yet another complaint about bureaucracy in need of "business thinking". I.e., how deep are they digging to find the real players? Because you can bet your home this "AI" initiative is just another instance of Elite Capture¹ here. The last thing any government needs right now is letting its policies and implementations being steered by (and made dependent on) hallucinating "AI", whose ownership ultimately is in the hands of the democracy destroying tech oligarchs. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_capture
- johnwatson11218 10mo ago
  They talk about the specific systems in terms of legacy code and how far removed government agencies are from automated testing and other modern, best practices. It has been a couple of years since I read it but I recall a part about a business process at the IRS that that people don't start learning until they have been there for about 17 years - due to the complexity. It talks about how there had been failed attempts to migrate to a new database, some of the data is now duplicated but the upgrade is de-funded so all the new code has to be aware that data may be duplicated. I'm not sure if this book got into it but I've also read that the IRS has assembly code from the 1960s that is very optimized and only a few devs can work on it. ChatGPT knows a lot about this history as well.
- zbentley 10mo ago
  It’s not that. It’s a several-years-old (and still very good) book by one of the original leaders of the USDS, a group which put many of the proposals described therein into practice.

frepubtards 10mo ago

[dead]

embedding-shape 10mo ago

> Participants will work on high-impact technology initiatives including AI implementation, application development, data modernization, and digital service delivery across federal agencies. > The initial roster of private sector partners includes Adobe, Amazon Web Services, AMD, Anduril, Apple, Box, C3.ai, Coinbase, Databricks, Dell Technologies, Docusign, Google Public Sector, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle, Palantir, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Snowflake, Robinhood, Uber, Workday, xAI, and Zoom. This list will expand over time. Ever wanted to get involved in government-sanctioned espionage technology? This seems like an recruitment effort for that. Applicants beware. Remember that in just 3 years this will stop helping you to get hired, and will probably look like a blemish on your CV when you eventually need to get a new job.

orochimaaru 10mo ago
Bullshit. There is no company in the US that refuses to hire defense contractor employees, ex military or anyone who has worked in defense earlier. Edit: this seems like the usds with private sector participation. I know “doge” is basically just usds.
- vineyardmike 10mo ago
  There’s no company with a policy to refuse, but there are plenty of individual hiring managers and interviewers with personal opinions or bias.
transcriptase 10mo ago
Right… because those definitely don’t already assist three-letter agencies and the presence of the largest tech companies on the planet on your CV will definitely somehow become a net negative because uh, orange man bad? I assume that’s what the 3 year window is about?
tptacek 10mo ago
This is a thing you can only say if you know very little about the talent pipeline for actual espionage technology in the USG, which: they do not have a lot of problems there. Lots of people don't share your precise values about espionage or about espionage technology, and the real jobs in this field are extremely high-status. There's competition to get them.

afavour 10mo ago

> Tech Force will primarily recruit early-career technologists > Tech Force will include centralized organization and programming and serve as a recruiting platform post-employment. Be prepared to struggle at the end of your two year placement because you have no idea how this is going to look on your resume two years from now. Maybe it’ll have the gravitas of having worked at the former USDS. But maybe it’ll be the black mark of having worked at DOGE. The latter feels much more likely than the former. You will have no control over this outcome. If I had to bet I’d say they will take advantage of your junior status to get you to do the kind of wildly irresponsible hacking, slashing and AI injecting that a more senior engineer would object to and you’re going to face some tough questions in subsequent job interviews.

redbluered 10mo ago
Employers would have to be pretty spiteful to look at it the way you purposed. I wouldn't want a spiteful employer. The flip side is that a lot of government jobs lead to pretty good private sector opportunities working with those same agencies. If you want to contact to DOE, knowing how it works in the inside and knowing people there definitely helps. A lot of military contractors are former military. Who better to design something for a soldier than a soldier?
- afavour 10mo ago
  > Employers would have to be pretty spiteful to look at it the way you purposed I disagree. If a persons resume contains description of blatantly harmful work how else can I interpret it but negatively? At best you’d have to chalk it up to “just following orders” but I don’t want blind obedience in a prospective employee either. The destruction caused by DOGE is evident to anyone with eyes, as is the agency’s complete lack of achievement. I would absolutely be asking questions about why someone remained there.
  - quantified 10mo ago
    These employees will be hired by the companies they helped integrate. Not a single one will look on them poorly. They will have domain knowledge, turf knowledge, and they won't argue about working with MAGA for money.

mxfh 10mo ago

The flash of unstyled text when it goes from serif Times New Roman to grotesk FF Neue Montreal is so jarring. Elite of the elite needs no sans-serif fallback font. Just when I thought this was on brand to the new "anti-woke" font style guide.

jotux 10mo ago

>What is the expected compensation for participants? Compensation varies based on experience level and agency placement. Annual salaries are expected to be in the approximate range of $150,000 to $200,000. Benefits include health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, and eligibility for performance-based awards. >Tech Force will primarily recruit early-career technologists So "early-career" but they're going to get paid GS-14/15 pay[1] in DC? New grad engineers in DC are going to be GS-7/9 at best. This is either a blatant lie, or created by someone who has no idea of how federal pay works (or both). As an aside, I was a fed for >10 years and left last year for industry but stay in touch with friends still working federal jobs. Before this administration recruiting was extremely difficult and candidate quality was low. I've heard that it's nearly impossible now and in the last 18 months they've only been able to hire a single person. Federal jobs used to be considered stable, with good benefits, but low pay. Now they're unstable, the current administration is actively working to make benefits worse, and the pay is still really low. [1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/25Tables/html/DCB.aspx https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...

pavel_lishin 10mo ago
I'd wager that the "approximate" in that sentence is going to be doing a lot of heavy lifting.
neilv 10mo ago
> Before this administration recruiting was extremely difficult and candidate quality was low. I've heard that it's nearly impossible now and in the last 18 months they've only been able to hire a single person. Federal jobs used to be considered stable, with good benefits, but low pay. Now they're unstable, the current administration is actively working to make benefits worse, and the pay is still really low. Also, many people took pride in the service they provided to their country (or to the people, or as part of a team that did good, however they thought of it). I don't have high hopes for this new thing. After recent treatment of federal employees, and other things going on in the US this year, including how USDS as DOGE was weaponized against the US... I'd expect this new thing to only be able to recruit from these categories: 1. Outright bad people, with anti-US, looter/saboteur intent, as we've seen from other facets recently. They will focus on their own bad-person individual interests. 2. People who aren't bad, but who are so cognitively impaired, that they still don't realize that they're probably going to get screwed personally and/or directed to be the baddies. They will be bad at everything they do. 3. People who are intelligent and pro-US, and have no illusions about what they're signing up for, but who desperately need the income, after being screwed earlier this year. They won't be inspired to execute well on whatever anti-US directives they're given.

jcoder 10mo ago

There are two attempts to render an American flag on that page and they’re both wrong

schlauerfox 10mo ago
The Emoji ones top and bottom or the animated banner?
- jcoder 10mo ago
  The illustrated “hackers” clothing

adamwong246 10mo ago

> Backed by the White House Yeah, that's going to be a hard pass from me

beefbombaystyle 10mo ago
[flagged]

mads_quist 10mo ago

Is this backed by YC?

zkmon 10mo ago

Why only 2 years? Why can't it be a permanent employment?

givemeethekeys 10mo ago
My guess is that they want young and ambitious people who will use this job as a springboard to bigger and better things.
Jtsummers 10mo ago
It looks like this is trying to fit into the same space as the former USDS and F18 which had term appointments. The key idea behind those was the industry partnership (recruiting experienced people from industry) and the knowledge/skills transfer that came with it. If you look at some other programs (Peace Corps, for instance) you'll see a similar thing. 2-year terms with extensions up to maybe 5 total years. What's funny is the retirement benefits won't apply to most 2-year term employees. Unless they were prior military or civil service, or come back later, two years is not long enough to keep the TSP match (three year vesting period) or to qualify for the pension (five years). (EDIT: Funny because they explicitly list it as a benefit, but these folks won't qualify for it.)
rozap 10mo ago
The funny thing here is that the short (often 1-3 years) tenure that's so common in the industry leads to some absolute dogshit software. Good things take time. By limiting terms to 2 years you almost guarantee that outcome. The biggest red flag on engineering resumes is never sticking at something for more than 2 years. Your bad decisions never catch up to you.

jeffbee 10mo ago

You can go ahead and add this to the list of job experiences that will earn you a "Definitely Not" rating from me in the hiring committee, along with doge, palantir, coinbase, etc.

SirMaster 10mo ago
You assume any of them would even want to work for/with you... I know I wouldn't want to work for or with someone or some company so close-minded as to use this sort of thing as some sort of candidate filter.
- nxobject 10mo ago
  You're right – close-minded is immediately blacklisting. Thoughtful is: "What did you do at $PLACE_CURRENT_ADMIN_LIKES, and what, in retrospect, did it actually accomplish that made people and society freer, more empowered, and their lives richer?" At which point you can say "I made an interface to let anyone with access scrape ALPRs around the nation, and I genuinely didn't think about what people would do with it", and then that speaks for itself.
ApolloFortyNine 10mo ago
It seems absolutely crazy to me not to hire someone because you don't like a company they worked for. I don't love seeing that you're far from the only person to mention it here. It's just shouting "I'm biased and I'm proud" from the top of your lungs.
- jeffbee 10mo ago
  A person who willingly worked for doge or whatever has a lot of explaining to do. All you know about them on paper is that they are either a clueless dupe, or a closet nazi. Either way why would you want them in your repo?
zbentley 10mo ago
That’s your choice, though please consider that many people who worked for those places may have done so before the behavior you disagree with started. Also consider that there are reasons to work for an organization other than “paycheck” and “alignment with organization priorities”, and that it is entirely possible (and sometimes uniquely possible) to do important, beneficial work while employed by an organization with which you fundamentally do not agree; the majority of my resume lines fit this description, I think. Reasonable minds can differ as to whether that constitutes unethicality or hypocrisy.

soared 10mo ago

This makes feel a bit queasy for some reason https://americabydesign.gov/ https://americabydesign.gov/

neogodless 10mo ago
> This is President Trump going bigger than President Nixon. You don't say...
- exceptione 10mo ago
  I wonder if there are living people who don't interpret it as a sign of something __REALLY__ weird going on here. I view Trump as a clinical case of narcissism, bad upbringing, screwed-up mentors, but too late for treatment anyways. But man, the crowd that lick his boots in public for a position or some coins... They should be shunned for life. This level of sycophancy would destroy one's reputation for ever in my culture and I just don't want to believe it wouldn't in American culture. But even the official government channels have been turned into fan pages run by six year olds. Not even the most backward countries in the world do look so stupid, so overtly corrupt, so I am at a loss: why does the USA? Is this really considered acceptable? Maybe some Americans can explain how this is being perceived in cultural terms.
  - gopher_space 10mo ago
    If people can tell you’re a republican from your resume alone it’s already in the trash can.
    - nebula8804 10mo ago
      No one is getting hired anyway these days, does it even matter?
  - phantasmish 10mo ago
    Enormous amounts of money and 30ish years (about 1980 or a bit after, to 2016) were spent building the largest web of propaganda distribution probably ever, to make this happen. Plus pioneering PR and crisis management strategies and testing the limits of voters’ tolerance for bullshit (very important post-Nixon—an early major experiment was the Iran-Contra scandal, and it went great for them) After 30 years it was so good it could make Republicans who’d been making fun of Trump as a notorious failed businessman, clownish self-parody, conman, and philanderer five minutes earlier (and I mean common voters, not politicians) do a 180 on a dime and send the dude money. None of this was built for Trump, but in priming their base to never consider voting for a democrat, they made them both way too right-wing and also made them wonder why Republican politicians weren’t going after democrats way harder (they’re so terrible, after all!) which teed up a coup within the party just perfectly.

aprct 10mo ago

It’s amusing that this initiative from “America by Design” uses the Neue Montreal typeface.

bdbdbdb 10mo ago
If you're looking for a semantic argument, Montreal is in America

workfromspace 10mo ago

I was just browsing this website and found that the jobs are actually listed at https://www.usajobs.gov https://www.usajobs.gov I think. The latter website, job search, job details and help center look actually nice. Unfortunately I'm living in EU and not an American citizen, but I wish EU did something similar. (There is https://eures.europa.eu https://eures.europa.eu but just like almost any other EU website, the design is very confusing and cluttered)

Havoc 10mo ago

Very curious whether things are actually changing. US administration seems to be making lots of moves and aggressively changing stance...but is this actually translating to real change?

gorgoiler 10mo ago

Top level hiring is a close knit network. The FAQ I wanted to see answered: who’s onboard already, and how do I know them / how might I have heard of them / what have they done before? I’m going to make a guess that the answers are missing for a reason.

blackjack_ 10mo ago

Did I miss congress passing a new set of laws creating the US Tech Force? I'm confused, as this seems like a direct and open violation of the Appointments Clause.

lubujackson 10mo ago
oh no I wonder what will happen
- blackjack_ 10mo ago
  You're being facetious I see, but I assume there will be litigation brought up against it being illegal, and then it will be stuck down as blatantly illegal in the next 6 months, and people involved will not get paid and be fired / dissolved.

cdrnsf 10mo ago

Building tech for a bunch of kleptocrats and fascists. If I saw this on someone's resumé I'd immediately refuse or dissolve any involvement with them.

steve-atx-7600 10mo ago
I bet that will convince them to think differently

alexpotato 10mo ago

Is this just US Digital Service V2? https://www.usds.gov/ https://www.usds.gov/

viccis 10mo ago
Yeah my first thought was that this already existed, was doing great work, and got canned by DOGE in favor of what appears to be a MUCH MUCH more expensive version of it here.
- nxobject 10mo ago
  And with Trump-aligned people running it, of course, not like the purged USDS. One of the perks is "networking" after all.
- Esophagus4 10mo ago
  I was having a conversation with a Trump-supporting relative, who was genuinely asking me, “Don’t you think it’s great that they put a bunch of [DOGE] engineers into the government to fix things?” When I said, “Well, we already had that - the USDS. And what has DOGE done, specifically, to fix things?” it just went right over her head. Did not even land.
  - phantasmish 10mo ago
    Most people have very little idea how anything works. Especially in the government, but it’s fairly true in general. Something like half of US adults don’t know how marginal income tax rates work, which is one of the very most-relevant-to-them-personally things for them to know about the federal government. The loudest ordinary citizens complaining about foreign aid or the estate (“death”, as republicans rebranded it on strategist advice) tax can’t tell you a halfway accurate thing about either, they’re just repeating what they heard, or some assumption they made (“well if [talking head] is complaining about it this much it must be really bad!”) This doesn’t get better for any other program or tax or whatever that you can think of. Folks have no idea how anything works and the media figures and politicians they trust lie to them constantly, and are rewarded for it.

mNovak 10mo ago

I know it's annoying now to nitpick over what's AI generated, but I'm noticing their robot mascot has two different incorrect American flags on its sweater..

exasperaited 10mo ago
Like this administration cares about little things like how many states there are. L'état, c'est Trump.
munificent 10mo ago
It's the perfect metaphor for a Trump-era group whose aim is to jam poorly-thought-out AI in to random bits of the government.

Animats 10mo ago

Like 18F, but pro-Trump?

nobodyandproud 10mo ago

How is this different from the formerly-great USDS?

r_lee 10mo ago
well, it's going to be incredible. Its gonna be something like you've never seen before. I've never seen anything like it. In fact, I hear many say it's going to be one of the greatest Tech Forces they've ever seen, maybe even the greatest.
ipython 10mo ago
it has the Trump stench all over it, apparently. :(

exasperaited 10mo ago

==> We are going to build infrastructure with teams of people who won't stay longer than two years. Nobody has thought about this long enough to realise this might be a problem.

nrmitchi 10mo ago

> Participants are hired as federal employees based on their technical qualifications and serve in non-partisan roles focused on technology implementation. "non-partisan" lol okay sure

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

xaxaxb 10mo ago

Doge 2.0

dragonwriter 10mo ago

I don't know, with almost thirty private contracting firms already identified (and a note that that list will grow) and a target of ~1,000 federal employees, seems like all the actual “Tech Force” public sector staff are going to be in contract management, oversight, and related roles.

lubujackson 10mo ago

> Tech Force will primarily recruit early-career technologists Baking in the ageism right from the start. Few want to work for this government, but at least they can keep those unsavory 30+ year olds out!

timeon 10mo ago
> ageism This is DEI talk to them.
- Spivak 10mo ago
  So is hiring young people over a better qualified senior applicant. You wouldn't have to make it a point if recent grads would win in a meritocracy. It's fine to hire a bunch of juniors but then you're kinda explicitly not looking for the best. But at $150k-ish they'll get mid career and senior devs from low CoL areas pouring in.
mixmastamyk 10mo ago
Last Day, Capricorn 25s, this is Carousel…

hntway2594 10mo ago

Funnily enough I had recently been thinking something like this would be a good idea. Like if the govt. created a department with the soul goal of developing open tech for the public good. I guess you could say they kind of already do this with research grants but something with more clear focus could be a good thing. It's too bad this was created by an absolute dumpster fire admin that will 100% use this for malicious ends.

BurnTheBoss 10mo ago
Im pretty sure this was one of the goals of the USDS before it was gutted and turned into DOGE. Also 18F (RIP)

netfortius 10mo ago

This will work perfectly with the approach used by candidates: https://www.interviewquery.com/p/tech-workers-gaming-ai-hiring-tools https://www.interviewquery.com/p/tech-workers-gaming-ai-hiri...

baconner 10mo ago

That's a nice idea, so nice in fact that it already existed as 18F until they closed it under the guise of efficiency earlier this year and are now starting over.

starryex 10mo ago
And USDS, which was specifically 2 year terms just like this, for actual experienced engineers at the top of GS15 pay. They destroyed USDS to pretend to reinvent it but with new worse humans.
- fuckinpuppers 10mo ago
  This is just their attempt to destroy USDS, started by Obama, and rebrand with a Trump-created effort. Just like everything. He wants credit for everything. I am shocked he isn’t calling this Trump Digital Government Services or something.

westmeal 10mo ago

Awful

fivre 10mo ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46277687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46277687 mentioned Recoding America as "what you're up against", omitting the important "people had learned what they were up against and were well into the process of building collaborative effort between civil servants the book _is_ good, but it's rather disheartening that all the people discussed (and many more that couldn't fit into the book) on the federal side were summarily fired to clear space for sycophants and toadies round one (the DOGE broccoli hair kids siphoning off sensitive data and doing some casual corruption) are putting out this as sycophants and toadies round two: _lasting_ corruption in partnership with the least scrupulous bits of private industry the people in the book are https://18f.org/ https://18f.org/ and spent the last decade building useful relationships, familiarity with public sector quirks, and standard software toolkit items for government tech. they got tossed for the crime of working with the Biden admin and wanting to work towards building tech entirely for public good under the auspices of the law. whatever branding and whatnot this comes wrapped in i don't trust this admin nor whatever bits of the private sector are looking to work with it in the slightest to not stand up something that works in the public interest. we're gonna get new and exciting forms of graft and revolving door exploitation of sensitive data

PostOnce 10mo ago

If you'll cut one corner to save money, you'll cut another. https://techforce.gov/footer-robot.png https://techforce.gov/footer-robot.png This is an example of a cut corner. AI slop with irregular pixels for the face, thumb melted into finger, ipad not subject to gravity. I wonder what the next cut corner will be?

beej71 10mo ago

With my opinion of the current administration, I doubt I'd qualify.

insane_dreamer 10mo ago

I still can't decide whether DOGE was a genius steal "hit job" to steal a bunch of data and place people into key positions under the pretext of waste reduction, or whether it was just truly an exercise in rushed "kill them all!" style incompetence that was never properly thought through or executed.

insane_dreamer 10mo ago

Or, they could have just kept 18F and USDS :/ Good luck trying to hire those people back, or people like them!

Centigonal 10mo ago

Hahahaha, they just updated the website to address the criticisms on this page! Fair play, NDS employee reading this thread.

ThinkBeat 10mo ago

It seems like an effort to hire newly educated people for a two year program, to work on various efforts in the federal government as something close to on the job training. Once you are done you can pair up with one of the private partners you had contacted with during your program. (If they want you). This does not appear to be an effort to hire people to the federal government, but to get cheap labour from new grads who hope to work on something cool. (But yes they will have to hire the framework people)

HardwareLust 10mo ago

You know what they say about a million monkeys on a million typewriters.