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This is pretty usual when government and software development are mixed together. All of the bad developers I met at college are now working for the government

This is pretty usual when government and software development are mixed together. All of the bad developers I met at college are now working for the government or are contracted by the government. Most hackers I know wouldn't go anywhere close to such a contract. My guess as to why it happens this way is that they check your scores rather than your actual skills and anyone without a diploma is automatically disqualified. Their culture is the opposite of hacker culture.

brudgers 14y ago
The government wasn't involved at all. The Republican Party (like the Democratic Party) is just a large dumb organization.
mbetter 14y ago
Since when is Mitt Romney's campaign part of the government? And even if we give you that leap, Obama's campaign was fantastic on this particular front.
rprasad 14y ago
* All of the bad developers I met at college are now working for the government or are contracted by the government. * Interestingly, all of the government developers I know would run circles around almost any startup programmer. These guys design and implement systems that are designed to last decades without even minor bugs. Frequently, they manage to keep systems designed decades ago from collapsing under their own weight. My guess as to why it happens this way is that they check your scores rather than your actual skills and anyone without a diploma is automatically disqualified. Their culture is the opposite of hacker culture. Government hiring is credentials and experience based. Don't be bitter that you can't get a job because you lack the credentials or experience to make the cut. Most hackers I know wouldn't go anywhere close to such a contract. A certain level of professionalism is expected for a real job. Nobody cares what you wear, or where you work, or how you work when you're making yet another Instagram clone. When you are designing and implementing critical systems, being a professional matters. Most hackers simply don't have the self-discipline to get such a contract.
- qq66 14y ago
  "A certain level of professionalism is expected for a real job. Nobody cares what you wear, or where you work, or how you work when you're making yet another Instagram clone." Let's see... you can wear shorts, work from home, and move fast and break things, or you can wear a tie to go to an office park and build DMV software. I'm not surprised that the people with a lot of options choose the startups.
  - rprasad 14y ago
    Well, I suppose the difference between the two is that in the former, you do nothing of relevance for a product that doesn't matter (which is why it can break repeatedly without incident). In the latter, you are building a program/system that people are actually using to do things. DMV software may not be sexy, but it is infinitely more valuable than yet another Instragram clone.
- pnathan 14y ago
  > A certain level of professionalism is expected for a real job. Nobody cares what you wear, or where you work, or how you work when you're making yet another Instagram clone. When you are designing and implementing critical systems, being a professional matters. Most hackers simply don't have the self-discipline to get such a contract. Disagree. I work in critical system infrastructure. Dressing up nice to talk the computer doesn't make the code better; aggressively making the code better does. It's my opinion that the better dressed the guy writing code, the more suspect his code is...
  - michaelt 14y ago
    It's my opinion that the better dressed the guy writing code, the more suspect his code is... So do you think others make judgements about your ability to do a job based on how you're dressed?
    - pnathan 14y ago
      Everyone is making judgements, are you wearing black, are you wearing a suit, are you wearing fashionable clothing, etc. My opinion/observation is that the more attention that is paid to your clothing, the more your engineering/code quality suffers. It like the IQ test: wearing suits impresses people who think highly of people wearing suits. Maybe it's better to impress people who think highly of quality work. edit: It's foolishness to dress finely to make people think you're awesome. You're not more of a professional because you wear a tie and suit. You're just a guy in funny-looking clothing who looks like important people. If you want to be professional, do the job well, do it kindly, do it so it can be used for its intended purpose for a long time, do it with respect for other people. Dressing nice has so very little to do with professionalism.
roguecoder 14y ago
It wasn't a problem the Obama campaign had. Nor that the current government websites had. This was a failure of management by someone who, it appears, was good at exploiting tax loopholes rather than being good at managing people doing something productive. I would argue that this is the result of mixing business people into software development. MBAs focus on ultimate results instead of iterative improvement, believe in secrecy over learning and generally don't understand the human factor of software development, much less the infrastructure involved in running it once it's written. After all, programmers are cost centers to be outsourced as quickly as possible. The only person who admits to being a technical manager for Romney on LinkedIn is an old-school web developer, not a government worker. He's been a consultant for a decade and a half. His company's website uses Flash, loads six different totally unminimized js files and displays gradient images for the background. He is exactly the person I would expect a somewhat-older business dude to hire, if that business dude knew nothing about web development and was uncomfortable with excessively-technical things. His resume looks impressive, he's older than nearly everyone else with web experience, he can probably speak CEO-jargon-ese and he isn't going to make them feel dumb.

brudgers 14y ago

The government wasn't involved at all. The Republican Party (like the Democratic Party) is just a large dumb organization.

mbetter 14y ago

Since when is Mitt Romney's campaign part of the government? And even if we give you that leap, Obama's campaign was fantastic on this particular front.

rprasad 14y ago

* All of the bad developers I met at college are now working for the government or are contracted by the government. * Interestingly, all of the government developers I know would run circles around almost any startup programmer. These guys design and implement systems that are designed to last decades without even minor bugs. Frequently, they manage to keep systems designed decades ago from collapsing under their own weight. My guess as to why it happens this way is that they check your scores rather than your actual skills and anyone without a diploma is automatically disqualified. Their culture is the opposite of hacker culture. Government hiring is credentials and experience based. Don't be bitter that you can't get a job because you lack the credentials or experience to make the cut. Most hackers I know wouldn't go anywhere close to such a contract. A certain level of professionalism is expected for a real job. Nobody cares what you wear, or where you work, or how you work when you're making yet another Instagram clone. When you are designing and implementing critical systems, being a professional matters. Most hackers simply don't have the self-discipline to get such a contract.

qq66 14y ago
"A certain level of professionalism is expected for a real job. Nobody cares what you wear, or where you work, or how you work when you're making yet another Instagram clone." Let's see... you can wear shorts, work from home, and move fast and break things, or you can wear a tie to go to an office park and build DMV software. I'm not surprised that the people with a lot of options choose the startups.
- rprasad 14y ago
  Well, I suppose the difference between the two is that in the former, you do nothing of relevance for a product that doesn't matter (which is why it can break repeatedly without incident). In the latter, you are building a program/system that people are actually using to do things. DMV software may not be sexy, but it is infinitely more valuable than yet another Instragram clone.
pnathan 14y ago
> A certain level of professionalism is expected for a real job. Nobody cares what you wear, or where you work, or how you work when you're making yet another Instagram clone. When you are designing and implementing critical systems, being a professional matters. Most hackers simply don't have the self-discipline to get such a contract. Disagree. I work in critical system infrastructure. Dressing up nice to talk the computer doesn't make the code better; aggressively making the code better does. It's my opinion that the better dressed the guy writing code, the more suspect his code is...
- michaelt 14y ago
  It's my opinion that the better dressed the guy writing code, the more suspect his code is... So do you think others make judgements about your ability to do a job based on how you're dressed?
  - pnathan 14y ago
    Everyone is making judgements, are you wearing black, are you wearing a suit, are you wearing fashionable clothing, etc. My opinion/observation is that the more attention that is paid to your clothing, the more your engineering/code quality suffers. It like the IQ test: wearing suits impresses people who think highly of people wearing suits. Maybe it's better to impress people who think highly of quality work. edit: It's foolishness to dress finely to make people think you're awesome. You're not more of a professional because you wear a tie and suit. You're just a guy in funny-looking clothing who looks like important people. If you want to be professional, do the job well, do it kindly, do it so it can be used for its intended purpose for a long time, do it with respect for other people. Dressing nice has so very little to do with professionalism.

roguecoder 14y ago

It wasn't a problem the Obama campaign had. Nor that the current government websites had. This was a failure of management by someone who, it appears, was good at exploiting tax loopholes rather than being good at managing people doing something productive. I would argue that this is the result of mixing business people into software development. MBAs focus on ultimate results instead of iterative improvement, believe in secrecy over learning and generally don't understand the human factor of software development, much less the infrastructure involved in running it once it's written. After all, programmers are cost centers to be outsourced as quickly as possible. The only person who admits to being a technical manager for Romney on LinkedIn is an old-school web developer, not a government worker. He's been a consultant for a decade and a half. His company's website uses Flash, loads six different totally unminimized js files and displays gradient images for the background. He is exactly the person I would expect a somewhat-older business dude to hire, if that business dude knew nothing about web development and was uncomfortable with excessively-technical things. His resume looks impressive, he's older than nearly everyone else with web experience, he can probably speak CEO-jargon-ese and he isn't going to make them feel dumb.