4 ms·

"You don't have to give up your life to the government—it's possible to help in short-term rotations—but this is the best shot we have in a long time to change

by larrys 12y ago

"You don't have to give up your life to the government—it's possible to help in short-term rotations—but this is the best shot we have in a long time to change the way our government works." Can you connect the dots for me as far as why, if the government needs help, they can't pay market price for the help? Or is the drawback to working for the government something other than that?

jbooth 12y ago
If the government pays its employees at market prices for tech, it'd be another sign of the bloated, inefficient federal government and, uh, socialism or something. If they pay a big federal contractor at twice that rate, who then pockets half and pays its people market rate, then that's private sector efficiency at work.
- nostrademons 12y ago
  More generally - there is no market when there is only one purchaser. Right now, the market for "tech talent working in government" is separate from the market for "tech talent working in private-sector tech companies", and the former sector has only one customer, which can set salaries basically arbitrarily. If you watch the YouTube video provided, it seems like the subtext of this appointment is that Obama wants to merge these markets, so that the federal government competes for tech talent out of the same pool as Silicon Valley, Seattle, Boston, NYC, etc. tech companies. There will probably be many subtle culture changes there - programmers may stop wearing suits in government contractors, market rates may adjust, etc. I can't predict exactly how things will change, but wouldn't count on the status quo remaining for long.
ProAm 12y ago
Government often pays more than market price for most jobs. I think his issue was no one wanted to leave Google to go help the government full time, that is why they had the rotations, people were not giving up their interesting jobs to help fix the governments mess.
- watwut 12y ago
  Working on a big project where people come in and out too often is a problem in its own right. The simple reality of code being written by too many people who are there only for short time tends to create special kind of mess. It also means that project will tend to repeat the same mistakes again and again. This kind of integration projects tend to be discounted by some as boring and stupid and indeed there is a lot of boring and annoying work to do on them. The thing is, this kind of project also have non-trivial learning curve until you become effective and the more organizational mess there is to overcome the steeper it becomes. There are more red flags then just salary cap on this one.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
brandonb 12y ago
The law caps federal salaries at $155,500. Congress could change it, but given that they seem to have trouble passing a budget, that doesn't seem likely very soon. :) That said, I think there are enough people that a) find $155k enough to meet their needs and b) believe in the mission that we'll be able to make a big impact. (One thing that's important to remember—"the government" doesn't really act like a unified, coordinated entity. Different branches and agencies have different incentives and behave in different ways. It's often better to think of the government as a marketplace rather than an organization.)
- eropple 12y ago
  $155K is a good to very good salary in Boston. DC proper isn't much more expensive. I'd take $155K in DC for two years.
  - sailfast 12y ago
    155K is the cap for federal salaries, not the typical salary. The 155K number (which is not quite right) is for the highest ranking execs short of SES (CIO / CTO level for many organizations. http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/pdf/2014/DCB.pdf http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-...
    - kngspook 12y ago
      Plus, there isn't any stock/equity/etc. And less perks (for example, free food can easily be effectively raise your salary by a couple grand).
      - nerfhammer 12y ago
        the lifetime value of a pension will ultimately totally dwarf the value of free lunch and snacks
        kngspook 12y ago
incision 12y ago
>'Or is the drawback to working for the government something other than that?' I would say yes. Getting paid is not the big challenge in Government work. It's the lack of urgency, political infighting and general stigma. The rotations described here and the leadership position / division described in the article both skirt those issues. * Urgency: Healthcare.gov had it. It was a firestorm visible from a continent away. Most Government IT failures don't work that way, they're smoldering trash fires that generate a meeting to figure out who's going to fill a bucket with a follow-up meeting to decide who's actually going to carry it. * Infighting: As described, the Digital Service 'will be focused on providing consultation' not 'a group that we parachute in to write code'. They're coming in from a position of authority - above the level of typical jockeying. * Stigma: None. Finish your rotation and go back to Google. Finish your stint as a head of an elite Federal service and name your title.
Shivetya 12y ago
some rules specify you cannot charge the government more than you charged someone else. Not sure if that would apply here, may just be on large contracts for products and services.
pmorici 12y ago
The government has two different kinds of workers. Actual employees they pay directly and contract employees they pay through a private company. Actual employees of the US government are generally paid a mediocre salary at best compared to what they could get in private industry. Government contract employees on the other hand are generally paid very very well. In excess of what a typical private sector non-government contract company would pay. It's common knowledge among government employees that you can double your salary by getting a job with a private government contracting company. The essential problem of the US government is there is no accountability. Poor performing employees are never fired and poor performing contractors are never penalized. If a project is a massive failure there are never any consequences for the people or companies involved. Over time anyone with any sort of skill whatsoever tends to leave and what's left are the poor and mediocre employees. I'd like to say creating the US digital service is a positive step but unless the basic problem of accountability is solved it too will be just as bad at IT as every existing organization in a few years time. In the real world this problem of organizational calcification would be solved when the incompetent company goes out of business because they are over taken by competitors. In the government since there is no competition there is no natural accountability mechanism.
- Tloewald 12y ago
  Part of the problem is that the contracting rules seemingly force contracts to be split among a bunch of contractors none of whom is fully responsible for the project, so when something goes wrong, it's a circular firing squad. My experience is that contractors do get fired, but the same people end up working for the contractors that are still there (and since they are often the only people who remember what the hell is going on, this is sometimes not a bad thing).
  - Iftheshoefits 12y ago
    That's by design: it's built-in pass-the-blame with an extra helping of spreading the bacon around. Government contracting is little more than legal, officially sanctioned nepotism and graft. The whole point is to allow Congressmen and other connected government officials to enrich their friends and family. In turn, these officials get high-paying "jobs" at the same places they helped funnel lots of money to. The people in these comments here on HN claiming that somehow that's "liberal government" at work don't know what they're talking about, at all, and I mean downvote-worthy, comically so. If we must label these antics with comparisons to American political ideologies, the government contracting system is closer to big-business, republican-style politics than anything else. Small-c-conservative and any-l-liberal are the last things I think of when I think of government contracting.

by larrys 12y ago

jbooth 12y ago

If the government pays its employees at market prices for tech, it'd be another sign of the bloated, inefficient federal government and, uh, socialism or something. If they pay a big federal contractor at twice that rate, who then pockets half and pays its people market rate, then that's private sector efficiency at work.

nostrademons 12y ago
More generally - there is no market when there is only one purchaser. Right now, the market for "tech talent working in government" is separate from the market for "tech talent working in private-sector tech companies", and the former sector has only one customer, which can set salaries basically arbitrarily. If you watch the YouTube video provided, it seems like the subtext of this appointment is that Obama wants to merge these markets, so that the federal government competes for tech talent out of the same pool as Silicon Valley, Seattle, Boston, NYC, etc. tech companies. There will probably be many subtle culture changes there - programmers may stop wearing suits in government contractors, market rates may adjust, etc. I can't predict exactly how things will change, but wouldn't count on the status quo remaining for long.

ProAm 12y ago

Government often pays more than market price for most jobs. I think his issue was no one wanted to leave Google to go help the government full time, that is why they had the rotations, people were not giving up their interesting jobs to help fix the governments mess.

watwut 12y ago
Working on a big project where people come in and out too often is a problem in its own right. The simple reality of code being written by too many people who are there only for short time tends to create special kind of mess. It also means that project will tend to repeat the same mistakes again and again. This kind of integration projects tend to be discounted by some as boring and stupid and indeed there is a lot of boring and annoying work to do on them. The thing is, this kind of project also have non-trivial learning curve until you become effective and the more organizational mess there is to overcome the steeper it becomes. There are more red flags then just salary cap on this one.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

brandonb 12y ago

The law caps federal salaries at $155,500. Congress could change it, but given that they seem to have trouble passing a budget, that doesn't seem likely very soon. :) That said, I think there are enough people that a) find $155k enough to meet their needs and b) believe in the mission that we'll be able to make a big impact. (One thing that's important to remember—"the government" doesn't really act like a unified, coordinated entity. Different branches and agencies have different incentives and behave in different ways. It's often better to think of the government as a marketplace rather than an organization.)

eropple 12y ago
$155K is a good to very good salary in Boston. DC proper isn't much more expensive. I'd take $155K in DC for two years.
- sailfast 12y ago
  155K is the cap for federal salaries, not the typical salary. The 155K number (which is not quite right) is for the highest ranking execs short of SES (CIO / CTO level for many organizations. http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/pdf/2014/DCB.pdf http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-...
  - kngspook 12y ago
    Plus, there isn't any stock/equity/etc. And less perks (for example, free food can easily be effectively raise your salary by a couple grand).
    - nerfhammer 12y ago
      the lifetime value of a pension will ultimately totally dwarf the value of free lunch and snacks
      - kngspook 12y ago

incision 12y ago

>'Or is the drawback to working for the government something other than that?' I would say yes. Getting paid is not the big challenge in Government work. It's the lack of urgency, political infighting and general stigma. The rotations described here and the leadership position / division described in the article both skirt those issues. * Urgency: Healthcare.gov had it. It was a firestorm visible from a continent away. Most Government IT failures don't work that way, they're smoldering trash fires that generate a meeting to figure out who's going to fill a bucket with a follow-up meeting to decide who's actually going to carry it. * Infighting: As described, the Digital Service 'will be focused on providing consultation' not 'a group that we parachute in to write code'. They're coming in from a position of authority - above the level of typical jockeying. * Stigma: None. Finish your rotation and go back to Google. Finish your stint as a head of an elite Federal service and name your title.

Shivetya 12y ago

some rules specify you cannot charge the government more than you charged someone else. Not sure if that would apply here, may just be on large contracts for products and services.

pmorici 12y ago

The government has two different kinds of workers. Actual employees they pay directly and contract employees they pay through a private company. Actual employees of the US government are generally paid a mediocre salary at best compared to what they could get in private industry. Government contract employees on the other hand are generally paid very very well. In excess of what a typical private sector non-government contract company would pay. It's common knowledge among government employees that you can double your salary by getting a job with a private government contracting company. The essential problem of the US government is there is no accountability. Poor performing employees are never fired and poor performing contractors are never penalized. If a project is a massive failure there are never any consequences for the people or companies involved. Over time anyone with any sort of skill whatsoever tends to leave and what's left are the poor and mediocre employees. I'd like to say creating the US digital service is a positive step but unless the basic problem of accountability is solved it too will be just as bad at IT as every existing organization in a few years time. In the real world this problem of organizational calcification would be solved when the incompetent company goes out of business because they are over taken by competitors. In the government since there is no competition there is no natural accountability mechanism.

Tloewald 12y ago
Part of the problem is that the contracting rules seemingly force contracts to be split among a bunch of contractors none of whom is fully responsible for the project, so when something goes wrong, it's a circular firing squad. My experience is that contractors do get fired, but the same people end up working for the contractors that are still there (and since they are often the only people who remember what the hell is going on, this is sometimes not a bad thing).
- Iftheshoefits 12y ago
  That's by design: it's built-in pass-the-blame with an extra helping of spreading the bacon around. Government contracting is little more than legal, officially sanctioned nepotism and graft. The whole point is to allow Congressmen and other connected government officials to enrich their friends and family. In turn, these officials get high-paying "jobs" at the same places they helped funnel lots of money to. The people in these comments here on HN claiming that somehow that's "liberal government" at work don't know what they're talking about, at all, and I mean downvote-worthy, comically so. If we must label these antics with comparisons to American political ideologies, the government contracting system is closer to big-business, republican-style politics than anything else. Small-c-conservative and any-l-liberal are the last things I think of when I think of government contracting.