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Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

164 points by hodgesmr 11y ago

acabrahams 11y ago
I'm sure this is a stupid question, but after a few minutes of googling I am still unclear on the answer so I thought I'd ask it here. I am about to start studying in the US (college), so I was wondering if the USDS accepts non-American citizens? Even without a green card? (I'm British, btw).
- nacin 11y ago
  18F can hire legal permanent residents.
pp19dd 11y ago
I didn't catch this part- why did the author leave? Was it just a term end and he chose not to renew it?
- gkoberger 11y ago
  They do "tours of duty", since I think they found people had a hard time moving to DC permanently. Using this, they've managed to get a lot of people to take sabbaticals from their Google/FB/etc jobs. "Quit your high paying job and indefinitely work for the government" is a hard sell; "come do something awesome for 6 months then go back" is much easier.
  - rayiner 11y ago
    I.e. the revolving door.
    - jacobolus 11y ago
      No, “the revolving door” refers to people spending time working as legislators/executive officials, and then going to work in the same industry they were regulating, and basically getting time-shifted favors/salary in return for their help while in office. Spending 6 months or whatever working as a programmer for the US Digital Service and then going back to a job in industry is something quite different.
      - rayiner 11y ago
        Won't argue that doesn't happen, but it's overstated. People from industry go into government for the same reason people join the digital service: because they think that the skills and knowledge they gained in industry can let them do the job better than the government can without them.[1] And these appointments are temporary for the same reason digital service appointments are temporary: people are only so willing to sign on for salary-capped government positions for so long. The only difference is the intent and motivation you're ascribing to the respective actors. [1] I think very few people would disagree with the assertion that a Googler knows tech better than anyone in government. The fact is that pretty much everyone in every industry feels the same way. Everyone thinks that the public interest would be served if only the government folks in charge were people who "get it" like they do.
        walshemj 11y ago
        That's a big ask Googles software requires a different mind set than say correctly calculating veterans pensions. From googles perspective having 2 or 3% suboptimal query's is fine but that wont pass muster for other types of work. Try building billing systems for a global Telco and have one of Vint Cerfs reports nudge you and say this had be right otherwise we are both out of a job :-)
        linkregister 11y ago
        I'm pretty sure that a billing error in Adwords would cause a fairly large controversy!
        walshemj 11y ago
        True and I bet that they pay more attention to detail on that but what proportion of googles SE's work on ad words billing.
        Kephael 11y ago
        Calculating a pension and building a billing system is rather basic CRUD work compared to scaling software to handle millions of concurrent users. Google's hiring bar is relatively high compared to any government position in terms of quantitative skills you'd need to demonstrate.
  - pp19dd 11y ago
    So I was aware of their tours of duty, but I thought that was not a carrot for outsiders to come in, but rather a way to circumvent the traditional hiring process. Probably doesn't hurt that the commitment is temporary. From what I understood, rather than go through the job listing process with position writeups, giving veteran and disability preferences, dealing with HR on the certification process, getting various new office reorganizations approved by congress (they literally have to approve each individual office creation) and so on, they simply got an approval for 200-300 "innovation specialists" (that's what everyone's job title is there) and then they can informally cherry-pick whoever they actually want without going through the red tape. The mechanism is like having a standing approval for hiring 20 French speaking translators at all times, since that's a specialized standing volume-based need. Anyhow, guess my question was more about the author's motivation for not choosing to extend the tour. It wasn't really spelled out in the post.
    - gkoberger 11y ago
      I'm sure there's a bunch of reasons they went with tours of duty. I do also know that a manageable hiring process was really important to them.
    - nacin 11y ago
      I'd argue it's mostly a carrot. The hiring authority is either one year or two, with option to renew. Most taking a leave of absence commit to six months at the onset. The goal is to get to 500 by the end of next year. [1] [1] http://www.fastcompany.com/3046756/obama-and-his-geeks http://www.fastcompany.com/3046756/obama-and-his-geeks
  - acdha 11y ago
    If anyone reading this is looking for a more permanent job working for the government, check out https://18f.gsa.gov/ https://18f.gsa.gov/ which is trying to build up a modern software group which provides services for the rest of the government. Ben Balter, Github's Government evangelist, summarized the difference between the two here: http://ben.balter.com/2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f-and-usds/ http://ben.balter.com/2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f-... (Disclaimer: I don't work there but know a number of people who do and, as a taxpayer, am cheering them on)
    - steven777400 11y ago
      Interestingly, they say 18F jobs are capped at four years. I wonder if this is a harbinger of change overall in government employment from being "lifers" to a more mobile workforce where people perform "civil service" at all levels as a more temporary thing (like elected positions are intended to be). On the other hand, it also strikes me a possible way to select for younger (less encumbered/tied down) applicants without explicitly performing age discrimination.
      - akilism 11y ago
        Yeah both USDS and 18F are capped at the same length of time. There's a pretty good article about USDS @ http://www.fastcompany.com/3046756/obama-and-his-geeks http://www.fastcompany.com/3046756/obama-and-his-geeks
      - acdha 11y ago
        I think it's simply a sign of how difficult it is to hire permanent staff which are seen as long-term commitments in a way that NTE (Not-To-Exceed) staff are not. My impression from the outside is that people are working on a more permanent system to keep people around indefinitely without losing a way to jettison the retire-in-place types and are working to get something in place by the time it starts to matter. I don't think age discrimination is a goal – the people I know value experience and most of them are 30-somethings, mid-career and looking for something more sustainable than death-marches, churning institutional knowledge, etc.
  - Kephael 11y ago
    Most of those listed as employees of the digital service on the main site seem to be employed for political purposes, if you read their biographies most don't have deep technical skills. The whole department seems to have been created to help Obama deflect from the healthcare.gov debacle and make it seem like he was taking serious action to fix the site.
    - markdeloura 11y ago
      Sorry... that's just totally not accurate. While there may be some who are not hacking code 24/7, it's because they're providing project management or leadership functions. This is a damn elite team of technologists there to make a difference - not for politics.
      - Kephael 11y ago
        Mikey Dickerson, who is now running the US Digital Service, was previously involved in the Obama for America campaign. I don't see how we can pretend that politics play no part in this organization.
        acdha 11y ago
        He's also a former Google SRE and has a good, relevant background. Is that politics or going with someone you personally trust to deliver results when you have a high-profile disaster in the news? (This is not to excuse other cases where donors, fundraisers, etc. get dubiously-appropriate jobs. That certainly happens but it's not the only option)
dnautics 11y ago
"Helping rich people get taxis easier". As a Lyft and Uber driver, I count among my rides: getting a rough looking fellow (who has spent years in prison after accidentally killing someone in a bar fight) get to the only job that would take him - affordably and on-time (he would have been fired otherwise). I've given an enlisted navy family from Oklahoma (husband was deployed) get home from a late night run to a distant Walmart - the military pay for an e-3 is low and I imagine tough to support a family of three and there are few other options without a college degree. It's crazy to read about this guy who wonders if this all matters... The amount of money that the government spends to get a marginal improvement on society beyond basic functions of the government should be even more dismaying. And it's incredibly patronizing to despair from on high that tech doesn't do any good for society.
- angersock 11y ago
  A good part of the reason that they spend that money is because they've been discouraged and hamstrung from developing those expertise in-house.
  - dnautics 11y ago
    Don't forget the mechanism by which government spends money - it issues a bond, which gets converted to dollars. The bond comes with interest, and the interest payments go to rich people (banks).
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      That's the mechanism by which government borrows money; the mechanism by which government spends money is that it takes money out of the pile which it has either borrowed or received in revenue (taxes, user fees, proceeds of government-run enterprises) and spends it. (This ignores the possibility of government receiving grants directly for the particular spending, which also happens, more for some governments than others...) Marginal increases in spending once revenues are completely used may be, in effect, equivalent to increases in borrowing, but spending in general is not equivalent to borrowing, so the mechanism for government borrowing money should not be presented as the mechanism for government spending money.
carlosdp 11y ago
I think the US Digital Service is a great initiative and I'll consider taking a tour myself in the future. That said, I don't really like these kinds of thinkers who believe the only companies that are doing something "that matters" are non-profits working directly on a specific problem in healthcare or poverty. I have yet to work for a company, from non-profit internet companies to product-oriented SaaS startup powerhouses, that didn't enable some great initiative or program that could not have existed without that company creating and improving their product and making it accessible, via availability or cost, to the non-profit that needed to worry about doing their actual work. Take the author's old company, Google, for example. They don't do anything "that matters"? I assure you there are many non-profits, charities, and important initiatives around the world that would have a much harder time if they didn't benefit from technologies that Google ushered in to the world. Mass, cheap communication via free email that is highly-available and untied from specific ISPs. Free, globally available document storage to safely store records and share documents across the globe, saving on the cost of having an entire department to handle the same task. These products may seem frivolous and unnecessary to us, because we can (maybe) live without them. But there are organizations directly doing important, charitable work that can't. Saying product companies that don't directly work on the world's poverty, social, or health (etc.) problems are not working on "things that matter" is just pretentious, in my opinion. All that said, the author has the right to feel the way he feels and work wherever and on whatever he wants to. Just don't tell everyone else what they do doesn't really matter. But that's just my two cents =)
- wpietri 11y ago
  > Saying profit-making companies are inherently not working on "things that matter" is just pretentious, in my opinion. Where do you believe he said that? The things he called out were "helping rich people find taxis more easily, selling ads more effectively, or building sexting apps". He also said that he believed "the advancing state of computing technology has overall benefitted peoples’ lives". So I think you're mainly arguing against a straw man here.
  - carlosdp 11y ago
    I had a feeling that sentence was going to be taken apart and thought I should change it, but I didn't have the words at the time. By "profit-making companies", I mean companies that work on products for people that are not directly designed to help an impoverished people or solve a health or social problem. That is being implied here. He calls out the "sexting apps" directly, but most of the article is about him reconnecting with his friends at Google and the conclusion seems driven from that interaction.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
jxm262 11y ago
Nice read. I don't mean to derail the discussion, but I wonder what sort of developers they were looking for when recruiting for the program. When I applied to the US Digital Service, I received a message back - "we are seeking candidates with skills tightly matched to our current projects. Members of our team reviewed your application, and we don't have the perfect match for your background right now". I'm mostly a web developer, so perhaps they were looking for a different background. I have many of the same thoughts as the author (feel like my dev skills could be used to help some greater causes), but not sure where else I could make an impact. Particularly in government where I have alot of interest.
- ryanSrich 11y ago
  There are plenty of startups and companies working on important, world changing problems. You just have to look outside of Silicon Valley.
- clebio 11y ago
  Not to derail your derailment any further, but hey. I live in Kansas City, and there's a fascinating startup here working on enabling farming with an open-data platform. They build hardware pucks to go on combine harvesters and stream the data collection to a Django front-end. They're also working on ingesting legalese forms that farmers have to file and putting web-based (Django) interfaces over them (c.f. how TurboTax will show you a tax form that's missing a form entry). So, as someone else mentioned here, if you're willing to look outside the Valley, there's lots of interesting, high-paying work that helps the common good.
alwaysdoit 11y ago
Why not take rich people's money for taxis, and then donate how ever much of your salary to charities that are trying to fight malaria you think is appropriate? Is making $40K/yr doing something "meaningful" better than making $100K/yr doing something "meaningless" and donating $60k/yr to meaningful causes?
- wpietri 11y ago
  Have you tried this? I know a lot of people, but nobody who has done this sustainably. I've definitely seen people start out on that road. But either they eventually quit and find jobs with meaning or they gradually end up not caring about meaning and spend the money on creature comforts.
  - nostrademons 11y ago
    Bill Gates is the most prominent public example. I also know a number of folks at Google who are very charitably active despite working big-corp jobs. Usually they compartmentalize very drastically, though, so I never heard about their charitable activities at work and only learned about them second-hand, through chance encounters with mutual acquaintances.
    - rifung 11y ago
      Is Bill Gates really an example of what the person described? Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think his motivation for working or making money was to donate it. It seems like he decided after accumulating his wealth that he should use it for good. It seems important to note the difference because I don't find it hard to imagine how a person whose motivation is to help the public good might not be passionate about a job which doesn't inherently do "good".
      - nostrademons 11y ago
        It's hard to speak of motivation unless you're the person in question. Most people do things for a number of different motivations. Hence the adage "We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior." I suspect that as far as Bill Gates is concerned, he considers it all a game and just wants to win. For the first half of his life, the game was maximizing the money he makes. For the second half of his life, the game was maximizing the money he donates. This is all just suspicion, though.
Jemaclus 11y ago
I applied and interviewed with the USDS, but the biggest thing was that they wanted me to move to DC for 6+ months. I'm quite happy here on the west coast, engaged to be married, and attempting to buy a house. Moving cross-country is pretty much a deal-breaker for me. That said, I really, really want to get involved in something that matters. My dream, for lack of a better phrase, no matter how cheesy it may sound, is to change the world. I want to solve what I call Epic Problems: malaria, clean water, homelessness, HIV, slavery, human trafficking. Or even something as simple as making a trip to the DMV as painless as picking up a prescription at the drug store.
- markdeloura 11y ago
  You should reach out to 18F! While home base for them is DC, quite a few of the members are on the west coast. https://18f.gsa.gov/ https://18f.gsa.gov/
  - karmajunkie 11y ago
    What about austin?
    - adelevie 11y ago
      No office there, but we have at least one remote staffer in Austin.
- omouse 11y ago
  I wouldn't mind that kind of short tour of duty if they would pay for the roundtrip airfare every few weeks and for a room in DC. I assume only politicians would that kind of sweet deal though.
- ryanSrich 11y ago
  If they truly wanted to embrace technology and working on important problems in the year 2015 they'd support remote work...
  - 11y ago
omouse 11y ago
>Most social impact projects and organizations are in the east coast, and, at least as far as I could tell (but in all likelihood, it’s probably because I suck at finding them), most of them don’t seem to have significant / meaningful software projects That's because they're stuck in the stone-ages and don't have the imagination to use and create software (aka they're run by marketers, managers and people who want to feel good about themselves). The charities/non-profits are treated as non-technical users, the donors are treated as non-technical, the board members and C-level execs are all conservative. It's a wonder that there's been any use of software in automating and lowering the costs for non-profits to operate. It's more meaningful to work on Uber because at least there you have the potential to deliver food using the service to more homeless people than any other food delivery service. The beginning of this post was good; fighting malaria is a big enough problem that could use better software (or at least more big-picture thinking). That's the kind of stuff we should be working on; being able to distribute malaria nets as fast, as cheap and as efficiently as possible. I don't know, you can't expect too much from companies and you can't expect much from non-profits either. At least while working at Google you have the chance to use some of your time for things like the disaster reporting/mapping tech or something else that can directly help someone like Gmail (charities do need a way to communicate!)
- jchrisa 11y ago
  The flip side of "you can't expect much" is that a little help from tech folks would go a long way. Organize a hack event where non-tech people describe the stuff they need help with and tech people try to form solutions. The important thing is the relationships, not the solutions.
  - tomjen3 11y ago
    That is probably the only insightful comment on this article, which is sad for hn, however relationships are based on trust and respect and based on the other comments here programmers can't even respect themselves.
pdeuchler 11y ago
Large leaps in technology have always, and will always, benefit the wealthiest 1% at the beginning. This is just the basics of capital in a capitalistic society. The internet has already redistributed earth shattering quantities of wealth in record time. Besides, to actually solve the "real problems" (no true scotsman, but we won't go down that path) you still need massive amounts of capital. Where else are you going to get that capital except for individuals who have gained their wealth through industry? Can't help but feel that there's a serious holier-than-thou tone throughout the article just because the author spent 6 months in DC. Thought experiment: who is helping the 1% more, people who generate products for a public company or people who work on pet political projects for the DC elite? (Not implying there's a right answer to that question, and not implying that's all the OP did with their time in DC)
- cheeseprocedure 11y ago
  > Large leaps in technology have always, and will always, benefit the wealthiest 1% at the beginning. This is just the basics of capital in a capitalistic society. What about the Green Revolution?
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > > Large leaps in technology have always, and will always, benefit the wealthiest 1% at the beginning. > What about the Green Revolution? The "Green Revolution" is a term applied largely to the wealthiest 1% deciding to fairly directly forgo some part of the short-term returns from certain technical developments to purchase longer-term sociopolitical security and greater long term profits, specifically, to forgo some of the short-term profits of new agricultural technology to head-off dissatisfaction that might lead to Communist revolutions and instead get large parts of the world positively engaged with both specific product lines and the more general neoliberal economic model. It certainly is not a counterexample to the technological changes benefitting the wealthiest in the short term.
  - pdeuchler 11y ago
    Honest question, do you mean to imply the Green Revolution did not follow this pattern? From my understanding it followed the pattern exactly by spawning the creation of the huge food production conglomerates we have today while also greatly enriching vestiges of colonial powers as the movement grew to feed the "global hungry". The last three paragraphs of this section of the wikipedia page more or less confirm it fit the pattern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution#Criticism
a-dub 11y ago
So... Gates Foundation or Google Ideas?
Sophistifunk 11y ago
Standard liberal guilt. If you're a programmer and you feel like curing malaria is more important than Uber, you should make a shit-ton of money and give it to Bill Gates. Without the teen angst.
- britknight 11y ago
  > "If you feel like curing malaria is more important than Uber"? I'm sorry, but that strikes me as a pretty privileged sentiment. Would you say that everyone who feels a calling to work in the nonprofit/humanitarian sphere is merely doing so to assuage their "teen angst"? If someone else feels compelled to work more directly to help those in need, and he or she is perfectly respectful of others' work (as OP clearly is), why do you feel compelled to reduce their desire to "standard liberal guilt" or "teen angst"?
  - woodman 11y ago
    > I'm sorry, but that strikes me as a pretty privileged sentiment. How does any of the prior statement sound "privileged"? Or was that just a hamfisted attempt at using a dog whistle?
    - britknight 11y ago
      > If you're a programmer and you feel like curing malaria is more important than Uber Um, this, for one. I see no possible reality in which a disease that kills almost one child every minute[1] could possibly take a backseat to you not being able to get a taxi when you call for one. The above could be put in the dictionary next to "first world problem". I would love to hear your reasoning if you have some opinion to the contrary. [1] http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/malaria/en/ http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/malaria/en/
      - woodman 11y ago
        > Um, this, for one. Actually, that is a pretty neutral position. Your position sounds much more "privileged", as you appear to be attempting to tell people not only what they should do, but how they should feel. I'm going to assume that you didn't imply that anybody holding a contrary opinion on the best use of their time is somehow cheering on malaria :)
singularity2001 11y ago
The first paragraphs read like cheesy paid promo for jobs in Washington. Trying to fix government is a great endeavor though, independent of the articles authenticity.
- wslack 11y ago
  It's sometimes genuinely hard not to sound cheesy when discussing my work in DC (moved here a few months ago). :) Here's another piece on this sort of work with a different tone but the same message: https://medium.com/@USDigitalService/mikey-dickerson-to-sxsw-why-we-need-you-in-government-f31dab3263a0 https://medium.com/@USDigitalService/mikey-dickerson-to-sxsw...
hueving 11y ago
Something about DC seems to give people the impression that anyone doing anything else in the world is "stuff that doesn't matter". R&D at these companies is what actually solves problems at the root cause. How would all of that healthcare exchange work have gone if the tech industry didn't build the massive infrastructure it relies on (database tech, network tech, version control, the Internet)? It feels like the person that wrote this article is the guy in the war movie yelling at the people designing new defenses for not being on the front lines firing a gun. There is a place for both roles, and shitting all over one half doesn't make you better than them, it just makes you myopic.
- hodgesmr 11y ago
  Something about DC seems to give people the impression that anyone doing anything else in the world is "stuff that doesn't matter". I see this from people that live in the Bay too. NYC too.
  - schoen 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_G%C3%B6ttingen#Campus_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_G%C3%B6ttingen#C...
misuba 11y ago
If there were profit in solving real problems, there wouldn't be any real problems.
deepdiver16 11y ago
What would be a good way to find companies that try to address more "pressing needs" and need strong technical help? I am currently in Indonesia, on a break after 20y in Silicon Valley, and would have time to help. I've thought about NGOs but I suspect these may be hard to navigate? Thanks in advance for any pointers and ideas
- worldadventurer 11y ago
  If you're interested in working in beautiful Cebu, Philippines, to build products that improve the lives of the poor worldwide, check out www.engageSPARK.com . We're recruiting for 6+ month Fellows as well as Permanent hires. We have a talented international team and are looking for more passionate people who want to leverage their tech skills to do good and help change lives. We're a not-for-profit business/startup building a challenging distributed platform that enables NGOs and governments to improve the lives of millions of people in poverty around the world. For example, a large international NGO (Mercy Corps) used our platform to do a financial education program using voice calls & sms soap operas with quizzes (to reinforce and test comprehension) for 20,000 people affected by a natural disaster: http://solutionscenter.nethope.org/blog/view/hitting-it-home-soap-opera-campaigns-encourage-financial-literacy-in-the-ph http://solutionscenter.nethope.org/blog/view/hitting-it-home... And Cebu is a great place to live. If you're a diver, you can be diving in warm tropical waters in less than an hour from the office!
nbevans 11y ago
I love how after 6 months working for someone he is happily blogging about it and he isn't ashamed about it even in the slightest. If I saw he'd worked for someone for 6 months only then I'd want to hear a good reason why he left. Otherwise I will just assume he was fired, or knew he was struggling against his peers and decided to move on by himself. You have to read his About page to realise that is probably not likely to be the case in this instance, but still.
- kmonsen 11y ago
  You sign up for 6 months ...
beatpanda 11y ago
I would love it if anyone repeating the tired talking point, that solutions for rich people's problems will magically transmogrify into solutions for real problems with actual impact on human potential and quality of life, could name even one example of this that's come out of U.S. technology startups in the last ten years. I would also love it if anyone could explain why so many people don't feel compelled to do anything about the poverty in Silicon Valley that is becoming much, much worse and drastically curtailing social mobility for poor people in the area, and instead promote this idea of "efficient charity" or whatever to help people far away, instead of fixing the problems caused by the kind of people who focus solely on earning a lot of money. Problems that exist whether those people spend that money on mosquito nets or hookers and blow. These talking points get thrown around over and over again, largely without evidence, and it's starting to feel like it's just people trying to justify their desire to make a pile of money without feeling bad about it.
- tomjen3 11y ago
  So getting laid isn't a problem with real human impact? I guess I'm not a real human being then. Maybe I should just go slit my wrist and stop taking up space that could be used by people who haven't committed the crime of doing something with their lives.
  - beatpanda 11y ago
    Believe it or not, people get laid every day without having to use the Internet. One thing that really helps that out is living in a city where lots of different kinds of people are able to live.
- com2kid 11y ago
  > I would love it if anyone repeating the tired talking point, that solutions for rich people's problems will magically transmogrify into solutions for real problems with actual impact on human potential and quality of life, could name even one example of this that's come out of U.S. technology startups in the last ten years. Android. It was a technology startup purchased by Google. Stripe, it has enabled small working class merchants throughout the US to make multiples more money. Every farmers market I go to now days has merchants who can now accept credit cards (my spending has increased dramatically!) Multiple other mobile payment and banking solutions have helped people around the world gain economic freedom.

164 points by hodgesmr 11y ago

I'm sure this is a stupid question, but after a few minutes of googling I am still unclear on the answer so I thought I'd ask it here. I am about to start studying in the US (college), so I was wondering if the USDS accepts non-American citizens? Even without a green card? (I'm British, btw).

nacin 11y ago
18F can hire legal permanent residents.

pp19dd 11y ago

I didn't catch this part- why did the author leave? Was it just a term end and he chose not to renew it?

gkoberger 11y ago
They do "tours of duty", since I think they found people had a hard time moving to DC permanently. Using this, they've managed to get a lot of people to take sabbaticals from their Google/FB/etc jobs. "Quit your high paying job and indefinitely work for the government" is a hard sell; "come do something awesome for 6 months then go back" is much easier.
- rayiner 11y ago
  I.e. the revolving door.
  - jacobolus 11y ago
    No, “the revolving door” refers to people spending time working as legislators/executive officials, and then going to work in the same industry they were regulating, and basically getting time-shifted favors/salary in return for their help while in office. Spending 6 months or whatever working as a programmer for the US Digital Service and then going back to a job in industry is something quite different.
    - rayiner 11y ago
      Won't argue that doesn't happen, but it's overstated. People from industry go into government for the same reason people join the digital service: because they think that the skills and knowledge they gained in industry can let them do the job better than the government can without them.[1] And these appointments are temporary for the same reason digital service appointments are temporary: people are only so willing to sign on for salary-capped government positions for so long. The only difference is the intent and motivation you're ascribing to the respective actors. [1] I think very few people would disagree with the assertion that a Googler knows tech better than anyone in government. The fact is that pretty much everyone in every industry feels the same way. Everyone thinks that the public interest would be served if only the government folks in charge were people who "get it" like they do.
      - walshemj 11y ago
        That's a big ask Googles software requires a different mind set than say correctly calculating veterans pensions. From googles perspective having 2 or 3% suboptimal query's is fine but that wont pass muster for other types of work. Try building billing systems for a global Telco and have one of Vint Cerfs reports nudge you and say this had be right otherwise we are both out of a job :-)
        linkregister 11y ago
        I'm pretty sure that a billing error in Adwords would cause a fairly large controversy!
        walshemj 11y ago
        True and I bet that they pay more attention to detail on that but what proportion of googles SE's work on ad words billing.
        Kephael 11y ago
        Calculating a pension and building a billing system is rather basic CRUD work compared to scaling software to handle millions of concurrent users. Google's hiring bar is relatively high compared to any government position in terms of quantitative skills you'd need to demonstrate.
- pp19dd 11y ago
  So I was aware of their tours of duty, but I thought that was not a carrot for outsiders to come in, but rather a way to circumvent the traditional hiring process. Probably doesn't hurt that the commitment is temporary. From what I understood, rather than go through the job listing process with position writeups, giving veteran and disability preferences, dealing with HR on the certification process, getting various new office reorganizations approved by congress (they literally have to approve each individual office creation) and so on, they simply got an approval for 200-300 "innovation specialists" (that's what everyone's job title is there) and then they can informally cherry-pick whoever they actually want without going through the red tape. The mechanism is like having a standing approval for hiring 20 French speaking translators at all times, since that's a specialized standing volume-based need. Anyhow, guess my question was more about the author's motivation for not choosing to extend the tour. It wasn't really spelled out in the post.
  - gkoberger 11y ago
    I'm sure there's a bunch of reasons they went with tours of duty. I do also know that a manageable hiring process was really important to them.
  - nacin 11y ago
    I'd argue it's mostly a carrot. The hiring authority is either one year or two, with option to renew. Most taking a leave of absence commit to six months at the onset. The goal is to get to 500 by the end of next year. [1] [1] http://www.fastcompany.com/3046756/obama-and-his-geeks http://www.fastcompany.com/3046756/obama-and-his-geeks
- acdha 11y ago
  If anyone reading this is looking for a more permanent job working for the government, check out https://18f.gsa.gov/ https://18f.gsa.gov/ which is trying to build up a modern software group which provides services for the rest of the government. Ben Balter, Github's Government evangelist, summarized the difference between the two here: http://ben.balter.com/2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f-and-usds/ http://ben.balter.com/2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f-... (Disclaimer: I don't work there but know a number of people who do and, as a taxpayer, am cheering them on)
  - steven777400 11y ago
    Interestingly, they say 18F jobs are capped at four years. I wonder if this is a harbinger of change overall in government employment from being "lifers" to a more mobile workforce where people perform "civil service" at all levels as a more temporary thing (like elected positions are intended to be). On the other hand, it also strikes me a possible way to select for younger (less encumbered/tied down) applicants without explicitly performing age discrimination.
    - akilism 11y ago
      Yeah both USDS and 18F are capped at the same length of time. There's a pretty good article about USDS @ http://www.fastcompany.com/3046756/obama-and-his-geeks http://www.fastcompany.com/3046756/obama-and-his-geeks
    - acdha 11y ago
      I think it's simply a sign of how difficult it is to hire permanent staff which are seen as long-term commitments in a way that NTE (Not-To-Exceed) staff are not. My impression from the outside is that people are working on a more permanent system to keep people around indefinitely without losing a way to jettison the retire-in-place types and are working to get something in place by the time it starts to matter. I don't think age discrimination is a goal – the people I know value experience and most of them are 30-somethings, mid-career and looking for something more sustainable than death-marches, churning institutional knowledge, etc.
- Kephael 11y ago
  Most of those listed as employees of the digital service on the main site seem to be employed for political purposes, if you read their biographies most don't have deep technical skills. The whole department seems to have been created to help Obama deflect from the healthcare.gov debacle and make it seem like he was taking serious action to fix the site.
  - markdeloura 11y ago
    Sorry... that's just totally not accurate. While there may be some who are not hacking code 24/7, it's because they're providing project management or leadership functions. This is a damn elite team of technologists there to make a difference - not for politics.
    - Kephael 11y ago
      Mikey Dickerson, who is now running the US Digital Service, was previously involved in the Obama for America campaign. I don't see how we can pretend that politics play no part in this organization.
      - acdha 11y ago
        He's also a former Google SRE and has a good, relevant background. Is that politics or going with someone you personally trust to deliver results when you have a high-profile disaster in the news? (This is not to excuse other cases where donors, fundraisers, etc. get dubiously-appropriate jobs. That certainly happens but it's not the only option)

dnautics 11y ago

"Helping rich people get taxis easier". As a Lyft and Uber driver, I count among my rides: getting a rough looking fellow (who has spent years in prison after accidentally killing someone in a bar fight) get to the only job that would take him - affordably and on-time (he would have been fired otherwise). I've given an enlisted navy family from Oklahoma (husband was deployed) get home from a late night run to a distant Walmart - the military pay for an e-3 is low and I imagine tough to support a family of three and there are few other options without a college degree. It's crazy to read about this guy who wonders if this all matters... The amount of money that the government spends to get a marginal improvement on society beyond basic functions of the government should be even more dismaying. And it's incredibly patronizing to despair from on high that tech doesn't do any good for society.

angersock 11y ago
A good part of the reason that they spend that money is because they've been discouraged and hamstrung from developing those expertise in-house.
- dnautics 11y ago
  Don't forget the mechanism by which government spends money - it issues a bond, which gets converted to dollars. The bond comes with interest, and the interest payments go to rich people (banks).
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    That's the mechanism by which government borrows money; the mechanism by which government spends money is that it takes money out of the pile which it has either borrowed or received in revenue (taxes, user fees, proceeds of government-run enterprises) and spends it. (This ignores the possibility of government receiving grants directly for the particular spending, which also happens, more for some governments than others...) Marginal increases in spending once revenues are completely used may be, in effect, equivalent to increases in borrowing, but spending in general is not equivalent to borrowing, so the mechanism for government borrowing money should not be presented as the mechanism for government spending money.

carlosdp 11y ago

I think the US Digital Service is a great initiative and I'll consider taking a tour myself in the future. That said, I don't really like these kinds of thinkers who believe the only companies that are doing something "that matters" are non-profits working directly on a specific problem in healthcare or poverty. I have yet to work for a company, from non-profit internet companies to product-oriented SaaS startup powerhouses, that didn't enable some great initiative or program that could not have existed without that company creating and improving their product and making it accessible, via availability or cost, to the non-profit that needed to worry about doing their actual work. Take the author's old company, Google, for example. They don't do anything "that matters"? I assure you there are many non-profits, charities, and important initiatives around the world that would have a much harder time if they didn't benefit from technologies that Google ushered in to the world. Mass, cheap communication via free email that is highly-available and untied from specific ISPs. Free, globally available document storage to safely store records and share documents across the globe, saving on the cost of having an entire department to handle the same task. These products may seem frivolous and unnecessary to us, because we can (maybe) live without them. But there are organizations directly doing important, charitable work that can't. Saying product companies that don't directly work on the world's poverty, social, or health (etc.) problems are not working on "things that matter" is just pretentious, in my opinion. All that said, the author has the right to feel the way he feels and work wherever and on whatever he wants to. Just don't tell everyone else what they do doesn't really matter. But that's just my two cents =)

wpietri 11y ago
> Saying profit-making companies are inherently not working on "things that matter" is just pretentious, in my opinion. Where do you believe he said that? The things he called out were "helping rich people find taxis more easily, selling ads more effectively, or building sexting apps". He also said that he believed "the advancing state of computing technology has overall benefitted peoples’ lives". So I think you're mainly arguing against a straw man here.
- carlosdp 11y ago
  I had a feeling that sentence was going to be taken apart and thought I should change it, but I didn't have the words at the time. By "profit-making companies", I mean companies that work on products for people that are not directly designed to help an impoverished people or solve a health or social problem. That is being implied here. He calls out the "sexting apps" directly, but most of the article is about him reconnecting with his friends at Google and the conclusion seems driven from that interaction.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

jxm262 11y ago

Nice read. I don't mean to derail the discussion, but I wonder what sort of developers they were looking for when recruiting for the program. When I applied to the US Digital Service, I received a message back - "we are seeking candidates with skills tightly matched to our current projects. Members of our team reviewed your application, and we don't have the perfect match for your background right now". I'm mostly a web developer, so perhaps they were looking for a different background. I have many of the same thoughts as the author (feel like my dev skills could be used to help some greater causes), but not sure where else I could make an impact. Particularly in government where I have alot of interest.

ryanSrich 11y ago
There are plenty of startups and companies working on important, world changing problems. You just have to look outside of Silicon Valley.
clebio 11y ago
Not to derail your derailment any further, but hey. I live in Kansas City, and there's a fascinating startup here working on enabling farming with an open-data platform. They build hardware pucks to go on combine harvesters and stream the data collection to a Django front-end. They're also working on ingesting legalese forms that farmers have to file and putting web-based (Django) interfaces over them (c.f. how TurboTax will show you a tax form that's missing a form entry). So, as someone else mentioned here, if you're willing to look outside the Valley, there's lots of interesting, high-paying work that helps the common good.

alwaysdoit 11y ago

Why not take rich people's money for taxis, and then donate how ever much of your salary to charities that are trying to fight malaria you think is appropriate? Is making $40K/yr doing something "meaningful" better than making $100K/yr doing something "meaningless" and donating $60k/yr to meaningful causes?

wpietri 11y ago
Have you tried this? I know a lot of people, but nobody who has done this sustainably. I've definitely seen people start out on that road. But either they eventually quit and find jobs with meaning or they gradually end up not caring about meaning and spend the money on creature comforts.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  Bill Gates is the most prominent public example. I also know a number of folks at Google who are very charitably active despite working big-corp jobs. Usually they compartmentalize very drastically, though, so I never heard about their charitable activities at work and only learned about them second-hand, through chance encounters with mutual acquaintances.
  - rifung 11y ago
    Is Bill Gates really an example of what the person described? Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think his motivation for working or making money was to donate it. It seems like he decided after accumulating his wealth that he should use it for good. It seems important to note the difference because I don't find it hard to imagine how a person whose motivation is to help the public good might not be passionate about a job which doesn't inherently do "good".
    - nostrademons 11y ago
      It's hard to speak of motivation unless you're the person in question. Most people do things for a number of different motivations. Hence the adage "We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior." I suspect that as far as Bill Gates is concerned, he considers it all a game and just wants to win. For the first half of his life, the game was maximizing the money he makes. For the second half of his life, the game was maximizing the money he donates. This is all just suspicion, though.

Jemaclus 11y ago

I applied and interviewed with the USDS, but the biggest thing was that they wanted me to move to DC for 6+ months. I'm quite happy here on the west coast, engaged to be married, and attempting to buy a house. Moving cross-country is pretty much a deal-breaker for me. That said, I really, really want to get involved in something that matters. My dream, for lack of a better phrase, no matter how cheesy it may sound, is to change the world. I want to solve what I call Epic Problems: malaria, clean water, homelessness, HIV, slavery, human trafficking. Or even something as simple as making a trip to the DMV as painless as picking up a prescription at the drug store.

markdeloura 11y ago
You should reach out to 18F! While home base for them is DC, quite a few of the members are on the west coast. https://18f.gsa.gov/ https://18f.gsa.gov/
- karmajunkie 11y ago
  What about austin?
  - adelevie 11y ago
    No office there, but we have at least one remote staffer in Austin.
omouse 11y ago
I wouldn't mind that kind of short tour of duty if they would pay for the roundtrip airfare every few weeks and for a room in DC. I assume only politicians would that kind of sweet deal though.
ryanSrich 11y ago
If they truly wanted to embrace technology and working on important problems in the year 2015 they'd support remote work...
- 11y ago

omouse 11y ago

>Most social impact projects and organizations are in the east coast, and, at least as far as I could tell (but in all likelihood, it’s probably because I suck at finding them), most of them don’t seem to have significant / meaningful software projects That's because they're stuck in the stone-ages and don't have the imagination to use and create software (aka they're run by marketers, managers and people who want to feel good about themselves). The charities/non-profits are treated as non-technical users, the donors are treated as non-technical, the board members and C-level execs are all conservative. It's a wonder that there's been any use of software in automating and lowering the costs for non-profits to operate. It's more meaningful to work on Uber because at least there you have the potential to deliver food using the service to more homeless people than any other food delivery service. The beginning of this post was good; fighting malaria is a big enough problem that could use better software (or at least more big-picture thinking). That's the kind of stuff we should be working on; being able to distribute malaria nets as fast, as cheap and as efficiently as possible. I don't know, you can't expect too much from companies and you can't expect much from non-profits either. At least while working at Google you have the chance to use some of your time for things like the disaster reporting/mapping tech or something else that can directly help someone like Gmail (charities do need a way to communicate!)

jchrisa 11y ago
The flip side of "you can't expect much" is that a little help from tech folks would go a long way. Organize a hack event where non-tech people describe the stuff they need help with and tech people try to form solutions. The important thing is the relationships, not the solutions.
- tomjen3 11y ago
  That is probably the only insightful comment on this article, which is sad for hn, however relationships are based on trust and respect and based on the other comments here programmers can't even respect themselves.

pdeuchler 11y ago

Large leaps in technology have always, and will always, benefit the wealthiest 1% at the beginning. This is just the basics of capital in a capitalistic society. The internet has already redistributed earth shattering quantities of wealth in record time. Besides, to actually solve the "real problems" (no true scotsman, but we won't go down that path) you still need massive amounts of capital. Where else are you going to get that capital except for individuals who have gained their wealth through industry? Can't help but feel that there's a serious holier-than-thou tone throughout the article just because the author spent 6 months in DC. Thought experiment: who is helping the 1% more, people who generate products for a public company or people who work on pet political projects for the DC elite? (Not implying there's a right answer to that question, and not implying that's all the OP did with their time in DC)

cheeseprocedure 11y ago
> Large leaps in technology have always, and will always, benefit the wealthiest 1% at the beginning. This is just the basics of capital in a capitalistic society. What about the Green Revolution?
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > > Large leaps in technology have always, and will always, benefit the wealthiest 1% at the beginning. > What about the Green Revolution? The "Green Revolution" is a term applied largely to the wealthiest 1% deciding to fairly directly forgo some part of the short-term returns from certain technical developments to purchase longer-term sociopolitical security and greater long term profits, specifically, to forgo some of the short-term profits of new agricultural technology to head-off dissatisfaction that might lead to Communist revolutions and instead get large parts of the world positively engaged with both specific product lines and the more general neoliberal economic model. It certainly is not a counterexample to the technological changes benefitting the wealthiest in the short term.
- pdeuchler 11y ago
  Honest question, do you mean to imply the Green Revolution did not follow this pattern? From my understanding it followed the pattern exactly by spawning the creation of the huge food production conglomerates we have today while also greatly enriching vestiges of colonial powers as the movement grew to feed the "global hungry". The last three paragraphs of this section of the wikipedia page more or less confirm it fit the pattern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution#Criticism

a-dub 11y ago

So... Gates Foundation or Google Ideas?

Sophistifunk 11y ago

Standard liberal guilt. If you're a programmer and you feel like curing malaria is more important than Uber, you should make a shit-ton of money and give it to Bill Gates. Without the teen angst.

britknight 11y ago
> "If you feel like curing malaria is more important than Uber"? I'm sorry, but that strikes me as a pretty privileged sentiment. Would you say that everyone who feels a calling to work in the nonprofit/humanitarian sphere is merely doing so to assuage their "teen angst"? If someone else feels compelled to work more directly to help those in need, and he or she is perfectly respectful of others' work (as OP clearly is), why do you feel compelled to reduce their desire to "standard liberal guilt" or "teen angst"?
- woodman 11y ago
  > I'm sorry, but that strikes me as a pretty privileged sentiment. How does any of the prior statement sound "privileged"? Or was that just a hamfisted attempt at using a dog whistle?
  - britknight 11y ago
    > If you're a programmer and you feel like curing malaria is more important than Uber Um, this, for one. I see no possible reality in which a disease that kills almost one child every minute[1] could possibly take a backseat to you not being able to get a taxi when you call for one. The above could be put in the dictionary next to "first world problem". I would love to hear your reasoning if you have some opinion to the contrary. [1] http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/malaria/en/ http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/malaria/en/
    - woodman 11y ago
      > Um, this, for one. Actually, that is a pretty neutral position. Your position sounds much more "privileged", as you appear to be attempting to tell people not only what they should do, but how they should feel. I'm going to assume that you didn't imply that anybody holding a contrary opinion on the best use of their time is somehow cheering on malaria :)

singularity2001 11y ago

The first paragraphs read like cheesy paid promo for jobs in Washington. Trying to fix government is a great endeavor though, independent of the articles authenticity.

wslack 11y ago
It's sometimes genuinely hard not to sound cheesy when discussing my work in DC (moved here a few months ago). :) Here's another piece on this sort of work with a different tone but the same message: https://medium.com/@USDigitalService/mikey-dickerson-to-sxsw-why-we-need-you-in-government-f31dab3263a0 https://medium.com/@USDigitalService/mikey-dickerson-to-sxsw...

hueving 11y ago

Something about DC seems to give people the impression that anyone doing anything else in the world is "stuff that doesn't matter". R&D at these companies is what actually solves problems at the root cause. How would all of that healthcare exchange work have gone if the tech industry didn't build the massive infrastructure it relies on (database tech, network tech, version control, the Internet)? It feels like the person that wrote this article is the guy in the war movie yelling at the people designing new defenses for not being on the front lines firing a gun. There is a place for both roles, and shitting all over one half doesn't make you better than them, it just makes you myopic.

hodgesmr 11y ago
Something about DC seems to give people the impression that anyone doing anything else in the world is "stuff that doesn't matter". I see this from people that live in the Bay too. NYC too.
- schoen 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_G%C3%B6ttingen#Campus_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_G%C3%B6ttingen#C...

misuba 11y ago

If there were profit in solving real problems, there wouldn't be any real problems.

deepdiver16 11y ago

What would be a good way to find companies that try to address more "pressing needs" and need strong technical help? I am currently in Indonesia, on a break after 20y in Silicon Valley, and would have time to help. I've thought about NGOs but I suspect these may be hard to navigate? Thanks in advance for any pointers and ideas

worldadventurer 11y ago
If you're interested in working in beautiful Cebu, Philippines, to build products that improve the lives of the poor worldwide, check out www.engageSPARK.com . We're recruiting for 6+ month Fellows as well as Permanent hires. We have a talented international team and are looking for more passionate people who want to leverage their tech skills to do good and help change lives. We're a not-for-profit business/startup building a challenging distributed platform that enables NGOs and governments to improve the lives of millions of people in poverty around the world. For example, a large international NGO (Mercy Corps) used our platform to do a financial education program using voice calls & sms soap operas with quizzes (to reinforce and test comprehension) for 20,000 people affected by a natural disaster: http://solutionscenter.nethope.org/blog/view/hitting-it-home-soap-opera-campaigns-encourage-financial-literacy-in-the-ph http://solutionscenter.nethope.org/blog/view/hitting-it-home... And Cebu is a great place to live. If you're a diver, you can be diving in warm tropical waters in less than an hour from the office!

nbevans 11y ago

I love how after 6 months working for someone he is happily blogging about it and he isn't ashamed about it even in the slightest. If I saw he'd worked for someone for 6 months only then I'd want to hear a good reason why he left. Otherwise I will just assume he was fired, or knew he was struggling against his peers and decided to move on by himself. You have to read his About page to realise that is probably not likely to be the case in this instance, but still.

kmonsen 11y ago
You sign up for 6 months ...

beatpanda 11y ago

I would love it if anyone repeating the tired talking point, that solutions for rich people's problems will magically transmogrify into solutions for real problems with actual impact on human potential and quality of life, could name even one example of this that's come out of U.S. technology startups in the last ten years. I would also love it if anyone could explain why so many people don't feel compelled to do anything about the poverty in Silicon Valley that is becoming much, much worse and drastically curtailing social mobility for poor people in the area, and instead promote this idea of "efficient charity" or whatever to help people far away, instead of fixing the problems caused by the kind of people who focus solely on earning a lot of money. Problems that exist whether those people spend that money on mosquito nets or hookers and blow. These talking points get thrown around over and over again, largely without evidence, and it's starting to feel like it's just people trying to justify their desire to make a pile of money without feeling bad about it.

tomjen3 11y ago
So getting laid isn't a problem with real human impact? I guess I'm not a real human being then. Maybe I should just go slit my wrist and stop taking up space that could be used by people who haven't committed the crime of doing something with their lives.
- beatpanda 11y ago
  Believe it or not, people get laid every day without having to use the Internet. One thing that really helps that out is living in a city where lots of different kinds of people are able to live.
com2kid 11y ago
> I would love it if anyone repeating the tired talking point, that solutions for rich people's problems will magically transmogrify into solutions for real problems with actual impact on human potential and quality of life, could name even one example of this that's come out of U.S. technology startups in the last ten years. Android. It was a technology startup purchased by Google. Stripe, it has enabled small working class merchants throughout the US to make multiples more money. Every farmers market I go to now days has merchants who can now accept credit cards (my spending has increased dramatically!) Multiple other mobile payment and banking solutions have helped people around the world gain economic freedom.