6 ms·

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

by pp19dd 11y ago

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.
        noir_lord 11y ago
        Last year there where 279 changes to the federal tax code. That system handles hundreds of millions of people and trillions of dollars. Calling it "rather basic CRUD work" is incredibly myopic and/or arrogant.
        walshemj 11y ago
        Quite Google can take a relaxed view about things eg getting geoloaction wrong 1 time in thousand on a query. Calculate 1 in a 1000 tax returns or bank statements wrong and some one will want blood.
- 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)

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

by 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?

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.
        noir_lord 11y ago
        Last year there where 279 changes to the federal tax code. That system handles hundreds of millions of people and trillions of dollars. Calling it "rather basic CRUD work" is incredibly myopic and/or arrogant.
        walshemj 11y ago
        Quite Google can take a relaxed view about things eg getting geoloaction wrong 1 time in thousand on a query. Calculate 1 in a 1000 tax returns or bank statements wrong and some one will want blood.
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)