I really wanted to work for the digital service and my experience applying was horrendous. The recruiter scheduled an appointment to call me and didn't at the scheduled time. She followed up weeks later and I finally got my phone screen. Phone interview went well, she said we would schedule another interview. The followup from her didn't happen until another month later. Then I had a technical interview where the interviewer talked over me and asked whether I would use a list or an array for a particular data structure, to which I replied I use Ruby & Python so I don't know what you're asking because it would be a question of semantics, to which he finally clarified he meant a linked list and chided me for not "knowing the difference between the properties of a linked list and an array." How can you expect me to know the difference between two data structures if you're using unclear shorthand to refer to one of them? And the interviewer was an ex-Google engineer so I imagine he had some familiarity with Python (where a "List" is what many languages refer to as an array) since it's an official Google language.
And then of course I didn't get the job (and no feedback on why). The whole thing was maddening, took 3 months total just to get railroaded by an aggressive and imprecise technical interviewer. It sounds like great work though, wish them the best of luck. Wish I could work on their projects.
Hi Andrew. I'm really sorry that you went through that. We know and acknowledge that our hiring process isn't perfect - I can't count the number of conversations where we at USDS share stories about how we personally were in some limbo before interviews or what we had to do to get drug tested or how we were super confused.
This of course is no excuse - there is a lot of work to be done and we are working on it.
Not to be a jerk but I'm going to sound like a jerk, but know it is from a position of love: linked lists and arrays are both fundamental data structures.
And let me relate to you: I get turned down for jobs all the time. It is not because of capricious reasons that I wish were the case, but it's because of me not knowing something. Yes, it's maddening because they throw out good candidates along with the bad to minimize risk to them. The same facts happen to me and you, but try to have the perspective on them be as positive as you can.
I'm really sorry about your experience. In many ways we're still a fledgling startup. We don't trust the regular federal government's hiring process, which means we have to build our own from scratch, so we have our own recruiters, coordinators, and when we aren't fighting fires or developing software, we're the ones actually doing the interviews. The process was maddeningly slow for a while but it's improving.
> And the interviewer was an ex-Google engineer so I imagine he had some familiarity with Python since it's an official Google language.
Be careful of such assumptions. Google has a lot of languages that they use, and it's not inconceivable that someone that worked at Google might be mainly a Java engineer, without much exposure to Python -- in which case list vs array is a pretty meaningful question from their perspective.
at least you got a call back, ive been waiting for weeks to hear back to my initial contact. this kind of makes me want to not answer the phone if they do in fact ever call.
asked whether I would use a list or an array for a particular data structure...the interviewer was an ex-Google engineer
It was a computer science question, not a programming question. If a particular tool doesn't implement one of the fundamental data types that is an interesting point you can talk about.
But the question sounds like the interviewer wanted to make sure you understood the time-complexity difference between the two.
If you've never done that style of interview it is important to realize that the goal is quite different to making sure you understand a language's syntax.
(Member of USDS) - I'm sorry we gave you a bad experience. It is not something I want to have happen to anyone.
If anyone asking "why is it so bad" actually genuinely wanted an answer, here is part of one: There's some finite amount of process change that we can absorb per unit time. We have tended not to prioritize process improvements that would reduce the risk of an individual getting a bad experience, in favor of ones that will increase the total yield of qualified hires. We know we are paying a price for this, so we keep an eye on places like HN to see how high it is.
Also check out 18F [1], which focuses on pushing forward how tech and the government work together. They run a 12-month Presidential Innovation Fellows program [2] which works more intensely on innovating with specific groups within the federal government. USDS is more focused on modernizing and ensuring some basic technical functionality of a lot of the core aspects of the government (which is incredibly important and impactful, but is less about innovation -- see a comparison here [3]).
At the risk of being self-promotional, there's another part of the rebel alliance of which USDS and 18F are the main players, and that is better technology contractors. ("Better" meaning, engineering practices and outcomes that the audience of this site would recognize.) There's Nava, and the company I co-founded, Ad Hoc. Greg and I were on the original HealthCare.gov rescue squad with Mikey et. al. We're still working on HealthCare.gov, but instead of helping to prop up the bad old code (which was necessary work to save the site and help actual people), we're rebuilding parts of the site from scratch, using things like Go, AWS, Angular. During the last open enrollment period over the winter, our code (healthcare.gov/see-plans/) had 100% uptime, served ~ half a billion page views, and had a mean response time of well under 100ms. (And _no_ garbage hiding in the 99th percentile.)
One thing I'll say about government work -- you're not really breaking new ground, from a technology perspective. (Unless you're at DARPA I suppose.) Don't come into thinking you're going to innovate in some bleeding-edge area. But government was left so far behind the consumer technology curve that basic, competently-executed, well-designed software that's fast is an _enormous_ leap forward. 2008-era web tech is sorely needed across government. In a way, that is the innovation: dependable software that reliably delivers services to people for whose user-experience has never been put on the same playing field as consumer online services.
If you're interested in being part of the rebel alliance, and for whatever reason USDS or 18F aren't right for you, consider contracting. There's enormous opportunity to make real change and see your code help others. Believe me, small teams can have a big impact on government, even from outside government. If you want to know more about Ad Hoc, get in touch (http://adhocteam.us/). We also have projects with the Department of Veterans Affairs, and state Medicaid programs.
I never thought I'd be a government contractor. I did the startup thing, and just happened to get roped into the HealthCare.gov rescue. I can tell you it's sometimes frustrating, but always satisfying work. And there are several avenues in.
There is so much truth to government being left in the dust technologically. When I was in the NSA, I built a bunch of programs that saved a dramatic amount of time by automating a lot of message passing, formatting, etc. When I made my first application, I didn't even know what a database was, so I built it using a bunch of interconnected perl applications using the Tie::File library on flatfiles and operating on them as arrays. With such little knowledge about creating applications, I was still able to have a major impact on people's workflows, showing how even the barest use of technology was extremely impactful.
A big part of why certain organizations fail on the technology side comes from how they perceive the use of systems on their network. For instance, in the NSA example, I asked if I could make programs to make things easier (having never made an application in my life) and the grizzled old veteran analyst handed me the Perl Cookbook and said "Go to town.". Compare that with my CIA contracting job where I was explicitly told not to program, programmed anyway, and proved that we could effectively make programs in-house instead of waiting for months on a separate contract to fulfill our needs. That programs savings to taxpayers dollars, by the way? About $10 million.
We do take for granted that we can do something like type `npm install` and programs magically get pulled from disparate parts of the internet and work. On government networks, you have to work with code that's been vetted over a 3-6 month process, leaving you with the baseline items (the node binary, for instance) but requiring you to rebuild the modules you need. I'm of course referencing networks that are completely air-gapped from the internet, that is.
Do the contractors offer senior engineer pay (10+ years experience) that is more competitive with private sector? The direct employment jobs max out at mid-level engineer wages.
You call yourself the Rebel Alliance, but you helped the government on a massive, expensive, intrusive, extra-legal project which almost nobody wants and has benefitted very few outside of the government and its cronies?
You ain't part of no Rebel Alliance, man. You're full Empire, and you helped build a Death Star.
As Sam alludes to, many YC alums have joined the government in some capacity—healthcare.gov, US Digital Service, Nava, Presidential Innovation Fellows—and are on HN.
Why doesn't the government allocate more funding to pay skilled technical workers at least close-to-market wages for the crucial work they are doing in bringing government organizations and systems into the 21st century?
Tor was started at the Naval Research Laboratory. There are smart, hard-working people in government service. The politicians, however, often have monied interests involved in preventing efficiency (pork barrel politics).
Because of the pork barrelling, you will definitely meet people at every level, but especially at lower levels, who play "rice bowl" politics:
"woah, there's paperwork to fill out for that, and it's my job to fill out that paperwork. Don't you do that until I fill out this paperwork."
Ok, how long will that take?
"I can probably have it done in a week."
It's a single half-sheet of paper, are you sure it will take a week?
"Yeah, maybe two."
But from the politician's perspective, a job's a job, so he'll have that job for a long time.
It's really not fair to lump all of government in with the NSA. "Helping the US government" in the case of the digital service means things like making it easier for immigrants to apply for a green card by building a web application that replaces paper forms. What the digital service is actually doing is helping US citizens receive government services more efficiently. Which is completely different from "helping the government" the way you phrase it.
Fwiw, the US Government is pretty big. And it's not like we all get secret decoder rings and meet up once a year to figure out how to trick the public in the next year.
There's a lot of organizations with a lot of different goals.
My thoughts exactly -- I would much rather be helping raise awareness of government surveillance and developing measures to abate it, instead of giving them even more technological power. The front-end of services like healthcare and immigration can be improved all we want, but that doesn't affect any fundamental change in the way things are done (it's a fancy website, but you'll still be waiting 5-10 years for your green card). I struggle to see why anyone who is technologically savvy would want to do this.
The USDS Playbook[1] reminded me a lot of the GDS Design Principles[2] and even shares a few points. I think they also set a feeling for each of the Governments they're related to.
Sharp eye! We are indeed indebted to the work that the UK has done! They are a couple years more senior (USDS just had it's 1st birthday this Tuesday; GDS is coming up on 3) and while there is much tailoring for each country's unique circumstances, we've certainly benefited from their experience.
Unfortunately, we just lost the person who put together the team who put all that in place in the UK. I hope his replacement is going to be able to take the baton and run with it.
I've met a lot of the U.S. Digital Service people and it is an amazing organization. I had a list of concerns (how they work with contractors already in place, how things would evolve with a new administration, whether they would get sucked into long term staffing at agencies, etc) and they had addressed all of them.
There are a few negative things as overhang from the rest of government (requirement for citizenship: so many of the great people I know are non citizens, even if many have green cards; drug testing, which doesn't really serve a meaningful purpose), but those are the reality, and don't diminish the value of the program in any way.
I would strongly recommend looking into USDS to anyone who who wants to make a difference in tech. It is a great place to go in the middle of a longer career at a post IPO company like Google/FB, or are between projects.
Really happy seeing these initiatives and the way the White House is thinking about bringing technology to the government.
I just can't understand why other government bodies and countries still give all their work to big corporations asking for ridiculous amounts of money for delivering questionable work quality. Their only thinking is how we can deliver the worst software ever that require us to maintain it for as many years as possible.
Give the work to smart folks who are willing to make it happen because they believe in that country and how they can make a true impact and you'll get wonderful software at a reasonable price that will just work.
Navy doc here. One project where a huge difference could be made, now, would be if smart people could hold Leidos to task with the new military health care system. It's something like $16 billion dollars and "integrating with the VA proved to be too expensive".
Many thanks to the folks at 18f and the US Digital Service.
How far behind is government IT? I'm trying to get the Navy HPC systems (the cutting edge, right?) to "modernize" to Python 2.7.
Did the people that charged $200 million to build healthcare.gov get to keep the money after the project failed? What about the people that allocated that money, do they still have their jobs?
It seems kind of disingenuous to ask engineers to do a "tour of duty" at a substantially reduced rate, when they could instead contract at normal rates and actually deliver working software. If you want to help the government, contract at normal rates and actually deliver high-quality, working software - don't take a pay cut to do it.
Did he take his own advice? Also regarding the rewrite of HealthCare.gov - I don't know the specifics but aren't re-writes always way cheaper and far easier than the initial implementation? Is it really a fair comparison?
I just want to be as sure as possible that they never get around to fixing the traffic ticketing system.
God forbid the state cops ever realize how many times the local cops have pulled me over, or vice versa, and that's before we even get out-of-state violations involved.
Good lord, keep them away from the traffic tickets. COBOL is just fine for that.
Erm. Serving your country does not equal to serving the government. Often the government in place actually has an active role in destroying the country or making it worse. Look at the NSA - are the NSA folks really serving their country or their goverment first ?
Yup. I want to give a shout-out to 18F who did a really great job with this. This project is really important for two reasons.
1. It brought analytics to the minds of agency communications and policy folks. Having 18F going around adding Google Analytics to as many government websites as possible also opened up lots of other opportunities to help people better understand their users.
2. It's an example of a shared service - one that doesn't require extra procurement, is super reliable, and doesn't require every agency to duplicate work. The sheer size of the government makes the fact that sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing is understandable - the way we've set up a federal system actually makes this an intentional feature. However, if we reduce rebuilding, either by sharing services or code would be a big win for the budget and for quality.
Will this scale? For me it looks like a kind of organizational anti-pattern. Imagine you are working in your project, then comes the "Know it all" guys trying to redo everything you know about. After rebuilding everything they will leave, take all the credits and leave the bomb with you.
Any idea what the compensation is like? Would the "tour of duty" be considered a sacrifice or is it a viable way to make a living for a talented engineer?
Honest question, because I can't find it in the copy on the USDS page, but have seen comments here about this:
Do you treat this as a job with a certain known tenure, or rather as a sabbatical? It seems like they want specific periods of work, but how does that fit with a regular job where you're vaguely working for a company indefinitely?
How does relocating to the DC-metro area fit in with that? Relocation is expensive and a hassle, after all.
Technology makes government and other traditional institutions irrelevant. Focus you efforts on decentralizing technologies that replace giant outdated systems entirely.
The US government, like all traditional states, is just a really official type of organized crime. The DNA of the state is past its expiration.
I would have been all over this a few years ago, but being married to someone who can't also move to DC for a multi-month period makes it unworkable. For my career, I work 100% remotely - I would love to do some work for the digital service if they had opportunity for remote working.
[+] [-] ritchiea|10 years ago|reply
And then of course I didn't get the job (and no feedback on why). The whole thing was maddening, took 3 months total just to get railroaded by an aggressive and imprecise technical interviewer. It sounds like great work though, wish them the best of luck. Wish I could work on their projects.
[+] [-] liyanchang|10 years ago|reply
This of course is no excuse - there is a lot of work to be done and we are working on it.
[+] [-] sown|10 years ago|reply
At the very least you now learned about them. I want you to read this: http://mikerowe.com/2015/08/otw-rejection/
And let me relate to you: I get turned down for jobs all the time. It is not because of capricious reasons that I wish were the case, but it's because of me not knowing something. Yes, it's maddening because they throw out good candidates along with the bad to minimize risk to them. The same facts happen to me and you, but try to have the perspective on them be as positive as you can.
[+] [-] dnesting|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gknoy|10 years ago|reply
Be careful of such assumptions. Google has a lot of languages that they use, and it's not inconceivable that someone that worked at Google might be mainly a Java engineer, without much exposure to Python -- in which case list vs array is a pretty meaningful question from their perspective.
[+] [-] eonw|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bliti|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nl|10 years ago|reply
It was a computer science question, not a programming question. If a particular tool doesn't implement one of the fundamental data types that is an interesting point you can talk about.
But the question sounds like the interviewer wanted to make sure you understood the time-complexity difference between the two.
If you've never done that style of interview it is important to realize that the goal is quite different to making sure you understand a language's syntax.
[+] [-] mdickers47|10 years ago|reply
If anyone asking "why is it so bad" actually genuinely wanted an answer, here is part of one: There's some finite amount of process change that we can absorb per unit time. We have tended not to prioritize process improvements that would reduce the risk of an individual getting a bad experience, in favor of ones that will increase the total yield of qualified hires. We know we are paying a price for this, so we keep an eye on places like HN to see how high it is.
[+] [-] rasmi|10 years ago|reply
[1] https://18f.gsa.gov/
[2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows
[3] http://ben.balter.com/2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f-...
[+] [-] nacin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] navahq|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbseid|10 years ago|reply
I love how they work in the public and really advocate open source. One cool project is their analytics reporter: https://github.com/18F/analytics-reporter
[+] [-] paulsmith|10 years ago|reply
One thing I'll say about government work -- you're not really breaking new ground, from a technology perspective. (Unless you're at DARPA I suppose.) Don't come into thinking you're going to innovate in some bleeding-edge area. But government was left so far behind the consumer technology curve that basic, competently-executed, well-designed software that's fast is an _enormous_ leap forward. 2008-era web tech is sorely needed across government. In a way, that is the innovation: dependable software that reliably delivers services to people for whose user-experience has never been put on the same playing field as consumer online services.
If you're interested in being part of the rebel alliance, and for whatever reason USDS or 18F aren't right for you, consider contracting. There's enormous opportunity to make real change and see your code help others. Believe me, small teams can have a big impact on government, even from outside government. If you want to know more about Ad Hoc, get in touch (http://adhocteam.us/). We also have projects with the Department of Veterans Affairs, and state Medicaid programs.
I never thought I'd be a government contractor. I did the startup thing, and just happened to get roped into the HealthCare.gov rescue. I can tell you it's sometimes frustrating, but always satisfying work. And there are several avenues in.
[+] [-] bazillion|10 years ago|reply
A big part of why certain organizations fail on the technology side comes from how they perceive the use of systems on their network. For instance, in the NSA example, I asked if I could make programs to make things easier (having never made an application in my life) and the grizzled old veteran analyst handed me the Perl Cookbook and said "Go to town.". Compare that with my CIA contracting job where I was explicitly told not to program, programmed anyway, and proved that we could effectively make programs in-house instead of waiting for months on a separate contract to fulfill our needs. That programs savings to taxpayers dollars, by the way? About $10 million.
We do take for granted that we can do something like type `npm install` and programs magically get pulled from disparate parts of the internet and work. On government networks, you have to work with code that's been vetted over a 3-6 month process, leaving you with the baseline items (the node binary, for instance) but requiring you to rebuild the modules you need. I'm of course referencing networks that are completely air-gapped from the internet, that is.
[+] [-] kalvin|10 years ago|reply
Piling on: If you're interested in being an early employee at a growth startup working with the government, check out Nava! (I work for Nava)
Our hiring post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10001189
[+] [-] plonh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brandonb|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uhcuhcy|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Albright|10 years ago|reply
You ain't part of no Rebel Alliance, man. You're full Empire, and you helped build a Death Star.
[+] [-] brandonb|10 years ago|reply
Jason Shen from YC S11 recently wrote about the concept of a "Tour of Duty": http://www.jasonshen.com/2015/when-did-you-do-your-tour-of-d...
If anybody has questions, feel free to ask and I'm sure one of the alumni will reply!
[+] [-] roymurdock|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] navahq|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notsony|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sarciszewski|10 years ago|reply
I know I'm not alone here, either.
[+] [-] niels_olson|10 years ago|reply
Because of the pork barrelling, you will definitely meet people at every level, but especially at lower levels, who play "rice bowl" politics:
"woah, there's paperwork to fill out for that, and it's my job to fill out that paperwork. Don't you do that until I fill out this paperwork."
Ok, how long will that take?
"I can probably have it done in a week."
It's a single half-sheet of paper, are you sure it will take a week?
"Yeah, maybe two."
But from the politician's perspective, a job's a job, so he'll have that job for a long time.
[+] [-] allworknoplay|10 years ago|reply
They're not facilitating spying or drone death, and they're actually cutting traditional overpriced shitty contractors from the mix, which is good.
[+] [-] ritchiea|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zacharycohn|10 years ago|reply
There's a lot of organizations with a lot of different goals.
[+] [-] vippy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magicmu|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twright|10 years ago|reply
[1] https://playbook.cio.gov/
[2] https://www.gov.uk/design-principles
[+] [-] liyanchang|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gm3dmo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdl|10 years ago|reply
There are a few negative things as overhang from the rest of government (requirement for citizenship: so many of the great people I know are non citizens, even if many have green cards; drug testing, which doesn't really serve a meaningful purpose), but those are the reality, and don't diminish the value of the program in any way.
I would strongly recommend looking into USDS to anyone who who wants to make a difference in tech. It is a great place to go in the middle of a longer career at a post IPO company like Google/FB, or are between projects.
[+] [-] jordigg|10 years ago|reply
I just can't understand why other government bodies and countries still give all their work to big corporations asking for ridiculous amounts of money for delivering questionable work quality. Their only thinking is how we can deliver the worst software ever that require us to maintain it for as many years as possible.
Give the work to smart folks who are willing to make it happen because they believe in that country and how they can make a true impact and you'll get wonderful software at a reasonable price that will just work.
[+] [-] niels_olson|10 years ago|reply
Many thanks to the folks at 18f and the US Digital Service.
How far behind is government IT? I'm trying to get the Navy HPC systems (the cutting edge, right?) to "modernize" to Python 2.7.
[+] [-] jcnnghm|10 years ago|reply
It seems kind of disingenuous to ask engineers to do a "tour of duty" at a substantially reduced rate, when they could instead contract at normal rates and actually deliver working software. If you want to help the government, contract at normal rates and actually deliver high-quality, working software - don't take a pay cut to do it.
[+] [-] nightski|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aerovistae|10 years ago|reply
I just want to be as sure as possible that they never get around to fixing the traffic ticketing system.
God forbid the state cops ever realize how many times the local cops have pulled me over, or vice versa, and that's before we even get out-of-state violations involved.
Good lord, keep them away from the traffic tickets. COBOL is just fine for that.
[+] [-] ekianjo|10 years ago|reply
Erm. Serving your country does not equal to serving the government. Often the government in place actually has an active role in destroying the country or making it worse. Look at the NSA - are the NSA folks really serving their country or their goverment first ?
[+] [-] fitzwatermellow|10 years ago|reply
https://analytics.usa.gov/
Between immigration and weather one can cover 70% of queries right there ;) And thanks to sama for the write up.
[+] [-] liyanchang|10 years ago|reply
1. It brought analytics to the minds of agency communications and policy folks. Having 18F going around adding Google Analytics to as many government websites as possible also opened up lots of other opportunities to help people better understand their users.
2. It's an example of a shared service - one that doesn't require extra procurement, is super reliable, and doesn't require every agency to duplicate work. The sheer size of the government makes the fact that sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing is understandable - the way we've set up a federal system actually makes this an intentional feature. However, if we reduce rebuilding, either by sharing services or code would be a big win for the budget and for quality.
[+] [-] vippy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neves|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jchendy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clebio|10 years ago|reply
Do you treat this as a job with a certain known tenure, or rather as a sabbatical? It seems like they want specific periods of work, but how does that fit with a regular job where you're vaguely working for a company indefinitely?
How does relocating to the DC-metro area fit in with that? Relocation is expensive and a hassle, after all.
[+] [-] adamkochanowicz|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilaksh|10 years ago|reply
The US government, like all traditional states, is just a really official type of organized crime. The DNA of the state is past its expiration.
[+] [-] tunesmith|10 years ago|reply