Why technologists don't want to work at a government agency | Hacker News Reader

Why technologists don't want to work at a government agency

ben.balter.com

37 pointsrmason16 comments

As someone who has worked for more than one agency, reading this list is like listening to a high schooler complain about getting up early for school. Yes it's a pain and there's lots of good reasons for change, but there's also probably reasons you're not familiar with (or care about) that make it necessary.

Also, some of these are really stretching:

>> 3. You tether developers to their desk

Not having Wifi is a dealbreaker? I don't know about the author, but i became an engineer because i wanted to build things. If the problem is interesting, does it really matter if you can't go 'chill in the lobby' with your laptop?

>> 10. New technologies are guilty until proven innocent

When managing anything that can vitally affect many people it's important to not just jump on the next bandwagon. This is engineering 101.

>> 13. Speaking at conferences is tightly controlled

What? Are you talking about OPSEC procedures or travel limitations or what exactly?

>> 16. You measure your hiring process in months

Your freaky fast startup is what...5..100 employees? Come on, an agency (while can be small) is part of something much much larger. Also many agencies require a full background check and/or security clearance.

>> 18. Recruitment is unheard of

Just because you're not getting spam from NASA or your local gov about an 'exciting opportunity to change the world' doesn't mean agencies don't attend job fair, offer scholarships, and recruit talent.

>> 19. You block half the internet - I honestly don’t know how I’d do my job without social networks like Twitter.

Really? "It’s not unsurprising that many government employees are out of the loop", like we can't or won't read/browse/learn things on our own time. Get off your petastle.

I had a similar reaction to you but disagree with you on a few:

>> 13. Speaking at conferences is tightly controlled

> What? Are you talking about OPSEC procedures or travel limitations or what exactly?

I spent a good deal of time working for the US Feds and it wasn't just travel limitations. Due to the fact that we couldn't accept "gifts," I wasn't able to accept the speaker package (flight+hotel) that was offered to every speaker so my supervisor could make the budget argument.

>> 16. You measure your hiring process in months

> Your freaky fast startup is what...5..100 employees? Come on, an agency (while can be small) is part of something much much larger. Also many agencies require a full background check and/or security clearance.

This is a straw man. Many agencies require a full background check for no particular reason. Further, a fingerprint check with IAFIS and even a National Agency Check can be done in a matter of days.

Regardless, to hire people in a field in demand, months is ridiculous. And it's not just the length of the process but the lack of information. The last time I was working for the Feds, I applied for a new position and waited ~30 days until they acknowledged the application, another ~30 days for the first call, a couple weeks for the first interview, and then another ~30 days for the followup. In the meantime, I joined a company and was deep into my first project.

The stuff I'd actually complain about would be the assumptions about continuous integration and continuous deployment--while those are always long-term goals, a lot fo companies never do them. :(

Especially on 19, though, I feel their pain. If the .gov feels it's important to protect developers from their own curiosity and browsing, fat fucking chance they'll retain anyone interesting.

I can't deny that it does hurt, but it's not really a dealbreaker until that random forum that you think has a similar answer to what you're looking for is blocked - most of the time i just bookmark links to read on the bus/when i get home

It does sound a bit entitled but you're not seeing the advantages. WiFi is useful for using computers in meetings, both formal and informal. Also, though it's not on the list, being able to work from home or while traveling is also important.

It's harder to secure but there are ways.

In my experience, meeting efficiency has a strong inverse correlation with the amount of internet available. In theory it should be nice to be able to fact check something mid-meeting, but in practice it's mostly a distraction. Can't check twitter mid-meeting? Good.

  Get off your petastle.

Petastle, eh? If only you had access to dictionary dot com.

or maybe a typo

A lot of this also applies to big corps, and most of it is not even a problem IMHO. In fact some of those, especially point 15, are reasons why I would want to work in a big, stablished company rather than in a startup.

The bit about integration, testing, Jenkins et al. surprised me, because in my (maybe not very vast) experience, small companies and startups are much less likely to test everything and just try to release as fast as possible. And I've had the same impression about process. Maybe I was just unlucky.

#9 is just basic http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_concerns

This guy has clearly never worked on anything but the most trivial of websites, he has no idea...

Actually, he works on some seemingly cool stuff at Github, (http://ben.balter.com/about/) and I think #9 is a complaint about being unable to monitor code in production, which is a valid concern even if your test suite is well written and someone else is performing the actual deployment IMO.

ESR in a suit.

I wonder what the working conditions of the technologists building Singapore's smart nation or e-Estonia are like.

Working in government is not always like this. I spent about 9 months contracting in the UK's Ministry of Justice

> You force developers to use tools designed for lawyers

Nope, we used whatever we wanted to.

> You distrust your employees

Nope, most people used OS X and had full control over their machine

> You tether developers to their desk

Nope, there is wifi throughout the building. I actually worked from home a lot, eventually only coming in for sprint planning and retros

> You prefer government-specific service providers

Nope, we deploy on AWS in prod, and spin up Heroku apps for sharing prototypes

> Temporary integration

Nope, we run CI on every branch, pull requests are not merged until green.

> Sparse delivery

Nope, Continuous delivery. Master is always deployable. We deploy whenever we want.

> You still see waterfall as a viable option

Nope

> You don’t place process on a pedestal

Nope, use all best practise you'd expect in any modern software shop

> You erect a moat between developers and servers

Nope, our releases our deployed by CI but we can SSH into any box (via VPN and jump boxes)

> New technologies are guilty until proven innocent

Nope, use what you want as long as you can justify it, i.e. building a service in brainfuck won't fly

> You use open source as a verb

Nope, all development done in the open and service source code licensed under MIT

> Working in the open is a novelty, not a best practice

Nope, see above. We're spending taxpayer money, the software belongs to the taxpayer and we want to be fully accountable.

> Speaking at conferences is tightly controlled

Nope

> Geeks are the bottom of your food chain

Nope. Quite frankly the opposite. We have the best equipment in the department, are amongst the best paid, and wear whatever we want to the office where all other stuff seem to be required to wear business dress.

> Culture only happens outside of your working hours

Nope. As we are spending public money we can hardly have an open bar but we do our best

> You measure your hiring process in months

Nope, the slowest part of the hiring process is having a background check, which takes a couple of weeks

> Onboarding is an afterthought

Nope, you're up and running with all your brand new kit and logins on day 1

> Recruitment is unheard of

Nope, but the department has largely grown through referrals

> You block half the internet

Nope, nothing is blocked whatsoever

Judging by the author's resume, which includes university and work in DC, he's criticizing US gov't tech culture. It's nice to hear that things are better in the UK, though.

I worked in Higher Education for 4.5 years in the UK and this article was very much a blast from the past. Some universities really got it but I distinctly remember being told by the head of IT at a top London university that developers had no place in his opinion.

Unfortunately the funding to JISC was heavily cut a few years back and the Dev8D community that had developed (made up of developers at many institutions) lost its momentum to budget cuts and bureaucracy.

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