I didn't catch this part- why did the author leave? Was it just a term end and he chose not to renew it?
"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.
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.
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.
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 :-)
That system handles hundreds of millions of people and trillions of dollars.
Calling it "rather basic CRUD work" is incredibly myopic and/or arrogant.
Calculate 1 in a 1000 tax returns or bank statements wrong and some one will want blood.
But I think you misunderstand software engineering and the nature of engineering skill or fields of experience. There may be no such thing as "100% right" when it comes to which hits are included in the result set for a google query, but I have no doubt that nearly any google engineer needs to write all sorts of code on a regular basis that indeed needs to be 100% right with regard to specifications or requirements.
Sorry after having been one of my country's 3rd line osi team I take a fairly hard line on correctness.
Ah so hobby programmers then.
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.
The goal is to get to 500 by the end of next year. [1]
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)
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.
(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)