Advice to programmers: Get a government job

http://commentlog.org/bid/4431/Advice-to-programmers-Get-a-government-job

by bokonist • 18 years ago

25 89 18 years ago

commentlog.org

Anon84• 18 years ago

This might be the answer to a previous post... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=394609

Dilpil• 18 years ago

Unless of course you actually want to produce quality software.

aswanson• 18 years ago

Like what, another buggy facebook app or social site? The software running on the FAA flight control systems, DOD command and comms systems, and satellite navigations outclass pretty much anything I've seen from the startup space in terms of quality.

alex_c• 18 years ago

What percentage - by whatever measurement you want, lines of code, man hours, whatever - do those make up of all software written by government organizations?

sofal2• 18 years ago

The software running on the FAA flight control systems, DOD command and comms systems, and satellite navigations outclass pretty much anything I've seen from the startup space in terms of quality.

It sounds glorious, doesn't it?

I wrote software for submarines. The innovation is outsourced and is done long before these systems start development. It's all about integration and stifling quality control. More effort is spent on generating paperwork than on developing the system. A corporate government contractor will bend over to get a contract, letting the customer dictate the details of the design (for example: specifying that CORBA must be used for all inter-process communication). The "quality" of the software comes from taking horrible code and beating it into submission with QA over the course of months. The user interfaces that come out of this process make me pity the poor sailors.

Coming up with these impressive technologies and then integrating them into real systems are two completely different activities, separated temporally by about a decade. The glory rests with the former only.

olefoo• 18 years ago

Most of that is written by contractors, not government employees. And for most startups the money they could spend training programmers and investing in methods and process is better spent getting something, anything, out there, on the street producing revenue.

matthavener• 18 years ago

depends on what you really want out of a job. if you want security and less stress gov't is the way to go. but you're also going to find people that don't care about quality, "doing it right", the latest technologies, learning, working hard, or sometimes working at all. you deal with the biggest bureaucracy in america... working for the gov't seems to be the opposite of the values purported by hn posts

Devilboy• 18 years ago

Exactly why you SHOULD consider a government job. We need people willing to rock the boat from the inside if we want things to change.

johns2• 18 years ago

Except for that its exceedingly difficult to accomplish anything of worth without some political influence outside of your sections control. Doesn't matter how much buy in you can get from your management, you're still in the end at the mercy of someone else's political whims.

old-gregg4• 18 years ago

What you just said applies to almost any business with more than 1K employees. I'd say any programmer considering a career at General Electric (random pick) is insane. It's a government job without government benefits.

netcan• 18 years ago

Which is to say, of those earning in the top 25%-30% (varies a lot by country) this applies to the majority of people.

Prrometheus• 18 years ago

I have friends in software development at military contractors in the area. Apparently, after you work for three years you get "tenure" and you receive France-style job security. Since its more trouble after that to fire you than to just pay you, the worst that can happen for incompetence is that you get left alone with nothing to do. Also, if you leave, you are always guaranteed a spot if you choose to return.

Nothing is good for job security like being removed from the discipline of the market. Hook up to the public teat and you can feed for life.

yan• 18 years ago

I understand you're being general, but as a specific example, my office is the opposite of that. (I work for federal gov't). A lot of extremely intelligent, diligent and competent people whose interests would belong right at home here.

vaksel• 18 years ago

I see it as 3 types of jobs really:

a) government job as described in the post b) corporate job as described in the post c) start-up job

Unless you are getting equity there is probably no reason whatsoever to work in the private sector.

the beauty of government jobs is that you work for 20 years, and then you can retire, where you get 50% of your paycheck as your pension.

I know for many wokraholics the mentality is that money solves everything, but most people will elect to get a slightly lower salary in exchange for a higher quality of life.

jcromartie2• 18 years ago

I've been a full-time government contractor, and let me tell you: it gives you plenty of time to work on interesting side projects.

But seriously, I hope that the Obama administration ratchets up the level of accountability when it comes to federal use of technology. There is so much redundancy that could be eliminated and, at the same time, so much more work that could be accomplished.

mattmcknight• 18 years ago

I don't have a problem with redundancy- it's like saying we don't need Microsoft and Apple. A little diversity goes a long way- it's the natural selection based approach. The real problem is it's not survival of the fittest, it's survival of the most connected. So many competing systems survive because of the government attitude of never admitting a mistake- ever.

What I do have a problem with is the government's current obsession with buying COTS software and making me "integrate it" and claiming it's easier than doing it ourselves. Millions and millions down the drain on licenses for Sharepoint, Oracle, and other crap for which I can download better alternatives for free. Source code we can own as a country and share across agencies. It's criminal that it's so hard to make that work.

jcromartie2• 18 years ago

Wow, man. Are you my past self speaking from an alternate universe? Never admitting a mistake, buying/integrating before building, worthless COTS licensing and contracts and dead-end projects everywhere. Yup. That's exactly what I remember from gov't contracting 5 years ago!

sachinag• 18 years ago

If you like the idea of making something people will use, but are scared of working for the government, consider making a tool that the government has to take over.

Here's the wonderful history of Carl Malamud doing this with the SEC EDGAR database and his current work on PACER: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/08/carl-malamud-ta.ht...

byrneseyeview• 18 years ago

From the article:

You have already received rich rewards for the initial publication of these documents, and releasing this data back into the public domain would significantly grow your market and thus be an investment in your future.

This seems really unlikely. It looks to me like Westlaw makes money by restricting access to information; I don't think they'd make more money if they had open access, though it would of course be very nice of them.

thomasmallen3• 18 years ago

"Let me be clear, this is a catastrophic development for our country. When the private sector can no longer compete with the public sector, you know that society is on its way out."

What? Of course the government outcompetes in terms of job security. I would too if I get a dollar for every three you made. But that's where the outcompetition ends. Private sector wins for efficiency, innovation, and general business competitiveness.

Get a government job if you want to be financially fed from a tube til death, probably doing tedious, monotonous work. You can stay in your cage where Farmer feeds you on the clock; those of us who have a passion for what we do will continue to live in the wild.

Related is PG's essay on the nature of the employee in a startup as opposed to in a corporation, although in this case the contrast is between the private and public sectors.

old-gregg4• 18 years ago

What? ... Private sector wins for efficiency, innovation, and general business competitiveness.

Wake up and look around: the government built first computers, your beloved Lisp, freaking Internet, not to mention sending man to space. Most universities are public. Innovation is so expensive that the private sector can't even dream of achieving anything of those magnitudes.

Government, believe it or not, will be the one who solves the energy problem, will eventually cure cancer and AIDS and hopefully build a true AI, while entrepreneurial types will continue "throwing sheep" on facebooks.

Inefficient? Yes. Non-innovative? No. And WTF is general business competitiveness?

thomasmallen3• 18 years ago

* I love Lisp? While I don't "love" any one language, most of my favorite projects were developed by open source communities.

* Of course the government will do all of this: It's placed itself at the center of motion. Monopolization doesn't indicate superiority.

* General business competitiveness: A business typically has to take other things that I didn't mention into account to be viable. I wasn't prepared to enumerate all of the differences between how a government institution and a for-profit business are run. It's no mystery that being beholden to paying customers or even a community that votes with its feet is more challenging than appealing to the many forces that drive government. And obviously, we're well past the point where American citizens throwing off the bridle is a possibility.

darjen4• 18 years ago

Ever hear of the broken window fallacy? You should seriously look into it. It applies to everything you say the government accomplished. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_window_fallacy

It's not some amazing feat of innovation that somebody thought to hook up computers to talk to each other. Give somebody enough power to confiscate money from the people, and monopolize tech research, and they might eventually come up with something useful.

Of course, who's to say private industry research wouldn't have been able to come up with something that's even more useful, had the government not monopolized these functions? They might have been able to come up with networking protocols without such serious security holes as in today.

corentin• 18 years ago

> Innovation is so expensive that the private sector can't even dream of achieving anything of those magnitudes.

Keep in mind that all the money of the public sector comes from the private sector... and ultimately ends up in some pockets in the private sector as well.

jrockway• 18 years ago

Get a government job if you want to be financially fed from a tube til death, probably doing tedious, monotonous work.

As opposed to a corporate job, where you get all the monotony but don't get the feeding tube?

I personally wouldn't want either -- but not everyone in the world is very smart or very motivated. In that case, they might as well get a pension.

thomasmallen3• 18 years ago

Corporations are a subset of the private sector. I never mentioned corporate jobs except in reference to PG's essay.

noodle• 18 years ago

i'd just like to point out that my state government has advertised for some agile rails jobs. "good" government jobs exist (assuming those were good jobs, i didn't apply or work in them so i can't say for sure).

bwd2• 18 years ago

Given how deeply some of the state and local governments are in the hole in this financial crisis, has anyone given any serious thought as to how safe government pensions really are? The two possible scenarios that worry me the most about our current situation are commercial real estate problems being as bad as residential and the failure of a large state or municipality (e.g. Michigan or Detroit) to be able to meet its debt and pension obligations, which might set off a chain reaction in the municipal bond market of the magnitude that we saw in the commercial paper market after the failure of Lehman. Is there a backstop similar to PBGC available for public sector plans (couldn't find one with a few minutes of research) or is the Federal government the only possible source of help?

yummyfajitas• 18 years ago

Is there a backstop similar to PBGC available for public sector plans...

Raising taxes.

Besides, the feds will most likely bail the states likely to default (CA, MI, NJ) at least until 2013.

jaredg• 18 years ago

The state and local government pensions I'm familiar with should actually be safer than most pension systems -- in theory, the government agency makes its required contributions to the trust fund at the time the employee is paid. The bigger state and local pension systems are some of the largest institutional investors, so their fates are more tied to the market than their member governments.

As with any other pension system, if a lot of the trust's holdings are in bonds, and those bonds end up in default, that would be a problem.

The government pensions schemes are facing the same problem as Social Security -- people living and collecting benefits longer, health care costs going up (for those that include long term health benefits), and so on.

bwd2• 18 years ago

"The state and local government pensions I'm familiar with should actually be safer than most pension systems"

Considering the fact that many defined benefit programs look about as safe as ticking time bombs, this doesn't particularly reassure me. In addition, there is the problem of actuarial assumptions. I remember a New York state actuary getting in trouble because he was being paid by the state labor unions earlier this year and came across this article while I was trying refresh my memory of the details: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/21/business/pension.php

ghshephard• 18 years ago

75th Percentile for Sr. Developers with a strong framework experience in the valley is $150K right now. Plus the options upside (Which should hopefully come through every third or fourth company you work for).

Yes, during a death march, you do tend to stay working after 5:00 PM, and possibly even work on weekends.

But, once you get into year three or four, a properly managed software shop should see those pushes for just three or four weeks a year, and it's not uncommon to see engineers putting in 30 hour work weeks the rest of the year.

Of course the whole roller coaster of layoffs is still pretty valid - but if you are a good developer, jobs are pretty easy to come by once you've built up your network, and you can treat the off time as vacation. There is a reason why recruiters make $20K-25K (minimum) for tracking down high performance developers - they are hard to find.

If you are an average developer, having to deal with 6 month to 2 year sabbaticals might suck, and I can see why the government job approach might make sense.

My conclusion: Rock stars should look to being principal developers for private concerns, others should consider all their options based on their needs.

larrykubin• 18 years ago

Been there, done that. Worked at a government/university job for about 2 years. Very few people there cared about programming or software whatsoever. It's hard to stay motivated about anything when no one around you is fired up or cares about being there.

Used a programming language similar to COBOL that made me want to bang my head against the wall. Features that would normally be trivial to implement were almost impossible. Took forever to get any code moved to production. Took about a year of meetings to do something as simple as installing MySQL. Version control = Excel Spreadsheets and folders. Any suggestion to use a new tool required a special committee, more meetings, etc. No one wanted to learn anything new.

While you will have extra time to work on your own thing, you might lose your motivation and joy, and gradually become apathetic. I quit 2 years ago, and am doing much better as a freelancer.

sofal2• 18 years ago

My experience working for a gigantic government contractor was just like you describe.

I cannot emphasize enough how soul crushing it is to work in this kind of environment. You cannot just put in your hours, go home, and work on something interesting. The apathetic monotony is instilled into your being. It grows inside of you during the day, and you take it home with you. You can't just context switch from 8 hours of mental atrophy to a motivated and productive state. Sometimes I would come home and be useless for anything but lying down and staring at the ceiling. I only worked there for a year but I was turning into a zombie.

If you go in thinking you can help rock the boat and make some changes, be careful. You may find that the changes happen to you instead. The dark side is powerful.

enra• 18 years ago

Yeah, I worked as well for goverment, or more specifically for military. Even most people that worked in the same department were civilans as well, they still weren't that qualified for the job(or cared).

I took like 5 years of meetings or committees to actually launch a website, and you were tied to vendors that were selected for the job like 10years before, and even it was clear that they didn't do a very good job, no-one cared or wanted to change. I only lasted a year there, I was too horrified to actually becoming one of them.

So I would guess that you can't say that goverment job is always better than private, or other way around. In both cases you might want to check out the environment beforehand. There actually are some interesting jobs that only exist in public sector and some of them are quite highly competative.

nolanbrown232• 18 years ago

When you don't love what you do, you work for the government. I care about my retirement too but if that is your end goal, then you clearly don't care about the work you do. All you want to do is just go to work, come home, retire and die.

mrtron2• 18 years ago

Absolutely disagree with the generalization.

A friend is an auditor for the gov. He routinely gets offers for 5x salary from clients he is auditing (illegally).

Why does he do it? Because he loves what he does. He feels he is doing something necessary and honourable for his country.

zzzmarcus• 18 years ago

I bet if the offers were legal he'd be out in a second flat.

There just can't be much joy in being a tax collector and if there is some anomaly and he does truly enjoy it, it's exactly that, an anomaly.

nolanbrown232• 18 years ago

Sorry, my generalization was meant to be specific to technical jobs in the government (with the exception of NASA and DARPA).

While I don't dispute the auditor is performing a vital function for the government and loves his job, the role of a technical person and auditor cannot be compared. In his case the government supplies the auditor with more than just a salary and security, they provide him power that can't be had elsewhere.

For a technical person, the government is the hole you go into to die because you no longer love what you do.

patio11• 18 years ago

A government job is a wonderful thing for folks who want to start their own business. The hours are short and the work won't mentally exhaust you, and the pay will put a roof over your head and food on the table. After you get home at 5:30 you can spend a few hours working on your side project.

Then if you quit 2-3 years down the road, everyone will be better off: you'll have a job you'll enjoy, and the government will have gotten 2-3 years of labor out of you for a song and won't have to pay your absurdly generous pension benefits.

kingkongrevenge2• 18 years ago

> I shall be 63, my birthday, and retire with Social Security and a very secure pension

This guy is remarkably naive about the long term solvency of the government.

mgornick• 18 years ago

Either that or his few hundred a month pension might buy him a gum ball at the rate the US is printing money.

jmtame3• 18 years ago

Maybe two gumballs if he's lucky.

eru2• 18 years ago

Aren't government pensions inflation indexed?

dgabriel3• 18 years ago

I bet he's doing better with his government pension than he would be with a 401k right now.

jmtame3• 18 years ago

The way this is written disgusts me. I feel like a salesman is telling me to jump off a cliff because he personally values retirement, a 9-5 job, and safe/comfortable pensions.

I'm sorry but not everyone on this forum shares your ideologies. Not everyone is in it for money, comfort, or security. It requires sacrifice to do something meaningful with your life sometimes. If you can't pull an 80 hour week, then startups are definitely not for you.

No offense or anything meant by this response. I'm just saying, I felt like the writer was trying to impose his beliefs on me. In an annoying sort of way.

gaius5• 18 years ago

Read the article to the end. He concludes by stating that if all this is possible, the economy is fucked.

jmtame3• 18 years ago

Right, it's such a bad thing, yet he encourages everyone to do it. That makes sense.

pmorici4• 18 years ago

Ugh, that's all I have to say. This is exactly the kind of person the government doesn't need working for it; ie: someone who's only concern is their own job security.

The government needs employees who are selfless and would readily set their bosses chair on fire if it meant doing the right thing by the American people.

pg• 18 years ago

The government needs employees who are selfless and would readily set their bosses chair on fire if it meant doing the right thing by the American people.

Might it not be better if these people worked in the private sector, where their efforts could have more effect?

pmorici4• 18 years ago

Sure, but, someone has to work for the government. When the government contractors come calling whom would you rather have sitting on the other side of the table. Some fool who's only goal is to get through the day with the least amount of hassle or someone who isn't afraid to evaluate an idea on it's merits and call BS if that's what it is.

That isn't to say that that person wouldn't be making some sort of personal sacrifice in terms of either salary or work environment. I mean, doesn't it worry anyone else that if all the countries best and brightest minds are out there building the next Twitter we might have the B team working on things that have a far greater chance of effecting us all in the long term?

raffi• 18 years ago

Government job isn't all bad. For folks like us there are many opportunities. Do you want graduate school paid for? Scholarship for service is a great program. I know the lab I was at would give civilians the options to spend 2 years in residence working towards their PhD with their civilian pay. Granted 2 years isn't enough time to do the whole thing, but you can get courses paid for (and the time to take them) while working. Sometimes taking the courses is considered part of your job. Most of my MSc was paid for this way. Government benefits are great--the BS the gov employees have to deal with is what makes it painful.

Depending where you are at, there is an opportunity to make an impact and do very interesting work. There are also entrepreneurial opportunities in the government: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=395714

keefe• 18 years ago

shudder... talk about being a cog in the machine. Unless you're shooting for an early one, working for retirement just makes no sense. Just becoming steadily more lazy until I die? Whatever it is you are wanting to do after you retire, find a way to do it now.

kiplinger2• 18 years ago

f government jobs. This guy is a loser.

kiplinger2• 18 years ago

This guy is part of the problem, a loser who wants to bloat the system. What will this idiot do when the taxpayers revolt and he loses his cush job?

Bitch and moan about "budget cuts" like all the other hacks.

viggity• 18 years ago

I had a government gig for 12 months and I wanted to gouge my eyes out. Just because the author worked 80 hour weeks and now works a precise 40 does NOT mean you should work for the government. If you thought private sector bureaucracy is bad, just wait until you work for the gov. Plus working for the government quadruples the chances that you'll be working with completely lazy, incompetent morons (not exactly the kind of people I want running my health care, but that is a whole other ball of wax)

Avoid the government like the plague. If you private sector gig asks you to work in a manner you don't want to, find another company, but don't think about the gov.

mattmaroon• 18 years ago

What is this 'pension' thing he speaks of? It sounds much like my IRA, except it can somehow be lost.

neilk• 18 years ago

I've worked at a government job and it was one of the worst experiences of my professional career. As a summer student, I outperformed the guy who had that job the other 10.5 months of the year. And still I have never been paid so much for doing so little.

But I've also seen exactly how meaningless the private sector can be. While it may satisfy my desire for fast-paced, stimulating work, ultimately a lot of it is, well, stupid. The fact that you can get to work with some exciting new tech obscures the fact that 50% of projects will fail, and of those, even fewer will ever matter to anyone or even bring a smile to anyone's face. And many of the ones that do succeed are often patently immoral, or at best amoral.

Meanwhile, capitalism today is run for the benefit of managers. Even if you're lucky enough to work for a successful company, expect the CEO and VPs to reap the lion's share of the rewards, and fire you (or your friends) at Wall Street's whim.

I guess I'm saying that I can see this guy's point of view. Gee-whiz tech is one thing, but stability does matter, and some parts of the government are doing good work. I know a woman who makes a good, stable living generating stats out of the census, and also creating web tools for people to do the same. Consequently she's doing something good for Americans of all kinds, the scale creates interesting challenges, and there's even something to look forward to after it's all over. Can you imagine it?

Right now I have a great job, but even we can't completely escape the relentless stupidity that is the software business today.

Advice to programmers: Get a government job

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