US Tech Force

by purple_ferret • 7 months ago

228 274 7 months ago

Are there any other benefits?
Additional benefits include professional development opportunities, networking with government and industry leaders, and a pathway to continued public service or private sector careers.

Given the lack of mention of any benefits prior to this, it sure sounds like "you'll get lots of exposure!"

edit: not sure if they just added it, or if I just missed it, but there is an FAQ entry on compensation:

Compensation varies based on experience level and agency placement. Annual salaries are expected to be in the approximate range of $150,000 to $200,000. Benefits include health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, and eligibility for performance-based awards.

afavour7• 7 months ago

Yeah, given the primary benefit of government jobs like this is usually the stability, pension etc when you’re offering absolutely none of that you really need to look down the back of the couch for some benefits.

boredatoms• 7 months ago

Is it stability when funding bills dont pass?

placatedmayhem• 7 months ago

For me as someone that would potentially be interested in and qualified for one of these roles, the DOGE actions earlier this year and ongoing firing of nonpartisan & non-appointed that don't tow the current ruling party line ruined the stability benefit. I think it also casts doubt on the pension aspect, but I know less about what's required to get pension in US fed positions.

phantasmish7• 7 months ago

I was super-interested in this years ago. My interest vanished when I encountered the “tour of duty” concept. I don’t make FAANG money so the pay was roughly a lateral move for me if it’d included retirement, but having it be time-bound rather than career-oriented was a huge turnoff. Was ready to make that my whole deal, potentially for the rest of my life.

The US going politically totally batshit crazy shortly after ended up making it for the best that I did’t join, but still, it struck me as weird that they had to set it up with that extra sting of “we have to make sure this is a sacrifice”.

UncleOxidant• 7 months ago

"you'll get lots of exposure!"

"Backed by the White House"

I don't think this is the kind of exposure most people are going to want, nor will they want this on their resume.

sybercecurity• 7 months ago

Given the lack of mention of any benefits prior to this, it sure sounds like "you'll get lots of exposure!"

Well, they are also "partnering" with some private sector companies. I guess the idea is that candidates will put in their 2 years, then take their contact list and join federal sales arm of one of the private companies.

ncr100• 7 months ago

"Big Balls" and his ilk got a lot of attention.

1986• 7 months ago

So they gutted and destroyed USDS in order to... Create it again?

martythemaniak2• 7 months ago

No, USDS became DOGE, which is still there, as is the GSA. This is probably just some dude's fief (Sacks perhaps?)

justin662• 7 months ago

Ugh. I didn't realize until looking at the "US Tech Force" FAQ that USDS is now "United States DOGE Service." Somehow I assumed it had just faded away when all the good people left.

afavour7• 7 months ago

So they gutted and destroyed USDS
No, USDS became DOGE

To me these statements are not contradictory

devrand• 7 months ago

Is DOGE still there? The latest reporting [1] I've seen is that it's leaderless and has more or less just been absorbed into other organizations. This aligns with DOGE not posting anything for several months now.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/doge-doesnt-exist-with-eigh...

azemetre• 7 months ago

This looks like a way to force a few key players to gobble up all the federal dollars by forcing many executive controlled agencies to be force fed these LLM solutions because these same key players cannot sell their wares to the public so they need to steal public money, once again.

exceptione5• 7 months ago

Jup, the official term is Elite Capture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_capture

The difficulty for any party to want to govern after this is... there is no government. It is all oligarch captured, the candidates are oligarch sponsored, and don't count on the media to sound the siren because, well, you know why.

This is a plane that is never gonna fly again. The only way is to build a new plane, as impossible as that might sound.

nozzlegear• 7 months ago

No, Tech Force positions are not political appointments. Participants are hired as federal employees based on their technical qualifications and serve in non-partisan roles focused on technology implementation.

Will you be forced to set a politically biased out-of-office message that blames the Other Side when you're inevitably furloughed during the next funding crisis?

martythemaniak2• 7 months ago

No one will force you do to such a thing, because no one who will not enthusiastically do this on their own accord will be hired.

ivape• 7 months ago

lol. This is not even a parody.

curt15• 7 months ago

They might as well be political appointments after Trump v Slaughter is decided since the unitary executive maximalists would swallow all for-cause job termination protections that have defined the professional civil service.

jshier• 7 months ago

Given the current administration's desire for unmitigated power, and SCOTUS' inclination to give it to them, there's really no such thing as a non-partisan role anymore. When you can be fired at any moment for any action the regime deems disloyal, you can't be nonpartisan.

jamesgill• 7 months ago

What an AI slopfest of a website.

Also: the "United States DOGE Service"? Really?

mandevil2• 7 months ago

That's its official name. Obama had created the US Digital Service (USDS) back in 2014- it was essentially a formalization of the "Tiger Team" that had fixed Healthcare.gov the year before. The idea was that you would take mid-career to senior SDE's, PM's, UX people, DevOps, etc. from industry, and bring them into the government for a 2-3 year period, where they would jump into a specific government IT thing and fix it up, revamp and improve, and then after a few years leave the USDS and go back to industry. It was part of the Executive Office of the President, though it was funded by Congress through 2024 (and then via CR like the rest of the government until the shutdown).

It wasn't a large group, and they weren't really responsible for much so they never got much attention. They would just try and fix a few specific pain points at a time. I only knew about it because one of the best PM's I ever worked for did a stint exactly like it was supposed to work- she joined the USDS, worked for the American people for a few years, then left and went back to industry.

And then on January 21st, 2025, his first full day in office, Trump renamed the USDS to the United States DOGE Service, because USDS had money to pay salaries and since it was part of the EotP he could easily hire new people without civil service restrictions. So he could bring in new people (Big Balls etc.) easily enough. By February, essentially everyone who had been in the USDS on the last day of Biden's term were either laid off or resigned. And since then the USDS has been entirely DOGEified.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 7 months ago

Sounds like the same thing as US Digital Service.

iAMkenough• 7 months ago

Which was rebranded to DOGE.

Republicans love playing shell games while they rob taxpayers blind.

jihadjihad• 7 months ago

Backed by the White House

Somehow it hits differently than the similar phrase, "backed by the full faith and credit of the US Govt."

xg15• 7 months ago

Because in this administration, I guess it is different.

The "US Government" are the people and agencies that DOGE tried to get rid of and that were taken out of their jobs or unable to provide any services due to the shutdown.

Whereas "The White House" is Trump and his buddies.

Welcome to the autocracy...

b0sk• 7 months ago

This is not a political appointment, but if you have mentioned something even mildly negative about a certain person in the past, not only we'll walk you out, we'll probably arrest you!

reaperducer3• 7 months ago

Also, try not to be brown.

justin662• 7 months ago

What companies are participating in Tech Force?

The initial roster of private sector partners includes Adobe, Amazon Web Services, AMD, Anduril, Apple, Box, C3.ai, Coinbase, Databricks, Dell Technologies, Docusign, Google Public Sector, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle, Palantir, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Snowflake, Robinhood, Uber, Workday, xAI, and Zoom. This list will expand over time.

Are there any companies on that list who haven't made gross public displays of servitude towards the current administration?

isk517• 7 months ago

Every one of them will also be tripping over each other to try and push their software as the solution to any and every problem. I'd wager a hefty sum that at the end of the day every US government department is going to have it's own unique software stack that will be ill-suited for their needs, incompatible with what adjacent departments use, and offer no robustness in the event of an emergency.

starkparker• 7 months ago

Interesting to see AMD on there and not Intel.

smallnix• 7 months ago

at the Department of Defense

*Department of War

pavel_lishin4• 7 months ago

Oddly, one of the FAQs does call it the Department of War.

reaperducer3• 7 months ago

Oddly, one of the FAQs does call it the Department of War.

Not odd at all. That's what it's called now. Complete with new URL:

https://www.war.gov

ulrashida• 7 months ago

Figures this comes from the National Design Studio (https://ndstudio.gov/) which ironically also ignores the government's own advice on web standards and correct use of identifying headers.

One can assume the US Tech Force will perceive itself as also unfettered by those silly rules and good practices.

torginus2• 7 months ago

Do those standards mandate a correctly rendered US flag?

mxfh2• 7 months ago

New memo is one star, but compensate with 5 squares for what could be a simple rectangle. That logo's SVG is weird.

amarcheschi• 7 months ago

Click on America by design initiative

"What's the biggest brand in the world? If you said Trump, you're not wrong. But what's the foundation of that brand? One that's more globally recognized than practically anything else.

...

This is President Trump going bigger than President Nixon"

Jesus christ, man

kstrauser2• 7 months ago

I about spit my coffee when I saw that. Good grief.

We've been conditioned to accept that mediocre in government is normal.

Yes, I do now accept that mediocre [sic] in government is normal for the next few years.

ipython6• 7 months ago

:( I had to click through because I didn't believe you at first... as someone who used to proudly work with feds, this yet another low point in many over the past ten years.

ChrisArchitect• 7 months ago

Why is all of ND Studio's work so severely AI/'tech/crypto bro'/SF-billboard-vibe coded?

Barrin92• 7 months ago

That's what an oligarchy looks like, 'careers' consist of trying to glaze whatever moneyed person in power you can in hopes of getting a contract

H1Supreme• 7 months ago

I know it's par for the course these days, but that's a lot of Js and CSS for a single page app with some text, a few images, and a list of collapsible info sections (whose animations aren't very smooth).

cvoss• 7 months ago

My actual first thought was "Is this a hoax?" precisely because the website did not identify itself as a US government website in the usual way for executive branch sites.

verst• 7 months ago

How is this different from 18F (a group within GSA which Elon killed), US Digital Service (which Elon kind of converted to DOGE) or Defense Digital Service (DDS)?

Is the only difference that the current government can claim they started this (completely ignoring they dismantled the previous programs)?

pimlottc2• 7 months ago

Fortunately that's addressed in the extremely fine FAQ:

How is Tech Force related to other government technology programs, including ones at GSA or the United States DOGE Service?
While Tech Force will coordinate across all of government, it is distinct from other technology initiatives within government, including the United States DOGE Service and programs managed by GSA. These programs differ in their mandates, structure, required skillsets, and ability to convert to the competitive service.

Any questions?

Igrom• 7 months ago

I was prepared to fume here until I checked your comment history. I guess it is true that sarcasm occasionally fails to get across the cable.

jfindper• 7 months ago

How are they different?

Well, they're different. That's how.

vkou• 7 months ago

I'm assuming that unlike 18F or USDS, you'll likely be asked to do ethically-compromising things?

reactordev• 7 months ago

You're missing a half dozen others.

Yeah, this is nothing more than grandstanding idealism. Their staff will no doubtably be as dumb as Space Force or Air Force when it comes to cloud and technology. I've dealt with them in various forms throughout the years contracting. BESPIN was entirely contractor driven. Their devops pipelines and how to deploy things. If that's your indicator, good luck.

pimlottc2• 7 months ago

More seriously, one big difference is that USDS recognized that design is as important as technology. This org only wants engineering-types.

We're looking for expertise in software engineering, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data analytics, or technical project management. Strong problem-solving abilities and a passion for public service are essential.

neogodless2• 7 months ago

https://americabydesign.gov/

Design is separate but equal.

mandevil2• 7 months ago

Something often observed in authoritarian states is duplication of effort because of empire building. The ruler cannot trust any of his underlings- they are all sucking up to him and backstabbing each other constantly, so he pits them against each other, assigning overlapping responsibilities on purpose to keep any one subordinate from becoming too strong. This is why all of the "fascism/communism is so efficient" arguments need to actually look at the nature of Soviet or Nazi governments. As an example, there were at least five completely separate armed ground forces in Nazi Germany (1).

This constant competition between parts of the government actually led to tremendous waste. You can see it again in the Soviet space program during the 1960's. While NASA had a single purpose of getting to the moon before 1971 with a unified organization under the control of a single leader, after Khrushchev was deposed (and Korolev died) the Soviet space program splintered into a war between the old OKB-1 (Korolev's group) and Chelomei's OKB-52 that lasted for twenty years over Super-Proton vs Energia etc.

1: The Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS are the two most famous, but the Luftwaffe recruited, trained and equipped the Fallschirm-Panzer Korps and Fallshchirmjaeger- yes, German paratroops worked for Goering not the Wehrmacht. There were also five Marine Infantry Divisions under the Navy- they had half as many Marine Divisions as the US did, despite many fewer amphibious assaults! And the Volksturm, at the end of the war when things looked grim for Nazi Germany, was under NSDAP party control but separate from the Waffen-SS.

nostrademons• 7 months ago

Now that the administration killed 18-F and USDS, they need a new organization that does the same thing but consists of people loyal to this administration.

Avshalom• 7 months ago

Those were services, this is a force

nxobject3• 7 months ago

Don't forget to work in "dominance" and "lethality"! It really, truly, is all about criticizing and tearing the old thing down, and belatedly stepping it up again with neoconservative vibes.

alsetmusic• 7 months ago

Space Force, Tech Force, Ass Force. What a stupid timeline. I've been promoting government work (state, not federal) to my friends ever since I landed a sweet gig. It's awesome. Guess what job I won't seek.

embedding-shape4• 7 months ago

Participants will work on high-impact technology initiatives including AI implementation, application development, data modernization, and digital service delivery across federal agencies.
The initial roster of private sector partners includes Adobe, Amazon Web Services, AMD, Anduril, Apple, Box, C3.ai, Coinbase, Databricks, Dell Technologies, Docusign, Google Public Sector, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle, Palantir, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Snowflake, Robinhood, Uber, Workday, xAI, and Zoom. This list will expand over time.

Ever wanted to get involved in government-sanctioned espionage technology? This seems like an recruitment effort for that. Applicants beware. Remember that in just 3 years this will stop helping you to get hired, and will probably look like a blemish on your CV when you eventually need to get a new job.

transcriptase• 7 months ago

Right… because those definitely don’t already assist three-letter agencies and the presence of the largest tech companies on the planet on your CV will definitely somehow become a net negative because uh, orange man bad? I assume that’s what the 3 year window is about?

orochimaaru• 7 months ago

Bullshit. There is no company in the US that refuses to hire defense contractor employees, ex military or anyone who has worked in defense earlier.

Edit: this seems like the usds with private sector participation. I know “doge” is basically just usds.

vineyardmike• 7 months ago

There’s no company with a policy to refuse, but there are plenty of individual hiring managers and interviewers with personal opinions or bias.

tptacek7• 7 months ago

This is a thing you can only say if you know very little about the talent pipeline for actual espionage technology in the USG, which: they do not have a lot of problems there. Lots of people don't share your precise values about espionage or about espionage technology, and the real jobs in this field are extremely high-status. There's competition to get them.

embedding-shape4• 7 months ago

This is a thing you can only say if you know very little about the talent pipeline for actual espionage technology in the USG

Or something one might want to say if they want to still have plausible deniability about not having been there, yet still want to say something. Who knows.

purple_ferret• 7 months ago

A lot of these places already have massive government contracts with their own management structures.

So the plan is to also make some of them federal employees, ostensibly helping to oversee those contracts? Seems like a conflict of interest...

curtisblaine• 7 months ago

and will probably look like a blemish on your CV when you eventually need to get a new job.

Not necessarily, especially in the private sector. It's hard to justify not hiring an excellent employee because he or she worked for a company you don't like. Especially if the hiring panel is composed by >1 person.

ActorNightly6• 7 months ago

Remember that in just 3 years this will stop helping you to get hired, and will probably look like a blemish on your CV when you eventually need to get a new job.

The worst part about this entire political is that Dems are most likely gonna win, and everyone will just move on.

Im really hoping that Trump lives long enough to actually stage a coup and tank the US economy so hard that things like working for this or DOGE actually do start to matter.

johnwatson112182• 7 months ago

If you want to know what you are up against I highly recommend - https://www.amazon.com/Recoding-America-Government-Failing-D...

This book discusses the IT systems at the IRS and VA and shows the kind of push back you can expect from entrenched players.

exceptione5• 7 months ago

I don't know the book, but I hope it isn't yet another complaint about bureaucracy in need of "business thinking". I.e., how deep are they digging to find the real players? Because you can bet your home this "AI" initiative is just another instance of Elite Capture¹ here. The last thing any government needs right now is letting its policies and implementations being steered by (and made dependent on) hallucinating "AI", whose ownership ultimately is in the hands of the democracy destroying tech oligarchs.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_capture

johnwatson112182• 7 months ago

They talk about the specific systems in terms of legacy code and how far removed government agencies are from automated testing and other modern, best practices. It has been a couple of years since I read it but I recall a part about a business process at the IRS that that people don't start learning until they have been there for about 17 years - due to the complexity. It talks about how there had been failed attempts to migrate to a new database, some of the data is now duplicated but the upgrade is de-funded so all the new code has to be aware that data may be duplicated.

I'm not sure if this book got into it but I've also read that the IRS has assembly code from the 1960s that is very optimized and only a few devs can work on it. ChatGPT knows a lot about this history as well.

zbentley6• 7 months ago

It’s not that. It’s a several-years-old (and still very good) book by one of the original leaders of the USDS, a group which put many of the proposals described therein into practice.

afavour7• 7 months ago

Tech Force will primarily recruit early-career technologists
Tech Force will include centralized organization and programming and serve as a recruiting platform post-employment.

Be prepared to struggle at the end of your two year placement because you have no idea how this is going to look on your resume two years from now. Maybe it’ll have the gravitas of having worked at the former USDS. But maybe it’ll be the black mark of having worked at DOGE. The latter feels much more likely than the former.

You will have no control over this outcome. If I had to bet I’d say they will take advantage of your junior status to get you to do the kind of wildly irresponsible hacking, slashing and AI injecting that a more senior engineer would object to and you’re going to face some tough questions in subsequent job interviews.

redbluered2• 7 months ago

Employers would have to be pretty spiteful to look at it the way you purposed. I wouldn't want a spiteful employer.

The flip side is that a lot of government jobs lead to pretty good private sector opportunities working with those same agencies. If you want to contact to DOE, knowing how it works in the inside and knowing people there definitely helps.

A lot of military contractors are former military. Who better to design something for a soldier than a soldier?

afavour7• 7 months ago

Employers would have to be pretty spiteful to look at it the way you purposed

I disagree. If a persons resume contains description of blatantly harmful work how else can I interpret it but negatively? At best you’d have to chalk it up to “just following orders” but I don’t want blind obedience in a prospective employee either.

The destruction caused by DOGE is evident to anyone with eyes, as is the agency’s complete lack of achievement. I would absolutely be asking questions about why someone remained there.

reaperducer3• 7 months ago

Employers would have to be pretty spiteful to look at it the way you purposed.

It's not always that black and white. In spite of appearances, many many companies make hiring decisions based on things other than what's in a resume.

For example, a company may have $mm contracts with another company whose owners/operators/shareholders/etc. favor one particular view, political party, or social construct. That company will most certainly look down upon the other company hiring people of a particular background.

Or the pressure could be internal. A couple of times in my life I've worked for companies where certain departments were unionized. Even if you weren't in one of those departments, if the company hired you and you had a particular background, the union would object.

The real world is very complex.

ActorNightly6• 7 months ago

Yes and no.

I have hired people to work under me. Generally, if someone can pass the interview and do the job, I don't care that much about your views unless you are very outwardly with them. The only time I had to filter out a candidate was due to a quick check of his public social media where he was "enthusiastically" pro Palestine with questionable posts.

That being said, having interviewed plenty of ex government or government adjacent people, not a single one can pass even a mediocre interview problem. Most people who work for the government show up expecting to be told what to do, then do it - very few can independently think for themselves.

For example, my interview problems are designed to be solved most efficiently with implementing parallelization, but they sound like regular interview problems, so even with LLMs a lot of candidates usually can't solve it unless they give the LLM specific instructions to implement threads, which requires understanding of the problem.

quantified2• 7 months ago

Coinbase will probably look quite favorably that you have been on the inside of whatever their piece is.

alaxhn• 7 months ago

I think you are right that you could face some challenges during the screening process but if you get to the interview this should be easy to explain with a face saving excuse.

"The tech industry was doing poorly and I was faced with a layoff so I took whatever job I could get. While I didn't agree with the actions of the administration I felt like I could be a force for good in an otherwise turbulent environment"

As we all know Nazi scientists went on to work for and lead parts of Nasa. The reputation hit of disreputable employers is dramatically overblown.

To be honest you can also get through issues with the resume screening process you can generally just change the wording and section headers a bit in order to avoid a quick filter out.

I'm pretty much a closet conservative working for big tech so I've had a lot of practice with this sort of stuff :D

ActorNightly6• 7 months ago

As we all know Nazi scientists went on to work for and lead parts of Nasa.

The difference is, those scientists were literally the best of the best in the world when it came to rocketry.

All their assistants did not share the same fate.

But generally, unless something drastic happens politically, companies won't care that much.

redserk• 7 months ago

I'd wager "scientist with a deep background in research of rocket propolsion technology in the 1950s" was a bit more difficult to come by than "early-career software developer who integrated a bunch of APIs and maybe wrote a frontend in React".

mxfh2• 7 months ago

The flash of unstyled text when it goes from serif Times New Roman to grotesk FF Neue Montreal is so jarring.

Elite of the elite needs no sans-serif fallback font.

Just when I thought this was on brand to the new "anti-woke" font style guide.

jotux5• 7 months ago

What is the expected compensation for participants? Compensation varies based on experience level and agency placement. Annual salaries are expected to be in the approximate range of $150,000 to $200,000. Benefits include health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, and eligibility for performance-based awards.
Tech Force will primarily recruit early-career technologists

So "early-career" but they're going to get paid GS-14/15 pay[1] in DC? New grad engineers in DC are going to be GS-7/9 at best. This is either a blatant lie, or created by someone who has no idea of how federal pay works (or both).

As an aside, I was a fed for >10 years and left last year for industry but stay in touch with friends still working federal jobs. Before this administration recruiting was extremely difficult and candidate quality was low. I've heard that it's nearly impossible now and in the last 18 months they've only been able to hire a single person. Federal jobs used to be considered stable, with good benefits, but low pay. Now they're unstable, the current administration is actively working to make benefits worse, and the pay is still really low.

[1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...

pavel_lishin4• 7 months ago

I'd wager that the "approximate" in that sentence is going to be doing a lot of heavy lifting.

neilv• 7 months ago

Before this administration recruiting was extremely difficult and candidate quality was low. I've heard that it's nearly impossible now and in the last 18 months they've only been able to hire a single person. Federal jobs used to be considered stable, with good benefits, but low pay. Now they're unstable, the current administration is actively working to make benefits worse, and the pay is still really low.

Also, many people took pride in the service they provided to their country (or to the people, or as part of a team that did good, however they thought of it).

I don't have high hopes for this new thing.

After recent treatment of federal employees, and other things going on in the US this year, including how USDS as DOGE was weaponized against the US... I'd expect this new thing to only be able to recruit from these categories:

1. Outright bad people, with anti-US, looter/saboteur intent, as we've seen from other facets recently. They will focus on their own bad-person individual interests.

2. People who aren't bad, but who are so cognitively impaired, that they still don't realize that they're probably going to get screwed personally and/or directed to be the baddies. They will be bad at everything they do.

3. People who are intelligent and pro-US, and have no illusions about what they're signing up for, but who desperately need the income, after being screwed earlier this year. They won't be inspired to execute well on whatever anti-US directives they're given.

jotux5• 7 months ago

Before all of this happened the hiring I had to deal with when I was federal fell into similar buckets:

1. Completely inept or lazy people that couldn't get a job anywhere else (~50%)

2. Smart people that took the job because it was close to their family (~30%)

3. Smart people that took the job because they liked the the specific mission and felt like it was really important (~10%)

4. Smart people that took the job after retiring from a private industry job as a sort of laid-back post-retirement hobby (we called them re-treads, ~10%)

From what I've heard, a lot of federal employers can only hire from the #1 category now, and the applicants in that category have gotten worse.

guru4consulting• 7 months ago

when I saw 18F, CISA, USDS were targeted by DOGE, everything was clear. They were just cutting all the good muscle and leaving the bad fat :(

lumost2• 7 months ago

At least in 2010, it was common for new grads to get GS-14/GS-15 pay for in-demand tech skills. It's a bit odd that early career folks would start out at the max of the pay band, but it is what it is. These were for roles which required a clearance.

Jtsummers4• 7 months ago

Not for people with just a BS, at least outside certain areas (DC) and roles (cybersecurity). GS-12 was a more typical "target" position (with GS-13 on occasion, like at some of the labs) back in 2010. A masters or a PhD could have bumped you up to GS-13/14/15 though.

Target: People typically enter, when coming out of college, at a lower grade in the GS-5/7/9 area with a target position of one of GS-11/12/13. IT (not CS) folks were often in GS-11 targeted positions, computer scientists and engineers often in GS-12 positions. They'd get promoted in two grade increases (5 to 7, 7 to 9, 9 to 11) or one grade increases (11 to 12, 12 to 13) until they hit their target grade. At a rate of either one increase per year or per 6 months depending on when they got hired, by what agency, and in what role. An IT person, usually one increase per year; engineer, typically two increases per year. Computer scientists usually got screwed and got one increase per year which meant you had fewer of them wanting to work for the government (they also, at that time, rarely got signing bonuses). This leaves a lot of the software shops in DOD (where I had experience) mostly filled with aerospace and electrical engineers.

"Cyber" roles (security; which could be a couple different job series) in some agencies jumped up faster or had a higher target grade due to the need (or perceived need) for more people.

lux-lux-lux• 7 months ago

This was absolutely not true, and I don’t know where you’re getting this. A newly minted CS PhD with a top end clearance would have gotten a GS-13 at most, anything less would have been much lower. Where I worked, STEM bachelors were generally hired on as GS-7s or 9s.

testing223212• 7 months ago

Benefits include health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, and eligibility for performance-based awards

Paid time off???

Health insurance???

Retirement plans????

OMG this is incredible! What an offer!

alephnerd4• 7 months ago

No 401k can ever match the beauty that is the TSP.

kulahan3• 7 months ago

A gov-backed retirement plan actually is nice. You don’t have to worry about losing your Chrysler pension because they went out of business.

voidfunc• 7 months ago

If I was late-career with a good solid financial foundation im place and just looking to work to cover living expenses the Federal Gov as fucked as it may be doesn't seem like a bad gig. Since the bar is so incredibly fucking low you just mail it in and collect the money and when youre furloughed you play golf or do extra hobbies. The ball just needs to keep moving, it doesn't actually need to move quickly. Heck it doesn't even need to necessarily move forward.

raw_anon_11112• 7 months ago

I am 51 “late career” and there is no way in hell I would work for the federal government now.

Even if I didn’t care about the politics, I have made more than the posted salaries working full time for outside consulting companies contracting with the federal government over the last five years and I wasn’t working at the whims of the government

ipython6• 7 months ago

There are way more people calling it in at large orgs or FAANGs. Clearly you've never worked in a civil service position given your foolish caricature of one.

ivanech• 7 months ago

I believe the new grad DOGE employees were GS-15s. So yes, it seems likely that they plan to hire at GS-14 or GS-15.

ethbr12• 7 months ago

Nothing like putting in a multi decade civil service career and coming in one day to find a 20-something installed over you whose primary qualification was being hired at a "friendly" tech company and making the right kind of joke around the CEO.

... although that seems depressingly like it would also be the experience with new administrators being installed in executive agencies every 4 years, except they're slightly older.

Man, if only there were some way to retain talent in the face of political leadership transitions... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Reform...

mixmastamyk4• 7 months ago

It still takes around 5-15 years to get to the upper end of the pay scale, currently $195K.

lowkey_• 7 months ago

(1) Are you saying it's bad if they're upping engineer pay to be more competitive, or you're just skeptical that they will?

(2) I'd actually like the American government to pay better wages for its engineers, and optimize for hiring the best, rather than those desiring a stable, low-paying bureaucracy — I don't think that attracts the best people.

(3) On talent and recruiting: This is being done by the National Design Studio, it says at the bottom. That's led by a cofounder of Airbnb - I know one person who works at the National Design Studio and he's a phenomenal engineer. The administration also has the involvement of David Sacks, who founded Craft Ventures and is pretty well-known in SV. I think this is probably the most tech-competent the government will have been in a long time. I'm not crediting Trump at all for that, to be clear - just pointing out that tech talent in government seems to be getting better, not worse.

jotux5• 7 months ago

#1: I am extremely skeptical they are paying that. I suspect this was put together by someone who has no understanding of federal pay systems. "$150,000 to $200,000" is already an erroneous number, federal salary is limited by federal law and cannot exceed $195200.

#2: Overwhelmingly I agree. Federal pay is very, very broken. They should reform it to align more with the private sector, and there are laws in place that do that, and every year the sitting president literally writes a letter stating it would be an economic emergency to pay federal employees equivalent wages and instead sets them low. You are still limited by federal law to that current $195k, so it means it's impossible for the federal government to hire technical experts and pay them a fair wage.

#3: I'm sure the federal government is paying those people some ridiculous amount of money to put this together, and they'll probably do a decent job because of it. It still doesn't change the fact that federal hiring is really broken, and has become significantly worse in this admin.

zbentley6• 7 months ago

I'd actually like the American government to pay better wages for its engineers, and optimize for hiring the best

Yes, and a big part of this involves changing the way agencies rely on contractors for specialty work (including tech work).

hopelite• 7 months ago

Not to mention “…recruiting an elite corps of engineers to build…” while also “…participants will receive technical training…”

So “elite” engineers need technical training?

What am I missing here.

I have extensive experience with this kind of government nonsense, but usually it is kind of in the background, blather no one really takes serious because it’s just blowing smoke. But this seems so credibility destroying through its ridiculous contradictions and bombast.

gcanyon• 7 months ago

Serious question: what makes you think team “hold my beer” won’t find a way around past norms, or just ignore them? Not that they actually care enough to do it, but I don’t think they wouldn’t/couldn’t if they did care.

jcoder2• 7 months ago

There are two attempts to render an American flag on that page and they’re both wrong

schlauerfox• 7 months ago

The Emoji ones top and bottom or the animated banner?

jcoder2• 7 months ago

The illustrated “hackers” clothing

adamwong2462• 7 months ago

Backed by the White House

Yeah, that's going to be a hard pass from me

mads_quist• 7 months ago

Is this backed by YC?

zkmon• 7 months ago

Why only 2 years? Why can't it be a permanent employment?

givemeethekeys• 7 months ago

My guess is that they want young and ambitious people who will use this job as a springboard to bigger and better things.

Jtsummers4• 7 months ago

It looks like this is trying to fit into the same space as the former USDS and F18 which had term appointments. The key idea behind those was the industry partnership (recruiting experienced people from industry) and the knowledge/skills transfer that came with it. If you look at some other programs (Peace Corps, for instance) you'll see a similar thing. 2-year terms with extensions up to maybe 5 total years.

What's funny is the retirement benefits won't apply to most 2-year term employees. Unless they were prior military or civil service, or come back later, two years is not long enough to keep the TSP match (three year vesting period) or to qualify for the pension (five years). (EDIT: Funny because they explicitly list it as a benefit, but these folks won't qualify for it.)

rozap• 7 months ago

The funny thing here is that the short (often 1-3 years) tenure that's so common in the industry leads to some absolute dogshit software. Good things take time. By limiting terms to 2 years you almost guarantee that outcome.

The biggest red flag on engineering resumes is never sticking at something for more than 2 years. Your bad decisions never catch up to you.

jeffbee2• 7 months ago

You can go ahead and add this to the list of job experiences that will earn you a "Definitely Not" rating from me in the hiring committee, along with doge, palantir, coinbase, etc.

SirMaster2• 7 months ago

You assume any of them would even want to work for/with you...

I know I wouldn't want to work for or with someone or some company so close-minded as to use this sort of thing as some sort of candidate filter.

nxobject3• 7 months ago

You're right – close-minded is immediately blacklisting. Thoughtful is:

"What did you do at $PLACE_CURRENT_ADMIN_LIKES, and what, in retrospect, did it actually accomplish that made people and society freer, more empowered, and their lives richer?"

At which point you can say "I made an interface to let anyone with access scrape ALPRs around the nation, and I genuinely didn't think about what people would do with it", and then that speaks for itself.

ApolloFortyNine• 7 months ago

It seems absolutely crazy to me not to hire someone because you don't like a company they worked for.

I don't love seeing that you're far from the only person to mention it here. It's just shouting "I'm biased and I'm proud" from the top of your lungs.

jeffbee2• 7 months ago

A person who willingly worked for doge or whatever has a lot of explaining to do. All you know about them on paper is that they are either a clueless dupe, or a closet nazi. Either way why would you want them in your repo?

zbentley6• 7 months ago

That’s your choice, though please consider that many people who worked for those places may have done so before the behavior you disagree with started. Also consider that there are reasons to work for an organization other than “paycheck” and “alignment with organization priorities”, and that it is entirely possible (and sometimes uniquely possible) to do important, beneficial work while employed by an organization with which you fundamentally do not agree; the majority of my resume lines fit this description, I think.

Reasonable minds can differ as to whether that constitutes unethicality or hypocrisy.

soared• 7 months ago

This makes feel a bit queasy for some reason https://americabydesign.gov/

neogodless2• 7 months ago

This is President Trump going bigger than President Nixon.

You don't say...

exceptione5• 7 months ago

I wonder if there are living people who don't interpret it as a sign of something __REALLY__ weird going on here.

I view Trump as a clinical case of narcissism, bad upbringing, screwed-up mentors, but too late for treatment anyways.

But man, the crowd that lick his boots in public for a position or some coins... They should be shunned for life. This level of sycophancy would destroy one's reputation for ever in my culture and I just don't want to believe it wouldn't in American culture. But even the official government channels have been turned into fan pages run by six year olds. Not even the most backward countries in the world do look so stupid, so overtly corrupt, so I am at a loss: why does the USA? Is this really considered acceptable? Maybe some Americans can explain how this is being perceived in cultural terms.

wmeredith2• 7 months ago

I find it deliciously fitting that the UX on this website kinda sucks.

adamwong2462• 7 months ago

America as a brand... my soul weeps.

aprct• 7 months ago

It’s amusing that this initiative from “America by Design” uses the Neue Montreal typeface.

bdbdbdb• 7 months ago

If you're looking for a semantic argument, Montreal is in America

workfromspace• 7 months ago

I was just browsing this website and found that the jobs are actually listed at https://www.usajobs.gov I think.

The latter website, job search, job details and help center look actually nice. Unfortunately I'm living in EU and not an American citizen, but I wish EU did something similar.

(There is https://eures.europa.eu but just like almost any other EU website, the design is very confusing and cluttered)

Havoc• 7 months ago

Very curious whether things are actually changing.

US administration seems to be making lots of moves and aggressively changing stance...but is this actually translating to real change?

gorgoiler• 7 months ago

Top level hiring is a close knit network. The FAQ I wanted to see answered: who’s onboard already, and how do I know them / how might I have heard of them / what have they done before?

I’m going to make a guess that the answers are missing for a reason.

blackjack_2• 7 months ago

Did I miss congress passing a new set of laws creating the US Tech Force? I'm confused, as this seems like a direct and open violation of the Appointments Clause.

lubujackson2• 7 months ago

oh no I wonder what will happen

blackjack_2• 7 months ago

You're being facetious I see, but I assume there will be litigation brought up against it being illegal, and then it will be stuck down as blatantly illegal in the next 6 months, and people involved will not get paid and be fired / dissolved.

cdrnsf• 7 months ago

Building tech for a bunch of kleptocrats and fascists. If I saw this on someone's resumé I'd immediately refuse or dissolve any involvement with them.

steve-atx-7600• 7 months ago

I bet that will convince them to think differently

alexpotato• 7 months ago

Is this just US Digital Service V2?

https://www.usds.gov/

viccis• 7 months ago

Yeah my first thought was that this already existed, was doing great work, and got canned by DOGE in favor of what appears to be a MUCH MUCH more expensive version of it here.

nxobject3• 7 months ago

And with Trump-aligned people running it, of course, not like the purged USDS. One of the perks is "networking" after all.

Esophagus42• 7 months ago

I was having a conversation with a Trump-supporting relative, who was genuinely asking me, “Don’t you think it’s great that they put a bunch of [DOGE] engineers into the government to fix things?”

When I said, “Well, we already had that - the USDS. And what has DOGE done, specifically, to fix things?” it just went right over her head. Did not even land.

nobodyandproud2• 7 months ago

You beat me to it. Minus the good will and civic mindedness that v1 had going for it of course.

Esophagus42• 7 months ago

Minus the talent, as well.

We went from top notch Google SREs fixing HealthCare.gov to… “Big Balls” and script kiddies.

bigthymer• 7 months ago

Ever since USDS got renamed as DOGE, they've had trouble recruiting people. I suspect this move is maybe an effort to shed DOGE's negative image.

floatrock2• 7 months ago

Textbook PR. If your reputation went to shit, just rebrand it.

See, for example, how the head of DOGE said "That wasn't a nazi salute, that was roman salute! It's a completely different thing."

munificent3• 7 months ago

No, USDS was about modernizing the government's tech systems in general.

This one is about jamming AI into shit:

Tech Force will be an elite group of ~1,000 technology specialists hired by agencies to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) implementation and solve the federal government's most critical technological challenges.

floatrock2• 7 months ago

And apparently implementing a Central Bank Digital Currency using TrumpCoin.

Backed by the White House, Tech Force will tackle the most complex and large-scale civic and defense challenges of our era – from administering critical financial infrastructure at the Treasury Department to advancing cutting-edge programs at the Department of Defense – and everything in between.

Also, surprised their AI reviewer allowed the use of DoD... I thought they identify as Dept of War now.

kj4211cash• 7 months ago

That was my first thought too. But they can say that this one was created by their administration. And is more AI.

I'd love to hear from people who had experience with USDS before this administration. The chatter I see online is overwhelmingly positive. OTOH, I interviewed with USDS and the experience was not good. I don't love tech interviews in general but this one was somehow worse. I remember thinking the interview would have made more sense if they were hiring for PMs, but I wasn't a PM and didn't want to be one. Focusing on my communication abilities and professional history is one thing, but this ... wasn't that. I always wondered if others had the same experience. Maybe I just had the wrong interviewer on the wrong day.

mNovak• 7 months ago

I know it's annoying now to nitpick over what's AI generated, but I'm noticing their robot mascot has two different incorrect American flags on its sweater..

exasperaited2• 7 months ago

Like this administration cares about little things like how many states there are. L'état, c'est Trump.

munificent3• 7 months ago

It's the perfect metaphor for a Trump-era group whose aim is to jam poorly-thought-out AI in to random bits of the government.

Animats• 7 months ago

Like 18F, but pro-Trump?

nobodyandproud2• 7 months ago

How is this different from the formerly-great USDS?

r_lee2• 7 months ago

well, it's going to be incredible. Its gonna be something like you've never seen before. I've never seen anything like it. In fact, I hear many say it's going to be one of the greatest Tech Forces they've ever seen, maybe even the greatest.

ipython6• 7 months ago

it has the Trump stench all over it, apparently. :(

exasperaited2• 7 months ago

==> We are going to build infrastructure with teams of people who won't stay longer than two years. Nobody has thought about this long enough to realise this might be a problem.

nrmitchi• 7 months ago

Participants are hired as federal employees based on their technical qualifications and serve in non-partisan roles focused on technology implementation.

"non-partisan" lol okay sure

xaxaxb• 7 months ago

Doge 2.0

dragonwriter• 7 months ago

I don't know, with almost thirty private contracting firms already identified (and a note that that list will grow) and a target of ~1,000 federal employees, seems like all the actual “Tech Force” public sector staff are going to be in contract management, oversight, and related roles.

lubujackson2• 7 months ago

Tech Force will primarily recruit early-career technologists

Baking in the ageism right from the start. Few want to work for this government, but at least they can keep those unsavory 30+ year olds out!

timeon• 7 months ago

ageism

This is DEI talk to them.

Spivak• 7 months ago

So is hiring young people over a better qualified senior applicant. You wouldn't have to make it a point if recent grads would win in a meritocracy.

It's fine to hire a bunch of juniors but then you're kinda explicitly not looking for the best. But at $150k-ish they'll get mid career and senior devs from low CoL areas pouring in.

mixmastamyk4• 7 months ago

Last Day, Capricorn 25s, this is Carousel…

hntway2594• 7 months ago

Funnily enough I had recently been thinking something like this would be a good idea. Like if the govt. created a department with the soul goal of developing open tech for the public good. I guess you could say they kind of already do this with research grants but something with more clear focus could be a good thing.

It's too bad this was created by an absolute dumpster fire admin that will 100% use this for malicious ends.

BurnTheBoss• 7 months ago

Im pretty sure this was one of the goals of the USDS before it was gutted and turned into DOGE. Also 18F (RIP)

netfortius• 7 months ago

This will work perfectly with the approach used by candidates: https://www.interviewquery.com/p/tech-workers-gaming-ai-hiri...

baconner• 7 months ago

That's a nice idea, so nice in fact that it already existed as 18F until they closed it under the guise of efficiency earlier this year and are now starting over.

starryex• 7 months ago

And USDS, which was specifically 2 year terms just like this, for actual experienced engineers at the top of GS15 pay. They destroyed USDS to pretend to reinvent it but with new worse humans.

fuckinpuppers• 7 months ago

This is just their attempt to destroy USDS, started by Obama, and rebrand with a Trump-created effort. Just like everything. He wants credit for everything. I am shocked he isn’t calling this Trump Digital Government Services or something.

westmeal• 7 months ago

Awful

fivre• 7 months ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46277687 mentioned Recoding America as "what you're up against", omitting the important "people had learned what they were up against and were well into the process of building collaborative effort between civil servants

the book _is_ good, but it's rather disheartening that all the people discussed (and many more that couldn't fit into the book) on the federal side were summarily fired to clear space for sycophants and toadies round one (the DOGE broccoli hair kids siphoning off sensitive data and doing some casual corruption) are putting out this as sycophants and toadies round two: _lasting_ corruption in partnership with the least scrupulous bits of private industry

the people in the book are https://18f.org/ and spent the last decade building useful relationships, familiarity with public sector quirks, and standard software toolkit items for government tech. they got tossed for the crime of working with the Biden admin and wanting to work towards building tech entirely for public good under the auspices of the law.

whatever branding and whatnot this comes wrapped in i don't trust this admin nor whatever bits of the private sector are looking to work with it in the slightest to not stand up something that works in the public interest. we're gonna get new and exciting forms of graft and revolving door exploitation of sensitive data

PostOnce• 7 months ago

If you'll cut one corner to save money, you'll cut another.

https://techforce.gov/footer-robot.png

This is an example of a cut corner. AI slop with irregular pixels for the face, thumb melted into finger, ipad not subject to gravity.

I wonder what the next cut corner will be?

beej71• 7 months ago

With my opinion of the current administration, I doubt I'd qualify.

insane_dreamer2• 7 months ago

I still can't decide whether DOGE was a genius steal "hit job" to steal a bunch of data and place people into key positions under the pretext of waste reduction, or whether it was just truly an exercise in rushed "kill them all!" style incompetence that was never properly thought through or executed.

insane_dreamer2• 7 months ago

Or, they could have just kept 18F and USDS :/ Good luck trying to hire those people back, or people like them!

Centigonal3• 7 months ago

Hahahaha, they just updated the website to address the criticisms on this page! Fair play, NDS employee reading this thread.

ThinkBeat• 7 months ago

It seems like an effort to hire newly educated people for a two year program, to work on various efforts in the federal government as something close to on the job training.

Once you are done you can pair up with one of the private partners you had contacted with during your program. (If they want you).

This does not appear to be an effort to hire people to the federal government, but to get cheap labour from new grads who hope to work on something cool.

(But yes they will have to hire the framework people)

HardwareLust• 7 months ago

You know what they say about a million monkeys on a million typewriters.

US Tech Force

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