Comment by paulsmith | Hacker News Reader

Comment by paulsmith | Hacker News Reader

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At the risk of being self-promotional, there's another part of the rebel alliance of which USDS and 18F are the main players, and that is better technology contractors. ("Better" meaning, engineering practices and outcomes that the audience of this site would recognize.) There's Nava, and the company I co-founded, Ad Hoc. Greg and I were on the original HealthCare.gov rescue squad with Mikey et. al. We're still working on HealthCare.gov, but instead of helping to prop up the bad old code (which was necessary work to save the site and help actual people), we're rebuilding parts of the site from scratch, using things like Go, AWS, Angular. During the last open enrollment period over the winter, our code (healthcare.gov/see-plans/) had 100% uptime, served ~ half a billion page views, and had a mean response time of well under 100ms. (And _no_ garbage hiding in the 99th percentile.)

One thing I'll say about government work -- you're not really breaking new ground, from a technology perspective. (Unless you're at DARPA I suppose.) Don't come into thinking you're going to innovate in some bleeding-edge area. But government was left so far behind the consumer technology curve that basic, competently-executed, well-designed software that's fast is an _enormous_ leap forward. 2008-era web tech is sorely needed across government. In a way, that is the innovation: dependable software that reliably delivers services to people for whose user-experience has never been put on the same playing field as consumer online services.

If you're interested in being part of the rebel alliance, and for whatever reason USDS or 18F aren't right for you, consider contracting. There's enormous opportunity to make real change and see your code help others. Believe me, small teams can have a big impact on government, even from outside government. If you want to know more about Ad Hoc, get in touch (http://adhocteam.us/). We also have projects with the Department of Veterans Affairs, and state Medicaid programs.

I never thought I'd be a government contractor. I did the startup thing, and just happened to get roped into the HealthCare.gov rescue. I can tell you it's sometimes frustrating, but always satisfying work. And there are several avenues in.

There is so much truth to government being left in the dust technologically. When I was in the NSA, I built a bunch of programs that saved a dramatic amount of time by automating a lot of message passing, formatting, etc. When I made my first application, I didn't even know what a database was, so I built it using a bunch of interconnected perl applications using the Tie::File library on flatfiles and operating on them as arrays. With such little knowledge about creating applications, I was still able to have a major impact on people's workflows, showing how even the barest use of technology was extremely impactful.

A big part of why certain organizations fail on the technology side comes from how they perceive the use of systems on their network. For instance, in the NSA example, I asked if I could make programs to make things easier (having never made an application in my life) and the grizzled old veteran analyst handed me the Perl Cookbook and said "Go to town.". Compare that with my CIA contracting job where I was explicitly told not to program, programmed anyway, and proved that we could effectively make programs in-house instead of waiting for months on a separate contract to fulfill our needs. That programs savings to taxpayers dollars, by the way? About $10 million.

We do take for granted that we can do something like type `npm install` and programs magically get pulled from disparate parts of the internet and work. On government networks, you have to work with code that's been vetted over a 3-6 month process, leaving you with the baseline items (the node binary, for instance) but requiring you to rebuild the modules you need. I'm of course referencing networks that are completely air-gapped from the internet, that is.

Agreed! Thank you for a much improved plan compare :) I do think there's room for innovation-- we just have to implement reliable software first.

Piling on: If you're interested in being an early employee at a growth startup working with the government, check out Nava! (I work for Nava)

Our hiring post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10001189

Do the contractors offer senior engineer pay (10+ years experience) that is more competitive with private sector? The direct employment jobs max out at mid-level engineer wages.

I'd say we're on par with the private sector.

Ad Hoc and Nava are both awesome groups of people!

You call yourself the Rebel Alliance, but you helped the government on a massive, expensive, intrusive, extra-legal project which almost nobody wants and has benefitted very few outside of the government and its cronies?

You ain't part of no Rebel Alliance, man. You're full Empire, and you helped build a Death Star.

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