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Comment by former_govt | Hacker News Reader

I admire the work that 18F is doing, and live in the DC area, even contracted for the government early in my career -- but I can never go back. I just fundamentally disagree with the security clearance apparatus is in place and never want to subject myself to that again. Especially when purely private companies pay more and don't care what you do in your personal time.

Working for the government felt like being a child again.

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Thank you! I didn't have the words to express it but that is it precisely. It is infantalizing in a way that makes ball pits and arcades in startup culture seem tame

What was so bad about the security clearance aspect?

A few people are a little disgruntled that the government gave all of the information in our security clearance applications/re-ups to China. That's my beef, I'm sure other folks have other things to say.

The explicit and everpresent awareness that you are owned by your employer in your off hours, for a limited sub-selection of possible activities.

In other words, you are not your productivity, you are required to live their moral code in your off hours.

That is...most jobs. Unless I'm not understanding your meaning. Many jobs will fire you for, say, getting a DUI or getting arrested for drug possession or something. And many employers do drug testing. But realistically, a "limited sub-selection of possible activities" is just about everything everyone else can do, except maybe go to Cuba or smoke pot, the latter of which will get one fired at many non-government places.

Smoking weed is not going to get you fired anywhere, except for the worst jobs in the worst places. Any place that does regular drug testing and/or cares one teeny tiny itsy bitsy bit about employees smoking weed when they're not working is guaranteed to be a terrible place to work at, for that and any number of other reasons. There is not a single reputable company in the entire tech industry that does this.

Uh, yeah, "in the tech industry" being the huge caveat here. Most HN readers might work in tech, but most people in general don't.

> Smoking weed is not going to get you fired anywhere, except for the worst jobs in the worst places.

Do you have numbers to back this up? Because almost every place I've worked at has had this policy. I think it's a terrible policy and should be illegal, but it's been pretty standard everywhere. Maybe it's not common in SV, but everywhere else it seems to be the norm, IME.

It has never been an issue for me as I don't partake, but anecdotally, I've worked at 5-10 mid range (100-200) firms in Virginia and Illinois and while I have been provided many free beers at work, if anyone suggested a drug testing program they would have been laughed out of the building.

I even worked for a company that ran drug testing programs for the government and they did not drug test.

That is definitely not true:

http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/15/news/companies/dish-employee...

I think you just proved his point.

http://cable.tmcnet.com/topics/cable/articles/2013/01/07/321...

"Out of 617 ratings on glassdoor.com, fully 246 called themselves “very dissatisfied.” The number of employees considering themselves “very satisfied” was just 48. Some comments even suggest that executive meddling may be involved in the “very satisfied” scores, with one commenter saying “Joe Clayton (CEO) put us up to upgrading our score.” Another commenter called their time with Dish “...like a prison sentence.”

Is drug testing always legal in the US? Can drug use on weekends get you fired for any job?

I lived in several European countries, and as far as I know there's no way an employer can force you to take a drug test, with the exception of people handling heavy machinery. If you are on drugs while you're at your job this will of course have consequences, but a drug test that would reveal drug use in your free time is nothing the employer should be allowed to do or even care about.

As an example, the rules in the UK clearly say that you need consent and that it has to be required by the nature of the job, which should exclude most (if not all) office jobs. [1]

[1] https://www.gov.uk/monitoring-work-workers-rights/drug-testi...

You can be fired for almost any reason in the US. There are only a few exceptions such as race, religion, sex or for reporting violations of some laws.

So, yes, in almost any job you could be required to take a drug test and be fired if you refuse.

Ironically, the Federal Government still ends up paying the price despite all of their efforts. I know around 10 top tier programmers who use drugs of some sort, have left of mainstream politics or just don't fit the "government worker" bill, but are no less patriotic and competent people. The loss of these people from the upper echelons of the state tech system is almost palpable. The CIA director was hacked by a bunch of teenagers from Eastern Europe, for Christ's sake!

And then on top of that, even with all the screening they do, they still stop the Snowdens from infiltrating, still can't stop foreign intelligence, still can't get a sysadmin worth their salt to keep our future President's clandestine email server safe from the public's prying eyes!

They want to know deeply personal details about your life, show up at your neighbour's and friends doors to question them, have explicit control over where you can travel on your vacation, deeply care about what you do in your free time, and mishandled all of it -- all in the vague guise of preventing blackmail and sabotage.

The blackmail and sabotage argument, as near as I can tell, is a farce because our enemies and "friends" are engaged in massive corporate espionage. If it were a real concern to them than they would use thier powers to require the same level of scrutiny on the private sector.

In addition to that they say be truthful so you don't have anything to hide to prevent possible blackmail by foreign powers, but in reality it's the truthful ones who don't make it through the process.

I've come to the conclusion that it's really just about having an excuse deny employment to "people not like us."

Its pretty backwards if you think about it, if the places you go or people you know or mistakes you make, can easily make you lose your security clearance and therefore your career could be ruined, it makes you much easier to blackmail than under a system that was more laissez-faire

Hmmm... If that were true we'd have lots of empirical evidence, so I'd like to see some link to that.

> we'd have lots of empirical evidence

That assumes there would be many attempts at this kind of blackmail, and that any attempts that did occur were discovered and documented.

> I'd like to see some link to that.

Even if the conditions above were satisfied (which I find highly unlikely), this assumes that we (the public) have access to the documentation.

I think the idea is more like if you are able to pass those clearances , you are less likely to find yourself in a future position that would compromise them. Similar to the belief that a high credit score shows that you're more likely to pay your bills and not abuse your credit - because you haven't so far.

> show up at your neighbour's and friends doors to question them

I think there's a lot of people that would like the associated intrigue that would come with this, it may be a cheaper way of hiring good developers that have a bit of a vanity streak.

Man, and I though Snow Crash's portrayal of the feds was wildly exaggerated.

Guess it was significantly less exaggerated that I thought.

Then after collecting your deeply personal information, they let it leak through poor security practices. This has happend to me and to other members of my family: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management...

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