Code For America Open for Applications | Hacker News Reader

Code For America Open for Applications

codeforamerica.org

This is very interesting, but (as a developer) doesn't seem appealing.

Apparently you live in San Francisco for a year, working on projects for another American city. You visit the city for a month to meet people and figure out what it is that you're actually doing, and then you go back to SF in some kind of mentoring camp with other Fellows, and implement the idea.

I have a bad feeling about the requirements management problem. It's known to be much better to be working onsite with your users, because communication between users and developers is critical. How is this addressed?

Another big sticking point is the salary. $35k, and I'll be living in San Francisco? It seems like a good web developer -- the kind you are trying to recruit, right? -- would be paid a LOT more, even at a startup (where they might have more impact, too). So it just doesn't feel right.

Getting paid 35k/yr to get abused by some asshole on the city council? Nobody in their right mind would even consider this.

I guarantee nobody on their advisory board would sign up for this shit. If you want to live in poverty there are lots of other things you could build on your own that would have a much bigger impact.

A much better solution would be to run a job placement service so people actually get paid. I don't see how them adding another layer of bureaucracy is going to help anything.

I'm on their advisory board, and I'd consider it-- I actually am considering it. The fact is government spends more money than a gaggle of googles. Building a start-up around providing services to government could be an awesome way to both change government and make money. Meaningful work that makes you rich sounds great. But there's only one thing? How do you learn how government spends money? And how do you figure out who is in charge of making those purchasing decisions? After two years at the Sunlight foundation, I'm still not clear on it-- and it's because we're not interacting directly with them.

Coming out of Code for America as a hacker'll teach one more about how Government works, how it buys things, and what it needs than just asking customers does. I think for some smart people who can keep their eye on the ball, this could be an amazing opportunity to learn about a market, and then become a player in it in a short few years.

Reading http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1379381 kind of answered this for me. While I'm sure not every government entity is like that, finding one that isn't, as part of the first step for this, isn't something I'd relish working on.

> Nobody in their right mind would even consider this.

I am.

I figure, either you can be part of the problem, or part of the solution. It's so easy to just sit back and complain about the way things are all the time, but it's much more interesting to actually try to change them.

'Sides, it would be a good introduction to dealing with municipal governments, and that could be useful.

I figure, either you can be part of the problem, or part of the solution.

False dichotomy.

It's so easy to just sit back and complain about the way things are all the time, but it's much more interesting to actually try to change them.

It may be more interesting to try, but it may not be any more productive.

More specifically, the most significant problems I might sit back and complain about are ones that can't be solved with software[1], let alone custom software.

The notion of targetting municipal government is suspect to me, as it reeks of the enterprise software model. I may be misinterpretting what they're trying to do, but, if not, it will be threatened by the same dangers, which means that 7 months isn't nearly enough.

[1] ..or any technology by itself. I occasionally complain that programmers have a tendency to believe that all (technical) problems can be solved in software, but this goes well beyond that.

Again, the point isn't to attempt to solve a non-software problem using software, it's to get a guided introduction to dealing with municipal governments.

I guess I missed where that point is outlined, though I admit to not reading all the backstory.

The title of the project obviously can't be taken literally, but I expect I'm not the only technical person who would expect the point has something to do with code.

I am too. I've been subscribed to CfA's Atom feed since I first heard about the program, and was excited enough about it to submit it along to HN once I saw it had launched earlier today.

The $35k stipend definitely makes me pause, but I'm going to give the application my all and then ask some hard questions of the review board if I'm lucky enough to be accepted.

I doubt I'd apply if my city wasn't included, but Seattle was accepted, and I'd love to make a positive impact on my municipal government.

You're right. They're limiting themselves to the bottom of the barrel in web developers, and setting up their schedule around the standard malpractices that lead to the deplorable state of the current IT systems in the first place.

The idea that they can spend a month in the host city learning how things will work, and then six months designing & developing a production-ready application that's significant enough to matter is at best laughable. The only projects that succeed are going to be the ones that are too small to make an appreciable difference to anyone -- especially the government.

On top of that, they're filtering out exactly the people that they need most: experienced developers and designers. Speaking for myself for example, I would not mind doing something like this in principle, but in reality I can't afford to, because I have a mortgage to pay. I'd also have to put my side business and blow off my karate students for a year. The people that they need have lives. The people that they'll get aren't qualified.

My work proxy categorizes the site as "Spam". Reading this description, I sort of agree.

In case others have the same issue, http://gist.github.com/421406. It's a copy/paste of CFA's "For Developers" page.

Cities should just pay reasonable salaries to a couple developers and build apps themselves.

"Each team returns to Bay Area headquarters and then has seven months to develop their application for their city."

Nevermind the potential issues from giving development seven months without having heard requirements. My question is, why just one application? Cities are huge machines. I have enough trouble navigating around a single councilwoman's website - let alone the DMV's. How is one application supposed to service an entire city in a meaningful way?

Before reading the details of this program, I imagined it would be something like this:

CFA puts you up in the city you'll be helping. Lodging, food, transportation, etc.

Instead of visiting the city you're helping, you visit SF headquarters - for a couple weeks, to go over your vision for development.

After identifying the applications that would be most beneficial to the city's residents, you build them. The applications start small – you iterate as you get feedback from citizens.

The benefit of this approach over CFA's is that you don't end up with one monolithic application that is difficult to add functionality to. Instead, you have a few examples of efficiency throughout the city. Enough examples, hopefully, that other departments will be inspired to invest in their own department's application.

Why even visit SF? Just setup a irc channel for all the devs and a weekly conf call to deal with announcements and attaboys.

Where I work we do a lot of software development for cities ranging from websites to applications. Most cities/departments are really reluctant to bring in any new systems. regardless how much they help. So I don't see how they would be able to do so much with what will more then likely be a bunch of new developers.

They also have to go out for bids on everything..

This seems like it's trying to build public services based off of the data in the cities' systems. On top of that, I think it's more of a non-profit so I'm assuming (and perhaps incorrectly) that they'd be more welcome as a partner.

My thought is this is to spread some of the openness that cities like SF and NYC (albeit at a much smaller level) have started.

Seems like they're trying to do the CFA project more like a "startup" style:

- SF -> checked

- Small team -> checked

- 2.0 -> checked

- Web (?) -> checked

- Ramen wage -> checked

- Tight deadline -> checked

- Unknown requirements -> checked

Plus health benefit and travel tickets. Minus bureaucracy (probably).

I don't think it's a bad idea. If you were to work there and be successful in 1-2 projects, you would get the following benefits:

- Connection with government agencies

- Experience delivering govt/municipal public solution (portfolio)

- Having stayed at SF for a while (maybe stationed yourself there)

- Probably connection to the startup scenes there (if they go to meetups)

You can join a startup afterward and get a bigger paycheck. Of course all of these are probably more suitable for fresh-grad looking for an opportunity in Silicon Valley.

This is a pretty amazing opportunity for anyone that wants to help fix cities. $35k stipend + travel + health and a chance at writing code that has meaning and helps fix a real problem. Will be interesting to see the kind of things that get built (and if the bureaucracy is beaten!)

More info on the program here: http://codeforamerica.org/become-a-fellow/

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