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Comment by isiahl | Hacker News Reader

RIP to the USDS, an inspiring government department to someone like me.

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it"

This applies equally to institutions and individuals, so from investors to CEOs to politicians to tech community leaders to individuals picking where they work, this is a very "interesting" time

Both the USDS and PIF programs were inspiring to me as they were almost like a New Deal for digital natives & coders. They did a good job of attracting smart hard workers to be underpaid for unglamorous & often-frustrating but impactful work. A lot of good people!

Yep. I’ve been subscribed to get emails when application to their jobs open, because they really represented a portion of the government that I thought was doing good work and was an area I could contribute meaningfully to (given my skillset). I never made the jump, it was such a large paycut and iirc looked like it’d require relocation, but I’d like to think I might in the future (if it ever comes back).

The people I met at USDS took that kind of pay cut for the mission, which I was in awe of. Senior, Staff, Principal engineers from big tech who likely had been making twice as much as top government salary.

They're behind U.S. Web Design System (USWDS)? This is going away?

USWDS have a cool palette system where color pairs from their palette have predictable WCAG color contrast (unlike in e.g. Tailwind's default palette), but I rarely hear of projects using USWDS colors:

https://designsystem.digital.gov/design-tokens/color/overvie...

> We call the difference in grade between any two colors the magic number. Magic numbers have the following contrast implications:

> A magic number of 40+ results in WCAG 2.0 AA Large Text contrast (example: gray-90 and indigo-warm-50v).

Under Executive Order 14151 "Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing" many links/pages were already removed from the design system https://github.com/uswds/uswds-site/pull/3078 https://github.com/uswds/uswds-site/pull/3053/files#diff-86c... (ie. inclusivecolors.com would be prohibited)

Within 60 days "“diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government" must be terminated https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/endi...

> (ie. inclusivecolors.com would be prohibited)

I didn't have "does this include words in it that might get banned?" on my checklist when hunting for a good domain name haha. The https://designsystem.digital.gov/design-tokens/color/overvie... link still mentions "inclusively".

> Within 60 days "“diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility”

Are there more details on this? So next USWDS might be stripping out references to WCAG accessibility guidelines like their color contrast advice?

That’d be something for sure. Section 508 accessibility laws are built into most federal IT contracts. DHS has an entire trusted tester certification program around it. The changes required to existing federal contracts if they do this are staggering.

https://www.dhs.gov/trusted-tester

> Sec. 3. DOGE Structure. (a) Reorganization and Renaming of the United States Digital Service. The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/esta...

in essence, USDS had the most cross functional access and was the best agency to be able to back door every other agency.

I wanted to work for them since Obama announced it, but they didn’t pay as well as a big funded private corp startup. If I was a bit older and more comfortable with my savings I would have.

I would have loved serving my country and working on software as a way to give back.

I talked to some people at USDS during my time in govt. They took a 50% pay cut to serve their country. Wish more people understood a lot of civil servants often do it for the mission.

There is a sad side to my desire, I’ve told people this before in social circles and most people respond with confusion as to why I would want to do that.

The general expectation with USDS and others was that you only stay for 2-3 years. So it’s more like a temporary tour.

At least that’s what was pitched to me a few years ago when I spoke to their counterparts in the US gov. Incredibly smart, no-BS people that wanted to do good work and have high impact.

Still the only job I regret not taking in all my career.

We'll live on in people's memories and hearts. Thank you.

Thank you for your service.

I wanted to join them some day. Hopefully they will be back.

Mikey Dickerson, the first head of the USDS, would say hope is not a strategy.

I wanted to join them a few years ago but I wasn’t in the right life position to do so. I was hoping to one day in the near future. Maybe that day will one day come again.

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