But first a little about me: CS degree, straight to engineering at blue-chip tech companies, did full stack development, then moved to product management, with a bit of project management experience jumbled in. I'm probably not the guy you want banging out 20K LoC/day on the Linux kernel, but I am the guy who can sketch out both the UI and the architecture of a new product, hold the big picture in his head on the one hand and still speak intelligently to specialists about minute details on the other hand. Fixing all the broken systems in government sounded like a dream job at the time. I thought I was a good fit from everything I heard.
I initially reached out to you, Brandon, around the second big round of press that USDS got -- summer/fall 2014ish. You helpfully put me in touch with J.
J rescheduled our calls twice. It's fine, shit happens. When we did get on the phone though, after explaining the above (with more evidence), she asked me if I wanted to do web-dev with 18F. No, I did not want to do web-dev with 18F, and there's very little in my background to suggest I'd be a good fit for web development. She flat out told me she didn't think I could hack it at USDS, but when I asked where she thought I wasn't a good fit, she backed down and said she'd get an engineer to interview me.
Next thing I know, I get an email from H @ 18F, who I understand is a manager there, and says that J said I wanted to speak to her. Okay, fine, I figure what's the harm in a conversation? I respond that I'd be happy to chat.
A month goes by, no response to 2-3 emails to J (or H).
Finally J responds, so sorry, got busy, etc. Alright, fine, shit happens I guess. The call with the engineer is set up. The engineer and I speak, technical stuff, no phone-coding though (yay!). Seems to have gone well. I give it a week, no sign of life, so I email: nothing. I let two more weeks go by, email again: nothing. Two months later (by now I was just doing this for the curiosity): nothing.
So. Maybe there's political will. Maybe they're bipartisan support. But I doubt you're hiring the best and brightest. Because hiring the best people is job #1 of any leadership team, and the best and brightest know that if this is the hiring process, run by deputy directors of these organizations, with the deputy CTO of the US cc'd on all these emails, and it's _this_ bad...well, it can only be even worse on the inside. And all the desire to give back and serve your country falls apart when you know that organization is going to hamstring you when it comes to the "giving back" and "serving your country" parts of the job description.
Oh, but what about H/18F, you're wondering? Over the course of 8 months (half of that time radio silence), I've scheduled 5 phone calls with her, and she's missed every single one, most of them without a courtesy email saying she'd have to cancel before the call. It got to the point where I was scheduling them during times I knew I'd be driving or waiting around at places because I didn't want to waste anymore hours sitting by a phone that was unlikely to ring.
So yeah, there was no "bait and switch" here, just the "bait and". Not that I'm irritated by this or anything...