I recently had a great conversation with USDS, they are an impressive organization and are doing a ton of good.
There were a few things that were deal killers for me:
* on site, relocation to DC. I don't mind flying out for meetings, and being onsite for a few weeks to get spun up, but commuting and sitting in an office every day is unproductive.
* mandatory drug testing. I'm not a big marijuana user, it's not really my thing, but being forced to pee in a cup is dehumanizing and humiliating. Until the federal government is able to find a way around mandatory drug testing, I think that they are going to miss out on a lot of top tech talent.
* disorganized 'tours'. This may have just been a mistaken impression on my part, but during my conversation there didn't seem to be a lot of clarity about what I'd actually be doing, or if it was a project I'd be interested in. It seemed more like "come on board, then we'll put you where we need you". As a highly technical CTO, founder and developer, there are specific problems (especially in healthcare) that I'm interested in helping with. I don't mind taking a pay cut to do good work, but the last thing I want to do is sign up for a "tour" and end up being assigned to something that doesn't fully utilize my capabilities.
Just wanted to give some direct feedback related to my experience with USDS, if others don't have the same concerns / restrictions that I do, I highly recommend giving it a shot.
Thanks for the feedback; it's helpful to hear about what your experience was like.
On the last point, when we see that someone has health experience, we're very likely to place them at CMS/HHS because they would benefit from that background.
But we have had situations in the past where we promised someone "You can work on project X when you start" and then over the course of a few months while that person was onboarding, project X got into a bad spot. That's a bad experience if someone shows up and can't work on what they thought they would.
Thanks for posting how things looked from your side of the conversation--I appreciate it.
There were a few things that were deal killers for me:
* on site, relocation to DC. I don't mind flying out for meetings, and being onsite for a few weeks to get spun up, but commuting and sitting in an office every day is unproductive.
* mandatory drug testing. I'm not a big marijuana user, it's not really my thing, but being forced to pee in a cup is dehumanizing and humiliating. Until the federal government is able to find a way around mandatory drug testing, I think that they are going to miss out on a lot of top tech talent.
* disorganized 'tours'. This may have just been a mistaken impression on my part, but during my conversation there didn't seem to be a lot of clarity about what I'd actually be doing, or if it was a project I'd be interested in. It seemed more like "come on board, then we'll put you where we need you". As a highly technical CTO, founder and developer, there are specific problems (especially in healthcare) that I'm interested in helping with. I don't mind taking a pay cut to do good work, but the last thing I want to do is sign up for a "tour" and end up being assigned to something that doesn't fully utilize my capabilities.
Just wanted to give some direct feedback related to my experience with USDS, if others don't have the same concerns / restrictions that I do, I highly recommend giving it a shot.