
Why technologists don't want to work at a government agency - rmason
http://ben.balter.com/2015/04/21/why-technologists-dont-want-to-work-at-your-agency/
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therobot24
As someone who has worked for more than one agency, reading this list is like
listening to a high schooler complain about getting up early for school. Yes
it's a pain and there's lots of good reasons for change, but there's also
probably reasons you're not familiar with (or care about) that make it
necessary.

Also, some of these are really stretching:

>> 3\. You tether developers to their desk

Not having Wifi is a dealbreaker? I don't know about the author, but i became
an engineer because i wanted to build things. If the problem is interesting,
does it really matter if you can't go 'chill in the lobby' with your laptop?

>> 10\. New technologies are guilty until proven innocent

When managing anything that can vitally affect many people it's important to
not just jump on the next bandwagon. This is engineering 101.

>> 13\. Speaking at conferences is tightly controlled

What? Are you talking about OPSEC procedures or travel limitations or what
exactly?

>> 16\. You measure your hiring process in months

Your freaky fast startup is what...5..100 employees? Come on, an agency (while
can be small) is part of something much much larger. Also many agencies
require a full background check and/or security clearance.

>> 18\. Recruitment is unheard of

Just because you're not getting spam from NASA or your local gov about an
'exciting opportunity to change the world' doesn't mean agencies don't attend
job fair, offer scholarships, and recruit talent.

>> 19\. You block half the internet - I honestly don’t know how I’d do my job
without social networks like Twitter.

Really? "It’s not unsurprising that many government employees are out of the
loop", like we can't or won't read/browse/learn things on our own time. Get
off your petastle.

~~~
angersock
The stuff I'd actually complain about would be the assumptions about
continuous integration and continuous deployment--while those are always long-
term goals, a lot fo companies never do them. :(

Especially on 19, though, I feel their pain. If the .gov feels it's important
to protect developers from their own curiosity and browsing, fat fucking
chance they'll retain anyone interesting.

~~~
therobot24
I can't deny that it does hurt, but it's not really a dealbreaker until that
random forum that you think has a similar answer to what you're looking for is
blocked - most of the time i just bookmark links to read on the bus/when i get
home

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gordaco
A lot of this also applies to big corps, and most of it is not even a problem
IMHO. In fact some of those, especially point 15, are reasons why I would want
to work in a big, stablished company rather than in a startup.

The bit about integration, testing, Jenkins et al. surprised me, because in my
(maybe not very vast) experience, small companies and startups are much _less_
likely to test everything and just try to release as fast as possible. And
I've had the same impression about process. Maybe I was just unlucky.

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gaius
#9 is just basic
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_concerns](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_concerns)

This guy has clearly never worked on anything but the most trivial of
websites, he has no idea...

~~~
pigscantfly
Actually, he works on some seemingly cool stuff at Github,
([http://ben.balter.com/about/](http://ben.balter.com/about/)) and I think #9
is a complaint about being unable to monitor code in production, which is a
valid concern even if your test suite is well written and someone else is
performing the actual deployment IMO.

~~~
gaius
ESR in a suit.

------
pkinsky
I wonder what the working conditions of the technologists building Singapore's
smart nation or e-Estonia are like.

------
sjtgraham
Working in government is not always like this. I spent about 9 months
contracting in the UK's Ministry of Justice

> You force developers to use tools designed for lawyers

Nope, we used whatever we wanted to.

> You distrust your employees

Nope, most people used OS X and had full control over their machine

> You tether developers to their desk

Nope, there is wifi throughout the building. I actually worked from home a
lot, eventually only coming in for sprint planning and retros

> You prefer government-specific service providers

Nope, we deploy on AWS in prod, and spin up Heroku apps for sharing prototypes

> Temporary integration

Nope, we run CI on every branch, pull requests are not merged until green.

> Sparse delivery

Nope, Continuous delivery. Master is always deployable. We deploy whenever we
want.

> You still see waterfall as a viable option

Nope

> You don’t place process on a pedestal

Nope, use all best practise you'd expect in any modern software shop

> You erect a moat between developers and servers

Nope, our releases our deployed by CI but we can SSH into any box (via VPN and
jump boxes)

> New technologies are guilty until proven innocent

Nope, use what you want as long as you can justify it, i.e. building a service
in brainfuck won't fly

> You use open source as a verb

Nope, all development done in the open and service source code licensed under
MIT

> Working in the open is a novelty, not a best practice

Nope, see above. We're spending taxpayer money, the software belongs to the
taxpayer and we want to be fully accountable.

> Speaking at conferences is tightly controlled

Nope

> Geeks are the bottom of your food chain

Nope. Quite frankly the opposite. We have the best equipment in the
department, are amongst the best paid, and wear whatever we want to the office
where all other stuff seem to be required to wear business dress.

> Culture only happens outside of your working hours

Nope. As we are spending public money we can hardly have an open bar but we do
our best

> You measure your hiring process in months

Nope, the slowest part of the hiring process is having a background check,
which takes a couple of weeks

> Onboarding is an afterthought

Nope, you're up and running with all your brand new kit and logins on day 1

> Recruitment is unheard of

Nope, but the department has largely grown through referrals

> You block half the internet

Nope, nothing is blocked whatsoever

~~~
pigscantfly
Judging by the author's resume, which includes university and work in DC, he's
criticizing US gov't tech culture. It's nice to hear that things are better in
the UK, though.

~~~
alexbilbie
I worked in Higher Education for 4.5 years in the UK and this article was very
much a blast from the past. Some universities really got it but I distinctly
remember being told by the head of IT at a top London university that
developers had no place in his opinion.

Unfortunately the funding to JISC was heavily cut a few years back and the
Dev8D community that had developed (made up of developers at many
institutions) lost its momentum to budget cuts and bureaucracy.

