
Back To My Roots - trevorhartman
https://al3x.net/2014/02/11/back-to-my-roots.html
======
ForHackernews
Whenever I read things like this, my immediate reaction is "How do these
people have so much money to travel around the world doing nothing-in-
particular for two years?"

Are there just a lot of really rich people out there? Or am I over-cautious
and they're operating without a safety net?

~~~
jmduke
From the article:

 _To make things a little more surreal: a few weeks after I turned 30 this
past October, Twitter went public, confirming that I never need to work again.
(I’m still getting my head around that.)_

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incision
This looks great.

You know what's really wacky about government inefficiency?

It's damn near impossible to help, much less fix from the inside.

I've long been convinced that the best/only way to help right along the lines
of what these guys are doing - build boxed solutions from the outside.

This is effectively an air-drop of tools which sails in over top of all the
petty backbiting, ass covering and general self-serving bullshit that stifles
in-house projects.

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badman_ting
Kudos to him, I would have gone back to school and lived the life of the
spoiled rich brat I always wished for.

~~~
aethr
I just connected the dots and realised that I went to high school with al3x in
the DC area. I never realised the programmer I knew in high school went on to
work with twitter, et all. What a brilliant surprise!

Anyway, really glad to see he's doing so well, especially after reading his
blog entry a few months ago about his personal troubles. It's refreshing to
see a fellow human being making great use of their time and fortune to the
betterment of others. Good luck in the new role, al3x.

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peter_l_downs
Really interesting — I think the question of "How can I help make government
better?" is not asked enough. My guess is that there is a large number of very
smart people who would love to write code to improve the government; I know
that when I'm looking for a new gig I'll be reaching out.

~~~
tw268
Minority set-asides wouldn't be my answer. It seems the government needs the
best contractors it can get.

You'll notice that private companies never do that stuff because they suffer
if they don't get results.

~~~
cjoh
Minority set-asides aren't our exclusive purpose. We want to reform the
procurement process to make it more competitive and honest. Part of that is
making it so that a woman doesn't have to write an essay explaining that she's
a woman before she gets granted woman owned business status by the SBA.

But another part of it is advocating for the RFP-IT Act, which would make it a
lot easier for small businesses to sell to the federal government:
[http://blog.dobt.co/2014/01/27/Reform-Federal-Procurement-
fo...](http://blog.dobt.co/2014/01/27/Reform-Federal-Procurement-for-
Information-Technology-Act/)

And another is piloting our software, Screendoor.io, which is based on the
project we ran successfully in the White House, RFP-EZ:
[http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/05/15/rfp-ez-delivers-
sa...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/05/15/rfp-ez-delivers-savings-
taxpayers-new-opportunities-small-business)

------
sjs382
I've been hacking around with DOBT's formbuilder.js, and they seem like a
great team. Hope the new position suits you well!

------
fernly
For those who, like me, were clueless, DOBT = "Department of Better
Technology"[1].

Not, oddly enough, "Depth-Oriented Brief Therapy" which is the only Wikipedia
hit[2].

[1] [http://www.dobt.co/](http://www.dobt.co/) [2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherence_therapy#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherence_therapy#History)

------
xradionut
This is similar to what I would do in the same situation. If I didn't need the
income of my day job, I'd spend the time on public service or charity of some
sort. I can't see myself spending money like a trust fund dilettante nor
funding yet another startup.

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raving-richard
I don't believe in the government. Unfortunately it believes in me. Well done
on being almost as free as a person can be in this unfree society. But please
don't help the biggest source of unfreedom there is. Instead, use your time to
help make others free if you want a suggestion as to what to do.

Easy to use crypto for one.

------
coops
For all their hand-wringing over the healthcare.gov debacle you'd think at
least one of these DoBT guys would have gone in to help fix it. That probably
would have gotten in the way of fund-raising, though.

~~~
cjoh
We did the best we could, and tried to help on it as much as the law would
allow. And still do. But one cannot simply volunteer to help the government do
things, as the federal advisory committee act prohibits government from
accepting free advice or work (you can infer why).

Not sure what you mean about fundraising though, as we don't raise money (we
have received a grant for our operations from the Knight Foundation, but
aren't looking to raise any VC money).

~~~
coops
You must not have tried very hard. [http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/31/oracle-
red-hat-and-google-e...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/31/oracle-red-hat-and-
google-employees-pitch-in-to-fix-beleaguered-healthcare-gov-reports-indicate/)
People are still flying out there to help with healthcare.gov, all the time.

~~~
mattdeboard
Those big companies used their government contacts to land some big government
contracts. The government reached out to industry as a PR move, throwing money
at whoever promised they could fix the problem as soon as possible. There's no
altruism here.

~~~
coops
sorry, no, you're all wrong. those employees are all taking unpaid leave to
come work on healthcare.gov.

