
The rise and fall of 18F - danso
https://www.fedscoop.com/rise-fall-18f/
======
throwawayhello
This article seems off the mark. I currently work at 18F and in some ways I
see what it's trying to say but it's missing important details.

1) 18F positions are filled in 2 year terms (Schedule A), with the possibility
of a two year extension. 18F is about four years old and many people are
terming out. My impression is that most people enjoy the work and would prefer
to stay, they just can't.

2) Backfilling positions was severely hurt by the hiring freeze. That's been
frustrating, but that's not specific to 18F or a judgement on 18F's work.

3) Recent changes in leadership disappointed many people because we appeared
to be getting into a good rhythm. But the new commissioner loves the work
we're doing and is planning to grow the team by 100 new people - bringing us
back to peak levels.

Are there challenges? Sure. But there are challenges at every organization and
the challenges of 18F are complex and interesting. I love my job and I am
working with incredible colleagues. The projects themselves are fascinating
and we get to wrestle with complex problems. We lead with technology, but the
goal is usually to transform the way an agency or department works. That's
massive! The pay is actually pretty good: GS-15 is $164,200 for Bay Area,
which is not the highest, but we're hardly struggling.

~~~
csdreamer7
Did a search for Schedule A. Got either a Schedule A 1040 (likely) or a
documented disability form.

Why does 18F do contract positions only? Why not W2? The article does mention
the 2 year terms, but doesn't explain why.

~~~
Spooky23
The government uses mechanisms like this to avoid civil service rules. The
intention of 18F was project based engagements where staff come and go.

~~~
Spooky23
Not sure why this attracted the downvotes.

This isn’t a bad thing. I’ve worked in (not fed) .gov for many years. Most
government jobs are structured as career jobs, not gigs or places for mid/high
level individual contributors to land.

When you want more senior talent with specific skill sets, you need
contractors or short term appointed people who work for the government, but
don’t have all of the rights or need to climb the ladder that career employees
do.

------
geekamongus
As someone who worked in a DOC agency for 5+ years doing security work, much
of my job consisted of reviewing software for compliance and security before
acquiring/installing it in our systems. Every time someone showed up with
something 18F was doing, it involved far more bleeding edge cloudy stuff than
we were able to accept.

In short, the shiny object that was 18F had a really hard time doing its job
of integrating with the resistant, crusty old pillars of Federal Agency policy
and technology.

~~~
xamuel
This. When "left-pad" messes up some Facebook-for-dogs startup, that's bad.
When "left-pad" messes up the social security system, the army, etc., that's
really really bad.

~~~
mattnewton
You think our government websites aren’t already messed up? Look at the ACA
site for example. There are plenty of websites that suffer from mundane
reliability and maintenance problems.

18F was a crucial step in modernizing our infrastructure and attracting people
to work for their government who would normally never touch this Byzantine
nonsense with a 10 foot pole.

God bless the people still in the government fighting for good tech.

~~~
clintonb
Are you referring to the initial ACA website? The USDS and 18F came about as a
result of resolving that particular debacle.

~~~
mattnewton
Yes exactly, bringing expertise in house was supposed to solve things like
that, and AFAICT it helped.

~~~
geekamongus
This is exactly what the article talks about, but I don't think you guys read
it.

~~~
mattnewton
The article talks about how new people aren’t being recruited in the new
administration. 18F under Obama was a major recruitment effort for quality
talent.

------
buildbuildbuild
I consider rumors of 18F's demise to be greatly exaggerated.

It may take a few years for a shift in power to occur which results in better
funding, but the momentum they have already built has inspired myself as well
as many others, and I consider that to be a great success.

Code For America and 18F: Thank you for your many sacrifices, don't be
discouraged. Keep it up.

------
mattdeboard
This was my big fear when I was going through the extremely and unnecessarily
long interview process (started interviewing in May, was told I got the job in
July, was given a start date for late October in late September...I took a
different job in the meantime) there a few years ago. That, yeah, cool, Obama
is forward looking and stuff but 18F just seems like a prime target for the
chopping block for a Republican administration.

~~~
s73v3r_
Which is a shame, because the only reason that would be is "because Obama did
it, so we must be against it." This kind of forward-thinking technology group
is exactly what the government needs more of.

------
zbentley
That's quite distressing. 18F delivered a lot of really important software
(identity.gov, for example) and I hoped that the quality of their products
would usher in a new era of open-source-first government technological
advancement.

~~~
microcolonel
Ultimately, it seems, the compensation was just always lower than industry
norms.

~~~
grepthisab
GS-15 is more than many pay, maybe not bay area or top, top companies. But I
had friends there who made $160k-ish and had a hard time moving back to SF to
mid-size startups because he would have had to take a pay cut (but with equity
filling the gap). Plus it was pretty high impact work, and the ability to work
remote on demand, so was hard to find something comparable if you're very
mission driven or want a more "relaxed" lifestyle.

~~~
toomuchtodo
It's not a bad deal if you're young and single. It wasn't tenable for me to
bring my wife and daughter to share a townhouse with a bunch of other USDS [+]
staff making $130k/year.

[+] I'm aware that USDS and 18F are independent branches.

~~~
grepthisab
Yeah that probably depends on your personal situation of course. But I met
many 18F'ers and USDS'ers through my friends, lots of people coming on between
startups for a few months, some staying for years. They seem to match your
current salary up to the federal civilian max, which appears to be $161,900.
So that's not exactly a small amount, especially considering the additional
benefits like excellent health care and blameless vacation-taking. Though you
won't be getting catered lunches or free drinks/swag. Really just seems to
depend on what you value. I've considered joining myself.

~~~
throwaway_45
The median household income in DC is 75k. So you are making 130-160k you are
way above the median. Everyone doesn't make 300k. Its like HN exists in its
own universe.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Regardless of whether you're making above the median and your skills have more
value, that should not require you to suffer a pay cut to spend 1-2 years
doing thankless work.

Regardless of DC median wages, housing is very expensive to be reasonably
close to where you'd be working onsite for 18F or USDS assignments.

~~~
gowld
Being a little less rich than possible is a relative loss, but it's not
"suffering". Nor is it more "thankless' than being a cog at a tech company.

------
Finnucane
"This sharp decline represents a significant erosion of technical talent in
the federal government and, if it continues, will likely impede the ability of
the Trump administration to use technology to implement its agenda over the
next few years."

This is . . . bad?

But in the larger scheme, this is bad, since it seemed like 18F was actually
making some headway in improving the government's use of internet technology.

~~~
phlakaton
It seems pretty unlikely to me that 18F would routinely be called upon to
implement a specifically Trumpian agenda. From the little I know of what they
do, it's about making government effective in service to the American people.
That should be a politically neutral goal.

To the extent that even Trump's administration is focused on that, I can
support it. However, the evidence I've seen so far strongly suggests to me
that it's not.

~~~
dragonwriter
> It seems pretty unlikely to me that 18F would routinely be called upon to
> implement a specifically Trumpian agenda. From the little I know of what
> they do, it's about making government effective in service to the American
> people. That should be a politically neutral goal.

In government, “in service to the American people" in the mission of an agency
means, in practice, “in service to the priorities of the current political
leadership”.

Notionally, democratic accountability should make the latter approximate the
former, but in practice results are quite mixed.

~~~
phlakaton
Let me put it this way: is getting veterans prompter, better access to VA
health care a Democratic issue or a Republican issue? Hopefully you'll agree
it's both (or neither).

Now you could look at improvements we might make to the VA at this time and
oppose them, saying that any improvements we make to the government during a
Trump administration legitimizes his administration and priorities.

As for me, I've had enough of that. It's the "party of 'no'" all over again.
If you think the 18F is doing something specifically nefarious, name it.
Otherwise, if something is a benefit to the American people, I support 18F,
the Digital Service, or whoever taking it on--and I suspect that most of their
work falls into this relatively uncontroversial category.

------
dragonwriter
18F always had the air of a demonstration project in all but name: in the long
term, government IT needs either are so different from industry that hiring
short-tour private industry vets the way 18F is structured to is nonsense, or
(and I think this is more likely) are similar enough that what needs to happen
is that government hiring and treatment (including, but not limited to, pay)
of IT staff (including IT managers, not just technicians) needs to improve so
that they are more competitive _across the board_ in hiring the best people,
not just having a place where they attract a few people to try to fix the
messes that the rest are making, whether through inadequate technical skills
or poor management of tech programs and staff. So it probably _should_ have
withered, one way or the other.

But what seems to be happening is neither of those, but just general neglect.
But that is kind of par for the course in this Administration when the office
isn't one with enough connection to hot-button partisan issues to be the
target of outright malice.

~~~
gowld
Of course. The hope was that 18F's success would inspire agency leads and
political leaders to to change IT government-wide

------
smsm42
From this article, it remains unclear to me what 18f is doing and how it's
doing it differently from any other IT shop of any other governmental body. I
mean, I get that they do it in agile, modular and user-friendly fashion (did
you ever see anybody declare otherwise - that they're going to develop in
monolithic, lazy and user-hostile fashion? everybody knows the buzzwords) -
but what specifically they do and why it is so important to keep doing
whatever they do?

Also, it looks like the leadership issues come from the fact that the
leader(s), despite declaring themselves to be apolitical, were very much
political (they just expected their policy to win so they can pose as
apolitical while doing exactly what they wanted), got triggered by Trump being
elected and rage-quit the job. Which is entirely within their rights, nobody
is obligated to work for Trump or the govt, especially if they hate the guy,
but it's not exactly a sign of problems within 18F as such.

~~~
danso
18F is part of the General Services Administration and was ostensibly tasked
to not just work on IT (for GSA, and others) but to develop and promulgate
best practices across the federal agencies.

A 2015 blog post about "The difference between 18F and USDS":
[https://ben.balter.com/2015/04/22/the-difference-
between-18f...](https://ben.balter.com/2015/04/22/the-difference-
between-18f-and-usds/)

> _The [Presidential Innovation Fellows] program was a success, and soon after
> a group called 18F was created within the General Services Administration
> (GSA) not only to house the PIFs, both physically and bureaucratically, but
> also to continue and augment their efforts — to centralize forward-thinking
> technologists in government under one administrative umbrella, and to
> provide a vehicle for change that wasn’t tied so closely to the
> administration and the highly political world in which it operates on a
> daily basis_

------
blauditore
Off-topic, but this page's `article` tag has its `title` attribute set to the
article's title. Event though it sounds reasonable, that's not how it's
supposed to work... :)

As a result, I get a useless tooltip when placing the cursor almost anywhere
on the page.

------
darkerside
It's unfortunate that the Trump administration doesn't recognize the power of
technology to act as a lever. You can invest in agile technology teams,
thereby actually reducing headcount of the government overall in the long
term.

~~~
dsr_
The Republican Party position for the last two decades has been that
government is incompetent to do anything except defense and transfer money to
the rich. Therefore, headcount can always be reduced without any particular
balancing efficiency gain -- the government just stops doing that function.

Doing things more efficiently is a threat to that worldview, so it must be
stopped.

~~~
gowld
Republicans don't "transfer money to the rich". They advocate for letting the
rich keep money they've obtained. You might object to how the rich obtain
their money, but that's different.

~~~
logfromblammo
You are quite obviously unfamiliar with how the military-industrial complex
works.

Republicans do transfer money to the rich. And they do it hand-in-hand with
the Democrats. They will even do it right in front of your face, as they are
claiming to be transferring money to the poor.

Where, pray tell, do you think all that annual budget actually _goes_? Most of
it isn't ending up in the pockets of the people actually doing the work that
the money is ostensibly buying. Military spending is not going into soldier's
paychecks. Medicare and Medicaid spending is not going to physicians and
nurses. There is an entire ecosystem of middlemen that do little more than
subtract the politics and volatility out of the government money and turn it
into a reliable cash flow. For this, they keep a fraction. It is every bit as
legit as the finance wizards on Wall Street that can turn market chaos into
investment-grade securities by mathematically separating risks from returns,
and the people doing it with gummint dosh can get just as rich.

It is entirely due to the semi-privatization of government services. Rich
people grow richer by operating a privately-owned business that serves only
one customer, who frequently asks them to name their own price, and then
doesn't bother to haggle or shop around.

For every young genius that strikes the jackpot with a unicorn startup, there
are hundreds of banal and unremarkable suit-fillers reaping mere millions just
from knowing a guy that knows a guy with an inside line on appropriations, and
from having enough money to credibly submit a contract proposal.

------
laser
It seems unfair to compare 18F attrition to GSA, as people in tech generally
have a lot more options than people in other government sectors. For
comparison, the ~2 year average retention at 18F is among the best of the big
tech companies [1]. Not to say there aren't issues, but this article seems to
make things sound worse than they probably are.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/employee-retention-rate-
top-t...](http://www.businessinsider.com/employee-retention-rate-top-tech-
companies-2017-8)

------
kirillzubovsky
One aspect the article doesn't seem to cover is how hard it is for the current
team to recruit anyone to join. Think about it. They all joined during Obama,
and presumably supporting him and Dem principles in place. Now that Trump is
the supreme ruler, the current team is slowly leaving, as the article has
pointed out. Imagine trying to hire someone to replace you, when you can't
tell them with a straight face that if given a choice, you would stay for a
second term because you can't wait to leave. Thus lack of hiring.

~~~
phlakaton
It could be that. Or it could be that, you know, their career page simply
states: _We don 't have any open positions right now._ That would make
recruiting a bit difficult.

(Source: [https://18f.gsa.gov/join/](https://18f.gsa.gov/join/))

------
book_mentioned
If you want to apply for a job with the USDS specifically (or 18F semi-
similarly), this sub-discussion seems helpful:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14672837](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14672837)

------
mychael
I would support a privatized version of 18F. One we could measure impact of
better and terminate more easily.

------
linkmotif
But the Trump administration _is_ working on a military parade, so...

------
joss82
I wonder where the name 18F comes from...

~~~
atonse
GSA is located at 18th St and F St.

~~~
gowld
Change it to F-18 to inspire better funding from GOP?

And move 17 blocks west to F&35?

------
erikb
40M looking for 18F for some fun?

I mean, the name is already not too well designed I'd say.

~~~
supahfly_remix
I know you're joking, but FWIW the name refers to the agency's location at
18&F Sts. in DC.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18F](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18F)

~~~
gaius
18F is the MOS for Army intelligence if I remember correctly. That alone will
have put lots of people off.

~~~
dtparr
I wonder how many people interested in and competent at 18F's mission would be
familiar enough with enlisted job codes in the Army to make that connection.

~~~
gaius
Well, I did. It wouldn’t be that far-fetched - look at some of the work the
Army Corps Of Engineers has done.

~~~
dtparr
Yeah, I'm not saying no one would, but of the cross section I mentioned, how
many would make the nominal connection and find it negative enough to dissuade
them from applying knowing there's no actual functional connection. Not 0, but
I wouldn't say 'lots of people'.

