Item — HN Reader

As Sam alludes to, many YC alums have joined the government in some capacity—healthcare.gov, US Digital Service, Nava, Presidential Innovation Fellows—and are on HN.

Jason Shen from YC S11 recently wrote about the concept of a "Tour of Duty": http://www.jasonshen.com/2015/when-did-you-do-your-tour-of-d...

If anybody has questions, feel free to ask and I'm sure one of the alumni will reply!

3 comments

Why doesn't the government allocate more funding to pay skilled technical workers at least close-to-market wages for the crucial work they are doing in bringing government organizations and systems into the 21st century?

There's plenty of funding, but salaries are capped by law: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-admi...

So Congress would have to pass a law to fix that particular problem.

That problem was solved decades ago by government contracting. See above, the healthcare.gov folks formed contracting companies so they could go back to work for the govt at double the salary.

That's not a solution. At all. The contracting companies end up pulling up the ladder so that nobody else can compete in the particular vertical they've managed to commandeer. And then they lose all incentive to work hard. They wind up hiring less and less competent workers and pocketing the difference.

Contractors are a big reason why the US government has the reputation it does today.

How much interaction does the USFS have with Congress? Do you have any idea when we'll start to see more technically-minded and possibly younger representatives in Congress who might make these issues more of a priority?

Pretty sure it's illegal for federal entities to lobby Congress. The Anti-lobbying Act makes it pretty hard, anyway. But folks like you could lobby your reps and senators and attempt to get them to increase federal pay. This is a democracy, after all, and you are the constituent.

It's off topic, but the legal status of lobbying in the US always baffles me. Today I learned It's entirely legal for a company to lobby a congressman, but not a government department. How does that make any sense at all?

A department or agency of the federal government acts within the laws and regulations set by congress and is overseen by the president. Thus, even if you wanted them to do or change something, they could not. Congress on the other hand is set up to listen to and respond to constituents (constitutionally), and thus lobbying congress is entirely legal as that it what you are supposed to do.

Well, the system is designed to make sure companies can dominate and control government departments. So, hey, working according to plan.

I didn't mean lobbying Congress per se, but simply the level of interaction between the two orgs. E.g. does the USFS work on projects to help improve/streamline Congress and do Senate/House reps meet with heads of USDS and 18F.

I'm afraid my net worth isn't high enough for me to have any real say in the way our country operates at the moment. Maybe one day :)

Because paying public employees more is politically unpopular and contracting out is politically popular, both with certain ideological groups and with the firms that actually get the contracting money (and turn around and work to support candidates that support contracting out), and paying government technical workers market salaries would mean the government was better at competing with contracting firms for talent.

Thanks for the shoutout :) glad USDS and 18F are getting the attention they deserve!

Sounds like a revolving door...

OK. Is that bad, in this case?

No. A revolving door refers to government leaders who leave government service and go work for lobbyists. We just go back to the private sector.

He revolving door absolutely refers to working for contractors, like is common in the militsry industrial complex.