Government is not a place where modern collaboration tools thrive. This has less to do with "broken IT" (though that's part of it) and more to do with the government's unique legal, oversight, and compliance burdens, and a lack of modern collaboration tools that can accommodate them.
The projects in which we are most successful are also not projects where people can easily contribute remotely. Some agency teams allow remote work but the jury's still out in my opinion as to whether these people are as effective as others.
The projects in which we are most successful are those where we have been able to quickly bring a lot of relevant experience to the table, not just knowledge and skill.
This was written not long after USDS was founded, and I recall thinking even then that many of his comparisons were not entirely accurate. The comments you read here are going to be more complete and up to date.
There exist people that are happy to take a personal statement and attribute it to the author's employer to score political points at the author's expense. When I use this disclaimer it's chiefly for my own benefit.
Hi, really sorry that you feel this way. Delays on the order of a few weeks aren't unexpected at this point, but we shouldn't have people that have been waiting for a response of some kind for much longer than that. We're still growing the team (including those doing the recruiting and hiring) and we appreciate everyone's patience.
We can follow up with you to let you know where you are in the process, but we'd need some sort of identifying information in order to do that.
If you don't mind me asking - why is the process so bad for you guys right now that many folks are complaining?
Also, your response sounds extremely canned, not gonna lie. Why not just say "Sorry about that, pm me your name and I'll look into it and fix the other dozen folks while I'm at it."? I see emails like yours all the time from middle management who don't quite know how to manage, but have such a large audience that they feel obligated to act "professional". It's a "human" issue, so just write a response like a human :).
18Fer here: Our team talent is tiny - I think three or four people. The amount of people in the pipeline is massive. They're inventing, and reinventing, processes left and right to improve. Also, at some point we have to hand off to GSA's hiring group for final paperwork, and we have less control over that process.
Also, we believe it's important to have the team you might work with do the interviewing, not just HR. Which unfortunately means we're often the problem - a fire with a client and suddenly you're down an interviewer, and we're not quite big enough to gracefully rebound and find a new one last minute.
All of which to say: not excuses, but hopefully gives you insight into some of our scaling troubles.
It doesn't sound like it's entirely your tream's fault, then. Not having enough time because of fires and such often screams to me of bad management towards the middle/top. And considering who you work for, that makes sense.
I wouldn't even say it's bad management. Emergencies do happen sometimes, and when that happens it sometimes has a bigger impact than "people can't buy pants on the internet right now."
I'm really sorry about your experience. In many ways we're still a fledgling startup. We don't trust the regular federal government's hiring process, which means we have to build our own from scratch, so we have our own recruiters, coordinators, and when we aren't fighting fires or developing software, we're the ones actually doing the interviews. The process was maddeningly slow for a while but it's improving.
The broader USDS family is focused on delivering better services. But one area we're starting to focus more on is policy itself. One thing that struck me about the federal government is just how little internal harmony there exists between agencies. Just because the NSA does or says something doesn't mean everyone here agrees with them or even really has to support them. Because the USDS HQ team is located in the White House (and OMB), there exists the ability to engage directly with decision-makers and influence policy and (at least sometimes) the behavior of agencies.
Yes, the USDS HQ team is part of the White House which means you have to be a US citizen. 18F is part of GSA and they have more flexibility in hiring. Agency Digital Service teams are being hired directly into various agencies, and each agency will have its own citizenship requirements I think.
