White House Wants To Borrow Tech Workers From Google and Amazon, Says Report (cnet.com)

"According to CNET, TechCrunch and others, the Trump administration reportedly wants tech giants to make it easy for workers to take leaves of absence to help the government modernize," writes Slashdot reader kimanaw. From a report: White House officials on Monday planned to meet with tech giants including Google, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM, to discuss ways to make it easier for employees to take leaves of absence to help with government projects, according to The Washington Post. The administration reportedly hopes tech industry workers will be able to help modernize state and federal agencies and tackle challenges such as upgrading the veterans' health care system. Attracting tech talent may prove difficult for the Trump administration, which hasn't always seen eye to eye with Silicon Valley on issues such as the president's ban on travel from predominantly Muslim countries. However, White House officials believe tech workers are willing to "put politics aside." "This event on Monday is not just about our efforts, it's about our successor, and their successor after that," said one unnamed official, according to the Post. The White House didn't respond to a request for comment.

Comments

Shouldn't be a problem

[olsmeister]

Since Silicon Valley uses so many contract workers, it shouldn't be a big deal to just poach a few away for a year or two, right?

Re:Shouldn't be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

What is their problem? CEO, CIO's SHOULD know their shit and trusted 2IC's, otherwise you have dummies in the driver seat. They don't take advise - fire them.
The best way is to put everything online and have competitions and unsolicited bids from where-ever. And code audit competitions online.

Re: Shouldn't be a problem

[schure]

I actually thought the White House wanted to create jobs..

Re:Shouldn't be a problem

[tmshort]

Trump doesn't pay contractors, though...

Re:Shouldn't be a problem

[Sir_Eptishous]

Trump doesn't pay contractors, though...

In Soviet Trumpistan, contractors pay you!

Re:Shouldn't be a problem

[hey!]

The myth that the private sector is made up of wonderfully efficient and capable people is easily disproved. Look at your private sector coworkers, and consider the private sector coworkers you've had in the past. Most likely they were not all paragons of efficiency and virtue.

Still, it's likely that they are able to adapt to change more readily than their government sector counterparts, but it's not because they're fundamentally better; they just operate under less restrictive rules and expectations.

Now it can be a good to bring in outside expertise, but the idea that bringing in private sector people will magically fix things is naive, because that expertise will operate under all the same constraints as their government employee counterparts except one: contributing to politicians who oversee the program. That's why privatization's track record of making government cheap and efficient is so un-magical.

It can be a good thing to bring in outside experts and contractors, or it can be a bad one, depending on your plan. If your plan is to shove money at them and sit back while they solve your problems, well that's a bad plan. All things equal a vendor would rather your problems be interminable and expensive, and if he has to give you a job after you retire from public office, that's a small price to pay.

Re:Shouldn't be a problem

[Penguinisto]

The myth that the private sector is made up of wonderfully efficient and capable people is easily disproved. Look at your private sector coworkers, and consider the private sector coworkers you've had in the past. Most likely they were not all paragons of efficiency and virtue.

...compared to most government/civil-service workers? In that light, hell yes they're paragons of efficiency and virtue. :/

I do agree that you can't simply toss money at a group of people and expect them to crap out a perfect vision or solution. Takes a lot of guidance and clear communication along the way. It also takes the removal of the shit-ton of regulatory barriers that most governmental institutions are weighed down with (for even the most trivial of things...)

Re:Shouldn't be a problem

[CaptainDork]

Not so fast.

The government (taxes) doesn't pay well "in house." The high-paying jobs go to contractors who are not always patriotic, like Manning, Snowden, and Winner.

This latest move tells us a few things:

The gubmint doesn't have the chops to do this. Private sector, apparently, does.

The feds have tried to use these same resources to weaponize software like drones, face recognition, and AI.

That failed, so the next iteration is to get that same work force by providing the carrot on a stick labeled, "patriotism."

It's the same song with a different title.

Re:Shouldn't be a problem

[hey!]

...compared to most government/civil-service workers? In that light, hell yes they're paragons of efficiency and virtue. :/

I'm curious how you know this. I worked in the private sector for decades, but at least half that work was for public sector agencies (well over a hundred in all) at all levels of government and in every part of the country except Alaska. I'd say on average public employees are about the same as private sector employees, but the variance is greater.

That's because on one hand you've got rules that makes it hard to get rid of underperformers. But the other hand, you get people who are genuinely dedicated to the mission of their agency in a way that would be downright bizarre in a private sector employee. These are the kind of people who are really bullish about promoting the state's agricultural products, or getting the next generation into hunting and fishing. I once had a trip to the CDC's Fort Collins office when news of a hemorrhagic fever outbreak in Africa came through. It was like being in a suit-up scene in some cheesy action movie because those guys were going to war -- with a virus that made you bleed out of your eyeballs.

The work of those kinds of employees goes largely unnoticed. When we had the Boston Marathon bombing up here, two bombs went off in the middle of crowds and 267 people were hurt, 14 requiring amputations, but only 3 died. First responders justifiably got a lot of credit for that, but the low death rate was also the result of planners having a procedure in place which rapidly activated trauma teams at 27 hospitals, so that on average each hospital had to triage on average fewer than ten patients. Imagine if they'd all gone to the nearest hospital instead. As far as I know whoever prevented that from happening never got any media pats on the back.

The kind of government employees that make those kinds of things happen are found everywhere, and everywhere they're weighed down by deadwood coworkers and bosses. The problem is worse, however, in places where the public is fatalistic about bad government employees. Texas is the worst I've seen. One of the hardware vendors we sometimes worked with landed a bunch of contracts there by procuring prostitutes for public officials. But even in Texas there's a core of good people who make things work; they're just not the ones getting blow jobs.

Re:Shouldn't be a problem

[hey!]

Oh, the chops exist somewhere in the private sector, that is certain. Whether they'll bid on any contracts is less certain, and whether they'd win is even less certain than that.

hat failed, so the next iteration is to get that same work force by providing the carrot on a stick labeled, "patriotism."

People willing to work for patriotism rather than money already work for the government. The problem is that they report to politicians.

Re: Shouldn't be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

How is Snowden not patriotic?

Re:Shouldn't be a problem

[anegg]

Personally, I think it will be a disaster. The government has its own entrenched IT risk management practices, not the least of which is their security certification and accreditation process, which will be completely opaque to the outsiders. The failure to successfully navigate security C&A is a significant potential point of failure for government projects, and using outsiders won't change that unless they are brought up to speed in the process before starting development.

Re: Shouldn't be a problem

[CaptainDork]

How is he patriotic?

Re:Shouldn't be a problem

[CaptainDork]

And most can't find decent work outside the military.

Which, by the way, what with super low unemployment, has changed just recently.

I'm seeing an increase in adverts for signing up.

I was in Uncle Sam's Yacht Club for 9 years. In 1965, the oil patch dried up here.

In 1968, it was still that way. Then, in 1974 the refineries announced preferential hire for veterans.

I bailed for that reason. I'm proud of my time of service but I don't claim to have ever done it out of patriotism.

Re:Shouldn't be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

All one has to do to distrust the Trump administration in the extreme is to look at all of the businesses and contractors that Trump has screwed in the past!!!!

Re: Shouldn't be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you not know what he did? Officials must not be allowed to hide criminal acts behind classified documents.

The purpose of the classification system is to protect information that is important to national security, and political embarrassment or jail time for some official does NOT count as a national security matter but is frequently an excuse to classify something. And for some reason people buy the old line that an embarrassment to the president or to the senator or to the general will be an embarrassment to the USA and will cause harm because reasons, but it's bullshit. It's the corrupt or illegal act itself and the cover-up that cause harm.

Snowden is more of a patriot than any other employee or contractor who worked for the NSA at the same time and was aware of the illegal nature of what they were doing and failed to speak up.

Yes he technically broke the law by disclosing classified information, but he was correct that a complaint in
the "appropriate" channels would have gone nowhere and ended his career anyway, and he did a tremendous public service by providing proof of what was happening on a huge scale.

The whole thing could have been avoided if the NSA didn't break the law in the first place and what do we do? Chase him around the world. Damn shame.

Re:Shouldn't be a problem

[Major Blud]

That's because on one hand you've got rules that makes it hard to get rid of underperformers

This is the real difference that people fail to see. I've worked in both private companies and public government offices, and both can have gross inefficiencies and lackluster employees. The difference is that it's much more difficult to get rid of a terrible employee at a government office, so more of them tend to stick around. Promotion also tends to lean towards seniority as opposed to merit.

The private industry also has situations like promotions based off of favoritism which lead to a terrible employee that sticks around, but at least the option of terminating this person is usually on the table and much easier to carry through with.

Re: Shouldn't be a problem

[CaptainDork]

TL;DR because:

Do you not know what he did?

I'm covering the fucking story.

Please resubmit and and answer the question in a single sentence. Thanks.

Who in Silicon Valley wants to work for Trump?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great way to get black listed by the community at large.

Re:Who in Silicon Valley wants to work for Trump?

[dcw3]

Sure, as if it's not hard enough to find talent. You think these companies are going to collaborate on who worked for the government? Hell, most of them already have government contracts.

Pay them?

[Henriok]

Or.. they could just pay the corporations to use their workers? Say like.. contract work? You know.. how capitalism work, and not, dare I say it.. communism?

Re:Pay them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or.. they could just pay the corporations to use their workers? Say like.. contract work? You know.. how capitalism work, and not, dare I say it.. communism?

Government should not use its power to carve out an exception for government with regards to labor. That's really all there is to it. They should work within existing rules. Now government should use its purchasing power to obtain the best deal for taxpayers for whatever is being purchased, that is no different than literally every person/company/etc in the universe. It is also fair game to do the math and estimate whether a foreign purchase really saves money by the time you calculate the money coming back in taxes. That is simply balancing the books.

Basically if government bids out a competition with Google and all the rest for IT help, then that is fair game. If government says, you have to let your workers take a leave of absence at any time to help government, it is not. People are welcome to try to ask their employers for a leave of absence for whatever they want, but employers should be under no responsibility to say yes if it is for government. I don't particularly care if the government is paying the workers or not, as long as they aren't compelled.

One area I might see an exception for is when someone wants to work for a political campaign, and then it would be a once in a lifetime unpaid leave of absence for a reasonable time. My theory there is that there is a prevailing public interest to get average people involved in politics.

Ethically, I don't think anyone should come within a mile of the current government unless they are working to stop the corruption. They are Evil. There is just no other word for it. This level of lies, corruption, threatening journalists, threatening political opponents, more lies, etc, etc is unforgivable, and treasonous by the ordinary definition of the word. (The one in the constitution is pickier, and it would likely not be there.)

In short, the next election is about simply human decency and ethics. One side has it. The other sound shouts loudly from the rooftop that they have it.

We mocked Baghdad Bob before we hired one.

Re:Pay them?

[houghi]

The advantage of borrowing them is that the people who pay them can influence them, as they are not under contract of POTUS.
This way they do not have to pay the White House via bank transfers, but do the things they want directly.

Banks are Wallstreet, so he is avoiding influence of Wallstreet. He is following up on his promises.

And communism was people getting paid. WORKERS of the world unite. Just a pity there never was any country with communism as it was intended.

Re:Pay them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Found the libtard. These companys should be doing this for free to repay the white house for its AMAZING work making our USA so great again. Asking for pay is treasonous.

Funny how ya'll want the world of Leave it to Beaver, but don't want the tax rates of the 1950s.

Re: Pay them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Or the high rates of unionization.

Fucking asshole fascist pigs will believe anything. Pretending the 50s was such a great time. Hah!

Conservatives would drink human piss if they thought it would piss off Liberals.

Re:Pay them?

[vtcodger]

"Or.. they could just pay the corporations to use their workers?"

I expect that's what they have in mind. I think they are troubled that a lot of government in house IT projects have large cost and schedule overruns. They presumably want to tap into Silicon Valley's vast skills at doing something or other -- ignoring the fact that large cost and schedule overruns by tech companies are not unknown or even uncommon.

This may or may not be exacerbated by the fact that the current administration has relatively few folks at any level who are anything other than completely clueless about how governments actually work.

Anyway, I think they are hoping to avoid things like the 2014 healthcare.gov debacle. If borrowing folks from Google, et.al. can help with that, it's probably not a bad idea.

My first question would be what, if anything, the GAO thinks about this notion. The second would be whether the Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFDRCs) -- Thats, Rand Corp, MITRE labs, Lawrence-Livermore, etc can do the job or whether perhaps a new FFRDC is needed specifically for government IT.

Anyway, my take is -- nowhere near as crazed as much of what goes on in Washington nowadays. But still, I'd like to know a lot more about it and the alternatives before I bought into it.

Re: Pay them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or all the cunts in silicon valley who expect tech talent to work in their free time learning and contributing to open source or code contests (or whatever else they call it now when an employee is forced to learn on their own time instead of a company footing the bill like they do for MBAs) could see this as yet another opportunity.

Re: Pay them?

[hey!]

Actually, according to Hannah Arendt, the real problem with fascists is that they don't have any real commitment to any belief or principle:

In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and nothing was true... The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.

Re:Pay them?

[CaptainDork]

How'd that go with Manning, Snowden, and Winner?

Also, let's look closely at the contractor idea as applied to the war in Afghanistan.

We have a goddam shit load of contractors over there.

How's that been working for us the last 17 years?

Re:Pay them?

[grahamsz]

I've known a few people that have done software and it roles in government. Those jobs may not have great basic salary, but they have a degree of stability that some people look for and coupled with comparatively generous retirement they can be attractive to competent individuals.

The issue, I suspect, on large government IT projects is probably not much to do with technical vision or project management but rather of ill-defined or ever-changing requirements coming from above. When you have a fixed budget & timeline and requirements change then quality has to suffer, our political environment generally doesn't permit anything else to give.

The only advantage to an outside contractor coming in would be that it would be much easier for them to announce to everyone that "shit's fucked up" and that the project isn't set up for success.

Re:Pay them?

[Anonymous Coward]

You feel that the war would be over by now if only we had the for foresight to hire employees instead of contractors?

An interesting view to say the least.

Re:Pay them?

[CaptainDork]

... say the least ...

Try that.

Re: Pay them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Might not be over but would definitely be cheaper...

Re:Pay them?

[dcw3]

So, you're attempting to color all contractors with what these individuals did? And btw, Manning wasn't a contractor. Are there shitty contractors?...sure. You think we could do the job w/o them?...you're delusional.

Re:Pay them?

[CaptainDork]

So, you're attempting to color all contractors ...

Did I post the names of all contractors?

Fake News!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad! #Trump2020

McCarthyism

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny,
I remember in school learning how evil it was to black list actors based on their political views. So now IT and Hollywood brag about black listing based on political views.

Interesting.

Re: McCarthyism

[muffen]

Not even a little bit interesting, times change, Donald freaking Trumpet is president!

Re:McCarthyism

[cascadingstylesheet]

Funny, I remember in school learning how evil it was to black list actors based on their political views. So now IT and Hollywood brag about black listing based on political views.

Interesting.

Silly, it's OK when we do it!

Re:McCarthyism

[Anonymous Coward]

So now IT and Hollywood brag about black listing based on political views.

No one is bragging. I guess that's what Slashdot is now, making up arguments and other shit. We are in a World of "alternative facts now" - where lying is acceptable to score a point on a bullshit argument.

American's do not deserve to be free. You deserve to be the slaves that you really want to be.

Re:McCarthyism

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to work with anybody in hollywood. It is a choice. You have no choice but to have Trump as president. Very big difference.

Re: McCarthyism

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're in Hollywood, then yeah, you do have to work with people, especially if you're a no-name, and that's where discrimination is the worst.

And even if you ignore the fact that Trump was democratically elected, he's only there for another two years.

Re: McCarthyism

[ganjadude]

thankfully

Re:McCarthyism

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so much for political views, but there is a very distinct lack of competence for anything Trump and his cronies seem to want to do. Getting involved with some project that turns out to be an epic failure is what I would see as the career killer.

Re: McCarthyism

[Anonymous Coward]

oh look. a druggie made a funny.

Re: McCarthyism

[Anonymous Coward]

he's only there for another six years.

FTFY.

Re: McCarthyism

[Anonymous Coward]

wasn't really funny

guy's a turd

Re:McCarthyism

[Anonymous Coward]

where are they bragging about black listing? citation needed. i work in silicon valley, and actual institutional systematic black listing would be scorned.

his comment used the word to mean "people won't want to hire you once they know who you worked for". that is true anywhere, if they find out you worked for a corrupt narcissistic moron with a micropenis.

Re:McCarthyism

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I guess you should go edit this article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist

delete the whole thing, and replace it with "me herd blacklissting wuz made up by duh meanie conspearasee!"

because that's how you sound, grasshopper.

Re:McCarthyism

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now" (?!) Hollywood brags about blacklisting based on political views? This has been going on for decades, at least since WW2. I'm surprised you didn't hear about it in school.

Re: McCarthyism

[ArylAkamov]

So?
"Rules for thee but not for me"

Re:McCarthyism

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut the hell up Non-American! Quit making shit up about us making shit up!

Re: McCarthyism

[Anonymous Coward]

He was actually proven correct as all the communists were later exposed through history

Re:McCarthyism

[pgmrdlm]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

âoeSheâ(TM)s a person of some dichotomy. On the one hand, she was on the board of the ACLU and fights for many individual rights,â says Neel Chatterjee, a San Francisco lawyer whoâ(TM)s known Dhillon since the 1980s âoeOn the other hand, sheâ(TM)s a staunch Republican Trump supporter.â And as Chatterjee notes: âoeShe likes fighting political fights.â

Re: McCarthyism

[Anonymous Coward]

how sad is it that liking our president gets a troll mod

Re:McCarthyism

[Tablizer]

McCarthy's claim was that the listed individuals wanted to overthrow the USA gov't (or hung out with those who did), not merely vote for left-leaning policies.

Re:McCarthyism

[dcw3]

Exactly why one of them labeled you Troll. Morons.

18F anyone?

[Amezick]

I was shocked to hear the Obama era idea get some traction with the Trump Admin. Hasn't anyone heard of https://18f.gsa.gov/?

Re:18F anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama said he would do a lot of great things. Trump actually does a lot of great things. If you could ignore the media and look at fiscal and policy accomplishments you'd see that.

Re:18F anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I applied to them before leaving the military. One of the guys working with them, Obama's data guy, was hosted by an organization in Saint Louis that I volunteer with, came in for the hackathon.

Re:18F anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama said he would do a lot of great things. Trump actually does a lot of great things. If you could ignore the media and look at fiscal and policy accomplishments you'd see that.

No, it sounds like you're the one ignoring the media.

Re:18F anyone?

[ganjadude]

exactly why he sees the good things being done

Re:18F anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama said he would do a lot of great things. Trump actually does a lot of great things. If you could ignore the media and look at fiscal and policy accomplishments you'd see that.

Isn't the Dow currently down 500 points today?

Re:18F anyone?

[mcvos]

What great things has Trump done exactly?

Fiscal? The deficit is larger than ever.

Economy? Stockmarket is down.

He mostly accomplished tax cuts for his buddies, cruel treatment of children, discrediting the US internationally, cozying up to all sorts of dictators and other authoritarians, and he's made DC even more corrupt than it was before. Really great things he has accomplished.

Re:18F anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

"fiscal and policy accomplishments"

Did you miss the fact that we're going to be running a trillion dollar deficit next year? This despite having a pretty strong economy which is exactly when deficits should be lowest. And that the few policy accomplishments that have been pushed through have primarily benefited large companies/rich individuals while the middle and working class incomes remain pretty stagnant? This while alienating the global community at the same time we're rattling the cages of our two biggest rivals. You couldn't engineer much of a worse set of fiscal and policy decisions if you tried to do it on purpose.

Re:18F anyone?

[dcw3]

So, the economy != the stock market. And, the stock market has been on a rocket sled upward since Trump won the election, but as with all bull markets, there come corrections, and you have no evidence that this is anything but one of those. And, the S&P 500 is still up Year To Date...the "Stockmarket" (sic) is != to the Dow 30.

Re:18F anyone?

[mcvos]

The economy has been on a rocket sled upward since two years after Obama's election. You need to ignore most of the data to credit Trump for that.

Re:18F anyone?

[dcw3]

Nothing you just stated has anything to do with my correction to your factually incorrect OP. No, the economy had been on the slowest recovery from recession ever, which was one of the biggest criticisms of Obama policies. The economy was actually starting to recover prior to Obama taking office.

Re:18F anyone?

[mcvos]

The economy was starting to recover prior to Obama taking office? I suggest you take another look at the data, because that is completely false.

You are claiming three contradictory things now: Trump is responsible for the recovery, Bush is responsible for the recovery, and Obama is responsible for the recovery being so slow. You are desperate to blame something, anything on Obama, while claiming credit for anyone who is not Obama, thought preferably Trump, no matter how undeserved.

I understand facts have gone out of fashion with Trump's election, but that doesn't make anything you say correct. Stick with your "alternative facts" if you must, but don't expect anyone else to believe them.

Working for Trump! Deer Hunter with a revolver!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that won't be a resume builder. Just say NO! to Trump! mothertruckers! Yeah, you know what I mean.

Count me in

[illiac_1962]

If you pay me and empower me I will help. I'm not from a shitty west coast tech parasite though...does that go against me?

Raise taxes and pay competitive rates

[sjbe]

Trump administration reportedly wants tech giants to make it easy for workers to take leaves of absence to help the government modernize

The easy way to do this is to pay the workers you want to utilize wages and benefits competitive with the private sector. This might require raising taxes to cover the cost. I cannot imagine the tech companies have much incentive to loan out any workers who are any good. I'm also dubious a lot of tech workers will be super enthusiastic about working on highly bureaucratic and low paying and likely boring government IT plumbing projects unless the government is willing to back up a dump truck of money. Even then it's not clear they would get the best and brightest.

However, White House officials believe tech workers are willing to "put politics aside."

HAHAHAHAHAAAA.... For this administration? I doubt they'll get any sort of wide spread enthusiasm as long as Trump is in office. I think it would be a tough sell for any administration but this one in particular seems rather unlikely.

Re:Raise taxes and pay competitive rates

[FearTheDonut]

However, White House officials believe tech workers are willing to "put politics aside."

As partisan as our current political climate is, the idea of people putting politics aside is optimistic at best.....

Re:Raise taxes and pay competitive rates

[Anonymous Coward]

The easy way to do this is to pay the workers you want to utilize wages and benefits competitive with the private sector.

Therein lies the problem. They currently have no competent worker that can act as an interviewer to select the workers. What the White House really wants is to benefit from the hiring process of tech giants.

Re:Raise taxes and pay competitive rates

[cascadingstylesheet]

However, White House officials believe tech workers are willing to "put politics aside."

As partisan as our current political climate is, the idea of people putting politics aside is optimistic at best.....

No, it's simple. Put politics aside and just agree with the obvious goodness and rightness of what I believe! ;)

Re:Raise taxes and pay competitive rates

[houghi]

So should the Whitehouse use VI or Emacs?

Re:Raise taxes and pay competitive rates

[Anonymous Coward]

So should the Whitehouse use VI or Emacs?

This is how the next civil war will begin. Though clearly, those who choose vi must die.

Re:Raise taxes and pay competitive rates

[lactose99]

Current Whitehouse would be lucky if they got nano working

Re:Raise taxes and pay competitive rates

[Sir_Eptishous]

So should the Whitehouse use VI or Emacs?

Our current Whitehouse would think this means either:

Village Inn
or
A new breakfast sandwich at Carls Jr

Re:Raise taxes and pay competitive rates

[Anonymous Coward]

EDLIN for the win!

RRK

Re:Raise taxes and pay competitive rates

[Anonymous Coward]

So should the Whitehouse use VI or Emacs?

Tabs or spaces?

Re:Raise taxes and pay competitive rates

[DivineKnight]

Nano.

Re:Raise taxes and pay competitive rates

[Anonymous Coward]

The White House could use a new interim President, who will be expected to put politics aside. Experience as CEO of a large technology firm is required.

Re:Raise taxes and pay competitive rates

[Miser]

If you back up that dump truck of money to my house, I don't care about your politics. :)

Everyone has a price.

Re:Raise taxes and pay competitive rates

[dcw3]

So, if you had the opportunity to help fix social security, or the VA hospitals, or make government more cost efficient, you would say no just because of who's in the White House? Got it, you're a piece of shit.

The underlying problem is...

[Anonymous Coward]

That the federal government has an aging workforce and politics is discouraging young people from going into government even though most positions are non-political. Out of 3M positions, only 4K are appointed by POTUS. If you do go into government service, you have to put with accusations that you're slacking off on the public dime while commenting on Slashdot.

Silly government executives.

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> administration reportedly hopes tech industry workers will be able to help modernize state and federal agencies and tackle challenges such as upgrading the veterans' health care system

The point of government IT contracts isn't to fix or improve anything, but to extract hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from government coffers without providing anything tangible or useful. See also: IBM, Oracle and/or Epic.

Re:Silly government executives.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that was the whole point of government jobs, do as little as possible and get paid for it.

Re:Silly government executives.

[Tablizer]

I thought that was the whole point of government jobs, do as little as possible and get paid for it.

That's the goal of pretty much all workers, isn't it? What individual wants to work more for less money?

How about all those women in stem you wanted

[Anonymous Coward]

Give all those minority women you wanted in stem a job, or are you admitting white males provide superior code.

It's going to be a huge challenge for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the only type of people who would work for the White House are those without any morals, or are Trumpites themselves (note... I did not say Republicans), the applicant pool will be very small.

Re: It's going to be a huge challenge for them

[Anonymous Coward]

You presume those employees will. E given a choice. I expect managers will tell people where to go. Or you can take a pink slip.

Re: It's going to be a huge challenge for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Lool if that's what you think then you're wrong. Think they're going to fire a 6 figure employee that took a year to find and months to hire?

Skills are scarce, I get a recruiter trying to hire me for my own company constantly. One guy quit next door. Recruiter calls me a few days later trying to put me in his position. They're going to fire me?
Oh it's so good not to be the little people anymore.

Even then I can't help the government anyhow. They need technical leadership, meaning all the trumps and the bushes and the hillaries all need to get replaced by al gores. Then the solution to the tech problem in gov can start.

I've been in the military I went to public school the people in charge are the problem without a doubt in my mind.

Amazon?! YES!

[Anonymous Coward]

With Amazon workers involved, maybe it'll make it easier to buy our government!

Let's see:

Senator - add to cart. Two Congressmen - add to cart. Oh, and a FCC administrator - add to cart.

Arrrrghhhh, just one more and I have enough to get the add-on item of a HUD admin.

its a matter of funding, not silicon valley morals

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an idea: fund agencies at a high enough level to hire developers and procure software themselves. The reason the government can't attract talent is because IT is not the "core business" of most government agencies, so when they are defunded, IT is always one of the first things to get cut.

I can see them lining up!

[Anonymous Coward]

"HEY! All you kids making $220k with all those nice perks? Don't ya think it would be just swell to take 2 years off from that to earn $90k a year and no spiffy perks?"

Re:I can see them lining up!

[Anonymous Coward]

No no no, It's your civic duty, we expect you to volunteer.

Yeah, this'll fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Once upon a time I was a gov contractor.

Let me sum this up with something many co-contractors were told:
"You're a contractor, you can ask/tell feds to do anything."

Feds simply don't communicate their decisions to contractors.

Changing the model from 'lowest bidder to meet the specification' can help attract people. But unless the culture changes these efforts will not really succeed.

Blame the federal rules procurement

[MikeRT]

You know a few technical guys and a decent manager and want to bid on a contract? Not so fast!

1. First you must figure out what contract vehicle it's on.
2. Then you must spend money getting onto that vehicle by bidding.
3. Then you must bid to get that contract.

All the while going up against incumbents that have better contacts and decades of experience wording things just right, with the particular jargon needed to win in the government space.

Oh and as a small company, you will also need to find some way to game the 8A system so that you aren't overlooked as a small business for purely political reasons beyond the agency's control.

Simple suggestion:

1. Abolish these processes and replace with a bond.
2. If your bid is unrealistic and plain bullshit, you get sent to arbitration to decide on whether the contract office sends the bond to the Treasury or not.
3. If you appeal for bullshit reasons, see #2.

Re:Blame the federal rules procurement

[Ol Olsoc]

You know a few technical guys and a decent manager and want to bid on a contract? Not so fast!

1. First you must figure out what contract vehicle it's on.

2. Then you must spend money getting onto that vehicle by bidding.

3. Then you must bid to get that contract.

You missed one step...

4. You must pay someone to hand out the appropriate bribe ^H^H^H^ baksheesh, errrm contribution to the appropriate guardians of democracy.

Re:Blame the federal rules procurement

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you do manage to get the contract, you must hire a full time employee to make sure you are in compliance and get paid in a timely manner.

Re:Blame the federal rules procurement

[Anonymous Coward]

And all employee's you hire must be able to pass a background screen or if you are doing secret stuff then they need to pass a clearance check which, depending on the level of clearance, may take 6 months to a year before they can even start work. Trying to modernize the gov't will be a joke and before you are about to start a new president is voted in and you got to start the whole process over again.

Re:Blame the federal rules procurement

[Anonymous Coward]

#1: what you describe is an IDIQ Task Order contract. Not all projects work that way. Many are just straight bid contract for work. As a point of fact an IDIQ Task Order contract is an immensely more efficient way for the government to procure services and can actually help small business because even when the big incumbents win them, they often have a mandated small biz level of effort. Reasonable people can indeed debate about how effective / enforced that set-aside is and I might agree with them ... or not ... just depends on the contract wording and the contracting office's enforcement level.

#2 it doesn't cost money to get on an IDIQ beyond the normal and expected cost of bidding for work. Business Development just isn't free and is indeed hard for a small biz to cover. I then reference you to #1 and the ability to partner with larger Primes, or ... get this ... sometimes the small biz wins (and sometimes are the only ones allowed to bid) and then they are the Prime to a much larger sub leveraging the large sub to write the proposal and provide the depth of people to help bolster the smaller prime's roster of employees. Again, reasonable people can debate how well this works, but it is not just bulk-bad.

#3 there is literally nothing wrong with this. Or are you suggesting a vendor should be able to win contract work no-bid?

I won't deny there are road blocks to small biz (as in all industries) but there are a lot of programs in place to help them and a lot of rules in place that slow everything because of previous bad actors (large and small) which sadly are harder to navigate for any company that can't absorb a lot of biz development investment costs (again, as in all industries).

Re:Blame the federal rules procurement

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, That doesn't happen. The system is way, way to protective to allow that to happen. The corruption is baked into the federal acquisition regulations, not in back channel dealings.

Re:Blame the federal rules procurement

[Anonymous Coward]

PS, I'll add that if you think a few buddies and a good manager are sufficient to roll out anything but the most rudimentary local IT solution for the federal government you are kidding yourself. These types of projects being talked about are immense in scope from all aspects (user size, user diversity, geography, legacy integration, data warehousing (to include from paper), geography, stakeholder coordination, legal/policy/certification/authority to operate, change management, user and admin training, etc). Seriously it isn't small and it isn't just because it is the government. Imagine the effort to update something like the financial system or HRIS of the largest and oldest commercial companies in existence? and then yeah ... add congress on top of the Board of Directors.

Re:Blame the federal rules procurement

[Ol Olsoc]

Nope, That doesn't happen. The system is way, way to protective to allow that to happen. The corruption is baked into the federal acquisition regulations, not in back channel dealings.

Not certain if Poeing me or serious. Smiling just the same.

Re:Blame the federal rules procurement

[Anonymous Coward]

Most contracts are not part of an existing IDIQ or BOA, so you don't need to get onto anyone's vehicle.

You may be in over your head if you try to put a bid in to build an aircraft or design a weapons system for your first foray, but there are tons of opportunity to start small.

Hell, search FBO for SBIR contracts or Broad Agency Announcements. These contracts are incredibly easy to award, they give detailed instructions on how to bid (often as easy as providing a less than 5 page proposal consisting of a cover sheet, quad chard, and 3 page whitepaper), and will walk you through how to get status as a "government contractor" (which doesn't cost much unless you need to store classified material or get a security clearance, which isn't necessary for most contracts).

Re:Blame the federal rules procurement

[vtcodger]

You're absolutely correct that bidding on a government contract is complex and difficult. The last government bid proposal I worked on decades ago required that we promise compliance with many millions of words of procurement specifications and about 60 pages of pro forma promising not to pollute the environment, subcontract to foreign companies, discriminate in any way in hiring, etc,etc, etc. I would guess that things have only gotten more complicated.

A bond might work in some cases, but overall, I'm skeptical. In my experience, government Requests For Proposal (RFPs) for complex items are far from perfect and by the time all the discrepancies and major flaws are ironed out, it's pretty hazy to what degree apparent non-performance is due to contractor ineptitude/malfeasance and what is due to the government asking for the wrong thing.

Re:Blame the federal rules procurement

[StevenMaurer]

He is correct. You are utterly wrong. You're actually putting forward a macro-conspiracy theory, though you're also clearly too ignorant to be aware of it. There are far too many controls in place for that kind of self-dealing to occur in federal procurement. Absolutely everything is reviewed by hundreds of people before it is approved; that's the major reason why the Federal government is so slow and bureaucratic.

The real "corruption" is how major employers garnering Federal contracts have their local Congressman in their pocket. It leads to the Pentagon telling Congress to stop buying it equipment that it doesn't need. But even with this, it's a matter of votes, not money.

It is a mark of how far Slashdot has fallen that ignorance like yours is upvoted to +5, with nary a supporting statement on your side.

Re:Blame the federal rules procurement

[hey!]

The first rule of getting a non-trivial federal government is to hire a good lobbyist, even if you have to skimp on the people who will actually do the work.

After 9/11 and especially the anthrax scare, the small company I worked for was courted to be part of some responses to Homeland Security RFPs. I was uncomfortable about the misleading way our technology was presented as being just what was needed, but in fact the winning proposals had even less substance, just teams of dirt cheap contractors with a track record of absorbing large quantities of government money for very little in return. But they had simply amazingly good lobbyists.

Re:Blame the federal rules procurement

[Ol Olsoc]

He is correct. You are utterly wrong.

Oh hell yess. Every statement I make is wrong.

Re:Blame the federal rules procurement

[Mike Van Pelt]

This ...

Years ago, I read a fascinating article by a small businessman who made dock floats. Basically, big chunks of styrofoam covered with fiberglass.

He sold them retail for $50 each.

For a government contract, he looked at the paperwork involved and bid $500 each.

He was underbid by another company, and the contract ended up nearly bankrupting them. In retrospect, he was glad he lost the bid, because at 10x the retail cost, he figured he would have lost money.

Re:Blame the federal rules procurement

[dcw3]

Most recent RFPs that I'm seeing already include a carve out for small business to get a percentage of the work. Which is why my company is teaming with about a dozen of them on an upcoming effort. No, you're not likely to be the prime on a major contract until you've got history, because that's taken into consideration in awarding the contracts...you need to show that you've got a track record. It's kinda like graduating from college and getting your foot in the door the first time. It's much easier the next.

Re:Blame the federal rules procurement

[dcw3]

This.

And people wonder why government contractors charge so much. The amount of compliance related stuff we do is amazing, and god forbid you fuck it up because you can be banned from future proposals...more likely just fined, and I'm not talking slap on the wrist. It's also why most small businesses can't afford to be the prime on a large contract. They need to team up with a large experienced contracting company just to get their foot in the door.

MORE DEV!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is know that the main issue with government IT project is the lack of DEVs... /sarcasm off

End-run around red tape

[Anonymous Coward]

If people are "volunteering" for this, then there is no need for bids, contracts, term schedules, or lengthy RFPs. Cuts out a ton of headache.... headache that ultimately protects both parties , ensures the right work is done, and ensures fair compensation for the knowledge, skills, and time.

Sure this might save a few tax bucks and some bureaucratic wrangling, but in the end I don't think this is the place to look for savings.

Also last time I contracted for a gov't entity, their IT staff was Union. Volunteers won't go over well.

Or maybe I'm looking at it backwards? If some Google employees revolt over Google bidding on spy projects, this may let the government access other Google talent who don't mind... without hiring Google specifically.

robought

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously drafting talent to build weaponized robots to reeducate americans.

You are working for the Country not Trump

[drnb]

Who in Silicon Valley wants to work for Trump?

Idiots. You are working for the Country, the American people, not for Trump. We are not talking about working on his campaign, we are talking about working on the software infrastructure for the nation.

Re:You are working for the Country not Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

*punches you*

Hey, come work for me. BTW, I'm going to continue punching you while you work for me and once the job is complete.

What do you mean you don't want to work for me?? OMG, why can't you just put politics aside?

Re:You are working for the Country not Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Though I have to question why Trump wants Liberals working for him.

Trump is a liberal, so you'd expect him to prefer them as employees.

Trump is the guy who raised taxes on everyone; he doesn't even get to blame/credit Congress for the tariffs. The tax increase is totally on him, the president.

Trump signed, instead of vetoing, the increased deficit budget. A conservative definitely would have vetoed and made them balance the budget.

Trump is the guy who keeps pressing for lowering immigration, like Obama. A conservative would move toward open borders.

Trump is the guy who repeals pollution controls, so that you have to pay someone else's bills. (At least Obama was somewhat right-wing on this, thank goodness.)

Trump favors a stronger federal government at the expense of the states and the people, because he knows what's right. A conservative would move power out and down. Instead, we have FCC telling states they can't have their own commercial networking laws.

(I'm just pointing out the leftiness of Trump; this isn't a list of all my complaints. And at least one of the above points isn't a complaint.)

Most liberals might not like Trump because his style is different (there's a dozen totally different ways to be a liberal), but he's a lot further away from conservatives than he is from liberals.

He can likely find much better tech talent, particularly those who support him, outside of Amazon and Google.

Trump doesn't like free markets. He basically ran on being anti-free-markets.

Re:You are working for the Country not Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiots. You are working for the Country, the American people, not for Trump.

The problem is that the Trump administration will get the credit for the modernization, which will increase their odds of getting re-elected. I don't want to see that happen. During the Obama era, I had wished Obama would do what the current admin is doing now. So it sucks to see that orange orangutan scoring easy points. Anyway, long story short, I would be in favor of this modernization if it were being initiated by a Democratic admin not a Republican one.

Re:You are working for the Country not Trump

[pgmrdlm]

The problem is that the Trump administration will get the credit for the modernization, which will increase their odds of getting re-elected. I don't want to see that happen. D
Fuck the country, only your political agenda counts., Even though modernizing the goverment would save money and help all citizens. THAT DOESN'T COUNT BECAUSE YOU ARE SO FULL OF FUCKING HATE.
There has NEVER been a president I hated to the point that I didn't want to see a good idea of theirs go forward. Jesus, what a mother fucking piece of shit.

What exactly are they asking?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Because it sounds like a number of these companies already have policies which allow exactly this sort of thing. So I suspect the current administration may be more interested in compelling participation rather than “allowing” it.

Re: What exactly are they asking?

[Anonymous Coward]

The government may not compel employees directly. But you can be sure they will apply pressure to companies such that their managers managers compel the employees to âoevolunteerâ or risk losing their jobs.

Politics aside

[Anonymous Coward]

"White House officials believe tech workers are willing to "put politics aside.""

Politics, yes, But not rabid nationalism, raping the environment for personal gain, hating on different cultures/religions/sexual orientations, dumping on women and setting the world on a war footing –NO!

Re:Politics aside

[cascadingstylesheet]

"White House officials believe tech workers are willing to "put politics aside.""

Politics, yes, But not rabid nationalism, raping the environment for personal gain, hating on different cultures/religions/sexual orientations, dumping on women and setting the world on a war footing –NO!

You are 1. assuming what you are trying to prove, and 2. literally engaging in politics.

Re:Politics aside

[DNS-and-BIND]

Loving one's country is rabid nationalism now? Well I never.

Number of wars started by Trump: 0. How many did Obama start? Was it more than seven?

Re:Politics aside

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah it's so rich

"Listen to us! Open a dialogue!: - right wingers

"Don't listen to those evil SJW's, get them out of politicas and TV and Hollywood! Only right wing voices are correct! Stupid LIEBERALS! - those same right wingers, without a hint of irony, hypocrisy, self awareness, etc...

Re:Politics aside

[Anonymous Coward]

No, openly and publicly calling yourself a Nationalist is rabid nationalism. Obviously you are not that smart.

Re:Politics aside

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumb ass, how many years has Trump been in office vs. Obama?

Re:Politics aside

[Anonymous Coward]

Number of wars started by Trump

Number of years Trump has been in office? Number of years Obama was in office?

Number of elections won by Obama by a majority of the popular vote?

Also, when you say "number of wars started by Trump", do you mean foreign wars, or wars against American citizens?

Re:Politics aside

[Anonymous Coward]

If you consider contemporary American nationalists "rabid", you have digested little to no historical perspective. If anything, anti-Americanism is at a high in America, as seen by all the Antifa videos and flag burnings.

Everyone's "raping the environment for personal gain" (though of course that doesnt make it right). You live in a modern home that uses infrastructure and reduces local habitat sq ft-age? Use products that're delivered via engine-based transport? Use plastics? I bet you doooooooooo. Assuming you do not consider those things rape, what has Trump introduced that is significantly more harmful than the aforementioned?

"Hating" on others? Free speech, baby. No one must "love" lesbians, other religions, et al. (However, introducing policy that discriminates is a big time no-no.)

Dumping on women? Trump dumps on men too, you forget about that? So you want special treatment for women it sounds like. Men and women are equals, or arent they?

Setting the world on a war footing?? -- HA! $20 says you're shit at poker.

Re:Politics aside

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama had eight years, and even at that you're stretching the definition of "starting wars". Trump has had less than two. Give him time. So far he's doubled down on wars in Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, and of course Afghanistan. Still waiting for positive results from any of those.

Re:Politics aside

[Anonymous Coward]

literally engaging in politics.

Cool, you figured out the entire point of his post.

Re:Politics aside

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like you're really comfy in that bed of yours with all the strawmen.

here's a crazy idea:

[Thud457]

Why not pay market competitive rates and not be a toxic, obsolescent, career-killing place to work?

"Oh no, we wouldn't want to do that. Let's just borrow some villeins from their lords Google and Amazon." Who BTW are really onboard with the whole divisive racism, hate and fearmongering agenda. This is what they really think about you.

Re: here's a crazy idea:

[Type44Q]

Which words did you think were big??

Re: here's a crazy idea:

[Anonymous Coward]

*Cough* Just a guess, but maybe the one he linked to.

Re: here's a crazy idea:

[Anonymous Coward]

"big words" isn't a big word.

Re:here's a crazy idea:

[Anonymous Coward]

That word actually works when describing the government's tech workplace environment...

Re: here's a crazy idea:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I know, links are hard, huh?

Re: here's a crazy idea:

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure why the assumption would be that borrowing technologists from leading technology companies would be for the purpose of importing their politics. Also should be noted that engineers and developers are frequently agnostic to the politics of their respective orgs.

Re: here's a crazy idea:

[pgmrdlm]

Not smart enough are you to just click the link to the actual definition of the word you used incorrectly I see

Re:here's a crazy idea:

[Anonymous Coward]

If the Silicon Valley companies paid their taxes, the federal government would have the cash to pay those competitive rates. Since the tech companies refuse, the governments is forced to make them comply at gun point.

Buy why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Barron Trump was an expert in cyber???

CAPTCHA: overrule

So they can spend the money

[franblets]

on more atomic bombs and missiles (NPR this morning). Tell me... If the Trump conglomerate had tech staff would he loan them? Hell, he wasn't even making the charitable donations he was boasting about.

Naive

[sjbe]

Idiots. You are working for the Country, the American people, not for Trump.

When Trump accepts that reality then I will too.

We are not talking about working on his campaign, we are talking about working on the software infrastructure for the nation.

So what? If it is important to the richest nation on earth then the richest nation on earth can damn well pay market rates for it. Buy fewer bombers if they need to find the money in the budget. The military is ridiculously over funded as it is.

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

sjbem, shouldn't you just admit you want to burn the American flag.

Re:Naive

[nateman1352]

If it is important to the richest nation on earth then the richest nation on earth can damn well pay market rates for it.

I think for a lot of the younger tech talent, its about more than just pay. As an employee of Facebook/Google/Amazon/etc. you can go in to work at 10pm wearing a T-Shirt and sandals, not fill in a time card, and often have a good lunch paid for by the company, and usually have admin access to your own personal development machine... the culture in a government office could not be further from this.

Giving this same level of pay and benefits to a government employee would be seen as egregious waste of taxpayer money and it would end up plastered all over Fox News/CNN/MSNBC/etc. as an example of gross government excess. Uncle Sam can't be seen as wasting the people's hard-earned money, so the best accommodations for a government employee are equivalent to the typical dingy DMV office. The government can't compete with private employers purely based on our social expectations of them.

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that Trump will take credit for the results assuming they are positive and blame you if they aren't. You could be working for the country, but a bad boss is a bad boss.

Hahahahahaha! No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody with the ability to address the government's data problems wants to work on them.

My boss already sent his resume in

[paiute]

He's great. Thomas J. Watson's the name.

Leave of absence rather than quitting

[drnb]

Idiots. You are working for the Country, the American people, not for Trump.

When Trump accepts that reality then I will too.

So you are a denier of reality, politics trumps the truth in your mind. Good to know.

We are not talking about working on his campaign, we are talking about working on the software infrastructure for the nation.

So what? If it is important to the richest nation on earth then the richest nation on earth can damn well pay market rates for it. Buy fewer bombers if they need to find the money in the budget. The military is ridiculously over funded as it is.

Wow, you truly are an idiot. The administration is not asking for free labor. They are asking for employees to be able to take a leave of absence rather than having to quit their jobs and hope to get rehired later.

Try to take off your political lens for a moment and at least read the summary: "discuss ways to make it easier for employees to take leaves of absence to help with government projects"

Re:Leave of absence rather than quitting

[Chatterton]

Like a woman taking a pareental leave to take care of her newborn and comming back to see that she was fired in the meantime... We know how it work :/

Re:Leave of absence rather than quitting

[Anonymous Coward]

Like a woman taking a pareental leave to take care of her newborn and comming back to see that she was fired in the meantime... We know how it work :/

That is illegal and never happens.

It is in fact a perfect example of what programmers need. If they go away to join the military, or have a baby, they don't get fired. They shouldn't get fired for going to help with infrastructure for the nation either.

Take a LOA to work for government scale?

[Anonymous Coward]

Top talent working for a Silly Valley company make low to mid six figures and someone thinks they're going to take a leave of absence to take a huge cut in pay?

Bwa ha ha ha ha

For a G15 in San Fran, San Jose the top salary is $165K* in 2018. And I highly suspect that the gobmint would probably be doing its best to not hire temps in at the top of the scale no matter how talented they might be.

And this regime isn't even trying to hire people to fill the vacancies it has right now.

* https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/pdf/2018/SF.pdf

Re:Take a LOA to work for government scale?

[Anonymous Coward]

No way would these be direct hires at GS pay rates. All you need to do is solicit bids for an LPTA contract to provide temporary staffing as needed to support White House initiatives. Then you "encourage" the big tech companies to "allow" their employees to take a "pay cut" (oops, said the real term there by accident) to work as a contractor. Piece of cake.

Traitors?

[Anonymous Coward]

But Trumpet states he wants to destroy government institutions. So these "volunteers" would help destroy the government. Great volunteer opportunity for traitors.

WH recruiting spies

[Anonymous Coward]

The truth is the White House (i.e., Trump) is recruiting spies for the segment of propaganda infrastructure it doesn't yet control.

Put politics aside

[Anonymous Coward]

White House officials believe tech workers are willing to "put politics aside."

Tech workers believe White House officials are willing to "put unwillingness to pay wages aside".

Or maybe just be nicer...

[Anonymous Coward]

to those they have. You gonna do better than Megan Smith advising the prez on tech?

Probably just a backhanded way

[rsilvergun]

to funnel cheap foreign workers into government contracts they normally wouldn't be allowed into. That would be my guess. I'll remind everyone we're 2 years into this administration and Trump hasn't recinded the Obama era rule that allows the spouses of H1-bs to work in the country (effectively doubling the number of work visas issued).

Also it would let Google and Amazon function as contracting agencies. Basically free money for them.

Re:Probably just a backhanded way

[Anonymous Coward]

to funnel cheap foreign workers into government contracts they normally wouldn't be allowed into. That would be my guess. I'll remind everyone we're 2 years into this administration and Trump hasn't recinded the Obama era rule that allows the spouses of H1-bs to work in the country (effectively doubling the number of work visas issued).

Also it would let Google and Amazon function as contracting agencies. Basically free money for them.

Why shouldn't the spouses be able to work?

politics sure

[Anonymous Coward]

If the project isn't in the public interest, I won't be taking a leave of absence to work on it. Always true, not just for Trump.

That is a higher bar than just politics.

Clueless

[sjbe]

So you are a denier of reality, politics trumps the truth in your mind. Good to know.

Denier of reality? Quite the opposite. I'm WELL aware that our current president likes to think we all work for him and that he doesn't work for us. How is it that you missed that fact? Once he actually starts working for the American people (ALL of them) then we can have this discussion about my motivations.

Wow, you truly are an idiot. The administration is not asking for free labor. They are asking for employees to be able to take a leave of absence rather than having to quit their jobs and hope to get rehired later.

Yes they are asking for a discount on labor. If they were willing to pay market rates then they wouldn't have to go begging the private sector for talent. Hell they could just hire the company to do the work if they need the person or win the person away from the private sector outright by paying them competitively. There is no point to such a discussion unless they are trying to get labor at a discount.

Try to take off your political lens for a moment and at least read the summary: "discuss ways to make it easier for employees to take leaves of absence to help with government projects"

Grow up and learn to read what that really means. Politics is ALWAYS involved and to think otherwise is dangerously naive.

Re:Clueless

[CaptainDork]

This, and I think the proposal is subterfuge anyway.

Hell they could just hire the company to do the work ...

Recall the attempt to do just that.

"Say, if you're not interested in writing killing code, how 'bout you just lend some of your workers? We got free beer with a decal of the American flag on the cans."

Re:Clueless

[Anonymous Coward]

Denier of reality? Quite the opposite. I'm WELL aware that our current president likes to think we all work for him and that he doesn't work for us. How is it that you missed that fact? Once he actually starts working for the American people (ALL of them) then we can have this discussion about my motivations.

Can we also go on a totally fun companion quest?

PS Your fact-detection DLLs may've been compromised.

Re:Clueless

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all government work is drone swarms and murder bots. Most of it is just communications systems and statistical analysis on large datasets to generate the various statistics the government has to put out.

Most of it needs to be migrated from old 80s hardware and/or Excel to something realistically feasible and maintainable.

Re:Clueless

[CaptainDork]

You're new here, right?

Workers at Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are demanding input on the impact of the technology they build.

Classic Trump

[alternative_right]

"I know we don't see eye-to-eye, but if we work together, you'll understand where I'm coming from." Then they will also depend on him, and be more loyal, instead of dissident critics.

Good thinking on his part.

Editor wars

[sjbe]

So should the Whitehouse use VI or Emacs?

Neither and they should send anyone who wastes government resources arguing about it to Guantanamo.

Nope...

[Arkham]

However, White House officials believe tech workers are willing to "put politics aside."

Nope. No way in hell I'd do anything to support that evil bastard or anything in his agenda, whether it's good or bad.

Re:Nope...

[dcw3]

Funny, I've had no problem supporting the evil bastard before him, or the one before him, or the one before him, going all the way back into the early 70s. I do what I do, not for who's in the office. I do it for my country. And even when I disagree with a president, I hope he/she succeeds, in winning wars, fixing the economy, etc., because if they do, it's good for us all.

How about if you could help fix Social Security, or the screwed up VA Hospitals? You wouldn't work on those because of who's in the WH? If that's the case, you're just a worthless POS.

New Visa Program

[registrations_suck]

Why doesn't the government just create a new visa program? Say...the HIB Visa. Open to anyone with mAd sKilLz who wants to come to the U.S. and work for the U.S. Government and get its technical shit together?

Should work great. Opens opportunities for deserving brown people around the world (and by around the world, I mean India), and gets the government technical workers for a fraction of market rates - should be win win for everyone.

And no, I'm not serious.

Window dressing

[PopeRatzo]

This is only for the election. After the election, the White House will just go back to getting their tech workers from Russia, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

H1B's get time off to go home USC work 80 hours

[Joe_Dragon]

H1B's get time off to go home USC work 80 hours a week with no time off

Re:Working for Trump! Deer Hunter with a revolver!

[Anonymous Coward]

diddy mao diddy mao

LOL.... No.

[SvnLyrBrto]

I worked for a government contractor my first job out of college. And no. Just... no. I'm never going to make that mistake again... not for 45, not for Clinton, not for Obama if they were to amend the constitution so he could run again, not for Kennedy or Lincoln if they could raise the dead. It's just awful in every conceivable way.

The culture is toxic. You're a tiny cog in a gigantic machine without any way for your own contributions to be meaningful. It's cubes as far as the eye can see in warehouse-sized buildings. It's super-political. And I don't mean R vs D. I mean every single little person who attains the slightest bit of power is king of his little hill and will require tribute if you need access to any resource in their domain, productivity be damned. It's like those old adventure games where you might be tasked with saving the kingdom, world, or galaxy. But every... single... NPC wants you to do stupid shit before they'll aid you in the smallest way. Tasked with going to person A to get item X? Before A will give you access to X, he will require you to goto person B to get item Y. B will require you to get Z from C before giving you Y. And C will make you go out and grind, killing orcs or boars or womprats or something similarly stupid and pick up 100 item drops before giving you Z. And a task that should take no more than a day winds up taking up two weeks. And there'd better actually be a god to help you if you need to deal with procurement to get something from a vendor.

And all of the even remotely interesting work is reserved for people with security clearances. These force you to submit to being investigated and treated like a criminal before-the-fact. And they take anywhere between 6-18 months to attain, depending on how backed-up the government is, and how hard your employer is inclined to push for you. And until then, you're stuck doing boring scut-work that builds neither your skill set nor your resume.

That's government work.

No.
Thank.
You.

White House wants to "borrow" tech workers

[DontBeAMoran]

White House officials on Monday planned to meet with tech giants including Google, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM, to discuss ways to make it easier for employees to take leaves of absence to help with government projects, according to The Washington Post.

"Rest assured that we will totally not replace those persons with government-controlled doppelgängers."

More Trump Hypocracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, they hope we are "willing to put politics aside". After Big Giant Orange Head, with malice and forethought, made everything political.

Sure, it's about future administrations. After Big Giant Orange Head made everything about himself, like the self-involved baby that he is.

Sure, they want Silicon Valley to work with the Administration. After Big Giant Orange Head instituted a full-on assault against all sorts of values that Silicon Valley generally espouses, rubbed it in everyone's noses, and then doubled down whenever anyone spoke up against those policies.

Yes, this initiative has all the attributes of a successful program! Idiots, all of them.

So...

[Anonymous Coward]

White House wants to bribe tech workers from Google and Amazon.

News at 11.

Or they could just let a realistic RFP

[Anonymous Coward]

which isn't low cost, technically acceptable, and which lowers some of the corporate requirements to allow for smaller companies to bid. As for patriotism, I did my years in a windowless building, where I had no contact with the outside world while on duty, where I settled for 40% under market pay in the name of service to my country, where my personal life was monitored 24 hours a day, where I had restrictions placed on where I could travel for vacation, who I could talk with, what sites I could visit online, and my level of political involvement. If the government fixed some of these issues, maybe they would be able to fill those vacant cyber spots. Seriously though, let a realistic RFP that targets smalls for the work, and you will get your workers.

Re:its a matter of funding, not silicon valley mor

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they could, I don't know, maybe have those agencies fund some sort of centers for research and development? Maybe task one with modernizing health care? Just spitballing some ideas here...

Politicians playing the ...

[CaptainDork]

... "long-term" card?

Would have worked better if they had played the, "Better dead than red," propaganda card that appeals to fear, patriotism and nationalism ...

Putting the politics aside

[dkone]

Let's assume that we as individuals could 'politics aside'. That still doesn't change the fact the most sane people will avoid government work because of:

Low comparative pay (most gov. workers are doing the long term pension game)
Entrenched bureaucrats
Incompetent project scoping (this is putting it mildly)
RED TAPE/PAPERWORK

Not to mention the questions about the plans details. Would these 'temp tech' workers be implementing a project? Designing a project? Designing and implementing? Specing out a RFP for a bid? When the 'temp tech' is done with his stint in hell, who takes over the project? This plan just sounds like a disaster, democrat or republican.
 

"... brief tours of duty ..."

[CaptainDork]

... as in 17 years (and counting) in Afghanistan.

Manning, Snowden, and Winner ...

[CaptainDork]

... 2.0.

Help a guy out ...

[CaptainDork]

... by explaining the the money, please.

These IT peeps go on "leaves of absence" ... What is the pay structure? Do they continue to get paid by the mother ship, or do they take a serious pay cut because patriotism?

Thanks.

Re:Help a guy out ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither. They accept a contract with the government, the government pays them. They finish the contract, they return to their original employer without prejudice.

The 'without prejudice' is the key, as generally if you say to your boss 'I want to take a contract offered by someone else' you'll be fired on the spot.

I don't see what's in this for the big tech companies though. They don't exactly want to be bleeding their workforce for no gain.

Borrow?

[Anonymous Coward]

From a White House that sacked a dozen people already for some kind of thievery or other.

Good luck with that.

Re:its a matter of funding, not silicon valley mor

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you the state of Pennsylvania does absolutely everything it can to not develop any software in house. So much of it is outsourced to India or H1Bs...most of what remains are "digital janitor" jobs cleaning up after and covering for their incompetence. People flip out about the Russians stealing an election with mean Twitter posts but have no idea that foreign nationals control the software that manages those elections.

Fixing Veteran Affairs system not to do with Trump

[drnb]

So you are a denier of reality, politics trumps the truth in your mind. Good to know.

Denier of reality? Quite the opposite. I'm WELL aware that our current president likes to think we all work for him and that he doesn't work for us. How is it that you missed that fact? Once he actually starts working for the American people (ALL of them) then we can have this discussion about my motivations.

Wow, you are doubling down on your idiocy. The work is not for trump, it is for national infrastructure. From the summary: "... hopes tech industry workers will be able to help modernize state and federal agencies and tackle challenges such as upgrading the veterans' health care system ...". What the f*ck does fixing the software mess at the VA and other departments have to do with Trump?

Wow, you truly are an idiot. The administration is not asking for free labor. They are asking for employees to be able to take a leave of absence rather than having to quit their jobs and hope to get rehired later.

Yes they are asking for a discount on labor. If they were willing to pay market rates then they wouldn't have to go begging the private sector for talent. Hell they could just hire the company to do the work if they need the person or win the person away from the private sector outright by paying them competitively. There is no point to such a discussion unless they are trying to get labor at a discount.

Your offer a foolish red herring to hide your ignorance. No one is requiring anyone to work for the government. The summary, CNet and TechCrunch citations mention no wage dispute. The summary and cited articles mention two things. (1) Leave of absences. (2) National infrastructure that is beyond politics and is for the common good, things that past wanted fixed and that future administrations will need.

Try to take off your political lens for a moment and at least read the summary: "discuss ways to make it easier for employees to take leaves of absence to help with government projects"

Grow up and learn to read what that really means. Politics is ALWAYS involved and to think otherwise is dangerously naive.

The projects are not political. The request for leaves of absences are not political. What is political are fools like you that would rather throw your childlike tantrum than see national infrastructure fixed.

I'm pretty sure one AC on /.

[rsilvergun]

doesn't speak for Hollywood.

Now, do you support laws making it illegal to discriminate on the basis of political views? How about sexuality? After all, if you're against political discrimination you'd pretty much be stuck being against sexuality discrimination, since they're both a choice. Of course, you can argue that folks are born gay, but then that falls under the same logic as being white. You're born white, so should I be able to discriminate against you for being white?

You buried the lede

[pohl]

This is the first indication that the Manchurian Combover administration intends to have successors.

The US Gov't doesn't pay market rates for anything

[rsilvergun]

we pay 2x-5x market rates. That's how we do socialism in America. I'd rather see us cut out the middle man and do UBI, but that doesn't seem like it's happening. We can always afford another $1 billion dollar bomber but Medicare for All is "Pie in the Sky", even when right wing think tanks say it's $2 trillion cheaper...

great way to lose talent

[originalGMC]

sounds like a great way to make people quit their jobs.

The problem isn't the workers it's the management

[Anonymous Coward]

So 'borrowing workers' will achieve nothing other than causing serious issues when said workers refuse to be subbed out any more because the management is so foul.

confusion

[bigdavex]

Trump thinks he is CEO of America, and everyone reports up to him.

It's all about playing power games.

[Guppy]

Or.. they could just pay the corporations to use their workers? Say like.. contract work? You know.. how capitalism work, and not, dare I say it.. communism?

So the question is... why isn't Trump pushing for a way to make it easier to temporarily hire engineers from Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, instead of having NASA hand out contracts to those companies? Or perhaps maybe grab some workers directly from Halliburton, instead of signing a contract that goes through their entire company?

Short answer -- because he personally has a beef with Amazon and Google, seeing that their corporate culture is hostile to his agenda. So in one stroke he seeks to find a way to forgo handing out lucrative government contracts to those companies, while simultaneously weakening them by leeching away talent.

Memo to whitehouse

[Anonymous Coward]

Have HR create and offer a superior compensation package.
Allocate sufficient funds.
Clearly define your IT objectives in writing.
Have somebody with sufficient authority education experience and integrity in charge.
Beware of mission creep.
1/3 of IT projects fail. It has always been so.
SAP already does most of what you need.
Did I mention lots of money?
There are no silver bullets.