Us Tech Force
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The US government's new "Tech Force" initiative is sparking heated debate, with some commenters questioning the appeal of government jobs that lack traditional benefits like stability and pension. While the program promises "professional development opportunities" and "networking with industry leaders," many are skeptical, pointing out that government funding is often uncertain and the "exposure" gained may not be desirable. Some have also drawn parallels between this initiative and the previously dismantled US Digital Service (USDS), with one commenter wryly noting that it seems like they're "creating it again" after gutting the original. As commenters weigh in, it becomes clear that the program's success will depend on its ability to offer more than just a vague promise of "exposure."
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Dec 15, 2025 at 12:19 PM EST
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> Additional benefits include professional development opportunities, networking with government and industry leaders, and a pathway to continued public service or private sector careers.
Given the lack of mention of any benefits prior to this, it sure sounds like "you'll get lots of exposure!"
The US going politically totally batshit crazy shortly after ended up making it for the best that I did’t join, but still, it struck me as weird that they had to set it up with that extra sting of “we have to make sure this is a sacrifice”.
Well, they are also "partnering" with some private sector companies. I guess the idea is that candidates will put in their 2 years, then take their contact list and join federal sales arm of one of the private companies.
"Backed by the White House"
I don't think this is the kind of exposure most people are going to want, nor will they want this on their resume.
> No, USDS became DOGE
To me these statements are not contradictory
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/doge-doesnt-exist-with-eigh...
The difficulty for any party to want to govern after this is... there is no government. It is all oligarch captured, the candidates are oligarch sponsored, and don't count on the media to sound the siren because, well, you know why.
This is a plane that is never gonna fly again. The only way is to build a new plane, as impossible as that might sound.
Will you be forced to set a politically biased out-of-office message that blames the Other Side when you're inevitably furloughed during the next funding crisis?
It wasn't a large group, and they weren't really responsible for much so they never got much attention. They would just try and fix a few specific pain points at a time. I only knew about it because one of the best PM's I ever worked for did a stint exactly like it was supposed to work- she joined the USDS, worked for the American people for a few years, then left and went back to industry.
And then on January 21st, 2025, his first full day in office, Trump renamed the USDS to the United States DOGE Service, because USDS had money to pay salaries and since it was part of the EotP he could easily hire new people without civil service restrictions. So he could bring in new people (Big Balls etc.) easily enough. By February, essentially everyone who had been in the USDS on the last day of Biden's term were either laid off or resigned. And since then the USDS has been entirely DOGEified.
Republicans love playing shell games while they rob taxpayers blind.
Somehow it reads differently than the similar phrase, "backed by the full faith and credit of the US Govt."
The "US Govt" are the guys that DOGE tried to get rid of and that were hit by the shutdown.
Whereas "The White House" is Trump and his buddies.
Welcome to the autocracy...
*Department of War
Not odd at all. That's what it's called now. Complete with new URL:
https://www.war.gov
One can assume the US Tech Force will perceive itself as also unfettered by those silly rules and good practices.
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This government is a joke.
"What's the biggest brand in the world? If you said Trump, you're not wrong. But what's the foundation of that brand? One that's more globally recognized than practically anything else."
Jesus christ, man
> We've been conditioned to accept that mediocre in government is normal.
Yes, I do now accept that mediocre [sic] in government is normal for the next few years.
Furthermore only ~50% of the country has a passport so many haven't even seen how things run elsewhere.
Gotta bust that nut.
Where are you from?
Is the only difference that the current government can claim they started this (completely ignoring they dismantled the previous programs)?
> How is Tech Force related to other government technology programs, including ones at GSA or the United States DOGE Service?
> While Tech Force will coordinate across all of government, it is distinct from other technology initiatives within government, including the United States DOGE Service and programs managed by GSA. These programs differ in their mandates, structure, required skillsets, and ability to convert to the competitive service.
Any questions?
Well, they're different. That's how.
it’s different
> We're looking for expertise in software engineering, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data analytics, or technical project management. Strong problem-solving abilities and a passion for public service are essential."
Design is separate but equal.
This constant competition between parts of the government actually led to tremendous waste. You can see it again in the Soviet space program during the 1960's. While NASA had a single purpose of getting to the moon before 1971 with a unified organization under the control of a single leader, after Khrushchev was deposed (and Korolev died) the Soviet space program splintered into a war between the old OKB-1 (Korolev's group) and Chelomei's OKB-52 that lasted for twenty years over Super-Proton vs Energia etc.
1: The Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS are the two most famous, but the Luftwaffe recruited, trained and equipped the Fallschirm-Panzer Korps and Fallshchirmjaeger- yes, German paratroops worked for Goering not the Wehrmacht. There were also five Marine Infantry Divisions under the Navy- they had half as many Marine Divisions as the US did, despite many fewer amphibious assaults! And the Volksturm, at the end of the war when things looked grim for Nazi Germany, was under NSDAP party control but separate from the Waffen-SS.
> The initial roster of private sector partners includes Adobe, Amazon Web Services, AMD, Anduril, Apple, Box, C3.ai, Coinbase, Databricks, Dell Technologies, Docusign, Google Public Sector, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle, Palantir, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Snowflake, Robinhood, Uber, Workday, xAI, and Zoom. This list will expand over time.
Ever wanted to get involved in government-sanctioned espionage technology? This seems like an recruitment effort for that. Applicants beware. Remember that in just 3 years this will stop helping you to get hired, and will probably look like a blemish on your CV when you eventually need to get a new job.
Or something one might want to say if they want to still have plausible deniability about not having been there, yet still want to say something. Who knows.
The main myth though is that somehow there is this idea that someone working as a booze allen contractor for the NSA or CIA is going to now be blackballed by everyone out of disgust. Most people will see it as good, and most companies just want talent and dont actually care about what areas people are in.
Belittling. Excellent way to get your point across.
> They actively recruit on elite engineering campuses over it. It is super fucking interesting work and candidates compete for the opportunity to do it.
This seems like it should be an easy thing to verify with some sort of reference. This is exactly what the parent comment is suggesting and you still flippantly are avoiding it as "trust me bro". I actually believe you, so why don't you share some evidence then?
And I'm not challenging you on that, at all. I actually believe you are correct because you typically provide very thoughtful answers from a position of authority and usually bring evidence to back your assertions. In this case, you're not. Your comments are childish and makes your position way less believable and hence why I'm pushing you.
> It remains a fact.
Just because you say it's a fact doesn't mean it is. The fact that you've done nothing but say "I know its a fact so therefore it is" doesn't help your position either.
> What I'm not going to do is write you an apology for confronting you with that information.
Yeesh. Chill out. I never asked for an apology. Your discourse is belittling and unproductive.
Yellow card.
The worst part about this entire political is that Dems are most likely gonna win, and everyone will just move on.
Im really hoping that Trump lives long enough to actually stage a coup and tank the US economy so hard that things like working for this or DOGE actually do start to matter.
Not necessarily, especially in the private sector. It's hard to justify not hiring an excellent employee because he or she worked for a company you don't like. Especially if the hiring panel is composed by >1 person.
So the plan is to also make some of them federal employees, ostensibly helping to oversee those contracts? Seems like a conflict of interest...
This book discusses the IT systems at the IRS and VA and shows the kind of push back you can expect from entrenched players.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_capture
I'm not sure if this book got into it but I've also read that the IRS has assembly code from the 1960s that is very optimized and only a few devs can work on it. ChatGPT knows a lot about this history as well.
> Tech Force will include centralized organization and programming and serve as a recruiting platform post-employment.
Be prepared to struggle at the end of your two year placement because you have no idea how this is going to look on your resume two years from now. Maybe it’ll have the gravitas of having worked at the former USDS. But maybe it’ll be the black mark of having worked at DOGE. The latter feels much more likely than the former.
You will have no control over this outcome. They will take advantage of your junior status.
The flip side is that a lot of government jobs lead to pretty good private sector opportunities working with those same agencies. If you want to contact to DOE, knowing how it works in the inside and knowing people there definitely helps.
A lot of military contractors are former military. Who better to design something for a soldier than a soldier?
I disagree. If a persons resume contains description of blatantly harmful work how else can I interpret it but negatively? At best you’d have to chalk it up to “just following orders” but I don’t want blind obedience in a prospective employee either.
The destruction caused by DOGE is evident to anyone with eyes, as is the agency’s complete lack of achievement. I would absolutely be asking questions about why someone remained there.
"I would never hire anybody who worked for the government during an administration I didn't vote for!"
I have hired people to work under me. Generally, if someone can pass the interview and do the job, I don't care that much about your views unless you are very outwardly with them. The only time I had to filter out a candidate was due to a quick check of his public social media where he was "enthusiastically" pro Palestine with questionable posts.
That being said, having interviewed plenty of ex government or government adjacent people, not a single one can pass even a mediocre interview problem. Most people who work for the government show up expecting to be told what to do, then do it - very few can independently think for themselves.
For example, my interview problems are designed to be solved most efficiently with implementing parallelization, but they sound like regular interview problems, so even with LLMs a lot of candidates usually can't solve it unless they give the LLM specific instructions to implement threads, which requires understanding of the problem.
I see this a lot in the private sector too here in Seattle. It's hurting us badly.
All for what? Lack of initiative and independent thinking? Did you intend this to be a reply to a different comment?
Sounds like a place I wouldn't want to work (and filtering for the reverse stance would be equally problematic).
Do you think things will work better if we have pro-Israel and pro-Palestine companies with the two groups never talking?
Or that create significant concern that they're unwilling to do their job responsibilities if it means working with/interacting with people who don't share their political views. More than a few people openly state things like that online as well.
Even before LLMs, most coding problems really are a test of efficient pointer manipulation. You either move a pointer to character in words, pointer to data in array, or traverse n-node linked lists.
This level of pointer manipulation is rarely ever needed these days, as things like sorting, searching, and parsing are all handled by functions. An LRU cache is literally a function decorator in Python.
What I care more is if someone can understand that network calls take time, that data processing is fast, and how to optimize that pipeline. Threading is not a requirement, they can do it with async as well, or even without async with just smart scheduling.
The core of the problem that makes it LLM proof is that the problem doesn't disclose anything about network latencies or data structure. So standard iterative solutions from LLM usually end up taking longer because they get stuck waiting on a single network response. And so you can clearly tell who understand the core operations at hand, versus someone who just memorized a bunch of patterns and/or using LLMs.
While I wouldn't argue in favor of this, it's impossible for me to ignore the overt spitefulness of the current administration and everybody associated with it. Mild criticism of Charlie Kirk got people fired, but Trump completely unloaded on Rob Rainer last night. The US is being steered towards a culture that encourages and celebrates spitefulness, and where some might be inclined to excuse their own side from doing it, it seems naive to pretend like this isn't happening and won't happen more intensely in the near future.
It's not always that black and white. In spite of appearances, many many companies make hiring decisions based on things other than what's in a resume.
For example, a company may have $mm contracts with another company whose owners/operators/shareholders/etc. favor one particular view, political party, or social construct. That company will most certainly look down upon the other company hiring people of a particular background.
Or the pressure could be internal. A couple of times in my life I've worked for companies where certain departments were unionized. Even if you weren't in one of those departments, if the company hired you and you had a particular background, the union would object.
The real world is very messy.
"The tech industry was doing poorly and I was faced with a layoff so I took whatever job I could get. While I didn't agree with the actions of the administration I felt like I could be a force for good in an otherwise turbulent environment"
As we all know Nazi scientists went on to work for and lead parts of Nasa. The reputation hit of disreputable employers is dramatically overblown.
To be honest you can also get through issues with the resume screening process you can generally just change the wording and section headers a bit in order to avoid a quick filter out.
I'm pretty much a closet conservative working for big tech so I've had a lot of practice with this sort of stuff :D
The difference is, those scientists were literally the best of the best in the world when it came to rocketry.
All their assistants did not share the same fate.
>Tech Force will primarily recruit early-career technologists
So "early-career" but they're going to get paid GS-14/15 pay[1] in DC? New grad engineers in DC are going to be GS-7/9 at best. This is either a blatant lie, or created by someone who has no idea of how federal pay works (or both).
As an aside, I was a fed for >10 years and left last year for industry but stay in touch with friends still working federal jobs. Before this administration recruiting was extremely difficult and candidate quality was low. I've heard that it's nearly impossible now and in the last 18 months they've only been able to hire a single person. Federal jobs used to be considered stable, with good benefits, but low pay. Now they're unstable, the current administration is actively working to make benefits worse, and the pay is still really low.
[1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...
Also, many people took pride in the service they provided to their country (or to the people, or as part of a team that did good, however they thought of it).
I don't have high hopes for this new thing.
After recent treatment of federal employees, and other things going on in the US this year, including how USDS as DOGE was weaponized against the US... I'd expect this new thing to only be able to recruit from these categories:
1. Outright bad people, with anti-US, looter/saboteur intent, as we've seen from other facets recently.
2. People who aren't bad, but who are so cognitively impaired, that they still don't realize that they're probably going to get screwed personally and/or directed to be the baddies.
3. People who are intelligent and pro-US, and have no illusions about what they're signing up for, but who desperately need the income, after being screwed earlier this year. They won't be inspired to execute well on whatever anti-US directives they're given.
It's always easy to spot a person who has enclosed themselves in a political or ideological bubble. They're typically first to apply a label to a large group of people and then assume all the people with that label are the exact same.
This has never been true for any group of people and as it turns out, it's the same for people you disagree with politically.
Your recent posting history here includes calling the entire European Union a "non-contributing toddler" to the world. Hmm.
But the wheel turns, and there's going to be a lot of folks in the party with very sharp axes to grind during the lame duck period.
His dyed in the wool followers will still support him.
The convenience crowd? I wouldn't take that bet. Especially after he's been such a dick to so many folks in his own party.
But we'll see.
It’s not even historically rare for a party to merge or be subsumed like that. Here’s the historical list just for the US
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_t...
Elite of the elite needs no sans-serif fallback font.
Just when I thought this was on brand to the new "anti-woke" font style guide.
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