White House Launches US Digital Corps
I, like (I think) many young people, am pretty disillusioned with the current state of the U.S.<p>I would really like for things to be better than they are, and I&#x27;m still fairly convinced that software has the potential to make good things happen and improve people&#x27;s lives.<p>Maybe this is where more people would start to disagree with me, but I would like to live in a place where government work was seen as a noble calling, or at least <i>better</i>, morally, than optimizing ad revenue. I would like to work with people who want to make things that solve problems for huge swaths of people who really need help.<p>But I read about the realities of U.S. government work, and frankly, it doesn&#x27;t sound like a place I want to work. Slow, bureaucratic, opaque, slow, low-compensation, <i>slow</i>. That&#x27;s just not attractive to me.<p>If these impressions are wrong, I hope that the USDC has a sizeable marketing budget to correct me. If they&#x27;re right, then I hope they have a plan to change things.<p>I don&#x27;t think a lot of our really big problems are solvable without the input of a massive number of technologists, and I am worried that we&#x27;re not going to have them where they need to be.<p>I hope this works.<p>Edit:<p>I do agree that &quot;fast work&quot; is probably a bad heuristic in many ways, particularly when it comes to work that requires <i>extremely</i> consistent outcomes, like much government work.<p>But shit, it&#x27;s <i>fun</i>, particularly in software, to make quick decisions and move efficiently to solve problems. And I think you have to contend with the engagement and &quot;fun&quot; that moving fast brings.<p>Compensation is one form of motivation, yes, but there are others. There are reasons people romanticize working at startups, take up new programming languages and frameworks in side projects on their own time: it&#x27;s <i>cool</i>, and feels good to work on. That&#x27;s one lever you have to try and push as an employer of engineers (or really of people in general, but particularly people who are very in demand).<p>I&#x27;m not advocating for &quot;Move Fast And Break Things,&quot; but I am saying that you have to compete with the people who <i>do</i> advocate for it, because that can be really fun.