It is really really concerning to me how seemingly thoughtless these cuts are to the actual stated goals. As stated below, this org ran at a $0 cost from full cost recovery through consulting services to other orgs. Sure you could argue that's not truly $0, it's not. But it is not a bloated cost-center that needs to be cut.<p>Just today on the All In podcast I heard Jason Calcanis suggest that the USPS go down to one delivery day per week because no one uses it? The unbelievable part is he was genuine and thought it was an intelligent thing to say. For reference the USPS delivers over 100B, yes billion, parcels per year.<p>The disconnect between the people who are running the show, and those who are in the ear's of those running the show is scary.
As someone that's very invested in seeing the federal government adopt and integrate information technology to make the government more transparent, effective, and, yes, efficient, this is nothing short of an incredible bummer.<p>It feels like we're setting the clock back a decade at a time when trust in institutions is already at a nadir and we're facing global threats that only the federal government has the capacity to tackle. I can only hope civil society is able to pick up the slack in the short term and future administrations are able to execute better.
Everyone should watch the Office of Budget and Management, Russell Vought, speak on government workers:<p><i>We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.</i><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBH9TmeJN_M" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBH9TmeJN_M</a><p>18F <i>are</i> the bureaucrats they want to traumatize.
I'm not American, but I'm very aware of the impact 18f has had from seeing the many posts on here of their work over the years: <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?q=18f" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?q=18f</a><p>I'm also aware of at least a handful of hacker new members, and people I've followed, who took time out of their carriers to do a "tour of duty" at 18f.<p>I feel for all today, you were doing good work!
> Just yesterday we were working on important projects, including improving access to weather data with NOAA, making it easier and faster to get a passport with the Department of State, supporting free tax filing with the IRS<p>I think this answers the question of "why".
They open sourced quite a few guides, resources and standards over the years. I think they did a lot of design and i18n work like the US web design guidelines. Also... don't they own login.gov?<p><a href="https://github.com/orgs/18F/repositories">https://github.com/orgs/18F/repositories</a>
I'm starting to think that the US is done for, short of a civil war to stop it they'll never get out of the damage done by four years of this.
A nearby state should take the opportunity to pick these people up. They appear to do good work and this is a rare opportunity to get a good prebuilt IT team that is willing to work at government rates.
What a shame. 18F/TTS were some of what was best about the recent decades in government, and doing what DOGE claims to do within the confines of the law.<p>Thank you to both 18F and USDS for your service.<p>I'm cloning USDS and 18F repos as we speak. It may be wise for several people to do so. I am not sure anything in git lfs was captured, but I hope it was.<p>USDS, 4.2GB, 54 repos:<p><pre><code> gh repo list usds --limit 9999 --json sshUrl | jq -r '.[].sshUrl' | xargs -n1 git clone
</code></pre>
18F, 37GB, 1,213 repos:<p><pre><code> gh repo list 18F --limit 9999 --json sshUrl | jq -r '.[].sshUrl' | xargs -n1 git clone
</code></pre>
The most recent commit to usds/website was on 2/14/2025. Top committers across all USDS repos:<p><pre><code> 4175 73812536+upptime-bot@users.noreply.github.com
2131 gertjan@west.nl
1084 mara@west.nl
955 vassil.iordanov@gmail.com
814 hunter@dds.mil
789 nick@dds.mil
770 vassil.iordanov@ncia.nato.int
718 91492387+amwhitty@users.noreply.github.com
692 cf-buildpacks-eng@pivotal.io
563 wslack@users.noreply.github.com
</code></pre>
The most recent commit to 18f/web-design-standards-ux was on 6/22/2024. Top committers across all 18f repos:<p><pre><code> 13266 bruce@momjian.us
12157 tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
6395 william.hamilton@gsa.gov
5413 shawn.allen@gsa.gov
4711 robin.ward@gmail.com
4590 41898282+github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com
4546 sam.saffron@gmail.com
4010 aidan.feldman@gsa.gov
3953 laura.gerhardt@gsa.gov
3802 lindsayn.young@gsa.gov</code></pre>
As a Scandinavian I would suspect that most government waste and corruption in a high trust developed country would be at the state and city level and not at the national level.<p>Unless they look into why Pentagon weapons programs are so suspiciously expensive they might actually be destroying an otherwise well working US Federal system.
I’m expecting this to not last the weekend so here’s an archive link. <a href="https://archive.is/xrGV2" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/xrGV2</a>
Is it time to cash out of the stock market? Would this accomplish two goals?:
1. Send an indirect political message
2. Save my current funds from madness.
Glad private industry can charge people to file their taxes because of how efficient everything is now, truly an inspiration.<p>The brilliant use of AI to ignore all the conflicts of interest is very innovative too!<p>Truly the ability to so efficiently not provide any services is impressive, I think they were heavily inspired by <a href="https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode">https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode</a>
A group of very smart people who are highly knowledgeable about some governments systems were fired overnight. I wonder if any one of them will be disgruntled and take some sort of action.
What's happening is a destruction of institutions, under the guise of efficiency.<p>If your goal was to establish authoritarian system and/or oligarchy in the US within a year and without firing any bullets, what would you do differently to what's happening now? Honest question I've been thinking about lately. My current answer is that the diff is not that big.<p>Yes, there's much to be done about efficiency/productivity on the government part, but this is not what's being done.<p>I am not sure if Elon is deliberate (similar to how "X is about free speech", DOGE is about "government efficiency" i.e. fake ideology to push some agenda) or an useful idiot (believes that all he's doing is improving efficiency, without realizing the consequences of destroying the institutions), but that's not the main point. The point is that fundamental institutions are being destroyed very, very quickly, without real oversight. This has important and negative consequences to democracy.
This is just the standard executive double speak we all deal with in the private sector.<p>How many times has a new executive been brought in, tells your team how important and great you all are, and then the entire team is fired a couple weeks later?
It's pretty clear that everything Elon claimed about his improvements was a complete and total lie, and that his real goal was the seize the technological workings of the government, which simplifies implementing their agenda.<p>We will be lucky if we, as a nation, survive the Trump administration without turning into a fascist, authoritarian state, with little to no scientific credibility, and a pariah state like North Korea.<p>I have noticed that a number of conservative organizations are starting to be affected by this and speaking up, although Congress and the Judiciary are clearly either afraid, or supportive of these actions. From what I can tell, the only remaining response is truly large scale, well-organized peaceful protest, which is risky because a small number of bad actors could mess up a peaceful protest and give Trump all the excuses he wants to bring out the US military for a violent response to innocent protestors.
It is just a shame how now this government can work ! In a few month, the government will be working the same way as other government to try to combat against, meaning Totalitarianism ! Because they just do think they are smarter than others...
Let’s just say it’s a middle way - where it’s not exactly what they say it’s for (economic boom), but its also not what you fear it’s for (orangegarchy)<p>What could it be?<p>Possibilities:<p>- reorganization of labor in anticipation of the need to soon fight a coming, century-deciding war<p>- preparing for massive hire-back into some new agency with fresh national purpose<p>- making the country a less attractive invasion target by making it ungovernable by colonists, and creating a mass pool of expert free agents to staff the resistance<p>Sounds unlikely. Possible sure, but how probable? What if it really is just aggressive restructuring to make the government a viable going concern?<p>Presumably Elon will add back some of the “muscle” cut away with 18F unless there are unseen factors that make them an issue.<p>My historical curiosity question is: where are the labor unions in all this? A few counter judges will not stop the tide with their brooms.<p>But maybe the most important question to ask yourself is: why the urgency? Why the rush to get it done by mid next year?? Why is that date important? What is anticipated???<p>After all this I’m inclined to think it is just about the cutting-out-the-rot corporate restructuring. As Elon has said many times: they are going to cut more than they need, to find the limits, and put back what’s necessary.
i admired 18F's work and their model, and have also seen similar digital service groups get marginalized and coopted by the bureaucracy.<p>something like it has to exist and it will likely reform as something else post-doge. what i think people need to appreciate is how pernicious bureaucracy is, and that doge is going to get one opportunity to reform it before it develops a new immune response.<p>18F showed themselves to be some of the most capable and resourceful people in public service doing some of the heaviest lifts, and they will all find private work faster than others.
many will likely immediately respawn as consultants. it sounds like a hard change but as it comes to light how bad things were, i can see how 18F could be coopted into an opposition. that they were taken out first should be a point of honor.
There is a method to this madness.<p>Elon Musk's strategy is to control the government operations through controlling its IT department.<p>The smart people of 18f stands in the way. By removing it and hiring his loyalists to run the government IT he gets to control the government's operations.
This makes my blood boil. As another commenter said, this is pure vandalism.<p>Musk's reasoning is that we have to cut the deficit. Our deficit is around $2 Trillion. Assuming an average salary of $70,000 for the approximately 3 million federal employees (excluding military and postal workers), the annual payroll would be roughly $210 billion. Even if you lay off 25% of federal workers, the deficit will only be cut by 2.5%.<p>The right way to cut deficit is by raising taxes on Elon Musk and his fellow billionaires.
“18F was doing exactly the type of work that DOGE claims to want – yet we were eliminated.”<p>Witness how “this type of work” is actually done. You’ve been claiming to “do this type of work,” yet even in this most earnest appeal “to the American people” you don’t bother to cite one single accomplishment that might make we the people sympathetic.<p>Thumb twiddling whiners. Good riddance.
DOGE is a group of thoughtless, self-serving goons whose only tool is blunt force. F<i>ck each and every person who put vengeful, childlike, draft-dodging, felonious Tr</i>mp in office.
Hmm, let me see...who else have had this playbook? Create confusion and fear. Laying the ground for an almighty to seize power. There are a few names that comes to mind.
when can i expect the upside to this? Will it come in dollars? Will I save $10 a year now at the expense of a gov capable of building scalable web apps?<p>Pooling money and resources will always be greater in quality efficiency and quantity than individual or privatized effort. Think about how inefficient decentralized blockchain computations are.<p>gutting gov services for measly tax cuts is atrocious and an attack on American people.
Elon Musk is removing the tech people... in order to replace them with his loyalists.<p>His strategy is documented here: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/us/politics/musk-federal-bureaucracy-takeover.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/us/politics/musk-federal-...</a><p><quote>
Mr. Musk made clear that he saw the gutting of that bureaucracy as primarily a technology challenge. He told the party of around 20 that when he overhauled Twitter, the social media company that he bought in 2022 and later renamed X, the key was gaining access to the company’s servers.
</quote><p>By replacing all tech workers with his loyalists, Musk will have full control of the servers and its operations.
I would love to work with these guys, I have been working on a small side project related to Gov. Tech:<p>- <a href="https://rnc.dev" rel="nofollow">https://rnc.dev</a><p>- <a href="https://dnc.dev" rel="nofollow">https://dnc.dev</a><p>Nothing on the scale of the amazing work they did but would love to link up if possible.
I keep wondering how this kind of scenario would have played out had Johnson had been elected. The libertarian party always felt like a few good arguments run by a pack of nut jobs. I'd love to see the movie of that timeline though. Just to compare.
This could be good, last time I remember, Amazon was abusing the USPS, so maybe bringing it down to once a week would force Amazon to do something different for delivery.
All of this seems like deliberate destruction of America from the inside out by an ayn-rand worshipping, billionaire afrikaaner cabal (David Sacks, Elon Musk, roelof botha etc). Thoughtless and mindless cuts
Trying to streamline the government of a massive nation the same way you would treat efficiency projects at a large corporation represents a miscalculation so inestimably ignorant that it has to be malicious.<p>If the United States had lost a world war with Russia & China coalition, this is exactly what the victorious powers would do to concentrate power into the hands of a few figureheads and oligarchs. This administration has saved them the trouble. This is what losing an economic & cultural conflict in the modern era looks like.
Elon got rid of it because he couldn't control. He'll put his own version in. Prepare for King Musk in 2028 or sooner (if Trump dies) unless people fight it overwhelmingly.
Isn't this the group that had the not that monitored chats and would warn on any use of language that was insufficiently adherent to the woke paradigm?
> The billionaire [Elon Musk] wrote on his social media platform X that 18F and TTS had been “deleted” weeks ago, re-posting another account that called the 18F a “far left government computer office” and pointed to its work on the IRS’ free tax filing system, Direct File. [1]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/people/2025/03/gsa-eliminates-18f/403400/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nextgov.com/people/2025/03/gsa-eliminates-18f/40...</a>
The same 18F as these people?<p><a href="https://x.com/lukerosiak/status/1885523747425399247" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/lukerosiak/status/1885523747425399247</a>
It’s seems that DOGE and 18f had an overlap. While 18f’s mission was not explicit reduction of waste, fraud, and government abuse; technology is the primary means of efficiency. Seems a better solution would have been; absorb a portion of 18f (who wanted to and were qualified) into DOGE.
Am I being too cynical if I read from this that they were fine with it until <i>they</i> got fired?<p>Honest question. I’m really not sure if I’m just becoming too cynical.
It's painful to see people doing real work get canned. It sounds like the unsustainable national debt has forced a cut across the board. Each department will find some organization to cut. The least politically connected groups will be cut.<p>The cuts are painful, but we simply don't have the money. In fact we are way deep in the hole.
So there were a lot projects listed here, but the one word used to describe the actual <i>work</i> being done by folks at 18F was “technologist” (in the sole bolded phrase of the article).<p>I know what devs do, QA folks do, product owners, scrum masters, UX specialists, etc. But what were these folks doing as “technologists?” I have my own understandings of the term that are, well… not biased in the direction of “valuable work.”<p>I’m all about calling out DOGE firings as problematic. But this particular post read as a lot of emotional language, but <i>very specifically sparse</i> specific details about what work they were doing and what they were being paid for it. And that’s, well… how you would actually demonstrate that it was problematic.<p>I get a vibe here of “politicians’ friends and family paid a lot to write how they think tech should work and wave their dicks around a bit,” to be honest, but really want to be wrong. Are there any substantive PRs to major GPL/MIT repos from 18F folks? Or more tactile explanations of their work? And some accounting of what they were paid for it?