Moving on from 18F

For anyone (like me) who doesn’t know what 18F is:<p>&gt; 18F is a digital services agency within the Technology Transformation Services department of the General Services Administration (GSA) of the United States Government. 18F helps other government agencies build, buy, and share technology products. The team consists of designers, software engineers, strategists, and product managers who collaborate with other agencies to fix technical problems, build products, and improve public service through technology.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;18F" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;18F</a>

For those not familiar with the author, Ethan Marcotte literally wrote the book on responsive web design (and coined the phrase). I point that out about because I think it is (or was) relevant that someone with such a place in digital design history had chosen public service.

Setting aside the politics of the issue(which is <i>very</i> polarizing) this is the part which troubled me the most<p>&gt; &quot;Instead, they found themselves on a call with people who wouldn’t say where they worked in government; in a few cases, some people wouldn’t disclose their last names, or any part of their names&quot;<p>This is terrifying if this is true. Forget this happening in a Government department, if I were in a meeting to discuss the details of my work with people I didn&#x27;t know and refused to provide basic identification, the standard response would be to call security.<p>Whether you agree or disagree with the goals of DOGE, I think we can all agree that the approach chosen is incorrect.<p>Edit: - Fix formatting

Mandatory service for the government would go a long way to educating the public just want these organizations do and building empathy for the problems they face.<p>There is a significant risk of civil unrest as the competent employees are pushed out and government ceases to be able to function while private companies take advantage of lack of regulation to try and further extract value from captured markets.

Question for lawyers.<p>I can understand and respect someone leaving on principle, or someone simply unable to tolerate an immediate situation.<p>But if a government employee is feeling under occupation by a destructive invader, and possibly expecting to be terminated, do they keep significant legal options open by <i>waiting it out</i>, rather than resigning, if they can tolerate to do so?<p>For example, let&#x27;s say that significant elements of legislative or judicial branches decide not to play along with the current maneuvers, and take corrective action. Or let&#x27;s say that employees are able to sue for reinstatement, with damages? Or to sue rogue individuals personally, in some way that pierces whatever immunity the rogues might think they enjoy. Does the wronged person have a better case if they don&#x27;t resign?

There was an SF office of 18F -- IIRC it was in the building to the right of the Civic Center park as you looked at it from the Bart stop. They were great folks from every encounter I had with them.

I still don&#x27;t understand what getting rid of 18F accomplished. Someone on HN said they were &quot;openly partisan&quot;[0] but neglected to explain how.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43059187">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43059187</a>

Expecting this article to get flag-killed, as all politically-inclined submissions critical of Elon seem to be these days.

For everyone talking about why things are being done like they are, take a look at this article linked to in the post:<p>Understanding DOGE as Procurement Capture<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.anildash.com&#x2F;2025&#x2F;01&#x2F;04&#x2F;DOGE-procurement-capture&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.anildash.com&#x2F;2025&#x2F;01&#x2F;04&#x2F;DOGE-procurement-capture...</a>

Musk tweet on 18F: &quot;That group has been deleted&quot; - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;elonmusk&#x2F;status&#x2F;1886498750052327520" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;elonmusk&#x2F;status&#x2F;1886498750052327520</a><p>Among other things, it frustrates me that Elon&#x27;s work here has echoes of &quot;what happens if we bring in experts from the tech world to help make government IT more efficient&quot; while ignoring that that&#x27;s what 18F did, and it worked really well.

I think this one is hard to defend but let me tell you a similar story in the UK. Gov uk was redesigned by some of the smartest people and generally I still praise a lot of digital transformation from that era. But after a while people got complacent and not much is happening or improving recently. So in that sense stirring the hive might be a good thing- even if 18F delivered good things in the past. Unfortunately with doge and Musk I don’t really see how something better comes out of the chaos- destroying things just for the sake of it is not good enough plan and basically is missing the second part- what happens after the revolution.

May be an opportunity to find talent for State or City governments that want to create their own digital services agencies?

It seems a coincidence that today is February 18.

Paraphrasing lines not to cross:<p>1. Working remotely<p>2. Killing or surveilling people<p>3. Discussing work with someone outside work<p>The resignation stemmed from the possibility of 3.<p>By contrast, some people stay in their positions or businesses notwithstanding adjudications of fraud, abuse, treachery, etc.<p>Of those two kinds of people, which will most successfully infiltrate and control an organization?<p>(As a hint, Stalin was not a leader but a bureaucrat who managed to oust all the actual leaders, and did Putin with the oligarchs.)<p>I respect the author&#x27;s choice as the best alternative, and respect his speaking up for the organization. I just wish we could give him a better alternative.

&gt; This is a wholesale attack on the American safety net, led by billionaires and far-right politicians who are frighteningly comfortable with fascism and autocracy. The last month has been called a coup by politicians, researchers, and watchdogs alike.<p>I find it amusing that many left-wing people are only now getting up in arms about the extent to which our government has been infiltrated by money interests. I understand not wanting to work for Trump&#x27;s government, but why not just leave it at that? If this person was willing to work for the Biden administration regardless of it&#x27;s billionaire influences, it betrays that this issue, for them, is a rationalization and not a reason.

18F&#x2F;TTS repeatedly was cited by the Inspector General for breaking rules and making false statements, often for political reasons. E.g:<p>March 2023: &quot;GSA Misled Customers on Login.gov’s Compliance with Digital Identity Standards&quot; (refused to use mandatory facial recognition because it believed it was racist) [1]<p>June 2017: &quot;Investigation of Whistleblower Reprisal Complaint&quot; (finding that an Obama political appointee retaliated against a career official for blowing the whistle on mismanagement) [2]<p>April 2017: GSA acknowledges &quot;gross mismanagement&quot; [3]<p>October 2016: &quot;Evaluation of 18F&quot; (finding that it spent thousands of dollars on things like &quot;inclusion bots&quot;) [4]<p>May 2016: &quot;GSA Data Breach&quot; [5]<p>February 2017: &quot;Evaluation of 18F’s Information Technology Security Compliance&quot; (misrepresented severity of breach) [6]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gsaig.gov&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;ipa-reports&#x2F;Alert%20Report-GSA%20Data%20Breach%205.12.16.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gsaig.gov&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;ipa-reports&#x2F;Alert%...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gsaig.gov&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;foia&#x2F;Investigation%20of%20GSA%20Whistleblower%20Reprisal%20Complaint%20June%202017.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gsaig.gov&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;foia&#x2F;Investigation...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;osc.gov&#x2F;Documents&#x2F;Public%20Files&#x2F;FY17&#x2F;DI-17-0642&#x2F;DI-17-0642%20Agency%20Report.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;osc.gov&#x2F;Documents&#x2F;Public%20Files&#x2F;FY17&#x2F;DI-17-0642&#x2F;DI-...</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gsaig.gov&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;ipa-reports&#x2F;OIG%20EVALUATION%20REPORT_Evaluation%20of%2018F_%20JE17-001_October%2024%202016.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gsaig.gov&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;ipa-reports&#x2F;OIG%20...</a><p>[5] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gsaig.gov&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;ipa-reports&#x2F;Alert%20Report-GSA%20Data%20Breach%205.12.16.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gsaig.gov&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;ipa-reports&#x2F;Alert%...</a><p>[6] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gsaig.gov&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;ipa-reports&#x2F;OIG%20EVALUATION%20REPORT_Evaluation%20of%2018F%20IT%20Security%20Compliance_JEF17-002_February%2021%202017.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gsaig.gov&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;ipa-reports&#x2F;OIG%20...</a>

The only insight I got from reading this is that the author doesn&#x27;t like the president or his administration. Big whoop.

It&#x27;s odd that it&#x27;s mostly Europeans talking about how the US is currently collapsing or something. Not very odd, but odd nonetheless.<p>The general consensus among Americans with a clue is that the Government should serve the people, not the other way around. If a government is &quot;critical&quot; for the people survive then the government has become a Leviathan. Ideally a government should just be another corporation, one buys and sells political services and goods. A failure of a single company shouldn&#x27;t cause an economic downturn, but that is the situation we find ourselves in.<p>It&#x27;s not very odd because implicitly Europeans have realized that the government they care most about, in terms of their economic well being, is the American one. (and of course they bragged about not working so much that we had to cut them off lol)

To recap: OP resigned because he feared what <i>might</i> happen in a meeting with USDS. It might have required him to kill someone, or explain his work to a contractor. Somehow these are presented as equally-odious propositions.<p>He openly refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of USDS, referring to it as &quot;a so-called &#x27;department&#x27;&quot;, and neglects even a cursory investigation into whether it may in fact be a legitimate executive agency established by Obama, staffed by government employees with requisite clearances and authority.<p>It&#x27;s wild to me that so many smart people think the White House should be boxed out of the day-to-day operations of GSA and OMB, whether by law or tradition, despite being undeniably responsible for their actions.

That&#x27;s too long for me to read, so apologies if the answer was too subtle for &quot;Find in page…&quot;<p>&gt; I’m not leaving under a “deferred resignation”.<p>&gt; …<p>&gt; Instead, I resigned from my position as a product designer, submitting two weeks’ notice…well, two weeks ago.<p>If they&#x27;re offering you a buyout and you don&#x27;t want to work there, why wouldn&#x27;t you take it?