As I wrote in another comment, US Tech Force participants doing 2-year stints won't qualify for the gov't backed retirement (unless they were prior military, prior civil service, or find a non-term appointment to follow this stint with). You need three years to keep the 5% TSP (401k equivalent) match, which is similar to many private companies. You also need 5 years to qualify for FERS (if you quit before then you can get your contributions back, but that's optional as you may want to come back to gov't later and have the years count).
Not for people with just a BS, at least outside certain areas (DC) and roles (cybersecurity). GS-12 was a more typical "target" position (with GS-13 on occasion, like at some of the labs) back in 2010. A masters or a PhD could have bumped you up to GS-13/14/15 though.
Target: People typically enter, when coming out of college, at a lower grade in the GS-5/7/9 area with a target position of one of GS-11/12/13. IT (not CS) folks were often in GS-11 targeted positions, computer scientists and engineers often in GS-12 positions. They'd get promoted in two grade increases (5 to 7, 7 to 9, 9 to 11) or one grade increases (11 to 12, 12 to 13) until they hit their target grade. At a rate of either one increase per year or per 6 months depending on when they got hired, by what agency, and in what role. An IT person, usually one increase per year; engineer, typically two increases per year. Computer scientists usually got screwed and got one increase per year which meant you had fewer of them wanting to work for the government (they also, at that time, rarely got signing bonuses). This leaves a lot of the software shops in DOD (where I had experience) mostly filled with aerospace and electrical engineers.
"Cyber" roles (security; which could be a couple different job series) in some agencies jumped up faster or had a higher target grade due to the need (or perceived need) for more people.
> Not for people with just a BS, at least outside certain areas (DC) and roles (cybersecurity)
Based on the FAQ, US Tech Force roles are located in DC (so they'll get the DC adjustment) and from the sounds of it, this proposal is the AI Washing the "Cyber Service" or "Cyber Exempted Service".
Also, based on Scott Kupor's (former Managing Parter at A16Z turned head of OPM) memo [0] it appears they seem to be using the same approach used to start the USDS back in the Obama admin. And based on their mention of "fellows", I think they'll merging parts of what used to be the Presidential Management Fellows program.
If AI-washing and Trump-washing helps maintain the core of these programs, there's nothing wrong with that.
Edit:
Dug deeper thru the FAQ - it's basically an AI washed version of the PMF and PIF.
I was responding to someone's claim about new grads (read the comment I responded to), not about US Tech Force. The person I responded to claimed that it was common for new grads (circa 2010) to jump in at GS-14/15. That was not common.
It could be a bias in the roles I was looking at - but coming in with physics undergrad for computer science roles, that was the standard set of roles in the Boston area for defense roles. Granted, these were mostly with private contractors who mirrored the GS pay scale along with their supporting government offices.
Ahh! My bad! Yea you're absolutely right - aside from PMFs who came out of grad programs you aren't see a new grad starting beyond GS7/8 in most cases.
It's also why a large portion of Gov employees end up jumping ship to professional services firms like BAH, Deloitte, Accenture, etc.
It looks like this is trying to fit into the same space as the former USDS and F18 which had term appointments. The key idea behind those was the industry partnership (recruiting experienced people from industry) and the knowledge/skills transfer that came with it. If you look at some other programs (Peace Corps, for instance) you'll see a similar thing. 2-year terms with extensions up to maybe 5 total years.
What's funny is the retirement benefits won't apply to most 2-year term employees. Unless they were prior military or civil service, or come back later, two years is not long enough to keep the TSP match (three year vesting period) or to qualify for the pension (five years). (EDIT: Funny because they explicitly list it as a benefit, but these folks won't qualify for it.)
This is sometimes intentional. Some design it that way to ensure that if they are going to do a certain action, that they have seen the toast. Obviously far from being the case all the time, but it happens that it is intentional sometimes.
As jjgreen pointed out, the submitter made a bizarrely editorialized version of the title that multiplied the title's number, 40, by a million to get their "40M" version of the title.
Also bizarre to myself. i shortened Neural Network to 'ML' because NN did bot look right. '40 ML' somehow got '40M'. Could it be server side. Sorry, I did only check now.
You don't need the streaming service though, you can just do without or find other methods of obtaining their content. It's not like food, electricity, or water where you may have no actual options or very limited options. Movies and shows are wants, not needs, and people can walk away and fill the time some other way.
Saying everyone should just quit streaming and go touch grass or read a book is not a productive recommendation. It's been tried for decades and fails because people really like TV and Movies. Given that, the discussion here needs to start from the assumption that people will continue to watch TV and movies and suffer meaningful quality of life impacts when they do not.
> Once Netflix buys all of these companies, you won't ever be able to watch a WB movie without a $25 netflix sub per month. (and yeah, when they are done buying all the competition that's what the monthly will be.
That's kind of a silly argument. "People are better off paying $100+/month for 4+ streaming services than $25/month for one that has everything."
If your argument were that you'd have to pay more than the current combined cost, it'd be a better argument against mergers. Arguing against something because it's a better deal is just strange.
It's not that silly of an argument when you factor in Blu-Ray as the other side of "won't be able to watch a WB movie without". Right now the only Netflix "Exclusives" you can find on Blu-Ray are the ones they source from Sony, Warner Brothers, or Paramount. If they own Warner Brothers one of those Blu-Ray sources goes away.
Instead of a one-time Blu-Ray purchase for ~$25 for a movie to watch as many times as you'd like, it's an ongoing subscription for $25/month. If you only want to watch that one movie in two different calendar months, you've easily doubled your spend.
(Yes, it is still apples-to-oranges because you may watch more than one movie in a month, but the flipside is that the $25/month is a variable catalog fee. The movie you want to watch may be "vaulted" that second month you want to go watch it. With Blu-Ray you control your film catalog, with Netflix some finance team does.)
(Also, yes, easy to forget Blu-Ray in this debate because Blu-Ray is dying/dead, especially in physical retail with Target and Best Buy dropping its sections. You can also substitute a lot of the same arguments here with arguments for Movies Anywhere and/or iTunes Store.)
thats not how most people do streaming, they consume everything on netflix - when the content gets stale, they cancel, move to P+, consume for a few months, stale, d+, stale, A+, etc....
1 at a time
Perhaps the most prominent example of literate programming missed by the author: https://www.pbrt.org/Physically Based Rendering by Pharr, Jakob, and Humphreys.
Responding directly to a couple things the author wrote:
> When programming, it’s not uncommon to write a function that’s “good enough for now”, and revise it later. This is impossible to adequately do in literate programming.
It's not impossible in literate programming. There's nothing about LP that impedes this, I do it all the time. I have a quick obvious implementation (perhaps a naive recursive solution) and throw it in to get things working. I revisit it later when I need to make that naive recursive one faster (memoization, DP, or just another algorithm all together). It's no harder than what I'd do with an ordinary approach to programming.
> Unit testing is not supported one bit in WEB, but you can cobble something together in CWEB.
WEB was designed for use with Pascal and CWEB for C and C++. At the time the tools were developed, "unit testing" as it means today was not really a widespread thing. Use other tools if you find that WEB is impeding your use of unit tests in your Pascal programs. With other tools (org-mode and org-babel are what I use), it's easy to do. Like with writing good enough functions, you just do it, and it's done. You write a unit test in a block of code and when it gets tangled you execute your unit tests. This can be more cumbersome in some languages than with others, but in Python it's as easy as:
When I used LP regularly I had a little script I wrote that would tangle source from my org files, and because I had the names and paths specified everything would end up in the right place. This is followed by running `pytest` (or whatever test utility) as normal. I used this in makefiles and other scripts. This is only slightly harder than the normal approach, but not hard. I added a `tangle` step into my build and test process and it was good to go.
If your unit test system requires more ceremony then you'll need to include that as well, but you'd have to include that in your conventionally written code as well.
> It's not impossible in literate programming. There's nothing about LP that impedes this, I do it all the time. I have a quick obvious implementation (perhaps a naive recursive solution) and throw it in to get things working. I revisit it later when I need to make that naive recursive one faster (memoization, DP, or just another algorithm all together). It's no harder than what I'd do with an ordinary approach to programming.
Do you do it as literate program, which is to say, your text first expounds on a naive solution to the problem, and then later outlines for the reader the complete solution?
Or do you write one literate program, and then update the file containing the text of your program after you realize the better solution—no different from anyone writing conventional programs—thus thwarting the fundamental promise of LP (since the "why" of changes like that—and the absence of answers to those whys—is exactly what makes it such a battle to understand unfamiliar programs).
The author is very obviously talking about the first problem. Your comments and failure to elaborate strongly suggest you're doing the latter.
> your text first expounds on a naive solution to the problem
That's not how every literate program is written, nor is it the entire purpose of literate programming.
> Or do you write one literate program, and then update the file containing the text of your program after you realize the better solution—no different from anyone writing conventional programs—thus thwarting the fundamental promise of LP (since the "why" of changes like that—and the absence of answers to those whys—is exactly what makes it such a battle to understand unfamiliar programs). [emphasis added]
I think you misunderstand LP. Keeping history is not essential to literate programming. Having a series of evolving programs from naive to fastest possible is not the point of LP. Having an explanation of the program with the code is the point of LP.
Sometimes that means leaving history, sometimes it means removing it. A literate program is not a dead program. It's a living object that can be edited and changed over time. Keep the elements that are essential to the text. If the naive version is clearer (often it is) then retain it so you can explain the more complex fast version as it relates to the naive version. If it has no explanatory value, then drop it. If you implemented something incorrectly, it's not necessarily worth keeping unless the wrongness of it has value in itself.
Get recommendations from supervisors you've had. Academic references are hard to obtain for most professionals 5-10 years out of school unless they've made a particular effort to stay in contact with undergrad faculty members. They understand this and take it into consideration.
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