Doesn't it seem wasteful that 18f spent all that time on the standards, instead of maybe a guide/theme on how Gov't sites should adapt, already open-sourced (bootstrap), frameworks?
Please help make changes in the most efficient way possible. I've seen it before when these digital agencies filled with "innovators" come only to reinvent the wheel; spending ridiculous amounts of tax payer dollars and man hours to create things that could otherwise be brought in from the private sector.
Good luck, do what's right with the tax payer dollars.
Failure should result out of poor leadership in the end. On my team I don't care for your gender, your race, your culture or your social image. I only care that you can get the job done. If I know you can, then I'll give it to you. If I think it allows for time to learn, then I'll give it to the ones who need to grow. If you think you aren't given a chance, then speak up and I'll give you a shot at something. Poor leaders will deny those opportunities.
But I believe that there is more good leadership as opposed to poor leadership in our industry, and that articles like this create misguided issues.
Also, it is too easy for anyone to go and find another job; especially if they have talent. A full on exit means something else, something these articles haven't shown yet. For example, my last experience with this type of issue was with a coworker, a gay black male, who decided to quit in the middle of a project he was leading. He was falling way behind and presenting demos with bugs & poor functionality. All would've been fine and understandable if it weren't for the developer misleading the boss and stating that the project was on track and doing well. After continuous failure our boss eventually gave him extensions but was obviously was not happy about it. The boss began to put pressure on and keep a watchful eye over new commits. The senior ultimately chose not to continue and quit. On his way out he complained of bullying and not being appreciated. He declared that he was a senoir and should've been included in more decision making and that other senior developers were treated with higher favoritism because they got "cooler projects" and he did not. He was partly right, but only because he had not shown that he could get the work done, and rather shown quite the opposite. He had never proven his skills when given the chance. He faltered at all chances and yet still had some type of delusional self-entitlement. He left and his project was delivered 2 months late even after his poor code-base was heavily refactored by the next lead. I recently chatted him to ask how he was doing and he stated that his experience on our team and with our boss was so negative that he hasn't looked for a new job yet, and is even considering a career change. I agreed that he should do what is good for him, but only because I consciously knew he is in no place to be a senior developer in this industry (but he will never tell you that, and neither will any journalist trying to make a story out of it).
As someone who develops for a Gov't agency, this is the wrong move. So much money has been spent on mimicking the private sector innovators. Millions and millions of tax dollars spent on these type of projects.
The focus really needs to be on building a process to better integrate private cloud services and gov't applications. I mean they already are for the most part: https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/fedramp/
We have some Node projects and we have a couple of bootcampers on our team who were hired for those projects. We also have a CS graduate who had no Node experience coming on. After a couple of months the CS grad just totally took over and led contributions on the projects. They could do more advanced things that the bootcampers have never had experience with. (Things like writing modular code and data traversing/parsing == algorithms and design).
What should a junior-level Dev out of DC make? Say they currently make 80k. Solid OOP, modern web framework usage, solid JS. Pay raise/cut/stay the same?
Should we in the tech industry feel obligated to spend energy on these social movements? Are we wrong and selfish to not?
Honestly, I'd rather not. I'd rather get technical things done, and let policy makers and influencers focus on those issues. If you're in on something with me, great AWESOME, I honestly don't care who you are. Things like race and gender don't matter to me as long as you can get work done. However, I do understand that being able to get work done in this industry is stemmed from a privileged advantage. -- Yes that sucks and is unfair, but how do we as a technical industry even change that when we need to focus on getting work done?