6 ms·

RIP to the USDS, an inspiring government department to someone like me.

by isiahl 2y ago

andreygrehov 2y ago
[flagged]
- 0xCMP 2y ago
  I never really saw anyone bad mouthing USDS even here. Can you explain why you think people didn't like USDS? I'm sure there was some resentment from other agencies that USDS helping them implied they didn't know what they were doing or something, but on HN it has basically been non-stop positive from what I've seen. Echos of the same things in this thread: that they wish they were in a position to sacrifice their pay in order to contribute meaningfully to the government where they have the most chance at impact. IIUC Login.gov and the much more unified design system based on Material Design for government websites came from USDS.
  - andreygrehov 2y ago
    > I never really saw anyone bad mouthing USDS even here. Can you explain why you think people didn't like USDS? HN search is available to all of us. I've been a HN reader for 10+ years. USDS has been proclaimed as a bureaucratic machine that cannot do much. Edit: ok, I actually apologize and take my words back. I must've confused USDS with something else.
- ronbenton 2y ago
  I cannot speak to online sentiment, but my experience when I was in government was a lot of reverence for USDS. They did great work.
- righthand 2y ago
  This is not true in my experience. Most people I’ve talked to didn’t even know about it. I always heard great things about it otherwise. > According to comments from previous years, nobody liked USDS. Everybody was bullshitting on it. Who is everybody? HN commenters? Do you have evidence of this sentiment? Emotional anecdotal comments should not be taken as public sentiment on an issue. They are often one sided and inaccurate.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - andreygrehov 2y ago
    Deleted my previous comment. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43145755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43145755
    - righthand 2y ago
      I updated my comment with response to your deleted comment. The last line specifically about emotional anecdotes. However your example has a lot of other comment threads that do not support the “usds is disliked” conclusion. What is disliked in your example is bureaucracy and domain guarding which can be found inside and outside of the government. That does not mean USDS is a bad or disliked program because it has inefficiencies. It also does not mean we need to audit and dismantle services and programs as a way to root out inefficiency.
kevml 2y ago
I wanted to join them a few years ago but I wasn’t in the right life position to do so. I was hoping to one day in the near future. Maybe that day will one day come again.
ronbenton 2y ago
I wanted to join them some day. Hopefully they will be back.
- hayst4ck 2y ago
  Mikey Dickerson, the first head of the USDS, would say hope is not a strategy.
lmeyerov 2y ago
"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it" This applies equally to institutions and individuals, so from investors to CEOs to politicians to tech community leaders to individuals picking where they work, this is a very "interesting" time Both the USDS and PIF programs were inspiring to me as they were almost like a New Deal for digital natives & coders. They did a good job of attracting smart hard workers to be underpaid for unglamorous & often-frustrating but impactful work. A lot of good people!
righthand 2y ago
I wanted to work for them since Obama announced it, but they didn’t pay as well as a big funded private corp startup. If I was a bit older and more comfortable with my savings I would have. I would have loved serving my country and working on software as a way to give back.
- ronbenton 2y ago
  I talked to some people at USDS during my time in govt. They took a 50% pay cut to serve their country. Wish more people understood a lot of civil servants often do it for the mission.
  - righthand 2y ago
    There is a sad side to my desire, I’ve told people this before in social circles and most people respond with confusion as to why I would want to do that.
    - atonse 2y ago
      The general expectation with USDS and others was that you only stay for 2-3 years. So it’s more like a temporary tour. At least that’s what was pitched to me a few years ago when I spoke to their counterparts in the US gov. Incredibly smart, no-BS people that wanted to do good work and have high impact. Still the only job I regret not taking in all my career.
hn_user82179 2y ago
Yep. I’ve been subscribed to get emails when application to their jobs open, because they really represented a portion of the government that I thought was doing good work and was an area I could contribute meaningfully to (given my skillset). I never made the jump, it was such a large paycut and iirc looked like it’d require relocation, but I’d like to think I might in the future (if it ever comes back).
- ronbenton 2y ago
  The people I met at USDS took that kind of pay cut for the mission, which I was in awe of. Senior, Staff, Principal engineers from big tech who likely had been making twice as much as top government salary.
boris-ning-usds 2y ago
We'll live on in people's memories and hearts. Thank you.
- ipython 2y ago
  Thank you for your service.
seanwilson 2y ago
They're behind U.S. Web Design System (USWDS)? This is going away? USWDS have a cool palette system where color pairs from their palette have predictable WCAG color contrast (unlike in e.g. Tailwind's default palette), but I rarely hear of projects using USWDS colors: https://designsystem.digital.gov/design-tokens/color/overview/ https://designsystem.digital.gov/design-tokens/color/overvie... > We call the difference in grade between any two colors the magic number. Magic numbers have the following contrast implications: > A magic number of 40+ results in WCAG 2.0 AA Large Text contrast (example: gray-90 and indigo-warm-50v).
- Maxious 2y ago
  Under Executive Order 14151 "Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing" many links/pages were already removed from the design system https://github.com/uswds/uswds-site/pull/3078 https://github.com/uswds/uswds-site/pull/3078 https://github.com/uswds/uswds-site/pull/3053/files#diff-86ccf55f781bde4571031d1eba9e77e77e2907d8d40ccc582839c175b23d0f4eL185-L189 https://github.com/uswds/uswds-site/pull/3053/files#diff-86c... (ie. inclusivecolors.com would be prohibited) Within 60 days "“diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government" must be terminated https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-and-wasteful-government-dei-programs-and-preferencing/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/endi...
  - seanwilson 2y ago
    > (ie. inclusivecolors.com would be prohibited) I didn't have "does this include words in it that might get banned?" on my checklist when hunting for a good domain name haha. The https://designsystem.digital.gov/design-tokens/color/overview/ https://designsystem.digital.gov/design-tokens/color/overvie... link still mentions "inclusively". > Within 60 days "“diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” Are there more details on this? So next USWDS might be stripping out references to WCAG accessibility guidelines like their color contrast advice?
    - 2y ago

RIP to the USDS, an inspiring government department to someone like me.

by isiahl 2y ago

RIP to the USDS, an inspiring government department to someone like me.

andreygrehov 2y ago

[flagged]

0xCMP 2y ago
I never really saw anyone bad mouthing USDS even here. Can you explain why you think people didn't like USDS? I'm sure there was some resentment from other agencies that USDS helping them implied they didn't know what they were doing or something, but on HN it has basically been non-stop positive from what I've seen. Echos of the same things in this thread: that they wish they were in a position to sacrifice their pay in order to contribute meaningfully to the government where they have the most chance at impact. IIUC Login.gov and the much more unified design system based on Material Design for government websites came from USDS.
- andreygrehov 2y ago
  > I never really saw anyone bad mouthing USDS even here. Can you explain why you think people didn't like USDS? HN search is available to all of us. I've been a HN reader for 10+ years. USDS has been proclaimed as a bureaucratic machine that cannot do much. Edit: ok, I actually apologize and take my words back. I must've confused USDS with something else.
ronbenton 2y ago
I cannot speak to online sentiment, but my experience when I was in government was a lot of reverence for USDS. They did great work.
righthand 2y ago
This is not true in my experience. Most people I’ve talked to didn’t even know about it. I always heard great things about it otherwise. > According to comments from previous years, nobody liked USDS. Everybody was bullshitting on it. Who is everybody? HN commenters? Do you have evidence of this sentiment? Emotional anecdotal comments should not be taken as public sentiment on an issue. They are often one sided and inaccurate.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- andreygrehov 2y ago
  Deleted my previous comment. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43145755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43145755
  - righthand 2y ago
    I updated my comment with response to your deleted comment. The last line specifically about emotional anecdotes. However your example has a lot of other comment threads that do not support the “usds is disliked” conclusion. What is disliked in your example is bureaucracy and domain guarding which can be found inside and outside of the government. That does not mean USDS is a bad or disliked program because it has inefficiencies. It also does not mean we need to audit and dismantle services and programs as a way to root out inefficiency.

kevml 2y ago

I wanted to join them a few years ago but I wasn’t in the right life position to do so. I was hoping to one day in the near future. Maybe that day will one day come again.

ronbenton 2y ago

I wanted to join them some day. Hopefully they will be back.

hayst4ck 2y ago
Mikey Dickerson, the first head of the USDS, would say hope is not a strategy.

lmeyerov 2y ago

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it" This applies equally to institutions and individuals, so from investors to CEOs to politicians to tech community leaders to individuals picking where they work, this is a very "interesting" time Both the USDS and PIF programs were inspiring to me as they were almost like a New Deal for digital natives & coders. They did a good job of attracting smart hard workers to be underpaid for unglamorous & often-frustrating but impactful work. A lot of good people!

righthand 2y ago

I wanted to work for them since Obama announced it, but they didn’t pay as well as a big funded private corp startup. If I was a bit older and more comfortable with my savings I would have. I would have loved serving my country and working on software as a way to give back.

ronbenton 2y ago
I talked to some people at USDS during my time in govt. They took a 50% pay cut to serve their country. Wish more people understood a lot of civil servants often do it for the mission.
- righthand 2y ago
  There is a sad side to my desire, I’ve told people this before in social circles and most people respond with confusion as to why I would want to do that.
  - atonse 2y ago
    The general expectation with USDS and others was that you only stay for 2-3 years. So it’s more like a temporary tour. At least that’s what was pitched to me a few years ago when I spoke to their counterparts in the US gov. Incredibly smart, no-BS people that wanted to do good work and have high impact. Still the only job I regret not taking in all my career.

hn_user82179 2y ago

Yep. I’ve been subscribed to get emails when application to their jobs open, because they really represented a portion of the government that I thought was doing good work and was an area I could contribute meaningfully to (given my skillset). I never made the jump, it was such a large paycut and iirc looked like it’d require relocation, but I’d like to think I might in the future (if it ever comes back).

ronbenton 2y ago
The people I met at USDS took that kind of pay cut for the mission, which I was in awe of. Senior, Staff, Principal engineers from big tech who likely had been making twice as much as top government salary.

boris-ning-usds 2y ago

We'll live on in people's memories and hearts. Thank you.

ipython 2y ago
Thank you for your service.

seanwilson 2y ago

They're behind U.S. Web Design System (USWDS)? This is going away? USWDS have a cool palette system where color pairs from their palette have predictable WCAG color contrast (unlike in e.g. Tailwind's default palette), but I rarely hear of projects using USWDS colors: https://designsystem.digital.gov/design-tokens/color/overview/ https://designsystem.digital.gov/design-tokens/color/overvie... > We call the difference in grade between any two colors the magic number. Magic numbers have the following contrast implications: > A magic number of 40+ results in WCAG 2.0 AA Large Text contrast (example: gray-90 and indigo-warm-50v).

Maxious 2y ago
Under Executive Order 14151 "Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing" many links/pages were already removed from the design system https://github.com/uswds/uswds-site/pull/3078 https://github.com/uswds/uswds-site/pull/3078 https://github.com/uswds/uswds-site/pull/3053/files#diff-86ccf55f781bde4571031d1eba9e77e77e2907d8d40ccc582839c175b23d0f4eL185-L189 https://github.com/uswds/uswds-site/pull/3053/files#diff-86c... (ie. inclusivecolors.com would be prohibited) Within 60 days "“diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government" must be terminated https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-and-wasteful-government-dei-programs-and-preferencing/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/endi...
- seanwilson 2y ago
  > (ie. inclusivecolors.com would be prohibited) I didn't have "does this include words in it that might get banned?" on my checklist when hunting for a good domain name haha. The https://designsystem.digital.gov/design-tokens/color/overview/ https://designsystem.digital.gov/design-tokens/color/overvie... link still mentions "inclusively". > Within 60 days "“diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” Are there more details on this? So next USWDS might be stripping out references to WCAG accessibility guidelines like their color contrast advice?
  - 2y ago