Finger crossed this is okay as a "Show HN" (there's a free chapter so I think it is ^_^;;;;)
But I'm psyched. This was a two year project collecting stories, researching techniques and historical context, then having Covid push through production schedules into complete disarray.
To be fair, I've met a lot of young COBOL programmers since starting to work on mainframe systems last year. I think the "elderly COBOL programmer coaxed out of retirement by dumptrucks full of money" dynamic that supposedly dominated the Y2K response is less prevalent these days, and companies that still run mainframe systems just realize they have to hire regular programmers and teach them COBOL and z/OS.
Sorry, didn't mean any slight at you by that. I don't doubt your account, but having no idea how widespread the practice was, its dominance on a large scale is just a supposition on my part.
I really like Zulip (https://zulipchat.com/) because it enforces threading of conversations which makes them so much easier to sort, mute, follow up with after the fact.
I can provide a little general insight on this. Here are some things that might lead one to get rejected from USDS Engineering without an interview:
- You're too junior (not your case, I understand.)
- It is not clear that you've actually written software recently as a professional. (While we're looking for senior people and do have management needs, over time we've struggled with hiring managers -vs- growing them because government is such a radically different environment that success managing in the private sector is a poor indicator. So engineering managers are evaluated primarily as engineers first, managers after they pass)
- Your skills seem too specialized in areas we do not have needs. (Much of government technology is super old and much of what is wrong with it is technical debt and decay, not cutting edge technical challenges. For that reason we prefer generalists. Again this doesn't sound like your case)
- Not enough web development work (There is an on-going debate about this, but realistically citizen facing services tend to mean websites and the infrastructure that supports them. In the past we have hired engineers who were unable to adjust to web development and we couldn't find them enough work to play to their strengths. So while we're open to software engineers from other disciplines, there's still a lot of inconsistency in how the engineers judging your resume weigh this issue. Our attempts to correct this are ongoing.)
- You've applied as an engineer and emphasized non-engineering accomplishments (Since we're a civic tech organization sometimes people curate their resumes to play up their social good activities instead of their engineering. This is without a doubt the wrong move. If our engineers don't think you can write code they will not clear you for a technical interview.)
- You've applied for the wrong role or it's not clear what role you would fit into (This seems like it might your case. USDS has three types of roles [well five, but two are not really relevant here]: Engineering, Design (which includes visual, UX research, and content strategy), and Strategy/Operations (which includes both our front office administration and people who are coming in with significant government/policy/legal/product management experience. While we definitely have people who straddle lines [PMs with engineering backgrounds, designers who can program, etc] all those people still applied and were evaluated for one specific community.)
This is the one thing the article got wrong about the talk. The 7074 replaced magnetic drums with core memory. It's an easy mistake to make since the 700 series used vacuum tube logic and the 7070 replaced those with transistors. The 7074 came about two years after that.
This article was such a pleasant surprise! I loved talking at Systems We Love and I love talking about legacy architecture in general. Bryan and the Joyent team were very accommodating and understanding. The White House is an amazing place to work (even now), but it's not a system that understands conference talks very well. Wish we could have a video, but it was a heavy lift just getting the bureaucracy okay with the idea that I was going to talk about information that was already public, without naming agencies or projects and without going into detail beyond what was in a user manual and that this was not a security risk.
Hi Marianne! I'm with The New Stack (not the writer of this article), and was wondering about the video myself. Interesting to see you address that there's definitely no public facing version, as it seems a lot of the commenters here would love to see it. I can only imagine the bureaucrat complexity involved.
Oh yeah, when I talked to the agency that owns the 7074 (more on this in a second) they were like "You can't do this because we will get hacked"
"How are you going to get hacked if I talk about your mainframe? It's not connected to the public internet, is it?"
"No. Well... we don't know... but ... hackers! Hackers are really smart Marianne."
Part of the compromise was that I promised I would only use information that was already available publicly through government reports and news articles. I went back through my talk and documented where each fact was already published somewhere else until they were comfortable with it. So the ambiguity on whether the 7074 was the actual machine or an emulator was deliberate... there were certain things I could not find a public comment on and therefore agreed to avoid making direct statements about.
This all seems super annoying, but it makes sense when you realize how heavily scrutinized public servants are. In the end they are only trying to protect me, my organization and Obama's legacy. Three things that are really important to me. So I can't exactly blame them for it. I was happy to be able to find a middle ground where they felt comfortable, the organizers weren't too badly inconvenienced and I got to give the talk I wanted to.
> A lot of legacy, sure, but I think this article makes it sound even more legacy than it really is.
Indeed. The point of the talk was that 1) legacy is often assumed to be bad not for any real technical reasons but just because it is legacy and 2) a lot of what was being presented as legacy wasn't even legacy. Their OS 2200 version was actually newer than the Oracle DB they were using on the "modern" side of the stack.
Actually not completely true. It depends on the agency that sponsors your clearance and it has more to do with the agency's involvement in the intelligence community. The White House does not require it.
It's true, and that's why I think student hackathons are going to become so important in recruiting. It's not about the grades and a fancy name, great talent comes from passion and intellectual curiosity. At these events the differences between the groups that code for fun and the groups that are in CS because they think it means a guaranteed well paying job post-graduation are REALLY obvious.
But I'm psyched. This was a two year project collecting stories, researching techniques and historical context, then having Covid push through production schedules into complete disarray.