Fangirling

I was REALLY lucky today and was able to talk to someone one-on-one for about 30 minutes today who works for one of the organizations that I really admire 18F/USDS (I’m being obfuscacious/general here because I don’t know either organization’s policy on  posting/things that were discussed.

Some Background

</strong>18F and USDS started out of the Healthcare.gov rollout and having to fix it.  As a result of a poor initial performance of Healthcare.gov the USFG brought in a small team of developers to rewrite the code and provide better service(s) to citizens attempting to sign up for the PPACA.

If you want more details you can read the full story here: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/the-secret-startup-saved-healthcare-gov-the-worst-website-in-america/397784/

I also came across the USDS/18F again with this article being published the other day: https://backchannel.com/inside-the-obama-tech-surge-as-it-hacks-the-pentagon-and-va-8b439bc33ed1#.wpgduuu6y

I’ve consistently been intrigued and interested in public service and social justice, because not only do I want to help people, but technology and making services more streamlined seems to be the most impactful way to help others and be a force multiplier for good, so places/departments like USDS/18F are right up my alley.

The story basically comes down to this: In one of the forums/news sites that I frequent there was a post that this person had commented on mentioning that they worked for USDS/18F and that others might consider doing the same.  After reading that I shot them an email(which was listed in their profile) and asked for advice on coding, and how to get to the skill level/point where I would be able to work at a place like USDS/18F.

They replied shortly after, and asked if I would be willing to talk on the phone for a short while. Commence fangirling SUPER HARD at this point. 8frrpafsxxl6e

Of course I said yes, and we talked for about 30 minutes, and I got to learn some pretty good stuff including.

  1.  Not everyone codes the same, some engineers are happy coding 12+ hours a day, others are happy doing 8 hours and clocking out/doing other stuff after.  Both are fine.
  2.  Learn as much as you can, but also be sure to learn what interests you. A.  There will always be rabbit holes to go down since CS/programming is SUCH a big field, but within that field there is bound to be something interesting.
  3.  At hackathons/code sprints, pair program with someone above your level and see if they’re willing to talk through how they do things, and learn from them.
  4.  Find open source stuff to contribute on/into (Codetriage is great for this: https://www.codetriage.com/ )
  5.  Chances are you’ll be fine, unless you’re doing something SUPER niche, programming/CS skills are transportable and you’ll probably find work.
  6.  Don’t be afraid to ask for help, even if it’s from a stranger on the internet :)
  7.  It never gets easier, you just go faster. ( http://www.velominati.com/the-rules/ )

After we got off the phone, and reading through my notes, coming down from fangirling, and processing it all.  I decided to see what I could do to get more involved locally, so I shot an email to Abhi Nemani ( http://abhinemani.com/about/ ) who is the Chief Innovation Officer in Sacramento.  I emailed him after ‘normal’ business hours asking if there was anything I could do to help the community at all with my (limited) coding skills…he responded less than 10 minutes later, and hooked me up with some local innovaters/coders in Sacramento.

Sooooooo now it looks like I’m going to the Code4Sac meetup group on Wednesday ( http://www.meetup.com/Code4Sac/ ) and getting to meet some other really cool people who are interested in code, tech, and helping out/getting involved.

Today has been like a dream.

Written on July 23, 2016