Nothing like putting in a multi decade civil service career and coming in one day to find a 20-something installed over you whose primary qualification was being hired at a "friendly" tech company and making the right kind of joke around the CEO.
... although that seems depressingly like it would also be the experience with new administrators being installed in executive agencies every 4 years, except they're slightly older.
By function a GS will ALWAYS be subordinate to a political appointee and there’s nothing they can do about it
I posted elsewhere that I left a govt career as a military officer precicely because of this reality. It’s like a old boring joke now that politicians are corrupt and worthless.
I will tell you from the inside that not only is it true but it’s 10 times to 100 times worse than you think it is.
I have multiple stories of operational systems, functions, whatever you wanna call them that we’re working exceptionally well had good backing, good funding and were completely wiped out because whoever became the deputy under secretary for that budget line decided they didn’t want to do it anymore. and completely shelved decades worth of work. Like literally I remember having to unplug a server that was running life-critical beacons for POWs because they weren’t being used enough.
As if that weren’t enough that same development problem then shifted over to some new hot organization that is in the politicians jurisdiction and then they start over from scratch with none of the learning from the previous admin.
There is no positive system that can be affected by the United States government
It does not exist, they cannot functionally or structurally exist, because the government of the United States but is not and has never been built on supporting citizens or the global community it is built and has always been built to support wealthy politicians and that’s all.
I’m not aware of how every other countries work but the ones I’ve seen the inside are the same
Going into the government for the “mission” is probably the most intentionally ignorant thing somebody could do given the plethora of easily accessible data proving exactly this
Somehow this country has managed to do big and bold things when it is needed. Those great systems that were dismantled got built at one point so it is theoretically possible to do good. Furthermore other countries seem to do a better job at serving their citizens so its not like effective government is impossible((look at how the EU at least gets some things that benefit their citizens even though most of it is a mess).
There has got to be some pathway to get back to that.
> a GS will ALWAYS be subordinate to a political appointee
It’s worth being specific about what is meant by “political appointee” here. That term has specific legal meaning in the context of federal staffing, and (as I understand it, not a lawyer) is not the same thing as “GS employee who was hired as part of an administration’s political agenda”.
> Nothing like putting in a multi decade civil service career and coming in one day to find a 20-something installed over you
GS grade does not correspond directly to manager/managee relationships at plenty of federal agencies. Someone getting hired at a higher GS grade is not automatically “over you” in the formal reporting hierarchy. That’s not to say this never happens (GS:org chart level is the case more often than not, I’d guess), but it’s not a given.
Now, if your issue is that agencies sometimes offer high (by the standards of current employees) GS grades to attract talented hires, then I agree that is a problem! The solution to that is to improve government pay scales and fix fed hiring more generally: https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/dear-mr-kupor-please-fix-fede...
Until that is done, (good) policies like the Pendleton Act cannot help that much.
Not being dismissive of your experience (or that of a civil servant with 10s of years of experience). I have a deep respect for that kind of work and folks who give up more lucrative opportunities in order to serve their country and fellow citizens.
> whose primary qualification was being hired at a "friendly" tech company and making the right kind of joke around the CEO
That’s being awfully dismissive of the individuals skill set. Nobody gets the job by making the right kind of jokes around the CEO. Nobody. Getting in the door takes hard work, talent and some amount of luck.
For DOGE specifically? Would be interested to hear of those DOGE employees who truly deserved to be GS-15s due to their extensive experience in both tech and government.
The USDS and DOGE had completely different mandates. Non government experience makes sense when you’re trying to learn the lessons of industry to improve gov website accessibility, performance and ux.
On the other hand, trying to slash spending with no understanding of the agencies you’re working at- let alone any life experience for a lot of these folks- is a very different mandate.
tried replicating w/ a slightly different system prompt w/ sonnet-4.5 and got some different results, esp w/ progressive to conservative questions. Prompting seems pretty load-bearing here
AI tools have been so good for me for making home-cooked software. As a new-ish parent, it’s so much easier to do stuff. I don’t need to go into extra-deep focus mode to learn how to center a div for the hundredth time, I can spend that precious focus time on the problems that matter / the core motivation.
I had a good laugh at the image showing that 2018 had a “quality focus”
I think Jonathan Blow gave his “Preventing the Collapse of Civilization” talk (much stronger treatment of the subject matter) around that time, also about how software quality was only going down
this is not true unless you’re doing some kind of adjustment. For t bills, us03m yields were much higher 30-40 years ago.
> US equities are at all time highs
this is true
> USD falling day over day, month over month, year over year
if falling means inflation, yes in banal way. If falling means relative to other currencies, that’s the last 9 months or so. Previously the USD was quite strong
> US debt is falling in value because no one wants to buy it
this appears to be the hinge of the argument? It is not true. 10y yields have been down / flat since beginning of 2025 (i.e., price up). also tsy auctions remain well-subscribed / within historical range
Just got it at work today and it’s a dramatic step change beyond Cursor despite using the same foundation models. Very surprising! There was a task a month ago where AI assistance was a big net negative. Did the same thing today w/ Claude Code in 20ish minutes. And for <$10 in API usage!
Much less context babysitting too. Claude code is really good at finding the things it needs and adding them to its context. I find Cursor’s agent mode ceases to be useful at a task time horizon of 3-5 minutes but Claude Code can chug away for 10+ minutes and make meaningful progress without getting stuck in loops.
Again, all very surprising given that I use sonnet 4 w/ cursor + sometimes Gemini 2.5 pro. Claude Code is just so good with tools and not getting stuck.
Even though it’s the same model cursor adds a massive system prompt to every request. And it’s shit and lobotomises the models. After the rug pull I’m exclusive Claude code at the end of my billing period or when cursor cut me off the $60 a month plan—-which will probably come first—-a bit over halfway into my month.
“Redfin data shows millennials are more or less on track with previous generations”
“more or less” is doing some heavy lifting. The chart referenced shows a pretty dramatic discontinuity between Millennials and Gen X / Boomers from age 25 to 35 w.r.t homeownership rate.
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