> (I know a few people who worked on various parts of it and for what it’s worth: they’re all legit. They care, and they’re good. It should come as no surprise that the site turned out the way it did, if they’re hiring these sorts of people.)
I imagine working for a government is interesting from an incentives perspective too, simply because the optimisation is not about profit in the market sense.
I worked for 18F (a digital transformation organization within the Federal Government, working with many different parts of it) for nearly four years. The lack of profit pressure was one of my favourite things about it, and one of the reasons why we had more room to do things "the right way". (Another reason: you're never sure when a codebase will get improvement/maintenance windows.)
Related: GDS (the GOV.UK people) was a huge inspiration to us from the start. Both 18F and USDS (another Federal Gov org focused on digital transformation) have strong connections to GDS, and there's lots of conversation between the groups.
I imagine working for a government is interesting from an incentives perspective too, simply because the optimisation is not about profit in the market sense.