[wpietri]

Speaking as an old, I think youth is part of the answer. One of the things I have to really work at as I get older is unlearning the things that used to be true. Given the pace of technological change, younger people have an advantage in that they have less to unlearn.

> Start-up culture and tech trends just don't work at the scale of government, for much the same reasons massive corporations move glacially.

This is good example of an old truth that needs some unlearning. Old corporations move glacially. Some new ones work differently, though.

Government can also work differently. The folks at 18F and the US Digital Service are demonstrating that in ways both large and small. Indeed, when I was looking at a USDS job, a White House advisor told me plainly that agile, iterative approaches were clearly better for government because they were much more effective at risk reduction than producing piles of documents ever could be.

[toomuchtodo]

> Government can also work differently. The folks at 18F and the US Digital Service are demonstrating that in ways both large and small. Indeed, when I was looking at a USDS job, a White House advisor told me plainly that agile, iterative approaches were clearly better for government because they were much more effective at risk reduction than producing piles of documents ever could be.

Is there a reason you didn't take the USDS job?

[agumonkey]

I'd love to hear you list the kind of things you had to unlearn, very curious about that.