--- title: "Vidya Talks Modernizing Tech Hiring in the Federal Government at the White House" description: "Vidya spoke to tech recruiters about how the federal government can hire and retain the best tech talent." canonical: https://www.vidyasource.com/blog/vidya-talks-modernizing-tech-hiring-federal-government-white-house/ type: article published: 2024-10-12 author: "Neil Chaudhuri" tags: ["Partners", "Diversity", "Programming", "Software Engineering", "Agile", "Government"] image: https://www.vidyasource.com/img/blog/tech-hiring.webp --- # Vidya Talks Modernizing Tech Hiring in the Federal Government at the White House > Vidya spoke to tech recruiters about how the federal government can hire and retain the best tech talent. - Canonical page: https://www.vidyasource.com/blog/vidya-talks-modernizing-tech-hiring-federal-government-white-house/ - Structured data (JSON-LD): https://www.vidyasource.com/blog/vidya-talks-modernizing-tech-hiring-federal-government-white-house.json - Published: 2024-10-12 - Author: Neil Chaudhuri - Topics: Partners, Diversity, Programming, Software Engineering, Agile, Government About 20 years ago or so, commercial businesses started to figure out they were building software all wrong. Waterfall software development, with its phased gates and handoffs and large chunks and wasted time, is not conducive to the experimentation and rapid feedback that creative work like software engineering demands. This led to a transition, difficult and controversial as it's been, to agile product development. Government doesn't have the advantages the private sector has, so fundamental change like that takes far longer in the public sector. Still, the right leadership can move things forward. It started with the creation of [United States Digital Service (USDS)](https://www.usds.gov/) and [18F](https://18f.gsa.gov/), which rotate elite talent from industry into government to provide their leading edge expertise to government agencies. Ten years ago, I was part of a team working with USDS and 18F to teach federal procurement officials how to write better contracts to motivate better behavior from vendors and ultimately to deliver better software. That curriculum evolved into [DITAP](https://techfarhub.usds.gov/get-started/ditap/). Now in 2024 after decades of outsourcing software product development to private vendors, the federal government wants to bring more subject matter expertise in house. There is a significant effort underway to improve government hiring practices by applying the best lessons from industry, which to be fair has not mastered hiring in its own right, to staff agencies with the [talent that tech laid off](https://www.vidyasource.com/blog/the-mckinsey-developer-productivity-analysis-is-a-ruse/) after the pandemic. To that end, I joined another team a few weeks ago on Technology Day at the White House—yes, *that* White House—to give a talk to a cohort of federal recruiters. I'm not going to lie. I was nervous but excited for the opportunity. ![Neil Chaudhuri in suit and sunglasses.](https://www.vidyasource.com/img/blog/tech-hiring-shades.webp) The talk was called *Tech Landscape & Government Realities: Modernizing Government Hiring.* ![Tech Landscape & Government Realities: Modernizing Government Hiring cover slide](https://www.vidyasource.com/img/blog/tech-hiring.png) I began with the bad news and the good news for federal recruiters. The bad news is that there is a lot of elite tech talent that looks at Big Tech companies like Uber, Meta, Spotify, Google, *etc.* the same way I look at Major League Baseball, a lifelong dream job, and it is all but impossible to change their minds. The good news is that there remains plenty other elite talent available now who recognizes there are disabled people, elderly people, veterans suffering the consequences of war, and countless others who need help, talent who wants to make it possible for them to live their lives with dignity. Meanwhile, government agencies are remaking their hiring processes and organizational structures to identify job titles and define career paths better aligned to what candidates are used to in private industry. ![Neil Chaudhuri presenting examples of government leadership on a slide to the audience.](https://www.vidyasource.com/img/blog/tech-hiring-leadership.webp) I then went on to describe what makes [flow state](https://leaddev.com/culture-engagement-motivation/why-flow-matters-more-passion) the foundation for a good work culture and how flow state hews closely to the principles of agile development. Finally, I walked through multiple examples of popular software product categories that industry and government have both built, from websites to machine learning pipelines to AI, and the kinds of job roles best suited to deliver them. ![Neil Chaudhuri presenting flow state on a slide to the audience.](https://www.vidyasource.com/img/blog/tech-hiring-flow-state.webp) It can be hard to know how a talk went after it's over and the polite applause dies down. It was gratifying when many of the recruiters in the audience came up to me afterwards to tell me they enjoyed it and learned a lot from it. One even told me that he had similar ideas himself but had lacked the vocabulary to express them to his leadership until seeing my presentation and that he was excited to make big, forward-looking changes to his agency's hiring process. A colleague informed me that students had told him they "loved the presentation." I am just glad that the audience was able to glean something useful to implement at their respective agencies from the mix of information, jokes, and pop culture references that typically define my talks. It was an honor to present at the White House, and I hope I have the opportunity to continue to help these recruiters and others down the line modernize hiring in the federal space and ultimately help our government deliver the best digital services of any government in the world. --- Vidya is a certified small business in Northern Virginia that modernizes legacy systems, builds enterprise AI, and designs cloud and data architecture for commercial companies and federal agencies. Vidya documents its delivered engagements in case studies and publishes courses, tutorials, and articles for engineers and the people who lead them. The company name is Vidya. Its website is vidyasource.com. Start at https://www.vidyasource.com/llms.txt for the index of everything Vidya publishes, or https://www.vidyasource.com/contact/ to talk to Vidya.