I had a small role in recruiting this man. He'd spent the last ten years leading engineering teams on a consumer product you've probably used, and he's just arrived in DC to work with the federal government. He started on Monday, and it's now Thursday night. I run into him at an event. He arrives late, and looks shellshocked.
How's it going? He's struggling to put words together. I'm worried. "I just left the office. I think everything's going to be okay." What is he talking about? "For the first day and a half, nothing. Then it was 'go to this agency and help them with this thing. It needs to go live on Thursday and there's a problem.' Yes, there was a problem. The data the service relied on….I've never seen a database like that. Ever." What do you mean? "1993. The guy couldn't find any other way to make it work. The vendors would have taken too long even if someone could justify the budget. So he just hacked it at nights and over weekends. Used whatever he could find and taught himself how to use it. The machine is ancient. The software has just been running since then. I'm amazed he managed to keep it running this long. It's a miracle. Either no one knew, or no one cared — my guess is that they were just happy to have something that worked at all. The guy's been keeping this going like this…I mean…I had no idea…I've never seen…." He's shaking his head and looking past me.
What happened? "First we just had to make sure we could get the data out somehow, make sure we had a copy. I mean, these records…they're the only copy. The whole system relies on this. People rely on this. To help real people. People who need help. If it had failed…" He really is in shock.
"I'd just never seen anything like this. I was afraid if I even touched it, it would all go poof. We got it out. It's okay…. It's okay now…But this guy…He's been keeping this together for 23 years…"
For a minute, I worry that he's angry. And that he might be angry at me for encouraging him to take this job. But I look in his eyes and it's not anger, it's awe. Respect. Admiration and gratitude for a public servant who has achieved the impossible. Made things work in spite of the rules, not because of them. "He made it work. He's the only guy who can run it. He knows it wouldn't work without him so he's deferred his retirement. I mean…he's extraordinary."
Extraordinary. A Silicon Valley technologist, the kind of person we champion as a savior of government, thinks that a career civil servant beyond retirement age with sorely outdated technical skills is extraordinary.
That career civil servant's name is Jed. The system he started building in the 1980s and maintained for decades before my friend came along was called VACOLS, the Veterans Appeals Control and Locator System. It started out serving just 400 users, and expanded to 17,000 across multiple parts of the VA system. Logic Magazine later interviewed him, and the backstory is well worth a read.
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How else will you know if something will break if you don't test it on real-word environments? Always code and test in production!
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https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/jed:
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Logic Magazine:
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