Top all-time · #6382
Ad Hoc
Company blog · adhocteam.usprogrammingcareer
Ad Hoc is the company blog at adhocteam.us, writing about programming and career. Since 2015, 13 different Hacker News readers have linked it 19 times, most often “We use homework to recruit engineers – Ad Hoc”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-20, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (12) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Ad Hoc, a remote government software contractor that came out of the HealthCare.gov rescue, mainly for its hiring posts and its playbook. Its homework-interview essay is also cited.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 12 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Ad Hoc brings small teams of skilled professionals together to build government digital services that are fast, efficient, and usable by everyone.
Most-linked posts?
- /3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-03-20
- /join/2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-06-01
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-05-02
- We use homework to recruit engineers – Ad Hoc2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-08-21
- Stop your (business rules) engines2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-06-20
What Hacker News says?
There are also a couple contractors that came out of the healthcare.gov rescue (notably: Nava [1] and Ad Hoc [2]) trying to do the same kind of work. I recently left a long career at Google to work for Ad Hoc, and we get to work alongside the great folks at USDS trying to make things better. Hit me up if you're interested in getting into this space! [1] https://www.navapbc.com/ [2] https://adhocteam.us/
Comment linking /
on “Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display”Submitted Stop your (business rules) engines as a story · 5 points
HN discussionID.me | Tysons Corner, VA (onsite) | https://www.ID.me Hey HN - I'm Tony Huynh, VP Engineering @ ID.me. Over the past 5 years we've grown from a military-focused daily deals company to taking on the challenge of digital identity. We just won a contract with Veterans Affairs to allow Veterans the ability to access all of their online benefits and services in a secure, trusted and reusable manner - https://adhocteam.u…
Comment linking /2016/05/03/vets.gov/
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2016)”Submitted We use homework to recruit engineers – Ad Hoc as a story · 3 points
HN discussionID.me | Tysons Corner, VA | Onsite | https://www.ID.me Over the past 5 years we've grown from a military-focused daily deals company to taking on the challenge of digital identity. We just won a contract with Veterans Affairs to enable Veterans the ability to access all of their online benefits and services in a trusted way - https://adhocteam.us/2016/05/03/vets.gov/ To grow our team, we're looking for: * Site Relia…
Comment linking /2016/05/03/vets.gov/
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2016)”Submitted Stop your (business rules) engines as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAd Hoc | REMOTE (U.S.-only) | Full-time | https://adhocteam.us/ Ad Hoc is hiring developers, designers, & project managers to help people get health insurance, help veterans get the benefits they're entitled to, & help government deliver these services to people. We're a small software company that came out of the HealthCare.gov rescue. We bring modern software engineering & design practices to government, to design…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2016)”Submitted Stop Using Business Rule Engines in Your Software as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAd Hoc | Software Engineer, DevOps, UX Researcher | REMOTE (US-Based), No Visas Ad Hoc is a small (but rapidly growing) software engineering company that came out of the successful effort to rescue HealthCare.gov after its disastrous initial launch. Ad Hoc is focused on delivering and operating fast, stable, and well-designed services on behalf of U.S. federal and state government that enables agencies to provide tr…
Comment linking /join/
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2017)”Submitted Creating a platform for employee-internal apps with GCP as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAd Hoc LLC | DevOps, Front-end, UX, Design, Product | Washington, DC | REMOTE https://adhocteam.us/join/ We build government digital services that are fast, efficient, and usable by everyone. Ad Hoc brings small teams of highly skilled professionals from the private sector to build government software right the first time. Ad Hoc is a remote-first company. Our team is located all over the country, in places like Was…
Comment linking /join/
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2017)”Submitted The Ad Hoc Government Digital Services Playbook as a story · 1 points
HN discussion(Former 18Fer here) If you're interested in getting involved in government-focused work, there are a ton of fantastic organizations hiring right now. One warning, before you consider applying to any of these orgs: please do not see yourself as a savior. There are a ton of smart people already in government who have tried everything before. More smart, talented people are great, but appreciate and respect those who h…
Comment linking /
on “How Go helped save HealthCare.gov”Ad Hoc | Remote, Fully Remote Company (U.S.) | Full-time | Multiple Roles | Civic Tech Ad Hoc is a digital services company that helps the federal government better serve people. Our team of experts from across commercial industry and government brings the modern skills necessary to help agencies transform public services into digital services. Our work enables agencies to meet the needs of their users while closing…
Comment linking /join/
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2020)”At the risk of being self-promotional, there's another part of the rebel alliance of which USDS and 18F are the main players, and that is better technology contractors. ("Better" meaning, engineering practices and outcomes that the audience of this site would recognize.) There's Nava, and the company I co-founded, Ad Hoc. Greg and I were on the original HealthCare.gov rescue squad with Mikey et. al. We're still work…
Comment linking /
on “The US digital service”At Ad Hoc, we have a version of this that expands on the USDS one with our own experiences and opinions: https://www.adhocteam.us/playbook/ If you want to make change in the government, and don't want to become a federal employee, being a contractor is an alternative that you might consider: https://www.adhocteam.us/join/ It can be frustrating work, but it can also be enormously satisfying; I've been doing it now fo…
Comment linking /join/
on “USDS Digital Services Playbook”> And that's the problem: it's free. Interviews have a nice limiting function; if it's a waste of the candidate's time, then it's a waste of the company's time. Not so with homework assignments. The company I work at's primary screener is homework, and it takes us a ton of time and effort to grade homeworks, this argument does not make any sense. https://adhocteam.us/2018/02/26/why-we-use-homework-to-recru...
Comment linking /2018/02/26/why-we-use-homework-to-recruit-engineers/
on “Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments”Disclosure - I met David Recordon via Healthcare.gov It's a true statement that he is facing an uphill battle. However, it's heartening to hear that he's making the move because he's been doing this job already for the last couple months - just as a individual contractor on loan to the government. The fact that he's willing to keep doing the admittedly difficult but critically important work of securing White House…
Comment linking /
on “Facebook's Engineering Director Is Headed to the White House”
