Top all-time · #6176
Jennifer Pahlka
Personal blog · eatingpolicy.compoliticseconomics
Jennifer Pahlka writes Eating Policy, a personal blog at eatingpolicy.com about politics and economics. Since 2024, 13 different Hacker News readers have linked it 27 times, most often “Jennifer Pahlka – Dear Mr. Kapor: Please Fix Federal Hiring”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-26, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (11) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Jennifer Pahlka's Substack on government technology, digital services, contracting and regulation. Several commenters explicitly recommend it as informative and as putting arguments better than they could.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 11 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
In business, culture eats strategy. In government, culture eats policy. Here we'll talk about the problems of state capacity (government's ability to achieve its policy goals) and how to fix them. From the author of Recoding America. Click to read Eating Policy, by Jennifer Pahlka, a Substack public
Most-linked posts?
- Jennifer Pahlka – Dear Mr. Kapor: Please Fix Federal Hiring3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-12-23
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-08-30
- Wishing for a more orderly disruption may misunderstand government reform2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-12-14
- The Recoding America Fund2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-10-22
- What Doge Didn't Do2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-06-04
What Hacker News says?
An insightful comment on this from an American context, but about basically the same problem [0] > Read the regs and you can absolutely see how complying with them to allow for banana peeling could become prohibitively costly. But the debate of whether they are pro-fruit or anti-fruit misses the point. If daycares end up serving bags of chips instead of bananas, that’s the impact they’ve had. Maybe you could blame a…
Comment linking /p/stop-telling-constituents-theyre
on “Lfgss shutting down 16th March 2025 (day before Online Safety Act is enforced)”Submitted Wishing for a more orderly disruption may misunderstand government reform as a story · 159 points
HN discussion> Evaluate ideas (or bills) for their merits, not based on who originated them. Ideas? Sure. Bills? No. So much of how a piece of legislation affects society has to do with the agendas of the people behind it (no matter what it says in text) and the means by which the executive implements it (often hand-in-glove with the agendas of the legislation’s originators). https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/understanding-the-casc…
Comment linking /p/understanding-the-cascade-of-rigidity
on “Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope”Submitted Robert Moses's unfinished business should be Mamdani's priority as a story · 14 points
HN discussionIn many ways, the fact that Digital Service intervention was useful/necessary there, and the fact that you thought that other than liaising with other feds they "didn't do anything" is indicative of a major--perhaps the major--issue with the government's overreliance on contractors for technical projects: since the contractors are tasked with building, and the non-contractor feds are tasked with approving/releasing/…
Comment linking /p/understanding-the-cascade-of-rigidity
on “The story of DOGE, as told by federal workers”Submitted What Doge Didn't Do as a story · 5 points
HN discussionHer Substack is pretty good too: https://www.eatingpolicy.com/
Comment linking /
on “Judge rules $400M algorithmic system illegally denied Medicaid benefits”Submitted The Recoding America Fund as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThat would help a tiny amount. The bigger problem, which GP alluded to and which is very, very frustrating to entangle, is the incentives around accountability . Pahlka’s writing puts it better than I could: https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/the-water-is-a-mirror https://www.niskanencenter.org/culture-eats-policy/
Comment linking /p/the-water-is-a-mirror
on “U.S. already has the critical minerals it needs, according to new analysis”Submitted Government Accountability Office Gets Schooled by the Department of Education as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> Nothing like putting in a multi decade civil service career and coming in one day to find a 20-something installed over you GS grade does not correspond directly to manager/managee relationships at plenty of federal agencies. Someone getting hired at a higher GS grade is not automatically “over you” in the formal reporting hierarchy. That’s not to say this never happens (GS:org chart level is the case more often t…
Comment linking /p/dear-mr-kupor-please-fix-federal
on “US Tech Force”Submitted Better Politicians: Weeding Is Fundamental as a story · 3 points
HN discussionJen Pahlka—a HealthCare.gov rescue team member who helped start the US Digital Service—has been writing a really informative series of posts that summarize what the Obama administration learned from its efforts to make government more efficient. Here's a good starting point: "Bringing Elon to a Knife Fight": https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/bringing-elon-to-a-knife-figh... The basic goal of making government work well…
Comment linking /p/bringing-elon-to-a-knife-fight
on “United States Digital Service renamed to DOGE”Submitted Jen Pahlka – What DOGE Didn't Do as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI think good salaries are necessary but far from sufficient. This blog seems good, here's a post on hiring in particular: https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/dear-mr-kupor-please-fix-fede...
Comment linking /p/dear-mr-kupor-please-fix-federal
on “How the US built 5k ships in WWII”Submitted Jennifer Pahlka – Dear Mr. Kapor: Please Fix Federal Hiring as a story · 3 points
HN discussionYes, because private companies aren’t subject to the PRA like federal agencies are. FWIW, I’m not sure that TSA ID verification does indeed have a PRA claim in the way the article asserts, and I am very sure that the PRA is a dumb law that needs to be removed: https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/why-the-paperwork-reduction-a...
Comment linking /p/why-the-paperwork-reduction-act-needs
on “The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal”Submitted The Recoding America Fund as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> Regulation that’s defined entirely in terms of the technology it regulates, as opposed to in terms of the effects it has on society or imposing boundaries and limits on the technology itself, is a core component of the technopolistic political and legislative environment. Incredible article, a lot to unpack here, but I found this particular offhand tidbit interesting. It does seem like any attempt at tech industry…
Comment linking /
on “The old world of tech is dying and the new cannot be born”Submitted Jed as a story · 2 points
HN discussionEven if it's better than Argentina's, it's still not good: https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/grasping-at-paper-straws Contracting policy/regulation is an area that accumulates the worst tendencies of government rulemaking: 1. Corruption results in hyper-specific rules being advanced. 2. It's very difficult to un-do regulation without replacing it, so rules often stay in place broadly even when whoever wanted them isn't…
Comment linking /p/grasping-at-paper-straws
on “Federal vendor with $50M in contracts leaves portal broken for a month”Submitted Thoughts for Inauguration Day as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Congress, you might want to take a look at this- What might DOGE have brewing? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Three Horizons Framework for Government Reform as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Trial by Fire: Crisis Engineering as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Channel your inner Marie Kondo – identifying and eliminating policy clutter as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Project vs. Product Funding as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
