NASA Force

In fact, a bunch of NASA labs were recently closed where folks with this exact skillset could do these exact jobs. Why re-post under a different skin and expect a different result?

Though its an odd choice that they run it in with the paragraph of normal text rather than making that a heading. Of course, with a four day hiring window its a website that exists as pro forma evidence that there was a public website about the hiring effort, the people actually intended to be hired were almost certainly notified in advance out of band, so there probably wasn't a whole lot of effort put into this.

is somewhere in that word salad. I think it's an internship?

i doubt it's that great, NASA is a huge government organization. There may be a handful of people/teams doing cool things but I suspect much of it is infuriating slow and bureaucratic. However, it's probably a good place to retire from if you're willing to put in the 30-40 years.

Either it's "We're hiring ~1000 IT/Engineering specialists across multiple domains" or it's "Hey, just apply on USAJobs for the open positions".

Otherwise it just feels like throwing an application into the black hole of some kafkaesque talent management system.

Yes. And it always did since the 1950s unless you were interested in relocating.

Ffs aerospace engineering cannot be done remotely, and that too in a city with a nonexistent aerospace industry.

> Does that mean there are legitimately no other jobs open for tech-related folks? What is the point of the fancy landing page (that provides zero actual info) if that's the case? No Data Science or developer openings for tech folk that don't have Abet certified engineering degrees

Not all industries need SWEs who are CRUD monkeys. And your assumption deeply underestimates how most Aerospace and Mechanical Engineers know how to develop at a CS level now as well - most MechE and Aerospace undergrad programs now see their students double major or minor in CompE or CS.

I have the specific Computer Science/Engineering degree they spell out in length in one question (30 credit hours CS, 16 credit hours math/calculus/stats) so I feel like that gives me a chance on top of the narrow window.

Glad I skipped ahead on the optional essay section. YOLO.

Windows by any chance?

This is a call for developers of the very long tail of logistics related stuff. I'd imagine a moon base would need someone to write the software for schedulers, dashboards, etc. and engineer the parts that interface with and provide non-critical telemetry to those systems. I'm not saying that stuff isn't hard, but it's not anything life or death.

Some of those roles might not even be technical at all and be more about coordinating the human side of those efforts.

Intern project?

They specify early to mid career. Imo they're anticipating a ton of applications and bounding it makes reviewing them tractable.

But can we really rule out it being part of such a strategy?

You know how (scheduled, ie you buy tickets to SF, no prior relation to the crew, money for a service) aviation is incredibly safe? Well, one way you can continue increasing safety when you've already fixed all the things which keep going wrong enough that they happened and you corrected for them, is collect incidents where things didn't go wrong.

But obviously no pilot is going to just say "I nearly killed everybody" in public 'cos that's career ending, so ASRS collects these reports anonymously and in fact promises you immunity for certain things if you reported them first. So they can see e.g. sure nobody ever died on a plane because a pilot pushed the "kill everybody" button on the new Boeing cost-optimised "It's probably fine" B123-Extra but here are six reports from pilots who pushed "kill everybody" but were able to push "Whoops, no don't do that" in the six seconds left to prevent it. So this means no the FAA should not approve Boeing's request to remove the "unnecessary" Whoops button from future models and actually maybe the FAA OK for the "kill everybody" button should be revisited 'cos it doesn't say anything about pilots pressing it easily by accident in Boeing's request...

One of my customers right now is frustrated because they have the tower closed at weird hours at their principle base of operations and they can't depart flights conveniently because of staffing shortages. Clearances are a bitch too... the whole thing is kind of wild and it's kind of a safety hazard when this airport goes uncontrolled. Anything that would help out - even cameras that would let the tower controllers at the primary airport see WTF is happening at the satellite field would be helpful...

the space part gets the most attention

That said if this bothers you I highly recommend not looking up how many Space Shuttle missions are classified.

Edits (in case my meaning above is not clear):

1. When I write "but we want the opposite to be true" I mean this: if only Trump-aligned or Trump-tolerant people sign up for these roles, I do not think this is desirable for NASA.

2. When I write "I understand the spirit of this comment (and I get it)" I mean: from an individual point of view, I fully grant that many people would be better off seeking work elsewhere.

3. My experience and scientific research shows that people are not merely selfish actors. While individual incentives matter a lot, perhaps even predominantly, it isn't accurate to claim that we can fully explain human behavior with exclusively narrow individualist framings.

4. Many of us act selfishly much of the time, and this is indeed reasonable and even beneficial at times. But taken to an extreme it can be worse overall, even for those individuals. See: game theory, social connections, morality, and so on.

5. When I write "Let's find ways to support good people who step up" I do mean concrete things such as "let's crowdfund ethical people's legal fees" to survive the Trump administration.