18F/18f.gsa.gov

---
title: "Holly Allen: Helping engineer a better 18F"
date: 2016-08-15
authors:
- melody
tags:
- staff profiles
- college scorecard
excerpt: "Holly Allen came to 18F from Dreamworks Animation and the Public Library of Science. She joined 18F in pursuit of a way \"to use technology to address big societal problems.\" After hearing about the U.S. Digital Service and 18F from US Chief Technology Officer, Megan Smith, she was inspired to join."
description: "Holly Allen came to 18F from Dreamworks Animation and the Public Library of Science. She joined 18F in pursuit of a way \"to use technology to address big societal problems.\" After hearing about the U.S. Digital Service and 18F from US Chief Technology Officer, Megan Smith, she was inspired to join."
image: /assets/img/team/holly.jpg
hero: false
---
<figure class="align-right">
    <img src="{{site.baseurl}}{{page.image}}" alt="Profile photo for Holly Allen.">
    <figcaption class="align-center">Holly Allen, Director of Engineering</figcaption>
</figure><br>

*All throughout the summer, we’ll be profiling members across the 18F
team. Holly Allen joined 18F in August 2015 after a lengthy career as a
software engineer and manager at Dreamworks Animation and in scientific
publishing. She currently leads 18F’s Engineering Chapter, and was
previously the product lead for College Scorecard.*

**Melody Kramer: Tell me about your path to 18F.**

**Holly Allen:** Before 18F**,** I was the head of the software
department at the Public Library of Science (PLOS), which is a
scientific publisher. I started at PLOS after spending eight years at
Dreamworks Animation. Making movies was an amazing experience, and after
many years of that I was looking for more social impact in my work. PLOS
was good, because I got to work on interesting problems and learn about
scholarly publishing. But when I heard about all of the work happening
in civic technology and how people were finding ways to use technology
to address big societal problems, I got really inspired.

**MK: How did you find out about 18F?**

**HA:** Through my alumni network. [Megan
Smith](https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/administration/eop/ostp/about/leadershipstaff/smith),
the Chief Technology Officer of the United States, and I went to same
college and when she became CTO, a story about that came through the MIT
alumni network channels. In the same article, it said that former CTO
Todd Park was coming back to Silicon Valley to recruit. I thought to
myself “I wonder what kind of recruiting?” because I didn’t know about
software engineers in government. It turns out, there are lots of
software engineers in government, and I found out about the U.S. Digital
Service and 18F through them.

**MK: Why did you decide to join?**

**HA:** For a few years I’ve been turning my career towards social
impact projects. I’m very motivated to spend my working days actively
making the world better in a tangible way. Finding a way to do that with
a technology background was tricky before I found civic tech.

Looking at 18F and the projects it was taking on, it really seemed like
it would be a way to use my strengths and experience while helping make
things better for everyday people.

**MK: What have you worked on so far?**

**HA:** The first thing I got to do was be a Product Lead for [College
Scorecard](https://18f.gsa.gov/tags/college-scorecard/). I worked with
18F, USDS, and the Department of Education, and it was a great
experience. It’s a great example of the kinds of projects that skilled
engineers and designers can help with, and I really liked that I got to
work on a public-facing project.

After that, I became Director of Engineering, so my role is to make
Engineering as diverse, inclusive, welcoming, and exemplary as possible
so those engineers can create amazing government services for the
American public.

**MK: What has been the most impactful project you’ve worked on?**

**HA:** In Engineering, we have functional leads who are each tasked with
making Engineering better in a certain way. We have leads focused on
back end development, front end development, diversity, operations, and
security. Without creating a bunch of top-down rules, they’ve been able
to do things like interview engineers on certain projects and get a
sense of how things are the same or different across projects, what’s
working, and what isn’t. We can then improve how we staff, kick off, or
hand back projects so that we all get better in these ways, in a
collaborative environment instead of a top-down system.

James Scott, who leads diversity, made an exit interview template to
ensure we learn the right things from departing engineers about their
experiences at 18F. I recently reused some of those questions in the
mid-year performance reviews. By asking every current engineer the same
set of questions I was able to create an engineering climate report
which showed that overall engineers are satisfied, motivated, and feel
they are treated fairly and can raise work issues. He’s also helping
with engineering interview guides to make sure we have inclusive
questions, and that our success criteria eliminate bias as much as
possible. We don’t want interviewers to think “I want to work with this
person because they’re like me.” We made success criteria that will
assess ability and capability, teamwork and core values.

**MK: Are there any anecdotes or stories that you can share about
overcoming obstacles on your project.**

**HA:** Like a lot of growing organizations, 18F has just passed Dunbar’s
number, which is the limit to the number of people who you can sustain
stable relationships with. (In other words, we’re now too big for
everyone to know everyone within 18F.) As a result, we’ve had to learn
how to communicate as a larger group of people. And so communication of
decisions or changes coming or impacts of things continues to be a
challenge, but we’re working on processes to continually improve as we
grow.

**MK: What was most surprising to you about joining 18F and the federal
government?**

**HA:** Something that was very pleasantly surprising was that
everything I read on the blog and saw on GitHub and read on Twitter
turned out to be true. It really is a place to come in and do great work
that you’re skillful at and have a tremendous impact. And the caliber of
people is incredible.

On a different level, I knew that I would come in and learn about
government process but the size, scope, and complexity of that was
surprising to me. That sounds naive but there is no end to what you
could learn about how government works, and it’s a separate skillset, and
I like that I’m learning that that’s a thing. It gives me a better
appreciation that we can’t just rush into “fix things.” We have to learn
the policies, and we have to create solutions together with our agency
partners, as well as the public. It helps me appreciate the depths of
that statement.

**MK: What would you tell your colleagues from a previous job who were
contemplating coming to 18F?**

**HA:** I would say it’s the best job I’ve ever had. The mission is
bar-none the most impactful mission you’re ever likely to work on and we
have the right people here to move it forward. It’s also going to be
really hard like most other things worth doing. And you have amazing
supportive people working alongside you.

**MK: What do you hope to take with you?**

**HA:** Two answers: This is the most design-centric group I’ve ever
worked with. I cannot go back from that. Our ratio of designers and
engineers is nearly 1:1 and there are many different kinds of designers.
I was used to having a single designer on the product team but not
content vs. ux designers vs. ethnography experts vs. visual designers.
I’m completely won over to the benefits of a design-driven organization.

The second thing is I don’t think I can go back to working on projects
that don’t make immediate, really positive improvements to the lives of
my fellow humans.