Holly

Think the DOGE layoffs are just hitting DC? Think again. As many as 200,000 federal workers have their jobs in jeopardy all across the country as workers on probationary periods and in the DOGE crosshairs are finding out, often on the news, that their positions or whole divisions are being eliminated. I wanted to see where in the country these layoffs were most concentrated, so I ran a Deep Research analysis on OpenAI and gave it some of the sources below. It's far from the blue state bloodbath one might expect: Texas is expected to lose up to 15,000 jobs across the Austin IRS service center, NASA Johnson Space Center, and a wide variety of civilian roles. Florida could lose as many as 10,000, including NOAA Hurricane Center and Kennedy Space Center technicians -- many of America's brightest minds. National Park Service staff in the mountain states and USDA field office staff in the breadbasket states are getting fired by the hundreds. Small Business Administration field offices in all 50 states are shedding the people who process small business loans. And as you get ready for tax season, hundreds of IRS customer service personnel are packing up shop. We will learn over the next few months what core government functions can get by with fewer staff (at least for some time) and what services will grind to a halt. As someone running a small business, paying taxes, riding planes, and eating American beef and eggs, I'm grateful to public servants, now and tomorrow. To those who are now looking for work: Your skills are needed in local government! Work for America's Civic Match is a great way to find rewarding roles in your community. And if you happen to be a full stack engineer looking to transition into startups ?? Holly is hiring! Grateful for all of your work and hopeful about the future of public service. Sources: https://lnkd.in/e7hBAYYi https://lnkd.in/ehRu74AU https://lnkd.in/eqQcMyXb Note: these are estimates based on public data, but DOGE hasn't offered precise numbers anywhere, leading us to compile lots of sources and make fair inference. We'd appreciate anyone with more context to share more! #FederalLayoffs #GovernmentJobs #PublicSectorJobs #JobCuts #FederalWorkforce #PolicyChange #GovernmentEfficiency #EconomicImpact #IRS #NASA #DOGE #FiredFed #FiredFeds

They say part of the founder life is you're always hiring… it's true! At Holly, we're looking for a standout founding engineer with a strong backend and data capability to help us tackle a massive challenge: 1M vacant local government jobs that are crippling essential services. If you're an experienced engineer who's excited about: ?? Building data systems & LLM pipelines from the ground up ?? Solving complex technical challenges with real social impact ?? Joining an early-stage, venture backed team tackling a $85B problem ...I'd love to chat! DM me or see the post below for details. #Hiring #FoundingEngineer #StartupJobs #SoftwareEngineering #TechHiring #GovTech #HRTech #PublicSectorInnovation #TechForGood #CivicTech

?? We're hiring a Founding Engineer to drive the future of government work! ?? Right now, nearly one million jobs in local governments sit vacant, costing taxpayers $85B in overtime and crippling essential services. At Holly, we're changing that through AI-powered software that modernizes public sector hiring. We're looking for someone passionate about: ?? Architecting data systems that power our AI hiring platform ?? Building scalable infrastructure for hundreds of government clients ?? Developing LLM pipelines that transform government data into insights ?? Shaping our engineering culture from the ground up Location: Brooklyn, NY Compensation: $140K-$180K + Equity Interested? Email?[email protected]. See the full posting here: https://lnkd.in/dYpT8s3G Know a great engineer who wants to modernize the public sector? Tag them below! #govtech #hiring #engineering #publicsector #jobs #tech #startups

??? Local Gov News! ?? "Across the U.S., it can take upwards of?100 days?to fill a public sector position, leading to application backlogs, delayed hires and often overtime work for the existing staff." "That’s why Long Beach is embarking on a pilot program to leverage the AI platform Holly to innovate and streamline its recruitment and hiring process. The platform is designed to generate AI-enabled drafts of job descriptions and leverage a database of more than 45,000 local jobs to help determine position salaries." Thank you, Kaitlyn Levinson and Route Fifty for highlighting Holly's work with the City of Long Beach to accelerate class & comp for hundreds of local government jobs. We are recruiting additional pilot partners for a learning cohort starting this spring. Want to learn more? Check out our webinar in the comments! #localgov #govtech #hr #govhr #ai #startups

??? Some big Holly news! ?? "Across the U.S., it can take upwards of 100 days to fill a public sector position, leading to application backlogs, delayed hires and often overtime work for the existing staff. "That’s why Long Beach is embarking on a pilot program to leverage the AI platform Holly to innovate and streamline its recruitment and hiring process. The platform is designed to generate AI-enabled drafts of job descriptions and leverage a database of more than 45,000 local jobs to help determine position salaries." Thank you, Kaitlyn Levinson for reporting how Holly is working to transform the future of public service! Route Fifty was one of the first places I'd go to learn about local gov innovation when I was in Baltimore city government, so it's such an honor to have our work shared to your readers. Local gov friends -- we're recruiting additional pilot jurisdictions for a learning community using AI to accelerate government hiring. Happy to chat and share more! We're also running a webinar on February 12th from 2-3pm ET, please sign up below and share with your colleagues!

Congratulations to the Holly team on this incredible milestone!

?? It’s off to the races! ?? I’m so excited to share that Holly has raised $2.2M, launched with an incredible customer, and is growing our team to welcome millions of Americans into fulfilling public sector careers. We founded Holly because we believe that public service is vital, fulfilling, and under-resourced. It’s a civic calling that deserves the best tools and capabilities – built by people who understand how government works and delivers value to the public. I’m proud to share our vision with our investors, J2 Ventures, Roble Ventures, and Gaingels. Christine Keung, who served in San Jose government, and David Pérez Hernández, also an HKS/HBS jointee, see that the future of government work depends both on hiring 10x faster and on building a workforce with intentionality and rigor around performance and inclusion. We also have a fabulous group of angel investors who bring deep experience as leaders in our industry and as public servants themselves. And I’m grateful for my cofounder, Cherie: we’ve learned so much building Holly together over the last year, hopping on customer calls in between graduation ceremonies and troubleshooting features by the Christmas tree. What’s next: we’re bringing together a cohort of pilot customers to share learnings and try new features and are looking for cities and counties interested in transforming class & comp. Excited to share more soon! Check us out! https://lnkd.in/ebEY_dEK #GovTech #AI #FutureOfWork #PublicService #startups

We are so excited to share that Holly has secured $2.2M in preseed funding to transform public sector hiring! Our mission is to bring millions of Americans into fulfilling public sector careers through software that treats them with hospitality and care. The future of public work is at stake: Government hiring shouldn’t take 135 days or cost $86B in overtime. Holly makes hiring faster, fairer, and more effective for 24M public sector roles. Huge thanks to J2 Ventures, Roble Ventures, Gaingels, and all our partners and supporters who believe in this vision. Let’s modernize government hiring together. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/eG6WwZ2w #GovTech #AI #FutureOfWork #hr #startups #vc

?? ?? What a year 2024 has been! It's easy to just focus on milestones, so here's what really happened, from pivot hell to finding our footing in civic technology ?? Q1 ??: Startup purgatory. After losing our first pilot for a previous idea, Cherie Chung and I felt stuck. We nearly quit and got jobs, but we took a couple more weeks in March to zoom out and talk to potential customers. We considered building labor marketplaces for search fund businesses, some fintech ideas, and got JUST enough positive feedback to dive into local gov hiring. I'm so glad we stuck it out. Q2 ??: Okay. We know that local gov hiring is a big issue -- now how do we address it? We were talking to customers between final exams, after graduation ceremonies, trying to figure out what, exactly, we should build. We almost brought on another cofounder, got a lot of "not yet" emails from VCs, and slowly learned how local govs buy software. We went from working in the iLab to apartment amenity floors and cafes. Q3 ??: This was our breakthrough quarter. We signed our first customer, took on angel checks from founders we admire, went to our first conference in KC, and started our raise (still can't believe how that turned out ??). At one point, we had $700 in the bank and a $10k+ invoice looming -- but we just made it through. We saw that local govs need help designing great jobs and worked with First Mate Technologies to build the platform. Q4 ??: It's feeling real! We launched with Long Beach, made our first hire, and started our "real jobs" with W2s and health insurance. We flew to Mexico City, SF, San Jose, Long Beach, and worked our way through each city's WeWorks and City Halls. In between it all, we both moved to New York City after six months living out of suitcases. It sometimes feels slow, sometimes feels too fast, but this founding year has been the opportunity of a lifetime to find purpose and satisfaction in creating something meaningful. So lucky to have a brilliant cofounder, colleagues, supporters, advisors, friends, and family making this journey possible. Here's to strengthening public service in 2025! ?? #StartUps #GovTech #YearInReview #PublicService

Meet Taspia Khan! Taspia is in her junior year at Harvard, studying computer science and psychology, and joined us for the past semester as a software engineering intern. We've been grateful to have her work with us to improve our product and design, and we're excited for all the amazing ways she will have a positive impact in her career in AI, technology, and human-centered design and development! Thank you, Taspia! ?? Tell us about yourself: “Hi, I’m Taspia! I’m currently a junior at Harvard, double majoring in computer science and psychology. I’m passionate about the intersection of these disciplines, which I like to call the “human side of tech.” This refers to how technology impacts individuals and society as a whole. From a young age, I’ve been passionate about advocacy and helping others. Through my coursework and experiences, I’ve realized that technology can be a powerful tool to achieve those goals.” ??? Why Holly? “Holly’s commitment to meaningful impact resonated with me deeply, and this internship has been incredibly fulfilling. During my time at Holly, I had the opportunity to work directly with the engineering team on front-end development projects. Additionally, I explored the product and design side of tech, an area I had little prior experience in. I created my own designs using Figma and collaborated with the product team to make design and workflow decisions for the platform. Overall, this experience allowed me to engage with multiple parts of tech, from engineering to design, and deepened my understanding of how these areas come together to create impactful products.” If you're interested in joining Holly as an intern, we'll be searching for summer interns starting in the spring, and we're always looking for more engineering talent! #civictech #govtech #AI #internships #softwareengineering #product #socialimpact #hiring