The CFPB is living up to its reputation as the hip new kid in the executive branch. Created as part of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ditched the stodgy reputation of old-school government regulators, opting for a younger staff drawn from careers not often targeted by the public sector (Audrey Chen, a 33-year-old designer who once worked at Comedy Central is often cited as an example). That ethos has translated into a chic website epitomizing the ideals of Web 2.0: open-source software, clean fonts with plenty of white space, and loads of interactive data.
The agency upped its geek quotient earlier this week with a not-so-secret easter egg. They buried a new job posting for a two-year design and technology fellowship within the announcement of new mortgage disclosure forms. Wannabe applicants would find the following message if they dug into the page’s source code:
It’s hard to imagine many potential applicants digging through CFPB source code (Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic spotted it thanks to a CFPB employees’ tweet), so the fellowship is also listed on the agency’s jobs page. But who knows, perhaps programmers desperate to work for the new agency should test a combination of up, down, B and A on the CFPB’s website.
