US Tech Force Reforms Federal Hiring and Culture for Modernization

Odd Lots · December 25, 2025 · Listen to Original Episode →

Original Title:

TL;DR

The US Tech Force initiative aims to recruit 1,000 engineers for two-year stints to modernize federal infrastructure, addressing a critical early-career pipeline deficit and the government's struggle with legacy systems.
Federal hiring reforms will eliminate degree and tenure requirements in pay schedules, enabling merit-based advancement and allowing individuals to be compensated based on demonstrated skill rather than years of service.
A shift from a "lifetime employment" narrative to emphasizing challenging problem-solving and career options aims to attract tech talent by offering meaningful public service and transferable skills.
The government is moving away from a zero-risk culture by enabling measured risk-taking and reforming performance management to recognize outstanding contributions, thereby differentiating compensation and improving retention.
The US Tech Force program emphasizes keeping recruited tech talent in cohesive teams within agencies to prevent them from being "swallowed by the beast" of bureaucracy and ensure project success.
By addressing the operational inefficiencies of manual processes, like the online retirement application, the government seeks to improve service delivery and free up existing staff for more complex tasks.
The initiative acknowledges that while government compensation cannot match top private sector tech salaries, it can foster a culture of challenge, learning, and career development to attract and retain talent.

Deep Dive

The U.S. government faces a critical challenge in modernizing its technological infrastructure due to a persistent shortage of high-skilled tech talent, exacerbated by outdated hiring practices and a culture that discourages risk-taking. Scott Kupor, Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), is implementing initiatives like the "US Tech Force" to address this deficit by attracting top tech professionals for two-year rotations, aiming to inject new expertise and drive innovation across federal agencies. This effort is crucial for national security and efficient governance in an era increasingly defined by technological advancement and global competition.

The core of the problem lies in systemic barriers that make federal tech roles unappealing compared to the private sector. Federal hiring processes are often bogged down by bureaucracy, lengthy approval chains, and rigid qualification requirements that overlook merit in favor of tenure and formal education. This creates a talent pipeline issue, with the government struggling to attract early-career professionals and facing a looming wave of experienced worker retirements. Kupor's "US Tech Force" program aims to circumvent these issues by offering a structured, two-year engagement, partnering with private tech companies, and focusing on problem-solving rather than demanding a lifelong commitment. This approach acknowledges that many tech workers prioritize challenging problems, opportunities for learning, and career development over the traditional federal promise of lifetime employment, which Kupor argues is an outdated and uncompelling narrative.

Beyond hiring, the government's operational culture presents significant hurdles. A deeply ingrained compliance-based, zero-risk mindset, driven by fear of audits and congressional scrutiny, stifles innovation. This contrasts sharply with the venture capital world, where measured risk-taking is essential for maximizing upside. Kupor is championing a shift toward a "measured risk" culture, encouraging experimentation and rewarding performance more effectively. This includes reforming the performance management system, which historically inflates ratings and fails to differentiate outstanding contributions, and tying compensation more directly to actual performance. Furthermore, the government's reliance on outdated systems and manual processes, exemplified by OPM's own paper-based retirement system, highlights the urgent need for technological modernization and the skilled personnel to drive it. The "US Tech Force" is designed to tackle these modernization efforts, such as redesigning the online retirement application, while ensuring that knowledge transfer and documentation are prioritized to mitigate the impact of short-term roles and impending retirements.

The implications of these initiatives extend to the broader discourse on AI adoption and government efficiency. While the private sector is incrementally integrating AI, the government's approach must be similarly pragmatic, focusing on immediate productivity gains from existing tools like ChatGPT and co-pilot, rather than pursuing speculative future-state AI architectures. By addressing operational inefficiencies, modernizing hiring, and fostering a culture that embraces measured risk and performance-based rewards, the federal government can begin to bridge the talent gap and ensure its continued relevance and effectiveness in an increasingly complex technological landscape. This strategic infusion of talent and reform of internal processes is essential to prevent the government from being left behind as the world rapidly evolves.

Action Items

Audit federal hiring processes: Identify and eliminate 3-5 bureaucratic bottlenecks that delay candidate onboarding for technical roles.
Develop US Tech Force runbook: Define 5 key sections for knowledge transfer and integration with existing agency CIO organizations for two-year program participants.
Measure early-career pipeline gap: Calculate the percentage difference in early-career talent (under 5 years experience) between federal agencies and private sector benchmarks.
Implement merit-based technical assessments: Pilot a standardized coding or skills-based evaluation for 2-3 critical tech roles to replace self-attestation.
Evaluate performance management reform: Track the impact of new mandatory supervisor training on reducing inflated performance ratings (currently 80%+ fours and fives) within 6 months.

Key Quotes

"The government has a dearth of what I would call modern software expertise and modern AI tech you know technology expertise and that's not a knock at all on the organizations but a lot of what these big CIO organizations in the the challenges the government has to do is they're maintaining these massive legacy infrastructures and so the ability to do bespoke development is quite difficult in those organizations so this will be a vehicle to help them accelerate bespoke development across the entire government."

Scott Kupor explains that the federal government lacks current software and AI expertise due to the necessity of maintaining large, outdated infrastructure. The US Tech Force initiative aims to address this by enabling bespoke development across government agencies.

"The second problem we're trying to solve is uh we have a massive early career pipeline problem in the federal government so 7 of the federal workforce is early career let's call that less than five or seven years of working experience and that compares to about 22 23 in the non federal sector so by a factor of three to one the federal government is completely failing at getting early career people into government."

Scott Kupor highlights a significant issue in federal hiring: a severe shortage of early-career professionals. He notes that only 7% of the federal workforce is early-career, compared to over 20% in the private sector, indicating a systemic failure in attracting younger talent.

"The narrative in my mind is come work on the toughest biggest most complex problems you know do some public service but then give yourself career options and you know what if you want to go to the private sector after that you know god bless you that's a perfect thing to do so that's part of the problem the other problem is the nature of what happens in government and you know you know jen palka as you guys mentioned in your intro who's like brilliant on this stuff diagnosed it perfectly which is so much of what government does is it's a compliance based culture right."

Scott Kupor argues that the traditional narrative of federal employment as "lifetime employment" is uncompelling and inaccurate. He proposes a new narrative focused on tackling significant challenges and public service, while also offering career flexibility and acknowledging the government's inherent compliance-based culture.

"So for the first time ever now we have kind of avoided we've eliminated the risk that the agencies were worried about which is if i use a technical assessment to judge somebody in their employment process i might get sued you know under some type of disparate impact theory so we are now doing that so number one to answer your there's a long way to answer your question but so like the way we're going to evaluate people is they actually have to demonstrate merit."

Scott Kupor explains a recent regulatory change that allows federal agencies to use merit-based technical assessments for hiring. This shift, after a 43-year consent decree, removes the fear of legal challenges and enables the government to evaluate candidates based on demonstrated skills rather than just self-attestation.

"We have a process in the retirement services thing called interim pay right which is as the name sounds right the idea is okay can we get you some money on an interim basis that may not be 100 accurate but at least helps bridge this gap between when you when you retire and when you get your actual annuity check."

Scott Kupor describes the "interim pay" process within the Office of Personnel Management, designed to provide retirees with temporary financial support. This initiative aims to bridge the gap between an employee's retirement date and the issuance of their final annuity check, addressing a significant burden on retirees.

"So 92 and a half percent of the people who left the government did so because they decided you know this wasn't the environment they wanted to be in so that being said now look i totally agree with you which is we have to demonstrate to the people that are there and to the people who are coming in that you know we obviously care about them and that we think they do valuable work."

Scott Kupor states that the vast majority of federal employees who leave do so voluntarily, indicating a desire for different environments. He emphasizes the importance of demonstrating care and valuing the work of both current and prospective federal employees to foster trust and attract talent.

Resources

External Resources

Books

"Only the Paranoid Survive" by Andy Grove - Mentioned as a foundational text for understanding one-on-one meetings with team members.

Articles & Papers

"Federal Workforce’s Toll After a Year of DOGE and Trump: 317,000" (Bloomberg) - Provided as a link for further reading on federal workforce statistics.
"USDA Lost a Third of DC Staff Even Before Relocation Effort" (Bloomberg) - Provided as a link for further reading on federal workforce statistics.

People

Scott Kupor - Director of the US Office of Personnel Management, former partner at Andreessen Horowitz, discussed for his initiative to bring tech talent into the federal government.
Jennifer Palka - Mentioned for her insights on public sector technology and hiring processes.
Patrick McKenzie - Mentioned in discussions about legacy systems and hiring processes in the public sector.
Elon Musk - Mentioned in relation to tech people coming into the administration and the DOJ endeavor.
Joe Weisenthal - Co-host of the Odd Lots podcast.
Tracy Alloway - Co-host of the Odd Lots podcast.
Ben Horowitz - Mentioned as a former CEO and manager from whom Scott Kupor learned.
Marc Andreessen - Mentioned as a co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz and for his insights on technology adoption.
Tyler Cowen - Mentioned for his thesis on AI diffusion and the impact of AI-native organizations.
Lavano - Mentioned as the original plaintiff in a lawsuit regarding civil service exams.
Joe Jebbia - Co-founder of Airbnb, mentioned for leading a team redesigning the online retirement application at OPM.

Organizations & Institutions

US Tech Force - A new initiative by the US Office of Personnel Management to recruit engineers into the government.
US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) - The talent management organization for the federal government, responsible for policies related to hiring, performance management, and HR systems.
Andreessen Horowitz - Venture capital firm where Scott Kupor was a top partner.
Department of Justice (DOJ) - Mentioned in relation to tech people coming into the administration and a past endeavor.
Palantir - Mentioned for building AI that helps workers and for their narrative on AI elevating American workers.
Bloomberg - The source of the podcast and linked articles.
iheartradio - A platform where the Wayfinder podcast can be heard.
Apple Podcasts - A platform where the Wayfinder podcast can be heard.
National Football League (NFL) - Mentioned in the context of past discussions on sports analytics.
Pro Football Focus (PFF) - Mentioned in the context of past discussions on sports analytics.
New England Patriots - Mentioned as an example team for performance analysis in past discussions.
Code for America - Mentioned as a past endeavor with similar themes to current tech infusion efforts in government.
US Department of Agriculture (USDA) - Mentioned in relation to staff departures.
Microsoft - Mentioned as a significant client of the government for its products.
Google - Mentioned in discussions about compensation for tech workers.
Facebook - Mentioned in discussions about performance evaluation of software engineers.
CVS - Mentioned in a promotional segment.
Spectrum - Mentioned in a promotional segment.
Public - Mentioned in a promotional segment.
Mint Mobile - Mentioned in a promotional segment.
Adobe Acrobat - Mentioned in a promotional segment.
Virgin Voyages - Mentioned as a sponsor of the Wayfinder podcast.
Dude's on Dude's with Gronk and Jules - A podcast mentioned in relation to Julian Edelman.

Tools & Software

ChatGPT - An AI tool mentioned for its use in summarization and assisting with tasks like responding to public comments.
XAI - An AI tool mentioned as being available on government desktops.
Microsoft Copilot - An AI tool available for individual government users.

Other Resources

US Tech Force - A program aiming to bring top talent into the federal government for a two-year stint.
DOGE initiative - Mentioned in relation to recruiting top talent and federal workforce changes.
GS Schedule - The pay schedule for federal employees, discussed in relation to tenure and degree requirements.
SES (Senior Executive Service) - The highest level of federal executives, for whom a forced distribution regulation for performance rankings has been implemented.
Pace - The name of a civil service exam that existed until 1980.
ORA (Online Retirement Application) - A redesigned retirement application at OPM.
Interim Pay - A process within retirement services to provide temporary payments to retirees.
Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) - A program offering severance for voluntary departure from government.
Voluntary Retirement Authority (VRA) - A voluntary retirement program.
Voluntary Separation Incentive (VSI) - A voluntary separation incentive program.
AI (Artificial Intelligence) - A broad topic discussed in relation to its impact, adoption, and potential within government.
Generated Assets - A feature on the Public investing platform.
Multiple Sclerosis (MS) - A topic discussed on the Health Discovered podcast.
Health Discovered - A podcast mentioned.
Wayfinder - A podcast mentioned.
Odd Lots Podcast - The podcast where this discussion is taking place.