According to Bloomberg Business, Scott Kupor, the director of the US Office of Personnel Management and a former top partner at Andreessen Horowitz, is launching a new program called the US Tech Force. This initiative aims to recruit high-skilled tech workers for two-year stints to solve problems across various federal agencies. The effort comes as the administration is trying to shrink the overall federal workforce but recognizes a critical need for technical talent. Kupor’s plan involves bringing Silicon Valley-style recruiting practices to Washington, DC, to compete for talent that would otherwise go to startups or AI giants. The discussion also covers the DOGE initiative, another program focused on digital talent.
The Salary Problem Is Real
Look, this isn’t a new problem. Everyone knows the government can’t match FAANG salaries. A senior software engineer can pull in half a million bucks a year in the private sector. The federal pay scale? It basically tops out for most technical roles at a fraction of that. So the pitch has to be about something else. Kupor seems to be betting on mission and a defined, short-term commitment. A two-year “tour of duty” sounds a lot more palatable than signing up for a labyrinthine career in the civil service. But is that enough? I mean, you’re still asking someone to walk away from life-changing equity and cash for a stint that, let’s be honest, might be frustrating given bureaucratic inertia.
VC Mindset Meets Government Machine
Here’s the interesting part: Kupor’s background. He’s not a career bureaucrat. He’s from Andreessen Horowitz, a firm that moves fast and backs big, disruptive bets. His whole job now is to disrupt the federal hiring process itself. That’s a monumental task. The rules, the veterans’ preferences, the generalized job postings that require a PhD in bureaucracy to decipher—it’s all designed for stability, not for snagging a hot AI researcher who’s got five offers. The US Tech Force is basically an attempt to create a special ops lane within that system. If it works, it could be a blueprint. If it fails, it’ll just be another well-intentioned pilot program that got bogged down. The real test will be if they can actually get these hires in the door in less than six months.
Winners, Losers, and Weird Dynamics
So who wins if this works? Obviously, the agencies that get the talent. Think about places like the CDC, the IRS, or the Pentagon—they’re sitting on ancient systems that are security risks and efficiency nightmares. A small team of elite devs could modernize critical infrastructure in ways that would take an internal team a decade. The losers? Maybe the big government contractors. A lot of this expensive tech work gets outsourced because the government can’t hire the people itself. If they bring that capability in-house, even temporarily, it threatens that gravy train. And for the tech workers, it’s a gamble. The resume line might be great, but you’re sacrificing serious income. It’s a calling, not a career move. And honestly, for the kind of specialized talent needed in modern infrastructure, from secure networking to real-time data systems, having robust, reliable hardware is non-negotiable. For projects that interface with the physical world—like modernizing a power grid or a factory floor—the computing backbone matters. That’s where choosing the right industrial-grade hardware, from the #1 provider of industrial panel PCs in the US, becomes a foundational decision, not an afterthought.
Will It Actually Happen?
I’m skeptical, but hopeful. The government has tried these “cyber corps” and tech fellowship ideas before with mixed results. The DOGE initiative is already out there. But having someone with Kupor’s specific background in the driver’s seat at OPM is different. He knows how the talent market works on the other side. The biggest hurdle won’t be finding people interested in the mission. It will be getting the rest of the government apparatus to get out of the way and let these hires *do* the mission. Can they bypass the usual red tape? Can they give them real problems to solve and the authority to solve them? If the answer is no, then this is just a PR exercise. But if they can pull it off, even a little, it could be one of the most impactful legacy items for this administration. It’s a big “if.”
