00:36:12 · Scott Kupor
[00:36:12] S1: for Yeah. Six And then by the way, if you promote them, they have to wait another twelve months, right? So we're eliminating stuff like that. So these are all policy changes we're making, which is we're gonna eliminate, it's called time integrate is the name for it. But like, what we want is a merit based culture where you come in and we level you appropriately for what you can do. So one of the programs we have is called Techforce, just so you're aware, which is basically we're trying to build this elite core, you and I talked about this. This is a elite core of we're trying to bring in a thousand software engineers, AI experts, data scientists, to serve two year terms of government. We're hiring them at what's called the GS 14 level, which is pretty high, that's like the second highest individual contributor level in government. And we're hiring that way because we are actually giving them assessments that technically analyze their skillset, right? So they come in and they have to do like an actual test by a third party that is a code development test. Never before has the government done this, right? Instead, I would give you a questionnaire and you would self rate your skills. Right? You would say, a really five? Tough turns out I'm a five. You're a five. Right? You know this language, you know that language, and again, like, it's it's just... It's crazy, and there's a whole historical reason for it, which is like, there was this lawsuit about disparate impact on these exams, but but the point is like, if we have a merit based culture, we will bring people in at the right level, we will promote them at the right pace, and then I believe they will wanna stay because they will feel like they're actually able to do what they wanna do. Right now, until the changes we've made, like historically we've had a system where like it's very hard for you to get break out of the pack basically. And that's just not amenable to having a high performance culture.
00:37:39 · David Senra, Scott Kupor
[00:37:39] S0: In the most simplest description that you can muster, explain why you felt it was like, what is the main problem as you see it, that you felt the need to, again, change your entire life, move again across the country and dedicate two, three, four years of your life to doing this? Is it the demographic problem? Is it we just don't like, it doesn't matter. It's not a political thing, but if you're deeply about America, you want the most talented people in the government. [00:38:09] S1: Yeah. So three things that motivated me, which we're trying to do. One is do we have the right talent? We have the right people in the right seats. This is where again, [00:38:17] S0: again- And the answer is clearly no. And you can't say this, but- [00:38:21] S1: Yeah, look, let me say this, because I wanna be fair. There's a lot of, there are a lot of very good people in the federal government. So like, I I think, and I'm gonna come back to this. I think a lot of this is a systems incentive problem versus necessarily a talent problem. Now there is a talent problem, which which you and I talked about a little bit, which is we suck at getting early career people into government. [00:38:37] S0: Explain the demographics of who's working in the government right now, because this is
00:38:39 · Scott Kupor
[00:38:39] S1: a wild step. Yeah. So today, 7%, that's seven of the federal workforce is 30. Okay? So just so your listeners have a comparison, if you look at the total US workforce, 23% of the total US workforce is 30. Okay? So by a factor of three to one or more, the federal government is way under indexed on early career people. Okay? If you go to the other side, 44% of our population is 50. And the work... Government In government. Sorry. So 44% in government 50. That compares with about 33% in the total US workforce. So we are three to one under indexed, and then we are 11 percentage points over indexed in the 50 category in federal government. So, you know, we talked about this, but look, I'm a small government guy. I won't presuppose your your ideological views, but Son a Cuban immigrant. Okay. So you're you're more more small government than the big government. Okay. So that explains a lot. Like, if we did nothing else, half of our workforce will retire over the next five or ten years and we are stuck with nobody to actually do the work, right? So like we need something more than zero people to actually work in the federal government. So thing number one that motivated me is like, can we solve that problem? And I think you solve that problem in two ways. One is, we actually have to go tell a story about why it's interesting to go to government. So we've been talking about this, but one of the things I'm doing after I go here is, we're starting on a college tour, which we have never done at OPM. We've never gone out to colleges or where the actual young people are and said, let's go find you, let's tell you what's compelling, let's actually create programs around this. And so we're gonna do that. And, you know, you may not have seen this, but I do these stupid social media things on, you know, Instagram and WhatsApp and stuff like that because like I've hired younger people who actually understand. How do we get a message to people who act... Who are looking at this stuff?
00:40:24 · David Senra, Scott Kupor
[00:40:24] S0: And your message is what? We need young Here's my message. Technically talented people to [00:40:28] S1: just Not just technically talented. [00:40:29] S0: Do a two year stint. Yeah, exactly. Because I think somebody was saying like when you first came in, oh, you're like, you're kind of screwing things up because our pitch here is like, you have a job for life. Yeah. And you're like, yeah, but young people don't think that way. Yeah.
00:40:40 · Scott Kupor
[00:40:40] S1: So I had a manager who like told me that they're like, you guys suck because our whole pitch to people is come here and you have lifetime employment. I told her this, I'm like, look, that is the worst pitch I've ever heard. Like there's not a single person under the age of 30 today who is thinking about lifetime employment. And if they are, by the way, you know, I hate to say this, but like that's not the kind of person we want because that's not the kind of like self motivated driven person that we want in the government. So my pitch to people is look, come here, do something, you know, not just as good for your country, that's fine, but like do something that's actually good for yourself, which is come spend two or three years to work on like some of the most complex hardest problems there are out there, right? If you're interested in space, like go work at NASA, what like Jared Isaacman at NASA is doing is fucking awesome, and like you should be part of that. Or if you want energy stuff, go to Department of Energy, there's all kinds of cool like super computer stuff and all kinds of things, work on these hard problems. And then after that, quite frankly, if you wanna go to private sector, that's amazing. Like let's help you go to the private sector. So this tech force program I mentioned, in addition to these two year stints, we've partners with 40 private companies, right? So all the names you would know, right? You know, Alphabet and Meta and Databricks and all these guys. And what they're doing during the two years is they're gonna do training and career development for these folks in this program. And at the end of the two years, we're gonna do like a massive job fair. And if we've done our job right in the government, we have trained these folks so well that I want, you know, every private company to be fawning over these people. It's a little bit like, you know, you and I were mentioning, right, in Israel and the IDF, right, they have this cyber core where it's the best, the brightest kids coming out of high school and go to the cyber core. And when they come out, every like venture capital firm is falling all over themselves to fund these guys. Every like cyber company wants to hire them. Like that's the kind of thing like we want for the federal government.
00:42:16 · Scott Kupor, David Senra
And if people love being government, great, God bless them, they can stay in government. But like we don't need to ask people to make like thirty, forty year commitments. [00:42:23] S0: I think you're appealing to interest is way smarter than saying, Hey, here's the government, you're a citizen, come try to do something good for the government. Will get some percentage of people, but it's like, you're gonna get a lot more if it's like, no, this is actually good for you and your country at the same time. That's with incentives. And look what could happen. Like, this is where your starting point is when you come in, this is what we can do. This is what you'll learn during this, and this is what happens after that. [00:42:45] S1: That's exactly right. And then while you're here, which comes to the second point is, look, I have to create a high performance culture for people like that to succeed. Right? So if I can convince young, aggressive, like career minded people to come to government, they can't come to the environment that I walked into, which is you have to sit in a job for a year before I consider you promotion, or I can't hire you at a GS 14 level because you have an experience. I'll tell you the story, which is somebody was reminding me of today. So if you follow the Doge stuff, right? There's a guy named Big Balls. Have you ever heard of Big Balls? [00:43:16] S0: I've heard of