WEBVTT - Scott Kupor's New Plan to Bring Tech Workers Into the Federal Government 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:15.920 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:21.800 Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:24.279 I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway. 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:25.040 Tracy. 0:00:25.239 --> 0:00:27.280 One of the topics that we like to talk about, 0:00:27.280 --> 0:00:29.600 but we haven't talked about it for a while, public 0:00:29.640 --> 0:00:32.400 sector tech, public sector are hiring. We've done a number 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:35.080 of episodes on this. It's been a while though, since 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:38.640 we've revisited this question, but it raises so many fascinating things. 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:41.640 I remember the ones that we did with Jennifer Palca, 0:00:41.720 --> 0:00:45.400 which were fantastic and we got a good sense of 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:51.919 some of the issues facing public technology, including I think 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:55.920 it was seven thousand requirements in a single RFP that 0:00:56.080 --> 0:00:58.920 was at the state level. But you hear stuff like 0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:01.440 that and it just kind of blows your mind how 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:05.440 complex the whole process of developing new technology actually is 0:01:05.520 --> 0:01:06.160 in government. 0:01:06.600 --> 0:01:06.800 Right. 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:09.720 So, and we've also Patrick McKenzie is the other one 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:13.040 we've talked about this with, like these legacy systems, they 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:15.480 have all of this croft or whatever, and some of 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:19.000 its tech, and some of it's related to hiring. Everyone 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:22.120 I feel like comes in to the public sector and 0:01:22.120 --> 0:01:24.200 they're like, why can't this look more like the private sector. 0:01:24.760 --> 0:01:27.880 But I have an observation that I thought about after 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:30.399 the last time we talked to Jennifer, which again they're 0:01:30.440 --> 0:01:31.480 excellent conversations. 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:33.679 We'll move the ball forward. So they're all kinds of 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:35.199 obvious problems with the public sector. 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:38.480 We'll get into them. That being said, and I think 0:01:38.480 --> 0:01:41.679 you had the same experience. You hear these descriptions of like, say, 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:45.800 what's broken with the hiring process, and it's like, you 0:01:45.800 --> 0:01:47.520 know what, that sounds kind of familiar. 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:49.720 I've experienced that in the private sector too. 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:53.720 Yeah, a lot of these pathologies seem to exist in 0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:54.800 large organizations. 0:01:55.000 --> 0:01:57.200 I was going to say, I think it's it's endemic 0:01:57.240 --> 0:02:01.640 to bureaucracy. Yeah, right, And I remember Jennifer specifically saying that, 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:05.000 like one of the main choke points is just the 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:08.760 operational process of getting stuff approved or getting a new 0:02:08.800 --> 0:02:12.160 candidate through a hiring process that has been dictated by 0:02:12.440 --> 0:02:16.080 Human resources and you have to fit into certain slots 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:18.800 or certain categories. So it's a big deal. 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:23.440 But that's the whole dealing with HR thing and their 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:26.760 role as gatekeepers of the hiring process. And they're all, 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:30.239 you say, jar I love our HR people here a Bloomberg. 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:32.280 I'm just saying some of it sounded a little bit familiar, 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:33.840 that's all I'm gonna I'm gonna leave it at that. 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:36.160 Some of it sounded a little bit familiar. Fair So, 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:39.200 of course we know that the new administration. Of course, 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:41.840 lots of people from the tech world have come to it, 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:44.440 I think probably most famously Elon Musk and the whole 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:49.160 Doge endeavor, which you know, we'll get into perhaps where 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:52.079 we stand on the verdict for that, but widely viewed 0:02:52.200 --> 0:02:55.560 is not particularly transformational et CIEC. Nonetheless, a lot of 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:58.160 like buying a lot of people from the tech world 0:02:58.200 --> 0:03:02.560 thinking about what aspect of our most dynamic industry in 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:06.280 America can be brought into the public sector to perhaps 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:09.200 make it a more dynamic place, maybe more efficient, maybe 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:12.480 more effective, and a maybe a more desirable place to 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:13.560 work for talented people. 0:03:13.840 --> 0:03:17.359 Right, and the government, the Office of Personnel Management is 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:21.360 launching a new cross government program right to recruit top 0:03:21.440 --> 0:03:25.280 technologists to modernize the federal government. And I would just 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:28.920 add it kind of has some new urgency because the 0:03:28.919 --> 0:03:33.880 Trump administration has identified the AI race with China as 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:38.520 like this existential threat to the US. So you can 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:41.040 see stuff kind of coalescing totally. 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:43.280 Well, we literally do have the perfect guest because we 0:03:43.280 --> 0:03:45.200 are going to be speaking with the Director of the 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:47.800 Office of Personnel Management in DC. We're going to be 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:51.080 speaking with Scott Cooper. He's a former venture capitalist who's 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:53.360 at Indrees and Horowitz, so he knows all about the 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:56.560 public world, the private world, et cetera. Literally the perfect guest. Scott, 0:03:56.600 --> 0:03:58.920 thank you so much for coming on the Outlots podcast. 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:01.680 Well, thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here. 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:02.520 Absolutely. 0:04:02.600 --> 0:04:05.640 What is let's start from real basics, what is the 0:04:05.720 --> 0:04:08.040 job of the office the Director of the Office of 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:08.960 Personnel Management. 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:12.640 Yeah, it's a great question, and I didn't know the 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:14.400 answer to this one before I started talking to the 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:16.719 administration about the job either. So I think the simple 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:18.080 way to think about it is, Look, we're the talent 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:20.840 management organization for the federal government. So there's about two 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:23.520 point one million federal employees roughly in the government today, 0:04:23.920 --> 0:04:26.839 and we are responsible for all policies related to people. 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:29.839 So how do you hire, how do you fire? Performance 0:04:29.880 --> 0:04:35.080 management system so HRIT systems, And then we're also across 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:37.640 functional organization that everything we do obviously touches all the 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:39.640 different agencies. So we're trying to make sure that we've 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:42.559 got consistency of policies across the government. And the simple 0:04:42.600 --> 0:04:43.880 goal in my mind is just how do we make 0:04:43.880 --> 0:04:45.320 sure we have the right people in the right jobs 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:48.320 in the federal government. That's basically the forward articulation of 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:48.680 what we do. 0:04:49.240 --> 0:04:51.960 Why did you decide to go from Andrewson Horowitz to 0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:55.880 what seems like, you know, something of a challenging job 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:58.600 and possibly lower paid. You don't have to tell us 0:04:58.640 --> 0:04:59.760 your salary. 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:02.960 But public somewhere, but I assume it lower than It's 0:05:02.960 --> 0:05:03.760 definitely lower than. 0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:06.400 A partner in a Jerisa Arty, right, right, my salary, 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:09.320 My salary is public. Actually, in fact, you know, you 0:05:09.320 --> 0:05:10.960 know what you know when you've hit a hype point 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:13.719 in your life when your oldest daughter, who is I 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:16.080 won't give her age, but she is, let's say, under thirty, 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:18.240 is making more money than I am at this day. 0:05:18.920 --> 0:05:22.320 So exactly, I'm very proud of her. Yeah, it's a 0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:24.520 great question. Look, the honest answer is it was a 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:27.279 couple of things. One is just it was the right time. 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:29.000 You know, I'd been an injuriesent, as you know from 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:31.400 the Founding for sixteen years. Super proud of what we 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:34.080 did there, and Ben and Mark were incredibly gracious in 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:37.280 giving me this opportunity, and I really felt like this, 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:40.360 there is an opportunity in this administration to do something differently. 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:42.320 So you mentioned a bunch of technology people coming to 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:44.479 the administration, there's also just a bunch of you know, 0:05:44.560 --> 0:05:47.320 business people more generally, and look, we're not going to 0:05:47.360 --> 0:05:49.599 make a mistake of applying every private sector you know, 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:51.760 method and model to the federal government. But I think 0:05:52.040 --> 0:05:53.880 what the President has asked us to do is to 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:56.560 think differently about things and giving us kind of the 0:05:56.560 --> 0:05:59.760 permission and the flexibility to do that. And so to me, look, 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:01.520 I I've been around the venture capital business. You know, 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:04.680 ultimately company succeed or fail. My lesson from the venture 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:07.960 capital business is they succeed or fail almost entirely because 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:10.320 of the people in the organization and the organizational structure 0:06:10.320 --> 0:06:12.960 and the culture and the incentives. It's pretty simple. And 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:16.160 so my view is, look, why can't we learn some 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:18.080 of those lessons and apply them as appropriate to the 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:20.560 federal government and think about creating a culture where we've 0:06:20.600 --> 0:06:22.200 got great people who can do great stuff on behalf 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:22.919 of the American people. 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:26.000 So let's say, I want you to tell me about 0:06:26.000 --> 0:06:28.719 your new initiative to bring in tech talent, and also 0:06:29.120 --> 0:06:33.360 in the answer, maybe like situated within maybe what makes 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:36.039 it different from other endeavors where you know it was 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:39.440 the code for America Endeavor, which you know probably had 0:06:39.480 --> 0:06:43.680 some similar themes. Obviously there is the Joje experience, which 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:46.160 I want to get into further. But talk to us 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:50.120 about this new project. What is it and then why 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:53.600 is it different from past efforts to infuse technology or 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:55.200 infuse tech thinking into the government. 0:06:56.360 --> 0:06:57.919 Yeah, so let me take you through the program. So 0:06:57.960 --> 0:07:00.800 the program is called US Tech Force, So anybody who's 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:03.920 interested can go to our x at us TESK Tech 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:07.359 Force and find more information about it. Basically, here's the program. 0:07:07.480 --> 0:07:10.080 The goal is to bring a thousand engineers into the government, 0:07:10.160 --> 0:07:15.200 so software developers, AI experts, data scientists, product managers, so 0:07:15.200 --> 0:07:17.160 anybody who can help us basically with the job of 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:20.440 modernizing government infrastructure. It's a two year program and we 0:07:20.560 --> 0:07:24.240 partnered with about twenty five of the largest private technology companies, 0:07:24.360 --> 0:07:27.360 private sector technology companies, i should say, And we're really 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:30.320 trying to accomplish a couple things here. Number one is 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:32.160 the government has a dearth of what I would call 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:37.000 modern software expertise and modern AI technology expertise. And that's 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:39.240 not a knock at all on the organizations, but a 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:41.920 lot of what these big cio organizations of the government 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:45.360 have to do as they're maintaining these massive legacy infrastructures, 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:48.040 and so the ability to do bespoke development is quite 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:50.440 difficult in those organizations. So this will be a vehicle 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:53.960 to help them accelerate bespoke development across the entire government. 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:56.880 The second problem we're trying to solve is we have 0:07:56.920 --> 0:07:59.840 a massive early career pipeline problem in the federal government. 0:07:59.880 --> 0:08:03.520 So seven percent of the federal workforce is early career 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:06.080 let's call that less than five or seven years worth 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:08.520 of work experience, and that compares to about twenty two 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:10.440 to twenty three percent in the non federal sector. So 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:12.720 by a factor of three to one, the federal government 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:15.320 is completely failing at getting early career people into government. 0:08:15.600 --> 0:08:17.080 And if you look at the other end of the spectrum. 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:18.640 By the way, so we've got about forty four percent 0:08:18.680 --> 0:08:20.680 of our population that's over the age of fifty, and 0:08:20.720 --> 0:08:22.600 that compares with about a third in the you know, 0:08:22.680 --> 0:08:25.840 non federal workforce. So we've got this looming problem, which 0:08:25.880 --> 0:08:27.240 is we're going to have a ton of people, you know, 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:29.560 over the next five percent years who rightly so you know, 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:31.600 are at retirement age and want to go do other things. 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:35.040 And we've done very very little to actually replenish the pipeline. 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:37.280 So this program is really intended to do that. And 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:39.280 one of the ways we're doing that is by making 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:41.480 it a two year program. So I don't think it's 0:08:41.520 --> 0:08:44.080 reasonable for us to go to a twenty two to 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:47.200 twenty five, twenty seven year old person and say, decide today, 0:08:47.280 --> 0:08:48.760 do you want to commit forty years of your life 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:51.040 to be a career public civil servant. What I'd rather 0:08:51.120 --> 0:08:53.360 do is expose them to the problems in government, let 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:55.240 them actually have a great experience, and you know what, 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:57.960 like we should convince them over time how great this is. 0:08:58.000 --> 0:08:59.160 But you know what, if the end of the two 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:01.319 year period they want to go back to the private sector, 0:09:01.320 --> 0:09:02.920 that's great. And that's why we've lined up all these 0:09:02.960 --> 0:09:05.360 private sector partners who are going to actually help run 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:06.960 a job fair for us and make sure that we 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:09.520 have kind of greater a connectivity between the public and private sectors. 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:28.880 Can you talk a little bit more about why historically 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:33.160 government roles have not been that desirable for tech workers. 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:36.559 Is I assume you diagnosed the problem before you came 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:39.160 up with a solution. But in your view, what is 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:43.720 the main choke point or market failure that is leading 0:09:43.760 --> 0:09:46.400 to difficulty for the government to recruit the kind of 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:47.440 people that it wants to. 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:50.839 Yeah, so I think there's a couple of problems. So 0:09:51.120 --> 0:09:54.559 one is it's I think the fundamental issue, quite frankly, 0:09:54.600 --> 0:09:56.760 in my mind, is a messaging problem, which is I'll 0:09:56.760 --> 0:09:58.280 give you an anecdote. Right, So, when I first came 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:00.000 into office, I've been in the office about six months now. 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:01.880 How I met with one of my managers in the 0:10:01.960 --> 0:10:04.440 organization who said, hey, you guys are ruining things. And 0:10:04.480 --> 0:10:06.000 I said, what do you mean? And by you guys, 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:08.360 she meant DOGE. And you know, I'm not part of DOGE, 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:09.880 but obviously, look I come from you know, I know 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:11.760 lots of those people. And I said, well, how are 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:14.720 we ruining things? She said, well, our whole value prop 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:16.840 to employees has been come to the federal government and 0:10:16.880 --> 0:10:19.880 have lifetime employment. And I said, oh my gosh, you're 0:10:19.880 --> 0:10:21.719 not going to like my answer, because number one, I'm 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:23.080 going to tell you like, that's a myth and a 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:24.640 lie that people have been telling you. There is no 0:10:24.679 --> 0:10:27.160 such thing as lifetime employment. And two, I said, look, 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:30.320 that's the most that's the worst least compelling kind of 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:32.000 narrative that I've ever heard that I'm going to go 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:35.160 tell some twenty five year old like, that's the value proposition. 0:10:35.160 --> 0:10:37.160 I'm coming to work with the government. So number one 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:38.920 is like, we have to change the narrative. The narrative 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:41.360 in my mind is come work on the toughest, biggest, 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:44.400 most complex problems. You know, do some public service, but 0:10:44.520 --> 0:10:46.720 then give yourself career options and you know what, if 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:48.040 you want to go to the private sector after that, 0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:49.679 you know, God bless you, that's a perfect thing to do. 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:52.800 So that's part of the problem. The other problem is 0:10:52.960 --> 0:10:55.320 the nature of what happens in government. And you know, 0:10:55.559 --> 0:10:57.520 you know Jen Polka, as you guys mentioned in your intro, 0:10:57.559 --> 0:11:00.560 who's like brilliant on this stuff, diagnosed it per which 0:11:00.600 --> 0:11:02.960 is so much of what government does is it's a 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:06.440 compliance based culture. Right, It's not just literally you know 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:09.079 that we follow laws, but if I do something wrong, 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:11.520 you know, I'm worried about getting an inspector General report, 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:13.440 or I'm worried about a GAO report, or I'm worried 0:11:13.480 --> 0:11:15.480 about some congress person hauling me in front of their 0:11:15.480 --> 0:11:18.720 committee to testify about stuff. And so the short answer 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:21.040 as a result is like, we have a zero risk 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:24.600 based culture inside of government. There's no concept of you know, 0:11:24.760 --> 0:11:26.199 you know, you guys mentioned I came to the venture 0:11:26.200 --> 0:11:28.079 capital world. You know, in that world, look, we take 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:30.840 crazy risk because all we're doing is trying to maximize 0:11:30.880 --> 0:11:33.280 upside opportunity. Now, I'm not proposing we do that in government, 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:35.320 and I've been using the term measured risk as a 0:11:35.320 --> 0:11:37.840 better way to try to describe it in government, but like, 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:39.920 we have to kind of change the culture and enable 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:42.240 people to think about the upside opportunity that comes from 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:45.560 taking modest amounts of risk. And unfortunately, particularly on the 0:11:45.559 --> 0:11:47.520 technology side of things, that has not been the case. 0:11:47.840 --> 0:11:49.959 And so again, if you're a young, you know, early 0:11:50.000 --> 0:11:52.800 career person, I think you want to do cutting edge stuff, 0:11:52.800 --> 0:11:54.079 you want to learn things, you want to kind of 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:55.679 go out a little bit on the risk curve. And 0:11:56.160 --> 0:11:58.199 right now, at least historically, government has not been in 0:11:58.200 --> 0:11:59.040 a minimal place for that. 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:03.560 Well, you mentioned that the pitch to work in the 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:07.680 federal government should not be this is lifetime employment. That 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:11.080 that is like, that's not healthy for a lot of reasons, 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:13.920 and I think a lot of people can intuitively agree 0:12:13.920 --> 0:12:16.720 with it. On the other hand, you know, you mentioned 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:18.720 the sort of like in the VC world, you're always 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:21.400 shooting for the right tail, but when you're talking about 0:12:21.520 --> 0:12:24.080 the layoffs or lifetime employee means like you're cutting off 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:27.160 the left tail. Just from a money standpoint, the employee 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:30.239 of the federal government never has the chance to experience 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:32.960 a right tail outcome. The highest paid worker in the 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:36.320 federal government, it's a very decent salary, but you know, 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:41.080 in the compared to very even moderately successful people, you know, 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:44.760 the most senior successful person in the federal government will 0:12:44.760 --> 0:12:47.560 make less very often than just sort of like someone 0:12:47.559 --> 0:12:50.800 who's hung around Google for a long time. So, like, 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:53.360 how much of a problem actually just comes down to 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:54.840 that simple monetary fact. 0:12:56.400 --> 0:12:59.320 So, look, there's no question that compensation is relevant, but 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:02.360 I actually think we've been overstating the nature of that problem. 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:04.160 So let me give you a couple of thoughts on it. So, 0:13:04.200 --> 0:13:06.640 first of all, part of the reason why we're focused 0:13:06.679 --> 0:13:08.920 on early career here is at least the pay gap 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:11.240 between private and public is a little bit more manageable, 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:13.960 and it just kind of it as themptotes like massively 0:13:14.000 --> 0:13:16.080 as you go farther through your career. So yes, it's 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:19.360 totally unrealistic, you know, unless you're rich and you just 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:21.319 decide you want to do something different. It's totally unrealistic 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:22.920 for us to think we're going to compete against like 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:25.840 a VP at Google for a senior level executive person 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:28.280 in the government. So that's not even in my mind, like, 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:30.400 that's not even worth worrying about, basically, because like the 0:13:30.440 --> 0:13:32.400 pay gap is just crazy and nobody's going to do that. 0:13:32.920 --> 0:13:35.320 But my experience, at least, and you know, you guys 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:37.600 have been around a lot of organizations, is look, there 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:40.200 are some people who are purely kind of profit maximizing, 0:13:40.280 --> 0:13:42.520 and that's great. It's not I'm not have no normal 0:13:42.720 --> 0:13:45.400 objections to that, obviously, but my sense is that's actually 0:13:45.480 --> 0:13:48.360 a relatively small minority the population of employees. I think 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:51.720 most employees come to work every day because they're being challenged, 0:13:51.800 --> 0:13:54.440 they're learning, they have career development opportunities, they work for 0:13:54.480 --> 0:13:57.080 someone who cares about their career and they feel like, 0:13:57.160 --> 0:13:59.040 you know, they can be rewarded when they actually do 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:01.000 good stuff. They feel like they're held accountable Like that, 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:04.000 to me is a culture that we can create inside 0:14:04.000 --> 0:14:06.520 of the federal government. And you know, even if it 0:14:06.600 --> 0:14:09.240 means yes, in a short period of time, you are 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:12.120 going to have like a you know, remuneration challenge relative 0:14:12.120 --> 0:14:14.600 to the private sector. But this is also why again 0:14:14.720 --> 0:14:15.760 just to go back to it, This is why I 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:18.800 think this whole narrative of come, you know, work for 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:21.120 the federal government for forty years, to me is just crazy. 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:24.440 Like we should have an open idea that you can 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:26.400 go back and forth being the public and private sector. 0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:27.600 And you know what, if you have points in your 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:29.680 life where you think, like profit maximization is the most 0:14:29.680 --> 0:14:31.240 important thing, then yes, like you should go to the 0:14:31.280 --> 0:14:33.840 private sector because the government's never going to deal with that. 0:14:34.160 --> 0:14:36.000 But I think we just have to break this. Like, 0:14:36.040 --> 0:14:38.000 to me, this dichotomy that there's one way to go 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:40.040 or the other makes no sense. So look, in the 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:42.080 perfect world, I'd wave a magic wand and say we 0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:44.160 pay everybody like what they can get paid to Google. 0:14:44.200 --> 0:14:47.000 But that's not realistic, and quite frankly, you know, there's 0:14:47.120 --> 0:14:49.600 there's zero support in Congress for that. The final thing 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:51.000 we can do, though, just to Joe, to give you 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:54.000 one last perspective, is we can do things inside of 0:14:54.040 --> 0:14:57.400 OPM to mitigate some of the challenges on the compensation 0:14:57.440 --> 0:14:58.560 side of things. So let me give you a very 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:01.440 specific example. So, as you probably know, there's a GS 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:03.680 schedule which is like everybody gets paid, you know, GS 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:06.800 one through fifteen. These are different levels today. All those 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:09.360 GS schedules are driven off of tenure and they're driven 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:11.960 off of degree requirements. So if I don't have a 0:15:11.960 --> 0:15:14.280 college degree and I haven't worked for ten years, no 0:15:14.280 --> 0:15:16.040 matter how good I am, I can't get to a 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:19.400 GS fifteen level in government. In my mind, that's just silly, 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:21.800 quite frankly, right, that's the opposite of a merit based culture. 0:15:22.200 --> 0:15:24.320 You all will remember, since we've talked does, right, You'll 0:15:24.360 --> 0:15:26.080 remember I won't mention his name, but you know there's 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:29.320 a doge engineer with a very colorful name that turger 0:15:29.360 --> 0:15:31.640 listeners have heard of. You know, when all the kind 0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:33.480 of exciting dose stuff was happening, there was a quote 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:36.600 from an administration official who said this guy's terrible. We 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:38.840 never would have hired him because he didn't graduate from 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:41.320 college and he didn't have whatever five years of work 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:43.960 experience coming here. And in my mind, like, I literally 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:45.280 wanted to pull my hair out when I heard that, 0:15:45.280 --> 0:15:47.880 because I'll say, that's the craziest thing in the world. Like, 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:50.920 if this guy is capable of performing at a GS 0:15:50.960 --> 0:15:53.960 fifteen level, why should we care about what his tenure 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:56.000 is or whether he has a college degree. And so 0:15:56.480 --> 0:15:58.200 one of the things we're doing inside of OPM is 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:01.640 we're going to eliminate all requirements and all tenure requirements 0:16:01.680 --> 0:16:04.440 in the pay schedule and so as a result, if 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:06.840 someone is doing awesome, like we can hire them at 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:09.080 the appropriate level. So some of the pay gap problem 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:12.320 is not just a numerical problem, it's a leveling problem. 0:16:12.320 --> 0:16:13.720 And I think we can solve that even in the 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:15.120 absence of congressional legislation. 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:19.560 Yeah, I remember Jennifer again said something very similar about 0:16:19.600 --> 0:16:22.480 like the best coder in America or a young guy 0:16:22.520 --> 0:16:26.080 who had won this huge coding competition and then couldn't 0:16:26.200 --> 0:16:29.360 get hired by the government because you didn't take all 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:30.560 of the official boxes. 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:32.440 Kind of crazy specific role. 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:37.720 Yeah, since you mentioned doing awesome. How do you actually 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:42.160 go about evaluating the performance of a tech worker in 0:16:42.240 --> 0:16:45.200 government and how do you figure out which people you 0:16:45.280 --> 0:16:47.520 actually want to hire in terms of talent? 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:51.840 Yeah, so the short entwer is we have to do 0:16:51.880 --> 0:16:53.640 it differently from how we do it today. But let 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:56.200 me give you the very specific So on the front end, 0:16:56.840 --> 0:17:00.680 historically we have relied on self attestation of skills in 0:17:00.760 --> 0:17:03.040 order to hire people into the federal government. So I 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:05.840 apply for a software engineering job and I get this 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:07.960 application where I check boxes and I say, you know what, 0:17:08.000 --> 0:17:10.960 I'm an expert in Perl programmer, I'm an expert in 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:14.080 you know, AI technology, And I literally checked the boxes. 0:17:14.119 --> 0:17:16.240 And that is the basis on which, like, my application 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:17.960 gets through or doesn't get through to the next round 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:18.440 of screening. 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:22.840 I assume this is at some point, though, right, there's 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:24.480 some sort of contency test. 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:27.959 So in many roles there's not. And the reason is, 0:17:28.040 --> 0:17:30.239 let me give you APEC. There's a historical reason for this. 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:33.040 So way back when we used to have literally a 0:17:33.080 --> 0:17:35.360 civil service exam, it was called PACE was the name. 0:17:35.440 --> 0:17:37.919 I forget what the acronym stands for, but it's PACE 0:17:38.960 --> 0:17:42.680 that existed until nineteen eighty and there was a lawsuit 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:44.719 at the very tail end of the Carter administration, very 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:48.000 beginning the Reagan administration, first Reagan administration, where there was 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:50.520 desparate It was a disparate impact claim basically, so the 0:17:50.600 --> 0:17:53.800 kind of test results on this exam were disproportionately negative 0:17:53.800 --> 0:17:57.520 for minority applicants versus majority applicants. And so in nineteen 0:17:57.520 --> 0:17:59.960 eighty one, the government entered into a consent to free 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:03.560 where basically they banned essentially the use of these examinations. 0:18:04.160 --> 0:18:07.080 And from nineteen eighty one until literally four months ago, 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:10.439 we were living under that consent decree. Nobody ever revisited it, 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:13.560 and as a result, every agency was terrified to use 0:18:13.600 --> 0:18:17.480 any kind of actual merit based assessment for hiring because 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:19.199 they were afraid they would run a foul of this 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:22.800 consent degree. Luckily for us, we revisited it along with 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:25.600 the Department of Justice, and we got out of the 0:18:25.640 --> 0:18:28.159 consent decree. We actually found the original plaintiff actually was 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:31.560 still alive, Levano was his name, and we actually, you know, 0:18:31.640 --> 0:18:33.600 finally said okay, forty three years later, we think it's 0:18:33.600 --> 0:18:35.399 time to get rid of this consent degree, and they 0:18:35.440 --> 0:18:38.280 agreed to that. So for the first time ever, now 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:41.119 we have kind of avoided we've eliminated the risk that 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:43.159 the agencies worried about, which is if I use a 0:18:43.200 --> 0:18:46.600 technical assessment to judge somebody in the employment process, I 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:48.760 might get sued, you know, under some type of disprit 0:18:48.800 --> 0:18:52.120 impact theory. So we are now doing that. So number 0:18:52.119 --> 0:18:53.800 one to answer your there was a long way to 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:55.760 answer your question. But so like, the way we're going 0:18:55.800 --> 0:18:58.639 to evaluate people is they actually have to demonstrate merit. 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:01.199 So there's lots of private sector tests as you probably know, 0:19:01.280 --> 0:19:03.399 code signal, all these other things, and every single private 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:05.920 sector company uses where they're like, hey, basically, let me 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:07.679 give you a coding test if you're applying for a 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:10.119 software development job, and then we can level you and 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:12.320 figure out are you a you know, GS five or 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:14.040 GS fifteen based on that, and then we can do 0:19:14.119 --> 0:19:16.520 secondary stuff like obviously an in person interview or other 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:18.560 things to make sure that you know, you're actually a 0:19:18.600 --> 0:19:20.720 good fit for the organization. So that's kind of thing. 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:22.040 The more when we have to do on the front end, 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:23.280 does that make sense at least? 0:19:23.280 --> 0:19:25.840 And kind of you know, yeah, it totally does. It 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:28.840 is kind of wild to think that, you know, last 0:19:28.960 --> 0:19:32.080 year or a few years ago or just four months ago. 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:35.600 Joe and I could literally say that we're like, I'm 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:36.760 hunting experts. 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:38.200 I'm a ten X engineer. 0:19:38.359 --> 0:19:41.920 Yeah, that's right, and apply I know, I'm a cokeball expert. 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:43.160 Cobyl COBBYL. 0:19:43.200 --> 0:19:45.680 I can never write cobol expert, would be very much 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:49.560 in demands. Coball, cobyl, Cobalt is Cobalt is the mineral. 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:51.200 There's a cobalt mineral. 0:19:51.920 --> 0:19:53.679 Yeah, I never know if it's cobble. 0:19:53.960 --> 0:19:57.040 I want to say cobble because it's like cobbled together 0:19:57.280 --> 0:19:58.639 on across IT systems. 0:19:58.840 --> 0:20:01.399 Oh, that's actually really good. Okay, I didn't think about that. 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:05.240 Okay, actually, but on the second part of Tracy's question, Okay, 0:20:05.240 --> 0:20:07.320 so once they're in, once they're in the office, and 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:10.560 again because it's not a for profit entity, like, how 0:20:10.600 --> 0:20:13.359 do we current how does the government currently go about 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:16.359 evaluating how someone did this year? And what would be 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:19.520 the optimal way for the government to evaluate how productive 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:21.320 someone there there is? And they're saying, and this is 0:20:21.359 --> 0:20:23.800 a problem in private sector too. I'm pretty sure that 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:26.600 if you went into facebooks or Google, et cetera, they 0:20:26.600 --> 0:20:30.000 would also not have a clean answer of like which 0:20:30.160 --> 0:20:33.240 software engineer is more productive or core attributed more value 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:33.880 than the other one. 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:36.720 Yeah, no, you're upsote. Right. Look, this is not a 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:38.560 problem that's unique at the government. But what I think 0:20:38.680 --> 0:20:42.240 is unique to the government is historically, basically everybody gets 0:20:42.280 --> 0:20:44.560 an A in government. To give you a perspective, most 0:20:44.600 --> 0:20:46.840 agencies rank people one through five at the end of 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:48.960 the year on their performances, one being the worst and 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:51.880 five being the best. And if you look historically over 0:20:51.960 --> 0:20:55.040 long periods of time in government, about eighty plus percent 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:57.359 of people get ranked A four or five. Okay, so 0:20:57.640 --> 0:21:00.199 meaning basically, you know, everybody is in you know, kind 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:03.399 of like Globa gone and well well above average. And 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:06.240 then about zero point two percent of federal workers get 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:09.160 ranked A one or two, meaning that you're performing below expectations. 0:21:09.480 --> 0:21:12.320 So number one, like, we've had no system that actually 0:21:12.800 --> 0:21:16.399 recognizes like outstanding performance and quite frankly unfortunately, no system 0:21:16.400 --> 0:21:19.000 that actually holds accountability on the other end of the spectrum. 0:21:19.160 --> 0:21:21.480 We're changing that. We've already put out regulations for the 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:23.679 most senior executives what are called the sees, which are 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:27.280 the most senior executives, where we effectively. For the SEES 0:21:27.359 --> 0:21:30.240 have put out a regulation that requires a forced distribution, 0:21:30.320 --> 0:21:33.360 so a cap of thirty percent of fours and five rankings, 0:21:34.000 --> 0:21:36.679 which we think is appropriate to actually distinguish people, you know, 0:21:36.720 --> 0:21:39.639 in terms of their performance. So number one is we 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:42.040 got to reform the system, period and we're working on 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:44.000 that and you'll see more regulation from us. In that 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:46.480 number two, you're actually right, which is look like sometimes 0:21:46.520 --> 0:21:48.240 the metrics are hard, right, so you know, you don't 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:50.280 really want to measure like lines of code that somebody 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:53.280 produces because obviously all code is not created equal. But 0:21:54.119 --> 0:21:56.040 you know, what I think does work in the private 0:21:56.080 --> 0:21:59.480 sector is, look, managers are responsible for their frontline workers. 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:01.720 They meet with one on one, they have you know, weekly, 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:03.639 they have a sense of what they're doing. They provide 0:22:03.640 --> 0:22:06.520 feedback along the way, like I think the performance management 0:22:06.560 --> 0:22:09.199 ongoing process works better in the private sector. In the 0:22:09.200 --> 0:22:12.159 public sector, what I found is instead of managers, we 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:15.800 use the term supervisor, which I think actually unfortunately does 0:22:15.840 --> 0:22:17.640 a disservice to what the job is. Like, I don't 0:22:17.640 --> 0:22:20.240 think the job is necessarily supervision. The job is to manage, 0:22:20.280 --> 0:22:22.439 meaning are they working on the right stuff, are they 0:22:22.440 --> 0:22:24.159 doing the right things. Do they need training for this 0:22:24.240 --> 0:22:26.640 kind of stuff, And historically we haven't done a great 0:22:26.720 --> 0:22:28.199 job on that. So one of the things that we 0:22:28.280 --> 0:22:29.720 just did, for example, is we just rolled out a 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:33.639 brand new training program that's mandatory for all supervisors specific 0:22:33.640 --> 0:22:35.960 to this issue on performance management, so to teach them 0:22:36.280 --> 0:22:38.879 like what does a one on one look like? You know, 0:22:38.880 --> 0:22:40.520 those of us who go up in the technology industry. 0:22:40.720 --> 0:22:42.520 The first book that we were all assigned to read 0:22:42.760 --> 0:22:46.040 was Andy Groves Only the Paranoids Survive, which I still 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:47.920 think is a fantastic book. I don't know if y'all 0:22:47.920 --> 0:22:50.960 have read it. It's actually a really all I have read it. 0:22:51.359 --> 0:22:53.040 Yeah, keep going, Yeah. 0:22:52.960 --> 0:22:54.960 I mean basically, he literally talks about like what is 0:22:54.960 --> 0:22:57.560 a one on one meeting with your you know, team member, 0:22:57.600 --> 0:22:59.520 Like what should it look like? And it's like, you know, 0:22:59.640 --> 0:23:02.200 it's very much like management one on one stuff. But 0:23:02.200 --> 0:23:03.920 I think the understands or is like, most people don't 0:23:03.960 --> 0:23:05.919 get that training, and so as a result, we have 0:23:06.000 --> 0:23:08.680 had a performance management culture where we have inflated grades 0:23:08.720 --> 0:23:11.720 and we have basically once or maybe maximum twice a 0:23:11.760 --> 0:23:14.000 year people actually get feedback. So it's totally unfair to 0:23:14.040 --> 0:23:17.040 the employee and it's also just unfair to top performers 0:23:17.040 --> 0:23:20.240 who are not actually getting differentiated reviews and differentiated compensation. 0:23:20.960 --> 0:23:22.879 I was just about to ask, just to be one 0:23:22.960 --> 0:23:26.800 hundred percent clear, compensation is going to be tied to performance. 0:23:27.200 --> 0:23:30.320 Correct, Okay, correct, yes, all right, yes, And again it's 0:23:30.320 --> 0:23:31.960 not that it hasn't been before. But the problem is 0:23:32.000 --> 0:23:33.600 if everybody's a four and a five and you have 0:23:33.640 --> 0:23:36.680 a finite bonus pool, then you're peanut buttering out the 0:23:36.760 --> 0:23:39.240 bonuses basically. So like, yeah, just you know, Tracey, just 0:23:39.320 --> 0:23:40.919 give me a sense. Like when we gave guidance on 0:23:40.960 --> 0:23:43.720 this sees these very senior executives, what we said is 0:23:43.720 --> 0:23:46.719 a thirty percent cap. We also said we think sixty 0:23:46.760 --> 0:23:48.960 percent of the bonus based compensation should go to those 0:23:49.000 --> 0:23:51.960 that thirty percent of the individuals. And you know that's 0:23:52.000 --> 0:23:53.920 a you know, we can argue whether it's sixty percent 0:23:53.960 --> 0:23:56.760 or eighty percent, but the point is, like, let's let's 0:23:56.800 --> 0:23:59.840 actually really pay per performance, and let's differentiate compensation as 0:23:59.840 --> 0:24:02.199 a posed to giving everybody a three hundred or five 0:24:02.280 --> 0:24:04.479 hundred dollars bonus, which in the scheme of things, has 0:24:04.520 --> 0:24:06.520 little retentive or incentive value for employees. 0:24:07.080 --> 0:24:10.840 So you mentioned project management just then, and I was 0:24:10.880 --> 0:24:13.760 looking at some of the press releases and documentation that 0:24:13.800 --> 0:24:15.720 you put out as part of this program, and there 0:24:15.760 --> 0:24:20.040 really is an emphasis on getting project managers, and I 0:24:20.080 --> 0:24:23.480 am very curious why that particular role seems to be 0:24:23.680 --> 0:24:27.160 in short supply, because I know someone who moved from 0:24:27.200 --> 0:24:31.360 a completely different industry into project management for a graphic 0:24:31.400 --> 0:24:34.240 design company. They had never done it before, and it 0:24:35.000 --> 0:24:36.200 didn't seem that hard. 0:24:38.760 --> 0:24:41.480 Okay, So I'm going to distinguish between project management and 0:24:41.640 --> 0:24:45.520 product management, which is I hope we wrote product management 0:24:45.560 --> 0:24:47.080 in the in our in our Stone. 0:24:47.119 --> 0:24:48.119 So did I miss read it? 0:24:49.240 --> 0:24:50.840 Well, I don't know that you didn't matter. We may 0:24:51.160 --> 0:24:53.280 have put it in there. But what we need is 0:24:53.280 --> 0:24:55.760 what I would call a product manager job, which is, 0:24:55.800 --> 0:24:58.479 you know, a product manager, in my mind, is basically 0:24:58.480 --> 0:25:01.119 somebody who sometimes they ca from an engineering background. They 0:25:01.160 --> 0:25:03.200 might actually have been developers themselves, but they're kind of 0:25:03.200 --> 0:25:05.720 people who sit between the engineering organization and the end 0:25:05.800 --> 0:25:09.040 user customer and they listen to the customer and say, great, okay, 0:25:09.040 --> 0:25:10.800 tell me your problems. What are you trying to solve? 0:25:10.800 --> 0:25:13.280 And their job is kind of to translate that into 0:25:13.359 --> 0:25:16.320 ultimately in tech speak, what we'd call a PRD a 0:25:16.359 --> 0:25:19.399 project requirements document for the engineers to develop against. So 0:25:19.520 --> 0:25:21.000 like that's the role we need. So in a well 0:25:21.040 --> 0:25:25.600 functioning engineering organization, you have developers, you have designers, uh, 0:25:25.640 --> 0:25:28.280 and then you have product managers. And the product managers 0:25:28.280 --> 0:25:30.679 probably aren't puting their hands on the keyboard actually you know, 0:25:30.840 --> 0:25:33.479 you know typing, you know, ones and zeros, but they 0:25:33.520 --> 0:25:36.600 are literally that go between between like the end user 0:25:36.640 --> 0:25:39.360 customer and then the requirements that ultimately drive the development process. 0:25:40.080 --> 0:25:40.720 It's interesting. 0:25:40.760 --> 0:25:43.639 I feel like that's something I've really come to appreciate 0:25:43.800 --> 0:25:48.560 in working for a large organization, how valuable translation skills are, 0:25:48.600 --> 0:25:50.359 because you have this one part of the room that 0:25:50.440 --> 0:25:53.399 knows one very specific thing, and then there's these generalists 0:25:53.400 --> 0:25:55.200 on the other end that have some vague thing, and 0:25:55.240 --> 0:25:57.440 that person who could sit in the middle and talk 0:25:57.520 --> 0:26:02.320 to both sides is clearly a very is a valuable person. 0:26:02.200 --> 0:26:02.399 You know. 0:26:02.760 --> 0:26:06.879 So you mentioned, like the one thing that comes up 0:26:06.920 --> 0:26:10.280 a lot in a common theme on our podcast is 0:26:10.280 --> 0:26:14.560 like the importance of this sort of like tacit organizational knowledge. 0:26:14.680 --> 0:26:17.800 Things that are like cannot simply be written down. They 0:26:17.800 --> 0:26:21.119 do not exist necessarily in one person's head. They're just 0:26:21.160 --> 0:26:23.960 things that are sort of collectively known process knowledge and 0:26:24.040 --> 0:26:27.800 so forth. How do you think about that in light 0:26:27.840 --> 0:26:31.680 of the fact that these are two year roles and 0:26:31.920 --> 0:26:35.520 you know, again maybe in some cases someone will do 0:26:35.600 --> 0:26:38.120 two years and then continue their career in the federal government, 0:26:38.400 --> 0:26:41.080 but that but you know, especially given the pay gap 0:26:41.119 --> 0:26:45.560 that emerges specifically for technologists, like that's probably you're taking 0:26:45.560 --> 0:26:47.600 on the one area where the pay gap probably gets 0:26:47.600 --> 0:26:51.640 the widest over time. How do you think about fostering, 0:26:53.080 --> 0:26:57.919 fostering and maintaining that kind of knowledge, especially given what 0:26:57.960 --> 0:26:59.720 you laid out at the very beginning, which is this, 0:27:00.240 --> 0:27:01.840 I don't know if crisis is the right word, but 0:27:01.880 --> 0:27:05.240 these looming retirement of all these people that do have 0:27:05.359 --> 0:27:07.760 years of accumulated knowledge about how things really work. 0:27:09.119 --> 0:27:11.560 Yeah, so you're absolutely right, which is, look, we have 0:27:11.600 --> 0:27:13.560 to balance kind of the two year time period against 0:27:13.640 --> 0:27:16.640 the need for actually the organization being able to maintain 0:27:17.240 --> 0:27:19.280 these systems once people leave. So let me just give it. 0:27:19.280 --> 0:27:21.040 I'll give you a real world example, Joe, just so 0:27:21.040 --> 0:27:23.119 you have it because it might be helpful. So in 0:27:23.160 --> 0:27:25.919 my organization o PM, we own the retirement process and 0:27:25.960 --> 0:27:29.119 retirement for you know, several million and new attempts. Basically 0:27:29.119 --> 0:27:31.640 who have you know, kind of completed their professional careers 0:27:32.080 --> 0:27:34.000 and we are completely it's a very I won't go 0:27:34.040 --> 0:27:35.920 into the details I want for you, but there's literally 0:27:36.000 --> 0:27:38.840 it's a like a ridiculously manual paper based process where 0:27:38.880 --> 0:27:41.680 for years we have had people literally filling out paper 0:27:41.720 --> 0:27:45.360 applications as recently as the beginning of this year and 0:27:45.480 --> 0:27:47.720 sending paper by postal mail and all kinds of stuff. 0:27:47.720 --> 0:27:51.040 And we literally have a mine in Bowyers, Pennsylvania, which 0:27:51.080 --> 0:27:52.879 is very fun if you ever want to come see it, 0:27:53.119 --> 0:27:55.560 where we have hundreds of millions of file cabinets of 0:27:55.600 --> 0:27:56.720 people's retirement records. 0:27:57.160 --> 0:27:58.720 So we'd love to I would love to. 0:27:58.800 --> 0:28:01.040 I've always wanted to go like those those like huge 0:28:01.080 --> 0:28:03.320 like under mountain like big. 0:28:03.520 --> 0:28:07.480 Yes, that's literally very lo it is. I I'd love to. 0:28:07.480 --> 0:28:10.240 Check warehouse for government. 0:28:10.840 --> 0:28:13.520 I've always wanted to check out on these places. We'll 0:28:13.600 --> 0:28:16.280 arrange that, all. 0:28:15.280 --> 0:28:17.879 Right, we're gonna we're gonna work on that one together. Anyways. 0:28:17.920 --> 0:28:20.159 I bring that up to say, Okay, so look, we've luckily, 0:28:20.359 --> 0:28:24.000 uh we've had a small team of developers Joe Jebbia, 0:28:24.080 --> 0:28:25.840 who you guys may recognize the name. He's a co 0:28:25.920 --> 0:28:28.840 founder for Airbnb. He joined the administration even actually before 0:28:28.880 --> 0:28:30.800 I got there, but he's been he's been kind of 0:28:30.800 --> 0:28:33.240 housed in o PM, and he has like a team 0:28:33.280 --> 0:28:36.639 of like three developers and you know, a design person, 0:28:37.040 --> 0:28:39.920 and they've been completely redesigning this retirement application. So we 0:28:40.000 --> 0:28:42.640 now have what we call ORA, the Online Retirement Application, 0:28:42.720 --> 0:28:45.400 where instead of paper, people actually can go, you know, 0:28:45.480 --> 0:28:47.760 in the year twenty twenty five onto a you know 0:28:47.800 --> 0:28:50.680 computer and and you know, type in their Apple their information, 0:28:50.760 --> 0:28:52.880 upload their documents, it gets routed to the HR and 0:28:52.920 --> 0:28:54.960 it's you know, it's you know, vastly better than what 0:28:54.960 --> 0:28:56.880 we've had. So I bring this up to say, look, 0:28:56.920 --> 0:28:58.880 I think this is me is a good example, which 0:28:58.880 --> 0:29:00.320 is all those people are going to disappear at some 0:29:00.320 --> 0:29:03.040 point in time, and then the responsibility for that application 0:29:03.120 --> 0:29:05.960 is going to shift to the existing CIO organization within 0:29:06.000 --> 0:29:09.040 OPM to maintain it, to integrate it with other systems. 0:29:09.400 --> 0:29:11.840 And so a requirement of being able to do that 0:29:11.880 --> 0:29:13.720 development process for Joe and his team is, Look, they 0:29:13.720 --> 0:29:15.760 have to do documentation, they have to do training of 0:29:15.760 --> 0:29:18.200 the team. Look, I think it's not an insurmountable problem. 0:29:18.240 --> 0:29:20.080 I just think it means, as part of your process, 0:29:20.160 --> 0:29:22.360 you just have to anticipate that there is going to 0:29:22.360 --> 0:29:24.120 be a time where people are going to disappear. And 0:29:24.200 --> 0:29:26.160 quite frankly, it's a smart thing to do anyways, because 0:29:26.160 --> 0:29:27.880 we just know and look, this happens in private companies 0:29:27.880 --> 0:29:30.640 all the time. Look people's average tenure in private companies. 0:29:30.640 --> 0:29:32.360 I can tell you in Silicon Valley it's way less 0:29:32.360 --> 0:29:33.920 than four years, is what the average tenure of an 0:29:33.960 --> 0:29:36.680 engineer is. So these are not new things. They are 0:29:36.720 --> 0:29:38.760 new things to the government, which is this idea of 0:29:38.840 --> 0:29:41.400 kind of knowledge capture and knowledge management, you know, kind 0:29:41.400 --> 0:29:42.800 of in light of the fact that people might not 0:29:42.840 --> 0:29:45.000 be there for their entire career. But I think it 0:29:45.080 --> 0:29:47.240 just means, as we've designed this program that we have 0:29:47.280 --> 0:29:49.680 to have the appropriate level of documentation, of integration of 0:29:49.760 --> 0:29:51.520 source code notes and all those things that are you know, 0:29:51.560 --> 0:29:54.120 you would do in a normal circumstance to recognize that. 0:29:54.240 --> 0:29:56.000 Now look at Joe in the perfect world. I hope 0:29:56.040 --> 0:29:57.600 people love it and they're like, wow, this is this 0:29:57.640 --> 0:29:59.000 is exactly where I want to spend the rest of 0:29:59.040 --> 0:30:00.640 my life, and that's awesome. Want to do that like 0:30:00.680 --> 0:30:02.640 we want to keep them in government, but you know, 0:30:02.680 --> 0:30:04.400 I think we'll also have to deal with the practical 0:30:04.400 --> 0:30:07.880 realities that you know, the current generation of you know, 0:30:07.960 --> 0:30:10.760 people are not thinking about you know, three, five, ten 0:30:10.800 --> 0:30:13.720 year you know, employments basically think things are much more 0:30:13.720 --> 0:30:14.160 clearer than that. 0:30:30.520 --> 0:30:34.120 What are you doing to streamline the operational side of 0:30:34.160 --> 0:30:38.760 the process, because I imagine you mentioned culture before. If 0:30:38.760 --> 0:30:42.960 the pitches come work for government, it's important, but you're 0:30:43.000 --> 0:30:45.160 going to be lower paid and you're going to have 0:30:45.200 --> 0:30:49.000 to constantly deal with paperwork and put together you know 0:30:49.200 --> 0:30:52.600 RFPs that have seven thousand requirements and things like that. 0:30:52.600 --> 0:30:55.560 That that's a tough sell to someone who's used to 0:30:55.640 --> 0:30:58.360 the whole move fast and break things culture. 0:30:59.800 --> 0:31:02.920 Yeah, So anyways, let me just be totally clear, which 0:31:03.000 --> 0:31:04.920 is we are not going to move fast and break 0:31:04.960 --> 0:31:08.120 things because we can't quite do that. In government. We 0:31:08.160 --> 0:31:10.800 can move faster than we currently do, and we can 0:31:10.840 --> 0:31:14.200 afford to take some risk, but we generally don't want 0:31:14.200 --> 0:31:16.200 to break things because you know, people do need to 0:31:16.200 --> 0:31:18.080 get their Social Security checks and you know, the IRS 0:31:18.160 --> 0:31:19.920 needs to actually make sure you get your tax refunds. 0:31:19.920 --> 0:31:22.719 So but it's a great it's a great question so look, 0:31:22.760 --> 0:31:24.719 there's a couple of things that we're doing both inside 0:31:24.760 --> 0:31:27.120 and outside this program. So outside the program more generally, 0:31:27.520 --> 0:31:29.440 one are the big things that OPM is driving along 0:31:29.480 --> 0:31:31.840 with OMB, you know, kind of the offseome management budget 0:31:31.880 --> 0:31:34.960 is we're working with all the agencies to basically what 0:31:34.960 --> 0:31:38.120 I would call do headcount planning and reshape the priorities 0:31:38.120 --> 0:31:40.880 for the organization. So there's a huge amount of government 0:31:40.920 --> 0:31:42.560 is very good about adding things to the plate, and 0:31:42.600 --> 0:31:45.360 they're very bad about actually ever taking anything off. So 0:31:45.440 --> 0:31:48.400 every time something new comes down from Congress, we add 0:31:48.440 --> 0:31:50.280 you know, thousands of more people, We add stuff to 0:31:50.320 --> 0:31:52.000 the plate. And then we have this list now of 0:31:52.040 --> 0:31:54.600 twenty things, probably five of which we've been doing for 0:31:54.600 --> 0:31:56.720 twenty years, and quite frankly, nobody even remembers while we're 0:31:56.720 --> 0:31:59.080 doing them anymore. They've just now become like, you know, 0:31:59.240 --> 0:32:02.320 embedded into our culture. So part of the exercise in 0:32:02.440 --> 0:32:04.280 order to kind of make the throughput faster and to 0:32:04.280 --> 0:32:06.280 make sure that an engineer isn't like sitting on their 0:32:06.320 --> 0:32:10.239 hands dealing with you know, crazy bureaucracy, is we have 0:32:10.280 --> 0:32:12.480 to go back and look at prioritization and actually remove 0:32:12.520 --> 0:32:15.000 services that are no longer statutory, and they're no longer 0:32:15.080 --> 0:32:18.080 valuable to the American people. So that's the exercise we've started. 0:32:18.080 --> 0:32:20.560 That's the exercise that we're kind of is ongoing right now. 0:32:20.880 --> 0:32:23.080 But the purpose of that will be not only to 0:32:23.080 --> 0:32:24.640 make sure that we're hopefully spending our money in the 0:32:24.720 --> 0:32:27.400 right places, but will also be to remove layers that 0:32:27.520 --> 0:32:30.840 ultimately slow down the actual work product of government. The 0:32:30.880 --> 0:32:34.080 second thing we can do is, as I mentioned, we're 0:32:34.160 --> 0:32:36.720 really trying to kind of change the performance management culture 0:32:36.720 --> 0:32:39.640 in government and eliminate barriers to people being able to 0:32:39.680 --> 0:32:42.000 move through the organization and change the idea that you 0:32:42.040 --> 0:32:43.880 can't take any risk. I mean, obviously that's a big 0:32:43.920 --> 0:32:46.600 cultural challenge that we have in government. So everything from 0:32:46.680 --> 0:32:48.840 down to like what your performance plan look like. Your 0:32:48.840 --> 0:32:52.160 performance plan should have, you know, efficiency, it should have 0:32:52.280 --> 0:32:54.200 you know, some measured amount of risk taking in there. 0:32:54.240 --> 0:32:56.480 So things that again will speed the pace of deployment 0:32:56.560 --> 0:33:00.200 and makes sense. The third thing we're doing is and 0:33:00.240 --> 0:33:01.600 this is again you guys asked me, you know, how 0:33:01.720 --> 0:33:04.280 is this program different from other programs. As we hire 0:33:04.280 --> 0:33:07.960 these thousand engineers, ultimately they will live in various agencies. Right, So, 0:33:08.800 --> 0:33:10.960 doctor oz At CMS says, you know, it's like, look, 0:33:10.960 --> 0:33:13.000 I need seventy five engineers to do you know, kind 0:33:13.040 --> 0:33:16.240 of important projects there or obviously Department of War you know, 0:33:16.480 --> 0:33:18.360 have lots of stuff, so they're going to live in 0:33:18.360 --> 0:33:20.000 those agencies. But what we're not going to do, which 0:33:20.080 --> 0:33:22.120 is historically where I think these programs has failed, is 0:33:22.160 --> 0:33:25.200 if you drop these teams just into the blob that 0:33:25.400 --> 0:33:28.040 is the federal government, they're going to have a terrible 0:33:28.080 --> 0:33:30.320 experience and they're going to get lost, and they'll their 0:33:30.320 --> 0:33:32.360 two years will literally go by without them actually having 0:33:32.400 --> 0:33:35.400 accomplished anything. So our whole goal with this is keep 0:33:35.440 --> 0:33:37.640 these teams together. So when you know what I'm what 0:33:37.680 --> 0:33:40.080 I'm hoping from doctor Oz is there's going to be 0:33:40.080 --> 0:33:41.920 a team of seventy five engineers who are going to 0:33:41.920 --> 0:33:43.560 be a team, and they're going to work on the 0:33:43.560 --> 0:33:46.040 projects that he thinks are the most important projects. And 0:33:46.120 --> 0:33:48.760 of course they have to integrate with the existing CIO 0:33:48.880 --> 0:33:51.120 organization because so much of what we do has integration 0:33:51.200 --> 0:33:53.880 back ends and all that kind of stuff. But we've 0:33:53.880 --> 0:33:56.680 got to make sure that that happens because otherwise, you know, 0:33:56.800 --> 0:33:59.200 you hire a random you know, intern to and you 0:33:59.240 --> 0:34:02.000 PLoP them into ananization and they get swallowed by the beast. Basically, 0:34:02.000 --> 0:34:05.080 it's just it's understandable why that happens. So we've got 0:34:05.080 --> 0:34:07.520 to think about the organizational implications of bringing people in 0:34:07.560 --> 0:34:09.719 and make sure they're set up for success. And you know, 0:34:09.880 --> 0:34:12.239 my expectations are and certainly the conversations that I've had 0:34:12.239 --> 0:34:14.160 with all the agency heads are that they understand that, 0:34:14.480 --> 0:34:16.360 and they understand that for them to achieve what they 0:34:16.440 --> 0:34:19.120 want to do, they have to create the organizational structure 0:34:19.200 --> 0:34:21.360 that enables these guys to actually do what they're there for. 0:34:22.120 --> 0:34:23.799 Yeah, I think that this is another thing that we 0:34:23.800 --> 0:34:28.080 could probably say from firsthand experience, is you come to 0:34:28.120 --> 0:34:31.120 a big organization, You've spent a long time, maybe the 0:34:31.200 --> 0:34:34.040 first year of just getting to know the lay of 0:34:34.080 --> 0:34:36.080 the land, who are the people that you should talk to, 0:34:36.160 --> 0:34:39.160 et cetera. It's a real challenge. It's a real challenge 0:34:39.160 --> 0:34:42.000 being effective of actually accomplishing anything. 0:34:42.080 --> 0:34:44.719 The amount of time. I mean, I've been a bloomberg and. 0:34:44.680 --> 0:34:45.600 There's all experience. 0:34:45.719 --> 0:34:47.480 Yeah, they're still I've been here ten years. That there 0:34:47.560 --> 0:34:49.040 is like who do I call it? It's just like 0:34:49.080 --> 0:34:52.440 the nature of large organizations. I want to talk about 0:34:52.520 --> 0:34:54.680 you know, people who you say, Okay, like you, we 0:34:54.719 --> 0:34:56.279 need to do something about the fact that all these 0:34:56.280 --> 0:34:59.040 people are going to retire, and there is this pipeline 0:34:59.080 --> 0:35:03.000 et cetera. Set it aside, optimal levels of how big 0:35:03.200 --> 0:35:07.400 the federal workforce should be, et cetera. One thing that 0:35:07.440 --> 0:35:10.680 I could see as a bit of a problem about 0:35:10.840 --> 0:35:14.279 maintaining careers if federal workers do not feel that they 0:35:14.320 --> 0:35:16.960 are respected in their jobs. And there is a rhetoric 0:35:17.400 --> 0:35:20.160 that is that you hear it's like the federal governments 0:35:20.200 --> 0:35:22.720 they you know again some people it's like, oh, they're leeches, 0:35:23.000 --> 0:35:25.480 they're part of the deep state. They're all look and 0:35:25.600 --> 0:35:28.200 they spend money on this, and that's ways. But even 0:35:28.239 --> 0:35:31.279 that spending looks like what I observe is spending in 0:35:31.280 --> 0:35:34.480 the private sector, et cetera. And then you know, there's 0:35:34.719 --> 0:35:38.920 at least from this administration, there's been these sort of 0:35:39.760 --> 0:35:43.680 seemingly from the outside and probably from the inside, capricious 0:35:43.719 --> 0:35:47.400 layoffs or arbitrary layoffs. And so if you respect this workforce, 0:35:47.960 --> 0:35:51.239 then how how could you possibly have just like cut 0:35:51.320 --> 0:35:53.759 so arbitrarily. I mean, these are this is what it 0:35:54.000 --> 0:35:59.440 seems like when you think about building a talent pipeline. 0:35:59.600 --> 0:36:03.040 Do you think think about this dimension and do agree 0:36:03.120 --> 0:36:05.160 with the sort of premise of the question that it's 0:36:05.160 --> 0:36:07.000 a challenge that no one is going to work at 0:36:07.000 --> 0:36:09.839 a place if their boss is to some extent sort 0:36:09.880 --> 0:36:12.919 of think they're you know, do not respect them. 0:36:13.680 --> 0:36:17.120 Yeah, So the short answer is yes, like absolutely, this 0:36:17.200 --> 0:36:19.520 is a critical part of making sure that the federal 0:36:19.600 --> 0:36:21.960 government is an attractive place for the people who are 0:36:21.960 --> 0:36:23.919 there and also the people who you know, we're trying 0:36:23.920 --> 0:36:26.360 to recruit in. So I got a million thoughts. Let 0:36:26.400 --> 0:36:28.160 me try to see if I can keep them in 0:36:28.200 --> 0:36:31.000 the time we have remaining. So I'll give tell you 0:36:31.040 --> 0:36:32.520 one thing. So just to back up, as you know, 0:36:32.560 --> 0:36:34.440 I've worked at entries in Horowitz and Ben Horowitz, in 0:36:34.480 --> 0:36:37.000 my mind, is one of the best CEO's, best managers 0:36:37.040 --> 0:36:38.920 that I've ever learned from. And I had worked for 0:36:39.040 --> 0:36:41.000 him for literally ten years prior, so for twenty six 0:36:41.080 --> 0:36:42.839 years of my life I've had the benefit of learning 0:36:42.840 --> 0:36:45.120 from Ben. The most important thing I learned from him 0:36:45.280 --> 0:36:47.759 is exactly what you describe, which is when you have 0:36:47.880 --> 0:36:52.080 restructurings in companies, basically you have broken trust with your employees. Okay, so, 0:36:52.640 --> 0:36:54.719 particularly in the startup context, right, Like, you know, when 0:36:54.760 --> 0:36:57.399 we were in startups, we personally recruited every single person 0:36:57.440 --> 0:36:59.520 into that company, and we told them how we were 0:36:59.520 --> 0:37:01.279 going to conquer the world and how awesome we were 0:37:01.280 --> 0:37:02.840 going to be, and we believed that we weren't like 0:37:02.920 --> 0:37:05.520 lying to them. But it turns out we were wrong. 0:37:05.640 --> 0:37:07.440 Like the market change, we didn't have to no money 0:37:07.480 --> 0:37:08.960 and and you know, we had to live through this 0:37:09.040 --> 0:37:11.279 in our loud cloud opsware days we laid we had 0:37:11.320 --> 0:37:13.319 to lay a bunch of people off, and so you've 0:37:13.320 --> 0:37:15.600 immediately broken trust with those employees. So you are from 0:37:15.640 --> 0:37:18.319 that day forward basically in a situation where you have 0:37:18.400 --> 0:37:20.920 to rebuild that trust. Right, so you have to demonstrate 0:37:20.960 --> 0:37:23.640 to them that you know it wasn't capricious and arbitrary, 0:37:23.719 --> 0:37:25.799 and that you're not like lying to them in a jerk, 0:37:25.840 --> 0:37:27.880 but that you actually do care about them. And it 0:37:27.920 --> 0:37:30.000 turns out, through no fault of their own, their next 0:37:30.040 --> 0:37:31.480 door neighbor who sat in the cube next to them 0:37:31.520 --> 0:37:33.960 unfortunately lost their job because like we couldn't afford to 0:37:33.960 --> 0:37:37.319 pay them anymore. So I say that only to say, look, 0:37:37.360 --> 0:37:40.080 I recognize that very clearly. I understand that. And if 0:37:40.120 --> 0:37:42.080 you literally go back to like the testimony I gave 0:37:42.120 --> 0:37:45.200 when I went through my hearing, I said that very splicit. 0:37:45.280 --> 0:37:47.239 I think that's important. All that being said, I think, 0:37:47.280 --> 0:37:49.359 look the way to think about. Let me just give 0:37:49.360 --> 0:37:51.840 you the context of the headcount reductions that happened in 0:37:51.880 --> 0:37:54.120 the government, because I think there is in my mind 0:37:54.120 --> 0:37:55.640 at least some misinformation out there that I think is 0:37:55.680 --> 0:37:57.400 worth talking about. So it'll give you some numbers. You know, 0:37:57.400 --> 0:37:59.719 you've got a very sophisticated audience. As at the end 0:37:59.760 --> 0:38:02.120 of the year, roughly about three hundred and seventeen thousand 0:38:02.120 --> 0:38:05.320 people will have exited the federal government. Okay, we started 0:38:05.320 --> 0:38:07.840 the year at about two point four million ish roughly 0:38:07.960 --> 0:38:10.160 in terms of civilian These are civilian employees, by the way, 0:38:10.200 --> 0:38:12.880 so forget about the armed services, because my organization doesn't 0:38:12.920 --> 0:38:15.759 touch that. About two point four million civilian employees will 0:38:15.800 --> 0:38:18.480 be roughly two point one million civilian employees as of 0:38:18.520 --> 0:38:21.279 December thirty first of this year. At the same time, 0:38:21.320 --> 0:38:23.560 we hired about sixty six thousand employees. So on a 0:38:23.600 --> 0:38:26.160 net basis, call it two hundred and seventy you know, 0:38:26.160 --> 0:38:28.280 two hundred and sixty two hundred and seventy thousand roughly 0:38:28.400 --> 0:38:31.120 kind of net departures from the government. If you go 0:38:31.200 --> 0:38:33.560 back to that three hundred and seventeen thousand, number, ninety 0:38:33.640 --> 0:38:35.880 two and a half percent of those people took some 0:38:36.080 --> 0:38:38.359 form of voluntary retirement. So we had this thing called 0:38:38.400 --> 0:38:41.400 DRP Deferred Resignation Program that was the back that was 0:38:41.440 --> 0:38:43.280 literally half of it. One hundred and fifty four thousand 0:38:43.280 --> 0:38:45.520 people took that, which was an eight month seference that 0:38:45.560 --> 0:38:48.520 we gave to people to voluntarily leave government. And then 0:38:48.520 --> 0:38:50.480 the rest of it was where there are some other programs. 0:38:50.480 --> 0:38:53.359 The acronyms aren't relevant for your for your listeners, they're 0:38:53.360 --> 0:38:55.239 called Viera and VISA if people want to look them up, 0:38:55.440 --> 0:38:58.440 but those are other voluntary kind of you know, retirement programs. 0:38:58.640 --> 0:39:01.040 And then only seven and a half percent of people 0:39:01.080 --> 0:39:05.200 were removed through either rifts or what we call probationary employees, 0:39:05.200 --> 0:39:07.400 which is in the government, if you've been if you've 0:39:07.440 --> 0:39:10.319 been there for one or two years, it depending upon 0:39:10.440 --> 0:39:12.520 the job. You're kind of the closest thing to an 0:39:12.520 --> 0:39:14.320 app will employee that we have in the federal government. 0:39:14.360 --> 0:39:16.840 And so that we're about seven thousand of those probitionary 0:39:16.880 --> 0:39:19.719 employers who were removed in about seventeen thousand people who 0:39:19.760 --> 0:39:22.239 were ultimately riffed, you know, reductions and forced as a 0:39:22.239 --> 0:39:24.799 result of restructings. So I say that number one, not 0:39:24.840 --> 0:39:26.440 to I want to be totally clear with your listeners, 0:39:26.600 --> 0:39:28.200 not to make light of any of this. Obviously those 0:39:28.200 --> 0:39:30.720 are real people with real jobs and real families and stuff. 0:39:30.760 --> 0:39:33.799 But the numbers, again, you know, kind of I think 0:39:33.840 --> 0:39:35.680 bear out what we tried to do in the government, 0:39:35.719 --> 0:39:38.520 which is tell people that things were changing, tell people 0:39:38.600 --> 0:39:40.200 that you know, we do have a different view as 0:39:40.239 --> 0:39:42.000 to what, you know, we think the federal government should 0:39:42.040 --> 0:39:46.040 be doing, and give people an opportunity to voluntarily say, okay, 0:39:46.040 --> 0:39:47.480 this is not what I signed up for, which is 0:39:47.480 --> 0:39:49.120 a very noble thing to do, and say, you know, 0:39:49.120 --> 0:39:50.719 it's time for me to go do something different. So 0:39:51.200 --> 0:39:52.560 ninety two and a half percent of the people who 0:39:52.640 --> 0:39:55.160 left the government did so because they decided, you know, 0:39:55.239 --> 0:39:57.000 this wasn't an environment they wanted to be in. So 0:39:57.719 --> 0:39:59.680 that being said, now, look I totally agree with you, 0:39:59.719 --> 0:40:01.880 which is we have to demonstrate to the people that 0:40:01.920 --> 0:40:03.399 are there and to the people who are coming in 0:40:03.600 --> 0:40:05.960 that you know, we obviously care about them and that 0:40:06.000 --> 0:40:08.680 we think they do valuable work. And I think that's 0:40:08.719 --> 0:40:10.640 the case for the vast fast majority of people there 0:40:10.680 --> 0:40:12.719 do great work, like any organization. Yes, there are some 0:40:12.760 --> 0:40:15.040 people who are not doing great work, and we have 0:40:15.080 --> 0:40:17.080 a system that makes it very hard to hold them accountable. 0:40:17.080 --> 0:40:18.719 We're going to try to fix that. But look, that's 0:40:18.719 --> 0:40:21.200 true of any organization. So I don't think it doesn't 0:40:21.200 --> 0:40:23.040 make sense that kind of demean the broad federal government 0:40:23.040 --> 0:40:24.880 based upon the work of a few. But we have 0:40:24.920 --> 0:40:26.680 to do that, and we also have to be honest 0:40:26.719 --> 0:40:29.360 and transparent with our people, which I believe very strongly, 0:40:29.400 --> 0:40:31.600 and is Look, we can't be all things to all people, 0:40:31.640 --> 0:40:34.719 Like we're running two trillion dollars deficits. That's not sustainable. 0:40:35.040 --> 0:40:36.600 And so look, we've got to be smarter. We have 0:40:36.640 --> 0:40:38.960 to use technology to find ways to improve efficiency. We 0:40:39.040 --> 0:40:41.160 have to think about if we're doing twenty things, are 0:40:41.200 --> 0:40:43.400 all twenty of them still required? Do they still add value? 0:40:43.680 --> 0:40:46.120 Because ultimately we're stewards of the taxpayer dollars, Like this 0:40:46.160 --> 0:40:48.200 is not our money we're spending, and so I think 0:40:48.200 --> 0:40:50.279 it's incumbent upon everybody. And this is the message that 0:40:50.280 --> 0:40:52.279 I'm trying to get across to my team and to 0:40:52.280 --> 0:40:54.799 the rest of the government. Is efficiency doesn't mean just 0:40:54.840 --> 0:40:57.400 cutting cost. Efficiency means are you thinking about delivering a 0:40:57.400 --> 0:41:00.000 better service but doing so you know, at or below. 0:41:00.000 --> 0:41:02.399 So like what you do today, because you're thinking about 0:41:02.480 --> 0:41:05.520 organizational changes, you're thinking about technology. Like to me, that 0:41:05.680 --> 0:41:08.560 is just like quite frankly required of anybody in any 0:41:08.640 --> 0:41:12.000 organization to do. And so that to me is like 0:41:12.080 --> 0:41:14.400 what I'm trying to convey to people. And yes, that 0:41:14.440 --> 0:41:16.320 means that there may be some jobs that are impacted 0:41:16.360 --> 0:41:19.040 because of technology, but those things are going to happen, 0:41:19.160 --> 0:41:21.600 whether you know kind of you know, we want them 0:41:21.640 --> 0:41:23.600 to happen or not. The question is do we actually 0:41:23.600 --> 0:41:25.560 set up the workforce and do training and do all 0:41:25.600 --> 0:41:26.759 the kinds of things we need to do to make 0:41:26.760 --> 0:41:29.319 sure that people have opportunities in light of what is 0:41:29.360 --> 0:41:31.920 a very very rapidly changing, you know, technological market. 0:41:32.160 --> 0:41:34.200 So I get that part of the problem that you're 0:41:34.200 --> 0:41:37.319 trying to solve is an operational one. This idea of 0:41:37.440 --> 0:41:41.239 like a COBOYL programmer who's been there for decades and 0:41:41.280 --> 0:41:44.399 he retires and walks out the door, and no one 0:41:44.480 --> 0:41:46.400 knows how to do what he was doing, or no 0:41:46.440 --> 0:41:49.839 one understands the system that he's basically had control over 0:41:50.320 --> 0:41:53.640 for ages. But at the same time, you know, we're 0:41:53.680 --> 0:41:56.840 talking about a decent amount of turnover a lot of 0:41:56.920 --> 0:42:01.920 new employees. If this goes the right way, how are you, 0:42:02.360 --> 0:42:06.680 I guess, guiding for safety. Are there any sort of 0:42:06.719 --> 0:42:10.520 like institutional guardrails that you're putting in so that the 0:42:10.600 --> 0:42:13.960 government doesn't actually end up breaking things? 0:42:15.120 --> 0:42:20.200 Yeah, I mean, look, there are you will hopefully appreciate 0:42:20.239 --> 0:42:22.440 this bill. Look, there are a ton of institutional guardrails. 0:42:22.560 --> 0:42:24.400 You know. In my mind, like the problem is we 0:42:24.440 --> 0:42:27.319 have too many institutional guardrails. And again, you know, rational 0:42:27.360 --> 0:42:29.799 people may disagree with me, but you know, I can 0:42:29.880 --> 0:42:32.799 just tell you, like the entire culture of everything we do. 0:42:33.080 --> 0:42:35.799 Any everybody I've talked to in government and luckily we've 0:42:35.800 --> 0:42:37.880 had lots of kind of impact on making change ear on, 0:42:38.320 --> 0:42:41.239 everybody is like, we can't do that because of X, right, 0:42:41.280 --> 0:42:44.640 And the answer is either because like it's statutory and 0:42:44.680 --> 0:42:46.520 the honest answers when you dig and dig and dig 0:42:46.520 --> 0:42:48.880 the realities it's not statutory, Like we've built up this 0:42:48.960 --> 0:42:51.840 like urban myth over time that something is statutory, or 0:42:51.880 --> 0:42:55.080 as I mentioned, because like I'm terrified that I'm gonna 0:42:55.080 --> 0:42:57.520 get a GAO report, an inspector General report, or a 0:42:57.560 --> 0:43:00.840 congressional inquiry. And like, we we have built such a 0:43:00.840 --> 0:43:03.880 compliance culture that we are just literally like unable to 0:43:03.920 --> 0:43:07.360 do anything that actually is kind of modern and you know, 0:43:07.560 --> 0:43:10.200 forward thinking in terms of government. And so this is 0:43:10.200 --> 0:43:11.480 what I'm this is what I'm trying to do. And 0:43:11.680 --> 0:43:13.520 as I told you guys from the beginning, like, yes, 0:43:13.560 --> 0:43:15.120 this is not the private sector. We're not going to 0:43:15.160 --> 0:43:16.960 take crazy risks. We're not going to like go like 0:43:17.000 --> 0:43:19.759 put everything on black, you know, in the casino. But 0:43:20.320 --> 0:43:22.600 we can have a rational conversation, which is okay, like 0:43:22.640 --> 0:43:24.520 what are the risks we're taking and what's the upside. 0:43:24.560 --> 0:43:26.200 So if you'll give me a minute, let me give 0:43:26.200 --> 0:43:28.920 you a very very tangible example for your listeners. So 0:43:29.040 --> 0:43:32.000 I mentioned to you that we handle retirement services and 0:43:32.040 --> 0:43:34.839 it's a very manual process, and so like it takes 0:43:34.880 --> 0:43:37.680 us a really long time to get people formally retired. 0:43:37.719 --> 0:43:39.360 So you quit from you know, you retire from the 0:43:39.400 --> 0:43:42.960 government on September thirtieth. In the current process, you know, 0:43:43.080 --> 0:43:45.719 it takes sixty ninety one hundred and twenty days sometimes 0:43:46.000 --> 0:43:48.719 for you to actually get a check because we have 0:43:48.800 --> 0:43:51.759 this ridiculous, manually paper process that takes forever to for 0:43:51.880 --> 0:43:53.920 us to calculate what are you actually entitled to and 0:43:53.960 --> 0:43:55.360 to make sure you're getting the right money and all 0:43:55.400 --> 0:43:58.080 that stuff. So that's a huge burden on retire reach. Right, 0:43:58.080 --> 0:44:00.040 You've been getting a paycheck every two weeks for the 0:44:00.120 --> 0:44:02.200 last forty years, and now I'm going to tell you, 0:44:02.280 --> 0:44:04.520 like sorry, like go manage your cash flow some other 0:44:04.560 --> 0:44:07.000 way while I'm doing this, Like, that's terrible in my mind, 0:44:07.160 --> 0:44:09.680 and it's a complete disservice and completely disrespectful to people 0:44:09.680 --> 0:44:12.200 who are retired with the government. So we have a 0:44:12.239 --> 0:44:15.080 process in the Retirement Services thing called interim pay right, 0:44:15.120 --> 0:44:17.200 which is as the name sounds, right, The idea is, okay, 0:44:17.360 --> 0:44:19.440 can we get you some money on an interim basis 0:44:19.440 --> 0:44:21.400 that may not be one hundred percent accurate, but at 0:44:21.480 --> 0:44:24.680 least helps bridge this gap between you when you retire 0:44:24.680 --> 0:44:27.440 and when you get your actual annuity check. Okay. So 0:44:28.160 --> 0:44:30.520 going into and then the couple this with we've got 0:44:30.560 --> 0:44:32.319 this massive You know, we have had a lot of 0:44:32.360 --> 0:44:34.560 exits in government. So the three hundred and seventeen thousand 0:44:34.560 --> 0:44:36.960 I mentioned, not all of those are retirees, but like 0:44:37.040 --> 0:44:39.400 on average people, we have about one hundred to one 0:44:39.480 --> 0:44:41.680 hundred and fifty thousand exits a year, so we're you know, 0:44:41.719 --> 0:44:43.479 more than double the number. So and as a result, 0:44:43.520 --> 0:44:45.760 there's more than double the number of retirees that are happening. 0:44:45.800 --> 0:44:49.480 So you've got this terrible papal process like massive volumes, 0:44:49.960 --> 0:44:51.880 and we're just going to make life miserable for all 0:44:51.920 --> 0:44:54.879 these people who can't get money. So I asked the team. 0:44:54.920 --> 0:44:57.280 I said, okay, how many people go through interim pay today? 0:44:57.360 --> 0:44:59.640 This is kind of pre are change, and it's about 0:44:59.640 --> 0:45:01.640 like percent of people. And I was like, well, what's 0:45:01.640 --> 0:45:04.400 the problem. Layer like, well, that's how we've always done it, 0:45:04.480 --> 0:45:06.440 so you know, again, part of the answer was statutory, 0:45:06.440 --> 0:45:10.040 which it's not statutory. And they're like, well, there's huge 0:45:10.120 --> 0:45:13.040 risk to the system because if we pay somebody more 0:45:13.719 --> 0:45:16.359 and then they die between the time we paid them 0:45:16.400 --> 0:45:19.960 their interim payment and we get their actual annuity, there 0:45:20.000 --> 0:45:21.920 may not be any assets left into the estate, and 0:45:21.960 --> 0:45:24.760 so we might compromise the fidelity of the trust fund. Okay, 0:45:25.120 --> 0:45:26.680 Now keep in mind, this is a one point two 0:45:26.680 --> 0:45:29.480 trillion dollar trust fund that is actually cashful, a positive. 0:45:29.520 --> 0:45:32.279 So among trust funds for retirement. It's actually fairy rare. 0:45:32.760 --> 0:45:34.760 But we earned two and a half percent on government 0:45:34.760 --> 0:45:37.120 treasuries a year, which is horrendously bad because we're only 0:45:37.120 --> 0:45:40.319 allowed to invest in government treasuries but not with Spain. 0:45:40.400 --> 0:45:42.479 That it's actually still pet cashul the positive and fully 0:45:42.480 --> 0:45:45.840 funded like almost in any any circumstance. So we finally 0:45:45.880 --> 0:45:47.279 went through the math, and I said, let's go through 0:45:47.280 --> 0:45:49.759 the math, and let's assume, you know, we get it 0:45:49.760 --> 0:45:51.960 wrong x amount of time and all this sudden stuff. 0:45:52.160 --> 0:45:53.839 And we did a bunch of math, and I said, look, 0:45:53.880 --> 0:45:56.520 if we're wrong one hundred percent of the time, it 0:45:56.560 --> 0:45:59.799 could cost us a couple million dollars over payments at 0:46:00.080 --> 0:46:02.480 one point two trillion dollars trust fund. But we can 0:46:02.520 --> 0:46:04.799 shrink from ninety to one hundred and twenty days the 0:46:04.840 --> 0:46:08.320 time somebody gets a payment to either zero to seven 0:46:08.400 --> 0:46:11.239 days if we put more people through this interim pay process. 0:46:11.320 --> 0:46:13.000 So in my mind, like this is just the most 0:46:13.000 --> 0:46:15.200 obvious thing to do, and we are doing it by 0:46:15.200 --> 0:46:17.000 the way we decided to do it. But like it's 0:46:17.040 --> 0:46:19.320 a great example, at least in my mind, of where 0:46:20.160 --> 0:46:22.799 we have so ingrained in the culture that risk, any 0:46:22.880 --> 0:46:25.919 kind of risk is bad without actually people being willing 0:46:25.920 --> 0:46:27.759 to have the conversation to say, Okay, like what is 0:46:27.800 --> 0:46:30.360 the cost of that risk relative to the upside opportunity 0:46:30.360 --> 0:46:33.560 that that taking that risk entails. And I'm perfectly happy, 0:46:33.719 --> 0:46:35.000 you know, I told them, I said, look, you don't 0:46:35.000 --> 0:46:37.000 need to protect me if it turns out some congress 0:46:37.000 --> 0:46:39.040 person wants to yell at me because like, I took 0:46:39.040 --> 0:46:41.359 a modicum of risk in order to like make you know, 0:46:41.480 --> 0:46:43.799 hundreds of thousands of retirees lives better and not have 0:46:43.840 --> 0:46:46.080 to like take loans out after they've given their career 0:46:46.160 --> 0:46:48.640 service to the federal government. Like, I'm totally fine defending that. 0:46:48.640 --> 0:46:51.120 I think that's a perfectly rational answer. So that, to 0:46:51.160 --> 0:46:51.960 me is the issue. 0:46:52.320 --> 0:46:54.560 I have one least question, and maybe I'll sort of 0:46:54.560 --> 0:46:56.640 ask you a little bit to put your VC hat on, 0:46:56.680 --> 0:46:59.160 maybe because maybe you will go back to VC when 0:46:59.200 --> 0:47:01.719 this level is over. But who knows someone who knows 0:47:01.760 --> 0:47:04.319 a lot a lot about technology. So we had an 0:47:04.360 --> 0:47:07.160 episode recently with Tyler Cowhen we talk about one of 0:47:07.160 --> 0:47:10.480 the weird things, Yeah, is that you know, the AI. 0:47:10.520 --> 0:47:12.279 We haven't even really talked about AI. So this's my 0:47:12.320 --> 0:47:15.000 AI question. AI the tech make you know, makes your 0:47:15.080 --> 0:47:16.960 jaws drop when you see it. On the other hand, 0:47:17.000 --> 0:47:19.359 the impact so far on the economy or the real 0:47:19.360 --> 0:47:21.840 world is sort of muted. It maybe is like you 0:47:21.920 --> 0:47:24.640 might have, given the capabilities, you might have expected more 0:47:25.360 --> 0:47:28.600 more revolutionary change. And his thesis that he put forth 0:47:28.760 --> 0:47:30.879 was like, we're really not going to see that sort 0:47:30.920 --> 0:47:33.880 of meaningful, impactful diffusion of the tech until we have 0:47:33.960 --> 0:47:37.560 organizations that to some extent are built ground up from 0:47:37.719 --> 0:47:40.080 AI that you know, yes, you can maybe get some 0:47:40.120 --> 0:47:43.239 productivity gains here and there by putting AI into some 0:47:43.320 --> 0:47:46.160 existing workflow, but that the real breakthroughs will come from 0:47:46.160 --> 0:47:49.280 whether it's companies or so forth, that are truly AI 0:47:49.440 --> 0:47:52.560 native from day one. I'm curious, you know, when you 0:47:52.600 --> 0:47:55.440 think about you know, again going back to the VC world, A, 0:47:56.160 --> 0:48:00.680 does this feel intuitive to you that the real deployers 0:48:00.719 --> 0:48:03.160 will be AI native And then does that have any 0:48:03.239 --> 0:48:06.120 implications for like, we're not going to have a revolution, 0:48:06.560 --> 0:48:09.440 I guess hopefully at the at the federal level, are 0:48:09.480 --> 0:48:11.839 not going to have a complete destruction and starting over. 0:48:12.200 --> 0:48:15.520 Does that have any implications then for thinking about how 0:48:15.560 --> 0:48:18.879 AI will be diffused within federal processes? 0:48:20.080 --> 0:48:22.560 Yeah? So obviously, Yeah, Tyler is a brilliant guy, so 0:48:23.000 --> 0:48:25.320 far from me to disagree with him. But let me 0:48:25.360 --> 0:48:26.799 give you just a couple thoughts on what he said. 0:48:26.840 --> 0:48:29.440 So look, I guess I generally agree with most of 0:48:29.440 --> 0:48:31.920 what he says, which is, and this is true by 0:48:31.920 --> 0:48:34.239 the way I think of adoption of most new technologies, 0:48:34.239 --> 0:48:36.600 which is, we go to the common use cases and 0:48:36.600 --> 0:48:39.200 we think about incrementality as the first thing to do it. 0:48:39.239 --> 0:48:42.480 So if you go way back when Mark Andresen told 0:48:42.480 --> 0:48:43.960 me this, so if it's if it's made up, I'll 0:48:43.960 --> 0:48:46.759 blame him. You know, when when we when we first 0:48:46.800 --> 0:48:48.840 when we first had movies, you know, actual like you know, 0:48:49.239 --> 0:48:52.680 moving pictures, they were just plays basically that people filmed, right, 0:48:52.719 --> 0:48:55.280 so like they weren't like producing them, they weren't new content. 0:48:55.320 --> 0:48:57.319 It was literally just we said, Wow, we have this 0:48:57.320 --> 0:48:59.560 cool thing called a camera. Let's film a play and 0:48:59.560 --> 0:49:03.000 then go in a thing. Now it's obviously that's not 0:49:03.040 --> 0:49:05.359 that relevant to this conversation, but my point is just 0:49:05.440 --> 0:49:08.239 like we tend to go to these very common incremental 0:49:08.640 --> 0:49:11.560 use cases for things. And so look, I believe that 0:49:11.760 --> 0:49:14.080 if you look at any major fortune five hundred company, 0:49:14.120 --> 0:49:16.600 I guarantee you that every single board conversation is what 0:49:16.600 --> 0:49:18.680 the heck are you doing about AI? And how do 0:49:18.760 --> 0:49:21.520 I get three to five to seven percent greater EPs 0:49:21.560 --> 0:49:24.759 growth relative to last year because you can fix my 0:49:24.800 --> 0:49:27.000 customer support problem or stuff like that. So I think 0:49:27.040 --> 0:49:29.399 that's what's happening right now. I do agree that, Yes, 0:49:29.480 --> 0:49:31.920 what often happens is then there will be a new 0:49:31.960 --> 0:49:33.680 generation of companies And we see this in the venture 0:49:33.680 --> 0:49:36.359 capital world too already. Which is the most obvious use 0:49:36.360 --> 0:49:38.160 cases that people did is there's a ton of companies 0:49:38.160 --> 0:49:40.799 who have customer support applications for AI, and there's a 0:49:40.800 --> 0:49:42.600 ton of companies who have you know, how do we 0:49:42.719 --> 0:49:45.640 help lawyers read documents better using AI? And that's great 0:49:45.680 --> 0:49:48.880 and those companies are fantastic, but the real breakthrough is 0:49:48.880 --> 0:49:51.279 going to be yes, like when someone says, Okay, we're 0:49:51.280 --> 0:49:53.520 not just gonna make salesforce dot com more efficient, but like, 0:49:53.560 --> 0:49:56.480 we're just going to rethink customer relationship management with an 0:49:56.520 --> 0:49:59.359 AI first mentality, and like, the AI should know who 0:49:59.360 --> 0:50:01.400 my customers are. It should anticipate what I want to do, 0:50:01.440 --> 0:50:03.480 and it should send me emails and texts and say, like, 0:50:03.520 --> 0:50:05.279 you haven't talked to this person in five weeks and 0:50:05.719 --> 0:50:07.600 I just saw that they you know, spoke at this 0:50:07.640 --> 0:50:09.480 conference and they talked about this, and you know you're 0:50:09.480 --> 0:50:11.279 not following up on it. So that's where we will 0:50:11.320 --> 0:50:13.520 get and I have no doubt we will get there, 0:50:13.600 --> 0:50:15.799 quite frankly. And look, I'm an optimist by nature. You 0:50:15.800 --> 0:50:17.400 have to be to be in the venture capital business. 0:50:17.480 --> 0:50:19.080 But yes, I would agree with him generally. I think 0:50:19.120 --> 0:50:20.640 that's right. What does it mean for the federal government? 0:50:21.280 --> 0:50:24.840 Very simple, which is that if the private sector is incremental, 0:50:24.960 --> 0:50:27.360 the federal government's going to be like, you know, a 0:50:27.480 --> 0:50:30.600 hundred x incremental relative to a hundred x less incremental. 0:50:30.600 --> 0:50:33.040 I guess I would describe it, but that's in my mind. 0:50:33.040 --> 0:50:35.720 That's okay. Like, so again I've told everybody in my team, 0:50:36.200 --> 0:50:37.640 I'm not asking you. I don't want you to go 0:50:37.680 --> 0:50:40.160 build like the twenty forty AI plan because we have 0:50:40.239 --> 0:50:41.800 no idea what the heck that's going to look like. 0:50:41.880 --> 0:50:43.799 That's a total waste of our time. What I want 0:50:43.800 --> 0:50:45.560 you to do is look at a process you do 0:50:45.640 --> 0:50:48.640 today and figure out can you use an AI tool 0:50:48.680 --> 0:50:51.440 to help you get three, five, ten percent greater performance 0:50:51.440 --> 0:50:53.680 out of your organization? Right, So we do a ton 0:50:53.719 --> 0:50:55.000 of I'll give you very simple say, we do a 0:50:55.040 --> 0:50:57.360 ton of regulation writing obviously, because you know that's what 0:50:57.400 --> 0:50:59.960 we're ultimately in the business of government is producing regulation, 0:51:00.520 --> 0:51:02.560 and we're about to put out a regulation. We got 0:51:02.600 --> 0:51:06.240 forty thousand public comments on this regulation. We literally assigned 0:51:06.280 --> 0:51:08.440 each one of those forty thousand comments to a person 0:51:08.520 --> 0:51:12.160 to read and to draft a response to. Now, to me, 0:51:12.280 --> 0:51:15.200 that's just insane, right, And I'm not saying that like 0:51:15.239 --> 0:51:17.080 the AI, we should just like the AI should do it. 0:51:17.120 --> 0:51:20.680 But like, clearly AI is very good at you know, summarization, 0:51:21.120 --> 0:51:24.359 at you know, helping people think about stuff like that's like, 0:51:24.440 --> 0:51:26.840 that's all. If we did that, like, we would unleash 0:51:26.920 --> 0:51:29.520 so much creativity and opportunity to government if we just said, 0:51:29.880 --> 0:51:32.839 take the very basic stuff we're doing today and use 0:51:32.920 --> 0:51:35.839 your you know, companion, chat, GPT or XAI, whatever your 0:51:35.880 --> 0:51:38.680 favorite tool is, and just you know, eke out a 0:51:38.719 --> 0:51:40.799 little bit of productivity. So anyway, that's how I think 0:51:40.840 --> 0:51:42.680 about it. So, yes, the government is not gonna we're 0:51:42.719 --> 0:51:45.560 not gonna transform government overnight. But what we're trying to do, 0:51:45.600 --> 0:51:47.120 and what the US Tech Force is trying to do, 0:51:47.239 --> 0:51:49.120 is can we get the right people in here who 0:51:49.239 --> 0:51:51.880 understand those things that we start to drive ourselves forward 0:51:52.200 --> 0:51:53.759 so we don't wake up five years from now and 0:51:53.760 --> 0:51:56.400 find that we're the last dinosaur basically, and you know 0:51:56.440 --> 0:51:57.480 the world has passed us by. 0:51:57.880 --> 0:52:00.520 So you sort of mentioned it just then, But can 0:52:00.560 --> 0:52:02.799 you talk at all about what kind of platforms you're 0:52:02.920 --> 0:52:06.359 using currently or what kind of models, because I you know, 0:52:06.800 --> 0:52:09.000 I'm sure some people would find it very ironic if 0:52:09.040 --> 0:52:11.959 the federal government was using deep seek or something like that. 0:52:12.920 --> 0:52:15.440 And I'm curious whether you lean towards like an open 0:52:15.480 --> 0:52:18.840 source thing or a closed source thing because of privacy concerns. 0:52:19.440 --> 0:52:21.920 Right now, the honest answer is we're at the very 0:52:22.000 --> 0:52:24.560 very early stages, which is most of what people are doing. 0:52:24.640 --> 0:52:24.680 It. 0:52:24.800 --> 0:52:27.640 Literally, this may make your head spin because it made mine. 0:52:27.920 --> 0:52:30.040 Until about a month ago, we did not even have 0:52:30.120 --> 0:52:33.000 chat GPT on our government desktops. So, like you know, 0:52:33.080 --> 0:52:35.000 I literally would sit there on my phone and ask 0:52:35.080 --> 0:52:37.400 chat GIPT questions myerson my personal phone, just to be 0:52:37.480 --> 0:52:39.719 totally clear on my personal phone, and then I would 0:52:39.760 --> 0:52:41.880 go back to my work laptop and do stuff. So 0:52:42.320 --> 0:52:44.000 as of about a month or two ago, we actually 0:52:44.000 --> 0:52:47.319 have chat GPT, we have Xai. Now we might even 0:52:47.400 --> 0:52:49.200 have We not even have a third one. I don't 0:52:49.200 --> 0:52:51.759 even know. And of course we're the government's a big 0:52:51.760 --> 0:52:54.480 Microsoft client. So we have my soft copilot for an 0:52:54.480 --> 0:52:57.040 individual user in government that's basically the state that is 0:52:57.160 --> 0:53:00.320 like the state of you know, kind of advanced automation basse. 0:53:00.360 --> 0:53:02.680 We literally have it on our laptops. Now for the 0:53:02.719 --> 0:53:05.839 development work that's happening. You're absolutely right, which is, Look, 0:53:05.880 --> 0:53:08.040 there are major security issues that we all have to 0:53:08.040 --> 0:53:10.920 think about. Look, I'm a big believer as you can 0:53:10.960 --> 0:53:13.920 imagine an open source and certainly our firm entries in Horowitz. 0:53:13.920 --> 0:53:16.040 You know, you've seen Mark make lots of public comments 0:53:16.040 --> 0:53:18.399 about this. So I think the government will use open 0:53:18.400 --> 0:53:20.560 source and can appropriately do so. Clearly we're not going 0:53:20.600 --> 0:53:23.839 to use like the deep seat commercial version, but you know, 0:53:23.920 --> 0:53:25.759 so much of that stuff is open source, and if 0:53:25.760 --> 0:53:27.719 you bring it in you know, to your environment, and 0:53:27.760 --> 0:53:29.520 you make sure that you get the right security standards. 0:53:30.320 --> 0:53:32.439 You know, there's tremendous value to develop on open source. 0:53:32.440 --> 0:53:33.759 But I would just just to give you a sense 0:53:33.800 --> 0:53:35.279 of where we are, I would say we're very very 0:53:35.320 --> 0:53:36.560 early in that journey in government. 0:53:37.080 --> 0:53:41.040 I have one last, very quick question, which is how 0:53:41.160 --> 0:53:44.960 much of a constraint is drug testing on new hires nowadays? 0:53:45.160 --> 0:53:47.680 You know, I wish I had a really smart answer 0:53:47.760 --> 0:53:51.359 to your question. I don't know the answer to that. 0:53:51.440 --> 0:53:53.440 I have not seen it. It hasn't I say, it 0:53:53.440 --> 0:53:56.600 hasn't shown up as some like big red flag where 0:53:56.600 --> 0:53:58.960 we're losing people in the recruiting pipeline because of that. 0:54:00.320 --> 0:54:02.560 But the very honest answers, I don't know, but I 0:54:02.560 --> 0:54:03.120 will find out. 0:54:03.400 --> 0:54:04.520 I think it's a good que we should. 0:54:04.560 --> 0:54:07.360 I'm actually very curious about drugs in the workforce in general. 0:54:07.440 --> 0:54:08.279 We should do more on that. 0:54:08.400 --> 0:54:11.120 Scott Cooper, thank you, no for real, for real, I 0:54:11.160 --> 0:54:13.160 you hear about it. My bark was talking about how 0:54:13.200 --> 0:54:15.720 hard it was to hire because he's like everyone is sort. 0:54:15.600 --> 0:54:17.799 Of if somebody I would just say, Joe, if somebody, 0:54:17.800 --> 0:54:20.640 if somebody clips that and puts it on Joe is 0:54:20.760 --> 0:54:23.320 very I'm very I'm very curious about drugs in the workforce. 0:54:23.360 --> 0:54:24.359 That's gonna be a great click. 0:54:24.840 --> 0:54:27.520 We'll get our producer, we'll clip it. Well, we'll get ahead, 0:54:27.560 --> 0:54:29.719 We'll get ahead of that one. Scott Cooper, thank you 0:54:29.760 --> 0:54:31.680 so much for coming on od Laves. That was really 0:54:31.760 --> 0:54:32.719 really appreciate your take. 0:54:32.760 --> 0:54:33.200 Your time. 0:54:33.360 --> 0:54:35.319 Very helpful, and I would love to stay in touch 0:54:35.360 --> 0:54:38.760 and hear more about how these projects evolved during your tenure. 0:54:39.800 --> 0:54:41.480 Right, thank you both for your time. I appreciate it. 0:54:57.880 --> 0:54:58.680 I thought that was great. 0:54:58.719 --> 0:55:01.600 I love I love these comm conversations. I mean because 0:55:01.880 --> 0:55:04.919 I think they're just I guess the sociology of them. Yeah, 0:55:05.080 --> 0:55:07.520 like that is what these conversations are really about. And 0:55:07.600 --> 0:55:10.600 especially you know, we talk about some of these pathologies 0:55:10.680 --> 0:55:14.360 that replicate from the public to a private sector, et cetera, 0:55:14.440 --> 0:55:17.400 that are both like, they're really interesting sociological questions. 0:55:17.480 --> 0:55:19.360 The Department of War needs to get a bunch of 0:55:19.400 --> 0:55:22.320 ping pong tables and tree snacks to recruit the most 0:55:22.360 --> 0:55:24.040 cutting edge tech workers, right. 0:55:24.080 --> 0:55:25.879 With a macha bar, that's right. 0:55:26.000 --> 0:55:28.000 I wonder, I wonder if they're experiment We should have 0:55:28.040 --> 0:55:30.920 asked that whether they have a macha on tap at 0:55:30.960 --> 0:55:32.560 the office and whether that could move the dial. 0:55:32.880 --> 0:55:37.640 But it's also interesting, again, there's that cultural sociological aspect, 0:55:37.719 --> 0:55:42.040 but it does apply to large bureaucracies and private organizations. 0:55:42.080 --> 0:55:44.840 And I think everyone at some point in their lives 0:55:44.920 --> 0:55:49.799 will experience this type of unnecessary paperwork, whether it's in 0:55:49.840 --> 0:55:52.520 their jobs or when they're applying for a driver's license 0:55:52.640 --> 0:55:53.080 or whatever. 0:55:53.680 --> 0:55:55.759 Yeah, you know what like this is like where I 0:55:55.800 --> 0:56:00.000 have like the sympathy for like sort of like modern life, 0:56:00.160 --> 0:56:04.160 large complicated things. How can the individual with our I mean, 0:56:04.400 --> 0:56:06.920 how could we do How could you navigate insurance? How 0:56:06.920 --> 0:56:09.120 can you navigate all this stuff? It like drives you 0:56:09.200 --> 0:56:12.560 crazy at any scale. I do think, you know, And 0:56:12.600 --> 0:56:15.279 this came up also in our conversations with Jennifer, and 0:56:15.320 --> 0:56:18.040 I believe it that there is a lot there is 0:56:18.160 --> 0:56:23.000 more to a career than pay, right, But I also 0:56:23.040 --> 0:56:25.680 think that's like a very real issue, especially when you're 0:56:25.719 --> 0:56:28.600 talking about the tech workforce specifically, where we know you 0:56:28.600 --> 0:56:31.280 could just make an absolute fortune, and in many cases 0:56:31.400 --> 0:56:33.400 you can make it a fortune as a very young person. 0:56:33.400 --> 0:56:35.240 You'll be in the right company at the right time, 0:56:35.320 --> 0:56:39.400 and many overnight multimillionaires in Silicon Valley. So it's not 0:56:39.719 --> 0:56:42.320 just the late stage, although that's where it becomes the 0:56:42.320 --> 0:56:45.520 most obvious. I really the pay is a very tricky situation. 0:56:45.760 --> 0:56:45.920 Well. 0:56:45.960 --> 0:56:48.759 I do think the emphasis on time constraints for the 0:56:48.800 --> 0:56:52.600 tech force that's really interesting, and that's kind of a 0:56:52.719 --> 0:56:55.600 shift again, a cultural shift from the way people have 0:56:55.760 --> 0:56:58.840 perceived government jobs for a long time. And I can imagine, 0:56:58.920 --> 0:57:01.680 you know, like if you were a young tech worker, 0:57:02.040 --> 0:57:05.799 maybe you're having trouble getting into the private sector. You know, 0:57:06.320 --> 0:57:09.600 just last year, you know, two years ago, remember there 0:57:09.680 --> 0:57:14.040 was the wave of like layoffs. Yeah, and now everyone 0:57:14.080 --> 0:57:15.279 is recruiting because of AI. 0:57:15.560 --> 0:57:18.280 But well, I mean no, I mean you're to your point, 0:57:18.400 --> 0:57:20.560 like there are even like there are many talented tech 0:57:20.560 --> 0:57:23.160 people if they're right there on the sweet spot, even 0:57:23.160 --> 0:57:24.400 though that's not what it used to be. 0:57:24.560 --> 0:57:26.680 So I can imagine, like you go to the government 0:57:26.720 --> 0:57:30.680 for two years and it's it's an educational process, and 0:57:30.720 --> 0:57:33.000 you can take some of that knowledge away from you 0:57:33.040 --> 0:57:35.400 when you then go into the private sector. Although that 0:57:35.520 --> 0:57:38.760 also opens up the question of rotating doors between the 0:57:38.760 --> 0:57:42.680 government and private companies, but maybe that's a topic for 0:57:42.760 --> 0:57:43.480 a different day. 0:57:43.720 --> 0:57:46.680 I just and I do think there is and it's 0:57:46.720 --> 0:57:49.120 not just this administration, but I think it's been very notable, 0:57:49.240 --> 0:57:51.520 at least with some parts of the administration or some 0:57:51.520 --> 0:57:54.720 parts of the rhetoric. There's this sort of like vilification 0:57:54.760 --> 0:57:56.720 of bureaucrats, which is again of sort of a long 0:57:56.760 --> 0:58:00.600 time thing, Like bureaucrats has sort of been a kind. 0:58:00.400 --> 0:58:02.440 Of a pejor, I mean a beer word. 0:58:04.160 --> 0:58:06.600 Anyway, I do think that's an issue. And I also think, 0:58:06.760 --> 0:58:10.280 you know, like maybe we should just bring back civil 0:58:10.320 --> 0:58:12.800 service exams everywhere and if you could know seriously and 0:58:12.840 --> 0:58:15.880 if you could pass this test, you can get a job. 0:58:15.960 --> 0:58:18.160 Like it's Lindy, you know, it's like famously, you know, 0:58:18.360 --> 0:58:19.960 go back thousands of years in China. 0:58:19.960 --> 0:58:21.560 It's like the Big I was about to say, do 0:58:21.600 --> 0:58:24.040 you know about the Chinese civil service exams? Those are 0:58:24.040 --> 0:58:27.160 so interesting and crazy? Shall we leave it there? 0:58:27.240 --> 0:58:28.320 Let's leave it there, all right? 0:58:28.360 --> 0:58:30.720 This has been another episode of the Oud Loots podcast. 0:58:30.800 --> 0:58:33.560 I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy. 0:58:33.240 --> 0:58:35.880 Alloway and I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at 0:58:35.880 --> 0:58:38.880 the Stalwart. Follow our guest Scott Cooper, He's at s Cooper. 0:58:39.160 --> 0:58:42.240 Follow our producers Kerman Rodriguez at Kerman Arman, dash O 0:58:42.280 --> 0:58:45.240 Bennett at dashbod at kil Brooks at Keil Brooks. From 0:58:45.240 --> 0:58:48.000 where Oddlots content go to Bloomberg dot com Flash Odd 0:58:48.080 --> 0:58:50.640 Lots were the daily newsletter and all of our episodes, 0:58:50.880 --> 0:58:53.080 and you can chat about all these topics twenty four 0:58:53.080 --> 0:58:57.120 to seven in our discord Discord GG slash oddlines and. 0:58:57.120 --> 0:58:59.200 If you enjoy od loots, if you want us to 0:58:59.240 --> 0:59:01.960 go to Pennsylvany to look at a bunch of file cabinets, 0:59:01.960 --> 0:59:04.800 then please leave us a positive review on your favorite 0:59:04.800 --> 0:59:08.440 podcast platform. 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