If President Donald Trump’s top HR official gets his way, there could soon be more back-and-forth movement between the tech industry and the federal government.
Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor, a former managing partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, said he wants to find ways to increase “connectivity between the public and private sector.”
“Let’s go to all the great technology companies and say, ‘you know what, show us your directors, senior directors, VPs,'” Kupor said on an episode of The a16z Podcast released on Thursday. “Let’s put them on a two-year secondment, for example, in the government and have them come be managers of early career technology teams.”
Kupor said that bringing in more senior tech industry workers could address what he sees as a “technical management problem” in the government, where managers don’t have technical experiences and are “just not, quite frankly, able to provide career development.”
One current challenge for attracting talent to work for the federal government, Kupor said, is that there’s a “false dichotomy” between working in the private and public sectors.
“The reality is, look, most people change jobs all the time, and we should make it fluid, right? I think there’s huge value to the government, and there’s huge value to the private sector by us having a lot more commingling of that,” Kupor said. “I would love to have young engineers come here for two, or three, or four years and, quite frankly, then go to the private sector, and realize that the private sector values the experience they have.”
Kupor also said that the government has been sending the “wrong message” to talent by emphasizing stability and long-term employment in the public sector.
“If you want to come here and solve really hard problems, and do something really cutting-edge — and, oh, by the way, you want to serve your country — like, that’s the mission we want to tell young people on the technology side,” Kupor said. “And we’ve never told that story.”
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