US Tech Force Aims To Recruit 1,000 Technologists (nextgov.com) 53
The Trump administration announced Monday the United States Tech Force, a new program to recruit around 1,000 technologists for two-year government stints starting as soon as March -- less than a year after dismantling several federal technology teams and driving thousands of tech workers out of their jobs.
The program will primarily recruit early-career software engineers and data scientists, paying between $150,000 and $200,000 annually. About 20 companies have signed on to participate, including Palantir, Meta, Oracle and Elon Musk's xAI. Some engineering managers will be allowed to take leaves of absence from their private-sector employers to join the program without divesting their stock holdings.
The initiative follows the March closure of 18F, General Services Administration's internal tech consultancy, and the shuttering of the Social Security Administration's Office of Transformation in February. The IRS had lost over 2,000 tech workers by June.
The program will primarily recruit early-career software engineers and data scientists, paying between $150,000 and $200,000 annually. About 20 companies have signed on to participate, including Palantir, Meta, Oracle and Elon Musk's xAI. Some engineering managers will be allowed to take leaves of absence from their private-sector employers to join the program without divesting their stock holdings.
The initiative follows the March closure of 18F, General Services Administration's internal tech consultancy, and the shuttering of the Social Security Administration's Office of Transformation in February. The IRS had lost over 2,000 tech workers by June.
And if you ever fail any subsequent loyalty test. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're fired!
Re:And if you ever fail any subsequent loyalty tes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And if you ever fail any subsequent loyalty tes (Score:5, Insightful)
For sure. Plus none of the new hires will be part of that pesky group consisting of Democrats, females, blacks, ......
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Re:And if you ever fail any subsequent loyalty tes (Score:5, Informative)
He said as much 5 years ago https://www.govexec.com/workfo... [govexec.com]
Fascism March Continues (Score:5, Insightful)
Notice that the companies listed are run by right wingnuts. This is Project 2025 attempting to steal another piece of America for themselves. Naturally, the useful idiot is all for it. As usual when el Bunko is involved, look for the trail of McNuggets back to his pockets.
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I have to wonder if the Trump admin has a shortage of tech workers thanks to all of the people that they laid off due to DOGE. I'd imagine that many more top performers just got sick of dealing with Elon's incoherent ramblings in early 2025 and went elsewhere.
That said, they're probably still saving money by hiring new tech workers right out of college for the lowest wages possible. They can probably offer pennies on the dollar now, considering that most big tech companies are trying to avoid hiring junior
A civilian corps? 25/27 is FDR 2.0? (Score:3)
This is interesting. A civilian corps is probably one of the ways that the US can get back on the world stage again. However, with just a two year stint, the people it will attract are the "well, I either have nothing, or this", as opposed to people who have FTEs as an option.
I'm curious what caliber people they want. If they want the best of the best, then have some job security, a pension, and a TS/SCI clearance that they can take to another job. Otherwise, they will be getting people who don't have FTE work, or people who need experience, so they will be getting junior to midrange people.
Overall this is a good idea, and a good pilot program, but this needs to be scaled to the tier of Thousand Talents for sake of US competitiveness.
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Trump wants it ran like a startup with a twist: Move fast and break people.
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See USDS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Digital_Service), which was renamed DOGE and I guess unrenamed? Not sure how this is different.
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Narrator: (Score:4, Funny)
The pay was way below market so the positions were filled with H1-B applicants
the new CNN? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:the new CNN? (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdotters are welcome to bring the Trump side. But being Don's team shoots from the hip and either don't know what they are talking about or intentionally obfuscating to hide it from "the rigged lying press", it's hard to present enough actual details to analyze from them.
Shoot-from-hip and democracy don't get along very well. Voters and checks-and-balance systems like explicit planning and justification. "Just trust me, I'm smart" will cause democratic indigestion.
Politics ruins, and it has come to Slashdot. (Score:3, Insightful)
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What was political about this story? It stated nothing but facts and offered no opinion. If this story makes you feel called out then it sounds like a you problem.
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Two sides to every story does not mean both sides are correct. In fact many times one side is clearly wrong.
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This is the ultimate failure of the corporate-owned press: they are desperate to "bothsides" everything, and so they present the administration's lies as a "side" when they are just lies.
Lies are not a "side" of a story.
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Perhaps you need to submit some stories that you thing would be more suitable. But I would only work for one of the named companies if I were desperate.
Re: the new CNN? (Score:2)
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It's a media company.
Media companies sell advertising to stay alive.
To sell advertising on a web site, you need to be able to prove daily active users to be able to charge people money for ad placement.
Stories about politics cause people to froth at the mouth and spend more time on your site, so media companies will naturally drift towards that fiscal gravity. When they actively turn rudder towards it and push the engine to full throttle, we call it "enshittification."
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Not disagreeing with the sentiment in that this site is trying desperately to increase traffic by lazy posting of political bullshit, but there is often more than two sides to a story. Sometimes there is only one side - lies are not a "side of a story" even when presented as one; this is what has caused the ultimate breakdown in the corporate-owned press: they're bending over backwards to present "bothsides" when one side is being truthful and the other is not.
Many cliches are being broken by this administ
Unholy Financial Conflict of Interest (Score:5, Insightful)
So, to be clear, some of the managers will have:
In normal circumstances, they would be precluded from long-term strategic planning, the creation of RFPs, and the evaluation or selection processes of contracts.
Are these guard rails in place? Color me skeptical.
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Are these guard rails in place?
I would put all the money in my pockets on "no."
Wrong name (Score:3)
News flash - there’s more to the tech world than code. You know, the entire world of atoms, not bits? Engineering fields like mechanical, electrical, civil, biomedical, etc. etc.?
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They’re all gonna be software engineers and data scientists? No problem, but don’t call it a “tech force”. Call it computer science, or something like that.
News flash - there’s more to the tech world than code. You know, the entire world of atoms, not bits? Engineering fields like mechanical, electrical, civil, biomedical, etc. etc.?
Normally, that would be good advice, but a special tech group formed to service the US government under a Trump administration - the name "Tech Force" is probably a good warning. You never know what you will be asked to do.
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Given the jokers like Kizenko, Sweet, Tullman, etc they hired for DOGE 1.0 I can only assume anyone hired for Tech Force will be some randos with very little in the way of complex systems knowledge or even basic software dev/maintenance. And honestly who would want to be associated with Trump Tech Force on your resume? If you've already made the decision to work at a place like Palantir, xAI (not judging. Everyone has to pay the rent) why diminish that with "Tech Force".
I just hope they have to wear stu
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Never thought I'd see the day when a stint at the White House would be a resume stain.
2-year stints? (Score:3, Interesting)
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I suspect that there are many in this era who see nothing wrong with "grift". They don't like the smear intended by the word, but they essentially see grift as a monetary transaction that should be perfectly acceptable in a purely free and amoral market.
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Are you trying to say "Libertardians"?
Who in their right mind would work for the gov? (Score:3, Informative)
I know people that have a job, were fired, rehired and then fired again. I'm not a billionaire with a day job as hobby.
The best of the best will stay away (Score:2, Insightful)
Only the desperate wannabes who can't get hired anywhere else will apply
State sponsored "capitalism" (Score:2, Troll)
Early-career, care to explain what early means? (Score:3)
> The program will primarily recruit early-career software engineers and data scientists.
What is the implied definition of "early" in "early career" here? Limited experience with a specific technology? Limited experience with a specific software stack? Limited experience working for the government? Is the "early" in "early career" subjective or objective? I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's objective, since admitting it's subjective would have literally all the age discrimination lawyers ordering new Porsches. Given "late-career" is generally defined as "the final phase of a person's working life", I would be more measured with my choice of words rather than try to argue that "early career", the polar opposite of "late career", does not implicitly include any age component.
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Considering that the major backers are Meta, Oracle, XAi, and Palantir, they'll probably spend the first year of their two year stint arguing over which AI framework and hosting providers to use.
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Fine by me. And then when they get it sorted out, it will be just in time for Congress to flip and yank their funding.
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It sounds to me like it means three things...
1) They're acknowledging that the offered compensation will not attract people that have a decade of experience or more.
2) Age discrimination. I don't see what difference the subjective/objective aspect makes, so I'm guessing that I'll be seeing more GT3-RSs and GT-4s at track days.
3) The executive leadership is stupid AF. "We just fired all of our career civil servants in this field, so we're going to replace them with whatever apprentices are desperate enough t
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Early-career means old enough to be able to spot issues with work ethics while young enough to be naive and malleable. Two year stints to be able to weed out those who made it through the first pass. Eventually, a solid group of people who will work on any project, no matter how odious to Liberty, Freedom, and Democracy, to complete the full takeover of the USA.
What "they" don't realize is that by taking control this way, they lose everything they wanted to get. There will be no creativity, nor even the abi
Fuck you. (Score:1)
I don't use my skills for evil, so I won't work for this government regardless of what they might offer. That juice isn't worth the moral squeeze.
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Hear, hear.
Joining this "tech force" might result in you having to explain yourself to your grandchildren.
Free 2 Year Probation (Score:2)
It could also be a 2 year probation period for the "partner companies" evaluate potential hires and siphon off federal employees that cut the mustard with no real risk to the companies.
IT National Guard (Score:2)
Maybe the US (and other nations) could get value from an IT National Guard. It could be a collection of people from assorted IT disciplines who may not be physically able to do military work, but are well suited for the MANY back office tasks any modern army requires. Someone has to design and build drones, keep communications working and secure, and do the countless other similar tasks. Sure, they could recruit the current way, but that likely disqualifies a ton of capable technophiles who could add high v
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+1, Insightful
Ag discrimination in disguise (Score:2)
If they are hiring mostly early-career technologists after firing all of the long term govt career technologists, I will look forward to witnessing the inevitable age discrimination lawsuit that they will surely lose. Never mind the huge training expense of replacing experienced employees with new hires - especially new hires who will only be around for 2 years. That's about how long it takes for someone to get really good in a position/track. So why are we throwing money away by firing the people who kn
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As neocon 'thought leader' Grover Norquist told a group of conservative congresscritters in the 1990s, "You'll never convince voters that government is broken unless you break it first."
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Oh, there's a reason. And that reason is the names of the companies that have signed up - a bunch of Trumpy tech bros that want to loot the United States Treasury for every cent they can.
They don't give a fuck about long-term damage, because it's a smash and grab. The damage is someone else's problem.