Government Tech Upheaval Leads to Opportunity for Displaced Employees

The recent gutting of the government's 18F technology unit has left dozens of skilled engineers and designers without jobs. However, billionaire investor Mark Cuban sees this as an opportunity for the displaced workers to take matters into their own hands.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, the General Services Administration (GSA) abruptly laid off around 70 employees from the 18F unit, which was tasked with helping other government agencies build, buy, and share tech products. This move ties to a Trump administration directive to shrink the federal workforce and cut spending at the behest of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The 18F team has described themselves as "non-partisan civil servants" who have worked on hundreds of projects to make government technology more efficient and effective, saving taxpayer money in the process. Their work has included building Login.gov, a secure and private way for the public to access services at various government agencies.

Rather than seeing this as the end for the 18F employees, Mark Cuban has stepped in with an intriguing proposal. He urged the displaced workers to "group together to start a consulting company" and promised to invest in and help such an endeavor. Cuban believes it's only a matter of time before DOGE "needs you to fix the mess they inevitably created" and will have to hire the former 18F employees on their own terms.

This presents a striking twist in the administration's efforts to shrink the public workforce. As DOGE moves quickly to dismantle government agencies, there have already been some high-profile missteps, like briefly canceling Ebola prevention efforts through USAID.

The question now is whether a significant portion of the growing number of displaced federal employees will seize this moment of upheaval and band together to build startups that could one day sell their expertise back to the government. If so, it would represent a remarkable reversal of the administration's plans.

One Bluesky user even suggested a branding idea for the potential new 18F consulting firm - "18FU" - a cheeky nod to their unceremonious dismissal.

While the 18F team says they are "still absorbing what has happened," they also declared that they "aren't done yet." With Mark Cuban's backing and the determination of the displaced workers, the future of government tech may be about to take an unexpected turn.