Trump’s no help recruiting Silicon Valley techies for US work
RIGHT AFTER President Donald Trump took office, Mikey Dickerson traveled to Silicon Valley to make a pitch for the US Digital Service, a program he’d run that’s brought hundreds of technologists to Washington to improve the government’s clunky computers and unsecured networks.
As a political appointee, Dickerson’s job ended in January, yet he volunteered to recruit for the program. Then Trump signed his initial travel ban on Jan. 27.
“Prior to that day, I was willing to meet with people and tell them about my experience, but not after that,” said Dickerson, a 38-year-old former engineering manager at Google who came to Washington to supervise the effort to rescue the Obamacare Web site after its disastrous debut. With protests erupting over Trump’s ban, Dickerson says he didn’t feel that he could recommend working in the new administration to his old colleagues.
Government work has always been a tough sell for technology whizzes. The pay is lousy compared with what top engineers and developers can make in the private sector, and the work can be frustrating — you’re more likely to be fixing old systems than developing new ones. After the failed rollout of the Web site in 2013, the Obama administration created programs such as the Digital Service to recruit talented people in the tech industry who could inject some start-up know-how into government. Now many are wondering if they should stay.
‘OVERWHELMINGLY OPPOSED’
“Technologists were overwhelmingly opposed” to Trump’s candidacy, says Herbert Lin, a cyber research fellow at Stanford University. The administration is “doing things that have the potential of creating more barriers.”
Recruiting is becoming even harder among computer wonks, many of them young, liberal and at odds with Trump’s positions on issues from gay rights and abortion to net neutrality.
In California’s Santa Clara county, the heart of Silicon Valley, Trump won just 20.7% of the vote, compared with 73.4% for Hillary Clinton.
Tensions between the new administration in Washington and the technology community have played out in headlines: Facebook, Inc. let employees take time off to join proimmigrant protests. Amazon.com, Inc. and Apple, Inc. stood by their pledges to fight climate change as Trump reversed Obama’s policies. A lawyer-turned-venture capitalist vowed to give $1 million to charity if Tesla, Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, who’s serving on White House advisory panels, agreed to “dump Trump” by condemning the president’s climate change policies.
The Trump administration seems to recognize it may have a problem on its hands. On April 28, the president signed an executive order establishing the American Technology Council to help the federal government deliver better digital services. The council will report to the White House’s recently created Office of American Innovation, run by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. The White House also is inviting technology CEOs to meetings in June to discuss modernizing government digital services.
But according to current and former employees of the US Digital Service and 18F — a General Services Administration initiative to help federal agencies build and buy digital services — Trump’s policies have already hurt their ability to retain staff. The Digital Service had 101 employees at the White House as of March 15 — 18 fewer than on Jan. 15, days before Trump’s inauguration, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg News through Freedom of Information Act requests. At 18F, the number of employees dropped to 157 on March 15, from 166 two months earlier.
While there’s turnover with every presidential transition, Dickerson says he knows of about 15 people who’ve left the Digital Service since Trump became president because they disagreed with him. Others have decided to leave over fears that working under the Trump administration will hurt their job prospects in Silicon Valley.
David Eaves, a public policy lecturer at Harvard University, says tech initiatives under Obama persuaded software engineers to give back through public service. But the Trump administration “hasn’t really built its brand around notions of public service,” Eaves says.
‘FIND A MESSAGE’
“The big question is, will they be able to recruit?” Eaves adds. “They’re going to have to find a message that makes them appealing.”
The Obama-era programs have their critics as well, who say the federal technology stints are too short, typically lasting six months to a year, so those who take part spend much of their time just trying to learn how the federal bureaucracy works. It’s also daunting to ask tech workers to take a pay cut and relocate — on their own dime — and to give up their privacy to get the top-secret security clearance that’s required. —