Ep 165: OPM Director Scott Kupor on Shrinking Government, Bringing Merit Back, and Why America’s Best Minds Should Join the U.S. Tech Force

Scott Kupor (0:00)

What Elon recognized is you can't be incremental. You have to actually make real change.

Joe Lonsdale (0:04)

You were the first person to work at A16Z, and you decided to go into government and be constantly attacked. Why did you do that?

Scott Kupor (0:10)

My wife asks me that question every day. Her actual line to me was, why are you effing up our life? We have a fundamental systems problem in the federal government. Incentives are hire more people for every problem, don't actually hold people accountable.

Joe Lonsdale (0:22)

You presided over the biggest federal workforce reduction in modern history.

Scott Kupor (0:26)

On a net basis, a little bit shy of 300,000. The federal government is the smallest it's ever been, actually since 1960 Now, when we hire technical people into the government, we actually give them a test.

Joe Lonsdale (0:35)

You guys are building the US. Tech Force.

Scott Kupor (0:37)

If you want to work on the most complex, the most challenging, the most high scale problems, this is a place to do it right.

Joe Lonsdale (0:49)

My friend Scott Kupor is running the Office of Personnel Management for the federal government, OPM. That may sound boring to you, but I'm having him on for a second time here because I think this is one of the most important areas of our federal government. He's in charge of all 2 million personnel, how we hire them, how we measure them, how we can fire people. 50 years ago, we made it almost impossible to fire people in the government. We got rid of the tests for hiring them and the quality of work has gone way down. It's a mess. Scott is working with President Trump and the administration to put back in merit, to change the rules, to make it so you can fire people for being inept, to make it so you can reward people for being successful. He came to UATX, our new university, and the whole group is really excited to hear from him. I think you will be too. It's wonderful to see everyone here.

We're off to a very strong third year of our third class at UATX, and a lot of our students are here in the community. So thanks for joining us, Scott. It's an honor to have you here.

Scott Kupor (1:41)

Thank you for having me. Great to be here.

Joe Lonsdale (1:43)

Scott is working in one of my very favorite areas of government we're going to get into and talk about. This is a very important area of how you make sure that people are able to let go if they're incompetent and incompetent if they're hired. It turns out it's good to be able to have not told an incompetent government even though I'm suspicious of it in general, but it's even worse when it's stupid. Scott, you're-

Scott Kupor (2:01)

You're going to get me in trouble tonight.

Joe Lonsdale (2:03)

I know. I'm definitely going to try to get in trouble.

Scott Kupor (2:04)

We're not recording this already. Oh, yeah.

Joe Lonsdale (2:06)

This is definitely going to be an episode of my podcast.

No, it's okay. Scott, you were the first person to work at A16Z, so you helped start what's one of the largest technology firms in the world. I presume you made a lot of money from that and don't have to keep working. So you decided to go into government in a very contentious area and be constantly attacked. And so why did you do that?

Scott Kupor (2:31)

That's great. So first of all, Joe, thank you really for setting this up tonight. And I did get a chance to spend a couple of hours with the folks here today. An incredibly impressive set of students and faculty and everything. So thank you for that opportunity. It was great. And thanks for those of you who are here. Yeah. So that's a really good question. My wife asks me that question every day. Why the hell would you do something? Actually, her actual line to me was, why are you effing up our life, basically, was what she said to me when I decided to do this. Look, in all seriousness, you know, look like you... I've been incredibly blessed in my professional life and just lucky to be around really smart people and making good decisions with stuff. And I had always had a bug to do public policy stuff. In fact, actually, I was a public policy major at Stanford. In fact, actually, the current chairman of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, and I were public policy mates back at Stanford way back when.

So it was always on my bucket list of things to do and just life got in the way.