Billionaire investor Mark Cuban entered the recent government tech upheaval on Saturday by extending an unexpected offer of support to federal workers who were recently laid off, sharing his thoughts on the social network Bluesky. His message quickly garnered attention, encouraging affected engineers and designers to leverage the situation to their advantage.
“If you were employed at 18F and found yourself laid off, consider banding together to form a consulting firm,” Cuban suggested. “Sooner or later, DOGE will need your expertise to address the chaos they’ve created. They’ll have to hire your company as contractors, but this time it will be on your terms. I’m more than willing to invest and assist.”
Cuban’s offer followed the General Services Administration’s (GSA) unexpected decision to dismantle its 18F technology unit, which had been instrumental in helping various government agencies develop, procure, and share technological products. According to Politico, approximately 70 individuals were affected by the layoffs, which were communicated at around 1 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday. Notably, the 18F unit was responsible for creating Login.gov, a secure and private access point for the public to engage with government services, including those of the Social Security Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
These layoffs are linked to a directive from the Trump administration aimed at reducing the federal workforce and cutting spending under Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This is not the first time 18F has faced cuts; earlier this year, Politico reported that an additional 24 employees were laid off when GSA eliminated probationary staff. Those who received the news in the early hours of Saturday were also sent emails late Friday from DOGE with the subject line, “What did you do last week? Part II.” These emails requested employees to outline their weekly achievements by Monday and were disseminated across various agencies, including the State Department, the IRS, and the NIH. In light of these layoffs, Cuban’s suggestion raises an intriguing question: could the very individuals pushed out of government roles pave the way for a new era of civic tech on their own terms? As DOGE continues its efforts to dismantle agencies, even Musk has acknowledged the repercussions of the rapid changes his team is implementing. He noted on Wednesday that, “For instance, with USAID, one of the programs we inadvertently canceled — albeit briefly — was Ebola prevention.” (Public health experts have since stated that government support in this area has not yet been fully restored.)
The critical question now is whether a portion of the growing number of displaced government employees will take the initiative, collaborating to create startups that could eventually sell their expertise back to the government. If they do, it would represent a significant turnaround in the administration’s strategy of downsizing the public workforce. Should Cuban’s vision come to fruition, at least one of these new entities may find itself embedded in a private company that the government will have no choice but to depend on. One creative Bluesky user even suggested a potential name for the startup, proposing, “Call the new company 18FU.”
