## Notes from 14 January 2026 [[2026-01-13|← Previous note]] ┃ [[2026-01-15|Next note →]] Finally read the [[Scott Kupor]] [interview on Statecraft](https://www.statecraft.pub/p/998-of-federal-employees-get-good). Had this interview queued up for weeks. [[Institute for Progress (IFP)|Statecraft]] is easily one of my top 3 podcasts, [[Santi Ruiz]] is really excellent at what he does. I really admire his effort to seriously engage with people from the Trump administration - trying to understand what they're attempting and where there are ideas worth attention. This kind of conversation needs to happen more. Scott Kupor is the director of [[OPM]] (Office of Personnel Management), came from [[Andreessen Horowitz]] where he spent 16 years. Now managing talent for 2+ million employees with a $7 trillion budget. He joined in July 2025, after DOGE's initial work had already happened. **The OPM position itself says a lot.** The fact that this position - and OPM as a central talent function - doesn't even exist in many governments says everything about how far talent management still is from being a real priority. When HR exists at all, it's relegated to lawyers and accountants managing laws and benefits. Zero strategic thinking. Completely fragmented across agencies with no central intelligence or unified HR/people unit. In the US at least there's a central authority with regulatory power over hiring practices, classification systems, and performance management. **The contractor substitution problem.** Kupor addresses a topic I previously discussed [[230803 Hidden State - the challenge of determining the number of public servants|when thinking about the Brazilian case]]. He mentioned several numbers related to the Trump administration's cuts to the civil service. Of the 300,000 reduction (from 2.4 million to 2.1 million), only 25,000 came from RIFs (Reductions in Force - basically layoffs where you eliminate positions entirely, not just fire specific people for cause) or probationary terminations — about 9%. The rest was voluntary programs and natural attrition. But here's the thing: when full-time equivalents (FTEs) are cut, the work often doesn't disappear. There are countless examples of costs shifting to contractors, who are hidden from official personnel statistics and way more expensive. The U.S. spends $750 billion per year on contractors, roughly two to three times the actual FTE count. Kupor calls this kind of cutting and then rehiring contractors an "abomination of the whole purpose of the headcount exercise." Now agencies must report contractor reductions alongside FTE plans. The interview handled this trade-off really well - loved seeing this issue addressed so directly. **The rehiring reveals lack of planning.** IRS rehired thousands, National Weather Service brought back 100 meteorologists, FDA, Forest Service, HHS "un-RIF-ed" 500 people. Kupor frames this as inevitable at scale and mentions the classic "cut too little vs. cut too deep" trade-off. But this just reveals that cuts happened without adequate strategic workforce planning. When Santi pushed him on whether the initial RIFs should have included this planning, Kupor basically said he wasn't there so can't comment. Fair enough, but the outcome speaks for itself. **The merit hiring reforms look genuine.** Three things converged to make this possible: Chance to Compete Act (bipartisan, 2024), Luevano consent decree being overturned (this was huge - had blocked merit tests since 1980), and this push for shorter resumes. Quick background: the Luevano decree came from a 1980-81 lawsuit during the Carter administration. The government used to have a civil service test called PACE (Professional and Administrative Career Examination) that showed disparate impact - minorities scored lower. Rather than fix the test, they entered this consent decree that basically banned testing for 45 years. The risk-averse interpretation was "any test might create legal liability," so they just... stopped testing entirely. The previous system that emerged was genuinely insane: - 10-15 page resumes - Pure self-attestation where you just say "I'm expert-level JavaScript" and that's taken at face value - No testing allowed The long resumes existed because they substituted for actual skills assessment. And self-attestation created this perverse dynamic where even good actors had to inflate their credentials to compete with bad actors gaming the system. Now they can actually test for skills again - both technical assessments (do you understand what a balance sheet is?) and psychosocial ones (can you work well with others?). Kupor's directive is smart: develop tests for uniquely governmental roles (like procurement officers who need to know arcane federal rules) but for standard roles like nurses or software developers, just validate and use existing private sector assessments. **Job classification problems.** US has 614 job classifications, Kupor wants to streamline to 80. This bloat emerged from risk-averse culture - someone got sued once, so now there's an entire apparatus to prevent that lawsuit from happening again. Each edge case creates a new classification until the system becomes completely unwieldy. **Performance management is broken.** The key stat: 99.8% of federal employees rated "fully successful" or above on a 5-point scale. 70% get 4s and 5s. Only 0.2% rated below expectations. And coincidentally, only 0.2% removed for poor performance in a given year. In the private sector, normal involuntary turnover is 5-10%. Kupor's new policy for the Senior Executive Service (SES): limit 4-5 ratings to 30% of population, concentrate 60% of bonus pool there. But bonus pools are statutorily capped at pathetically low amounts, so even this "dramatic change" is maybe 2-3% of annual salary for high performers. **Pay constraints and workarounds.** Can't change the GS-15 ceiling ($159K) without congressional approval. There are workarounds: 800 slots for above-GS pay, Special Act Awards, retention bonuses, Direct Hire and Excepted Service Authorities like the CHIPS Program Office used. The US actually has way more flexibility than Brasil: central HR regulator with technical authority, lateral transfers between agencies, some agencies with differentiated scales, rulemaking process that allows changes without legislation, more normalized rotation between sectors. **But fundamental problems are universal.** Classification bloat, compressed salary bands, grade inflation in performance reviews, can't fire poor performers, lack of young talent, aging workforce. The US is ahead of Brasil in some ways (Brasil stuck with essa porcaria de concurso público, whole judicial-cultural system around it). But the fundamental dilemmas? EVERYONE HAS THE SAME PROBLEMS WORLDWIDE. **On Santi's approach.** I initially thought Santi was being too soft with Kupor, giving him space to rationalize chaos. But rereading, the interview is actually more confrontational than it appears at first - pointed questions about rehiring, about whether cuts should have had strategic planning, about the contradiction of cutting HR while demanding better performance management. Santi gives Kupor space to explain his reasoning, which is valuable for understanding where the administration is going, but doesn't let things slide. You can see the goal wasn't to put Kupor against the wall with "accountability journalism" but to genuinely understand his thinking while still pushing back. Inevitably this also created space for him to rationalize what's been an absurdly chaotic administration and simply unacceptable actions like politicizing recruitment mechanisms, advancing on laws requiring independence of independent agencies like MSPB, and firing many of their heads. **The central tension.** Kupor has reasonable organizational diagnosis (performance management broken, classification bloated, need merit hiring) but execution has been chaotic (cuts before planning, political firings, institutional knowledge destroyed). The reforms themselves would be valuable - merit tests, classification streamlining, pay flexibility. But here's the thing: he may represent a more sane branch of this administration, but let's not forget that others are shaping its HRM vision, such as [[Russell Vought]]. **Discovered [Kupor's blog](https://www.opm.gov/news/secrets-of-opm/)** on the OPM website - didn't know it existed, read several posts, really good quality. Love when people in power write blogs, makes them more accessible and forces clearer thinking. Reminds me of [[Marcos Peña]]'s [_cartas de jefatura_](https://www.casarosada.gob.ar/cartajefatura) in Argentina.