Kin Lane fondly remembers working on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid in 2013. FAFSA is used by millions of college students each year to help access scholarship money, and Lane, an API expert, had an up-close look at the system. He saw the importance of ensuring financial data remains stored securely and can be accessed by Internal Revenue Service tools. The job wasn’t flashy, but it was tangibly meaningful — when his own daughter went to college, he would use FAFSA himself.
Lane wasn’t a veteran employee. He had recently joined the government as a Presidential Innovation Fellow and, in some ways, a skeptic. He was raised questioning government programs that meddle in people’s lives. But after a couple of short months, his perspective had changed. “I’m no longer libertarian because of it,” he says. Working on financial aid, among other systems, gave Lane an appreciation for the impact of public-sector technology. “That process working or not working, the privacy, the security … just equipping the next generation year after year. That kind of bureaucratic machine [is] super important and super critical for my daughter to go to school,” he says.
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Ultimately, Lane’s time at the government was cut short when the 2013 shutdown created a financial strain that forced him to leave DC; he currently works in the private sector. But his perspective is widely shared by public servants. The field is notoriously low-paid and slower-paced than the private tech world, with layers of bureaucracy to deal with. The reward is fulfilling a sense of civic duty. But over the past year, the Trump administration has waged a deliberate campaign to drive workers out of the government. Now, the three-week-long federal shutdown is dealing them another blow — and threatens a brain drain that could last for years to come.
The shutdown is forcing what’s left of that workforce to carry on with even fewer workers than were already there
For most of 2025, federal workers have been pummeled with Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)-induced cuts across their workforce and regularly face threats of further (and likely illegal) reductions in force. The shutdown is forcing what’s left of that workforce to carry on with even fewer workers than were already there. Thousands of workers have been furloughed — with the threat they’ll never get paid for the weeks they were supposed to be employed — and others continue to work without pay. For skilled tech workers who have options in the private sector, that’s making the choice to stay more difficult than ever. For the public, it likely means delays in modernizing government tech ranging from portals that help consumers access government services to ways to access public data — and the risk that when systems break, nobody will be left to fix them.
“It definitely contributes to the perception — the perception and the reality, because it’s an accurate perception — that the government is just a pretty shitty employer, it’s going to treat you badly at all times,” says Mikey Dickerson, who served under Barack Obama as the first administrator of the US Digital Service (USDS), which was later repurposed into DOGE. “You get the same warm, personal-touch customer service as an employee as you do if you’re fighting with the IRS over your refund check.”
The USDS was officially opened after the catastrophic launch and subsequent rescue of Healthcare.gov, which underscored the need for bringing skilled technology talent into the government. Through USDS, technologists would work with agencies across the government to improve a range of systems. Projects the group worked on included making it easier for visa applicants to check their case status online and for veterans to manage healthcare claims and prescription refills.
One of Dickerson’s tougher jobs was luring technologists to work for USDS in the first place. “I don’t have very much to work with to make this sales pitch,” he says. “The 85 percent pay cut is not attractive. The pre-employment drug testing and background check is not attractive. I am not going to be able to replicate the Google work environment.” While he could offer a meeting in the Situation Room or breakfast at the White House mess hall, Dickerson says the novelty of those things tends to wear off over time. “Really all I have to pitch is the notion that you’re going to be joining a group of people, and they’re going to be fun to hang around with, and they’re going to be different from what you’re used to in the Bay Area,” he says. “And they’re trying to serve the public in some altruistic sense.”
The Trump administration and DOGE have painted federal workers as do-nothing bureaucrats. But they maintain systems the average American often takes for granted, except when something goes wrong. Last year, a series of issues with FAFSA delayed schools’ financial aid offers and made it difficult or impossible for non-citizens or their children to fill it out. The result was uncertainty for millions of residents about whether they’d be on the hook for thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars in college fees — which could mean the difference between celebrating an acceptance letter and turning it down.
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