The D.C. shutdown is hurting government tech workers — and everyone else

Ken Lin fondly remembers working on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid in 2013. Millions of college students use the FAFSA each year to help access scholarship money, and Lin, an API expert, took a closer look at the system. He saw the importance of ensuring financial data remained securely stored and accessible through Internal Revenue Service tools. The job wasn’t glamorous, but it made tangible sense — when his daughter went off to college, he used the FAFSA himself.

Lane was not a veteran employee. He recently joined government as a Presidential Innovation Fellow and, in some ways, as a skeptic. He grew up questioning government programs that interfered in people’s lives. But after a few short months, his perspective changed. “I’m no longer a libertarian because of that,” he says. Working on financial aid, among other systems, gave Lin an appreciation for the impact of public sector technology. “This process is hit or miss, privacy, security…just preparing the next generation year after year. This kind of bureaucratic machine (is) very important and very crucial for my daughter to go to school,” he says.

Ultimately, Lin’s time in government was cut short when the 2013 shutdown caused financial pressures that forced him to leave the capital; He currently works in the private sector. But his view is widely shared among public servants. This field is known to be lower-paying and slower-paced than the private tech world, with layers of bureaucracy to deal with. The reward is achieving a sense of civic duty. But over the past year, the Trump administration has launched a deliberate campaign to push workers out of government. Now, the three-week federal shutdown is dealing them another blow, threatening a brain drain that could last for years to come.

For most of 2025, federal workers have been under intense pressure Cuts resulting from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Across their workforce and regularly face additional threats (and Most likely illegal) Reductions in strength. The shutdown is forcing what’s left of that workforce to continue with fewer workers than were already there. Thousands of workers have been furloughed – with… Threatening that they will never get their money For the weeks they were supposed to work – others continue to work without pay. For skilled tech workers with options in the private sector, this makes the choice to stay more difficult than ever. For the public, that likely means delays in modernizing government technology ranging from portals that help consumers access government services to ways to access public data — and the risk that when systems break, no one will be left to fix them.

Mickey Dickerson, who served under Barack Obama as the first director of the US Digital Service (USDS), which was… He was later rehired at DOGE. “You get the same warm, personal customer service as an employee as you would if you were fighting with the IRS over your refund check.”

US dollar It was official It was opened after the disastrous launch and subsequent salvage of healthcare.govwhich emphasized the need to bring skilled technological talent to the government. Through the United States Development Service (USDS), technology experts will work with agencies across the government to improve a range of systems. The projects the group worked on included facilitating matters Visa applicants check the status of their case online And for Veterans to manage health care claims and prescription refills.

One of the difficult tasks Dickerson faced was attracting technicians to work for USDS in the first place. “I don’t have much to work on to make this sales pitch,” he says. “An 85% pay cut is not attractive. Pre-employment drug testing and background checks are not attractive. I will not be able to replicate Google’s work environment.” While he can deliver a meeting in the operating room or eat breakfast in the White House Dining Room, Dickerson says the novelty of those things tends to wear off over time. “Really, all I have to offer is the idea that you’re going to be in a group of people, it’s going to be fun to hang out with them, and they’re going to be different from what you’re used to in the Bay Area,” he says. “And they are trying to serve the public in a selfless way.”

The Trump administration and DOGE have portrayed federal workers as do-nothing bureaucrats. But they maintain systems that the average American takes for granted, except when something goes wrong. Last year, a series of issues with the FAFSA delayed financial aid offers to schools Make it difficult or impossible for noncitizens or their children to fill it out. The result has been uncertainty for millions of residents about whether they’ll be charged thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars in college tuition — which can mean the difference between celebrating an acceptance letter and rejecting it.

One contractor for a large federal agency, who was granted anonymity to discuss their work, says they are concerned about a slowdown in important government operations as the federal workforce overall shrinks. “I’m very concerned about the IRS. How are they going to be able to pay taxes next year with a small portion of employees?” They say. “I’m concerned about the military having the morale to be able to do their job in the face of the possibility of not getting their next paycheck. I don’t want air traffic controllers to worry about how they’re going to pay their mortgage while they’re trying to bring my plane in.”

Even private contractors, who continued to work during the shutdown, felt the pressure of a dwindling workforce. “Half the people are gone and you can’t reach anyone,” the contractor says. “So the way furloughs impact technology employees is that contractors are doing a lot of work and we don’t have the opportunity to be directed by our federal counterparts, which slows everything down and is a huge waste of taxpayer money.”

The result, they say, is a “self-fulfilling prophecy” of the administration’s guiding rhetoric that public employees and services are useless. “If you don’t have enough people to do the work, nothing gets done. And then they can say, ‘Look, the government isn’t getting anything done.’ Donald Trump has warned that he will use the shutdown to roll back what he calls “democratic programs” from the government, and his administration has already done so Use it to dismantle the Department of Educationa long-term goal. “And in many cases they will never come back.” He said Of the programs that he used to close during the confrontation.

Eliminating the government’s tech workforce doesn’t just make public services perform worse; It also undermines the private sector. Lin points out that technology experts can understand government systems by working directly with them. This may be useful if they go on to found startups or work in companies that intersect with government-funded programs, such as education technology.

For Lin, his experience in government completely changed his view of the world. “I just saw that government isn’t just an evil market force trying to ruin people’s lives. It’s actually the only thing standing between you and market forces, especially when you’re a person of color. So it changed me forever, for the better.”

But Lin knows better than most how a shutdown can drain the government of tech talent. Just two months after he moved to Washington in 2013 for his fellowship, the federal shutdown at the time made it impossible for him to make ends meet, and he became… He had to cut down his time. “My parents weren’t supportive of me being there. I didn’t have a lot of money. I didn’t have a credit card at the time, so we were literally living paycheck to paycheck in D.C.,” Lane recalls. “When the lockdown happened, everyone was celebrating. I panicked. I had an Airbnb. I was two weeks away from being homeless.” Over the years, he went to work on many projects for the government, but from abroad.

Former USDS officials are now trying to help government technologists who may be in a similar situation like Lin fill the gap. Dickerson is part of an informal group that provides personal loans to the agency’s alumni network to help former USDS workers in government positions get through the shutdown. They offered two to three months of net pay, and thought they would see how much they could lend on interest. Dickerson says “a handful” of people have taken it so far.

He realizes that there is a risk that he may not get paid if these workers are denied their back wages. The Trump administration has He was reportedly hatching a plan To withhold the pay that up to 750,000 workers would normally receive after the lockdown ends. But while Dickerson believes USDS was ready for change even before the DOGE takeover, he says he still feels an obligation to make sure his successors feel like they’ve joined something valuable, even years after he left.

Dickerson continues to call for a “revitalization” of a version of the USDS, although he says it does not need to be identical to the past. He says: “Why do we keep the dream alive? That is because if we were to assume for a moment that in five or ten years there will be an American president, and an administration that wants the government to be competent to do anything at all, and there will be a bigger hole to get out of.” “We will need those same people again, and they will need to be willing to get back together and work together again. The only thing I can do now from a position of powerlessness is to encourage them to feel that the universe still cares about them in some way.”