Billionaire investor Mark Cuba arrived in the cradle of latest government technology on Saturday, posting an unexpected offer of support for newly laid-off federal workers on social network BlueSky.
His message, quickly gaining traction, prompted evacuated engineers and designers to turn the tumultuous into their profits.
“If you work on the 18th floor and get fired, you will combine groups to set up a consulting company,” Cuba writes. “It’s only a matter of time before Doge inevitably needs to fix the confusion they created. They have to hire your company as a contractor to fix it. But on your terms. I’m glad you invested and helped me.”
Cuba’s offer comes after the government’s General Services Agency (GSA) suddenly destroyed the 18th floor technology unit. According to Politico, the layoffs affected around 70 individuals who learned the news around 1am on Saturday. Above all, the unit reportedly built login.gov. This is a secure and private way to access services at government agencies, such as Social Security and the Bureau of Veterans Affairs.
The early morning layoffs have been linked to the Trump administration order to reduce federal workforce and reduce spending at the request of Elon Musk’s Office of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The cut was not the first on the 18th floor. According to Politico, 20 more employees on the 18th floor were fired in February, when the GSA cut probation staff.
People affected by the delicious Saturday morning hours received an email from Doge late on Friday on the subject line. “What did you do last week? Part II.”
According to Politico, the email urges employees to list their weekly performance by Monday, but was widely distributed across multiple agencies, including the State Department, the IRS and the NIH.
In the wake of these new layoffs, Cuban suggestions present interesting possibilities. Will workers who have been kicked out of the government help to reconstruct the future of civic technology on their own terms? As Doge moves to dismantle the engine, even Musk recognizes the fallout that is linked to the speed at which his team is moving. On Wednesday, Musk said, “One of the things we accidentally cancelled, for example, with USAID, was Ebola prevention very easily.” (Since then, public health experts have said that government support has not fully recovered.)
The current question is whether some proportion of the government’s increase in ex-employees who have been evacuated will seize the moment and unite to build a startup that can one day bring their expertise back to the government. If so, it represents an astonishing twist in the administration’s efforts to reduce the public workforce.
If Cuba has his way, at least such units may find themselves within the private enterprise. The government has no choice but to rely on it. Another Bluesky user even had the idea of a startup branding, telling Cuban “name the new company 18FU.”
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