Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

So Mark Cuban wants to lean into exactly what DOGE is pushing by putting himself in the middle of the Governmental to Private shift?<p>That doesn&#x27;t surprise me and gives more evidence that Cuban is not dissimilar to Musk, just that he has much better PR.

D+ grade headline. His full offer and message:<p>“If you worked for 18F and got fired, Group together to start a consulting company,” wrote Cuban. “It’s just a matter of time before DOGE needs you to fix the mess they inevitably created. They will have to hire your company as a contractor to fix it. But on your terms. I’m happy to invest and&#x2F;or help.”

I’ve seen a lot of positivity surrounding login.gov on HackerNews. I’ve never used the service and am unfamiliar with the quality of its implementation. Many commenters here point to login.gov as an example of the US government shipping good software. [1]<p>1. From the end-user’s perspective, what makes this a quality service? Is it simply better than other government alternatives, or does it compete with equivalent modern services from the private sector?<p>2. From the technologist&#x27;s perspective, why is this considered quality software? I see it&#x27;s an open-source Ruby on Rails app[2] with basic documentation, tests, and monitoring. As a non-RoR developer, I&#x27;m curious where this project falls on the spectrum from merely adequate to exceptional, and why.<p>[1] e.g., in this comment section: “login.gov is one of the few government services that as a private sector techie I&#x27;m in awe of”<p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;18F&#x2F;identity-idp&#x2F;">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;18F&#x2F;identity-idp&#x2F;</a>

Privatization is what a lot of people believe is the answer, thinking that there is so much waste and useless things the Federal government does. These people must have never worked at a large corporation. I have a relative in the federal government and we would share stories because the dysfunctions are basically the same.<p>Any large organization of humans working uses a pyramid organization since like the middle ages (or even well before). There will be inept people, waste, corruption, people stealing, etc. but there will also be the vast majority trying to do a good job and feel satisfaction in their work. It doesn&#x27;t matter if its the federal government or a private corporation, its simply a trade-off of the organization structure. I don&#x27;t think we, as humans, know of a better&#x2F;different way to organize that would be more effective.

The headline sucks (as of this posting) as one it doesn’t match and two even the matching headline is not accurate.<p>Mark Cuban is encouraging the employees of 18F to start their venture to provide govt services. He will invest hoping that DOGE will see right through their mistakes and seek to hire them back.<p>Except he is wrong. Musk is a lot of things but one thing he isn’t capable of is backtracking showing his actions to be stupid.

Presented with the noblest of intensions, no doubt, but a symptom of an extremely disconcerning trend: the beginning of the endstate where the US government is completely privatized.

They built &#x2F; manage login.gov?<p>Oh boy.<p>It’s one thing if Twitter has bugs. It’s another thing if people have bugs while trying to login or signup to government services. Or hackers finding vulnerabilities and no one to fix them?

Bill Clinton ended up cutting staff throughout his time in office. Despite the cuts in government staff driven by the narrative that a smaller government is better by years of Reagan and Bush1. Despite these cuts, the sum effect was that costs significantly rose as they had to hire contractors to do the things that internal staff was doing.<p>Things are more complicated than they appear.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;programs&#x2F;fresh-air&#x2F;2025&#x2F;02&#x2F;26&#x2F;fresh-air-for-february-26-2025?showDate=2025-02-26" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;programs&#x2F;fresh-air&#x2F;2025&#x2F;02&#x2F;26&#x2F;fresh-air-...</a>

Cuban: &quot;It’s just a matter of time before DOGE needs you to fix the mess they inevitably created. They will have to hire your company as a contractor to fix it. But on your terms. I’m happy to invest and&#x2F;or help.&quot;<p>Unfortunately these people (Musk and friends) are so full of themselves that it&#x27;s more likely they will rather let the whole proverbial house burn down than ask for help.<p>It&#x27;s one of many reasons why I am currently a political orphan. Absolutely sick and tired of the shenanigans of both the &quot;left&quot; and the &quot;right&quot;.

Put Mark Cuban to the side for a bit, I think the general idea of 18f going private is a good one and was my first reaction when I heard they were getting dissolved.<p>EDIT: I think it&#x27;s a good idea in the context of them getting dissolved. I would much prefer if they continued to exist within the govt, but if the choice is between going private and ceasing to exist, I would prefer they go private and I think it&#x27;s a good idea in terms of salvaging what they had already built as an org

Had DOGE been more than 2 brain cells fighting for 3rd place, they would have spun out 18F as an independent organization. They could have taken inspiration from how the British government did something similar with the Behavioural Insights Team.<p>The US government could have even secured favorable rates for a period of time so it could continue to benefit from the 18F expertise.

This is exactly what the people who shut down 18F want: a shrunken government reliant on private contractors for basic service needs.<p>There’s a famous Reagan quote that the nine most terrifying words are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”. That soundbite influenced a generation of small-government conservatives who ignored the big qualifier that followed — he was actually announcing more government support for farmers, a big handout to a mostly-Republican constituency: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reaganlibrary.gov&#x2F;archives&#x2F;speech&#x2F;presidents-news-conference-23" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reaganlibrary.gov&#x2F;archives&#x2F;speech&#x2F;presidents-new...</a>

Government by philanthropy and <i>éminence grise</i>.

Is there any evidence that government teams are more wasteful or less productive than commercial alternatives? How does spinning a government team into a government contract of a commercial vendor save the government money?

Worth noting that there already exists an ecosystem of these sorts of contracting firms (nava, skylight, truss I believe, forgetting even more) that, basically, pitch themselves as the antidote to beltway banditry<p>People from the federal civic tech nexus started them up over the past decade as they termed out of 18F, USDS, and PIF

so smart, privatizing essential parts of the government.<p>it’ll make it seem like you were able to do massive budget cuts in the moment and then you’ll spend 5x the money on consulting firms when nobody is focused on the budget anymore cuz they moved on

18f has(d) really smart people. who gave up higher wages in the private sector to serve the public. then idiots like musk come along.<p>damage from musk n co will be monumental in the years to come.

Every privatization of utilities I saw (not US) always devolved to being priced higher, being given legal monopoly, workers earn much less, quality degrades. A single &quot;business man&quot; gets super rich

This seems less a reaction and more the design of causing as much damage as possible.<p>I imagine this consulting will cost the taxpayers at least twice as much and be insulted by their contract from any consequences….

This would be exactly what the Republicans want and what they have had wanted for decades.<p>Shrink the government and privatize as much as possible.<p>Turning 18F.gov¹ into 18FU.com, a company with the business model of selling their services back to the government in the future.<p>Seems like a risky venture.<p>The government could come knocking on Monday, a week later, a month later, a year later, or never. I hope Cuban is planning on funding them out of pocket for at least until it happens or at least for two years.<p>Of course, 81FU can start providing its services to the private sector and hope to succeed that way. I am sure a lot of companies would want to buy their services to support them.<p>¹ I don&#x27;t know if they used that domain. I just wanted a quick way to go from in the government into a company

This is Cuban putting his money where his mouth is. He wasn&#x27;t willing to do it when it came to applying DEI to his basketball team, but I&#x27;m glad he is here.

I&#x27;d rather have a stable government that doesn&#x27;t have billionaires funding and&#x2F;or running specific departments when it suits them.

But are they hiring?

I wonder at this rate - will they privatize IRS tax filing software?

It’s so interesting that here on HN, on virtually any political topic, virtually the entire commentary is one-sided, and virtually all comments providing dissenting views are simply downvoted and&#x2F;or flagged out of existence (often with no actual counter-arguments).<p>On technical topics, this place tends to be so awesome—I learn so much by just reading the comments—due to the intellectual diversity of the viewpoints, but on anything even remotely touching politics, it turns into an entirely unwelcoming echo chamber.<p>I guess one could argue that this is a pretty good representation of how divided our country is (for those of us who are Americans), but I think it’d be so dope if the same folks who tend to have these great intellectually diverse discussions on technical topics could also do the same for the topics affecting us all (<i>i.e.</i>, politics), but I guess that’s just wishful thinking.

This is exactly what Trump and Musk would want, privatization of what should be (and were) government services.<p>No one — and I mean no one — should profit from the provision of what should be core government services, like tax filing or health care.

Mark Cuban is welcome to advocate for a wealth tax that can fund 18f and many other portions of the government, while keeping it public and free of interference from private billionaires.

This title is pretty misleading (I appreciate it&#x27;s basically the same as the article&#x27;s title). He&#x27;s not saying he&#x27;ll fund the govt department, he&#x27;s saying he&#x27;ll fund a private venture made up of the people formerly employed in 18f. And he predicts that venture will be able to gouge the public purse when the govt inevitably realises the cuts they made were far too deep.<p>As others have pointed out, this is a deeply right-wing idea and exactly what the Republican party wants to see happen.

Welcome to Phase 2 everyone.

Ah just what we need: a billionaire to throw money around at secondary symptoms. No thank you, just lobby for higher taxes and give cash injections to the bottom of the economy, please.

Reading every thread related to something DOGE is doing reveals the same pattern. Commenters instantly seem to reach two conclusions (or bring them to the table from preconceived notions):<p><pre><code> 1- Republican = bad, evil 2- You cannot&#x2F;should not touch anything in government </code></pre> I won&#x27;t get into the first because it is objectively stupid. This is just as stupid as people on the right concluding &quot;Democrat = bad, evil&quot;. Both polar opposites need to stop being bigoted and use their brains. Living in their respective glass houses they throw stones and shit all over half the country, painting them as evil, stupid, incompetent, etc.<p>This simply isn&#x27;t true.<p>On the second point. Well, that&#x27;s an unreasonable position. It say that government is perfect as it is and none of the hundreds of organizations that comprise it and millions of people who run it should ever be expected to do better. Ever. Again, utterly unreasonable.<p>Government should be obligated to go through an audit every N years. You cannot just keep throwing money at it and growing it. That does not solve problems in the private sector and it sure as hell does not in government.<p>I have worked with and sold product to various government groups. From White Sands Missile Test Range to city local entities. Anyone posting comments without having had experience engaging with government entities has no idea what they are talking about. None.<p>I have seen contracts awarded to companies charging double the street price because the person making the decision is so incompetent that they went with the company they thought would cover their ass. These are lazy and expensive decisions made by people who are not qualified to do the job and should not have that job. In other words, they would not have been hired to do that job in the private sector in a million years.<p>The US has serious problems. We need a restructuring of priorities and how we do things or it will be hell in a decade or two. The reason we have to be so assertive today is that this work should have started 25 years ago. It did not. And so the problem is now an order of magnitude greater.<p>This week I spent five days cleaning our area drains. I should have done this ever five years or so. I did not. I have not touched them in 25 years. That&#x27;s why it took five days. The accumulated crap in those pipes was amazing to see. Solid sticky mud, roots, tennis balls, rocks, lego pieces, garbage bags, etc. This required renting a powerful machine to just rip through stuff as well as a powerful 5000 PSI pressure washer with a 100 ft snake and a nozzle to shred everything in its path.<p>In other words, when you don&#x27;t keep an eye on things for a long time, the solution tends to be far more &quot;violent&quot; than the case of having kept thing in order with regular checkups (this applies to your health as well).

I feel like a lot of the discussion is beating around the bush or tangential.<p>The very simple cause of this wave of layoffs is in response to the “what did you do this week?” email. If you’ve been following closely, a week ago DOGE sent an email to many people, including suspected dead government workers, asking them to list in 5 bullets what they accomplished the prior week. Some people didn&#x27;t respond after having the last week to do so. Some people protested with insubordinate responses. According to TFA the people let go were unable or unwilling to complete this simple task.<p>DOGE this DOGE that. At least in this instance it seems like a effective tactic was deployed and cuts were made based on observed performance.