Mark Cuban Suggests Fired Federal Employees Turn Into Government Consultants

Billionaire Mark Cuban has a big idea for some federal workers who just lost their job: get into consulting. The General Service Administration fired workers from its 18F office on Saturday morning as part of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s ongoing trimming down of the federal government. After news of the firings hit, Cuban sent out his remedy on Bluesky.

“If you worked for 18F and got fired, Group together to start a consulting company. It’s just a matter of time before DOGE needs you to fix the mess they inevitably create. They will have to hire your company as a contractor to fix it. But on your terms,” Cuban said. “I’m happy to invest and/or help.”

18F was a part of the federal government that worked to make the online and technological pieces of D.C. suck less. They were public servants working to ensure that nothing like the Obamacare rollout disaster ever happens again. And 18F did good work.

Weather.gov as a usable website to track the country’s weather patterns? That was 18F. The website we used to order Covid tests from the government during the pandemic? Again, 18F. The IRS’s DirectFile System that allows taxpayers to sign in and pay their taxes online for free? You guessed it, 18F.

“In alignment with the President’s Workforce Optimization Initiative executive order and the recent memo from GSA per the Trump administration requiring cutting ‘non-essential consulting’ functions, the 18F office has been identified as part of this phase of GSA’s reduction in force as non-critical,” new GSA commissioner Thomas Shedd said in an email to the employees of 18F who had done such a good job making online life in America suck just a little bit less.

The now-former employees of 18F set up a quick website and issued a statement about the firings. “This was a surprise to all 18F staff and our agency partners. Just yesterday we were working on important projects, including improving access to weather data with NOAA, making it easier and faster to get a passport with the Department of State, supporting free tax filing with the IRS, and other critical projects with organizations at the federal and state levels,” it said.

And they promised a new future for 18F. “We’re still absorbing what has happened. We’re wrestling with what it will mean for ourselves and our families, as well as the impact on our partners and the American people,” it said.

“But we came to the government to fix things. And we’re not done with this work yet.”

Cuban’s suggestion is one possible future for 18F and many other former federal employees: going private. Musk and Trump are destroying large chunks of how America works, and we’ll all find out over the next few years just how integral portions of that infrastructure were. It won’t be rebuilt overnight, if ever. And when things do come back, there’s a good chance they’ll be more expensive.

The government using private contractors doesn’t make things cheaper. Consultants make a premium for their services, and when you’ve got a single client like the U.S. government with almost unlimited funds, the tendency is to milk them for all its worth. Just ask all those companies building jets and nukes for the Pentagon.

Cuban is pitching a future that’s similar to what Musk and Trump want. One where private interests make a ton of money off the U.S. taxpayer and nothing is ever done for the greater good but only for the greater profit. In this situation, at least the good people of 18F could be the ones reaping the rewards.