{"id":58865,"date":"2019-01-28T02:00:25","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T02:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2019\/01\/28\/it-wasnt-a-fun-place-to-work-dods-cultural-hurdles-in-attracting-tech-talent\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T00:26:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T00:26:11","slug":"it-wasnt-a-fun-place-to-work-dods-cultural-hurdles-in-attracting-tech-talent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/smr\/cultural-clash\/2019\/01\/28\/it-wasnt-a-fun-place-to-work-dods-cultural-hurdles-in-attracting-tech-talent\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It wasn\u2019t a fun place to work\u2019: DoD\u2019s cultural hurdles in attracting tech talent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Pentagon has received poor marks from external observers for its apparent inability to court and attract the talent it needs to compete in a 21st century world against sophisticated nation-states and militant organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a telling example, Trae Stephens, co-founder and chairman of Anduril Industries and partner at Founders Fund, said during his three-year internship with the intelligence community, he saw employees leave for reasons unrelated to mission enjoyment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was because they were stuck in a windowless basement without their cellphone, where they couldn\u2019t communicate with their friends. They were closed off by a bureaucracy that was not merit-driven but tenure-driven. Their managers didn\u2019t know anything about what they were doing, and when they did interfere or insert themselves, it was always negative and nasty,\u201d Stephens said during a roundtable hosted by Defense News in California in November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephens recalled that during his time in government, he used noise-canceling headphones. After a few days, Stephens said, his supervisor asked if the IT department provided a waiver for the headphones. Subsequently, Stephen\u2019s waiver was denied and he had to turn to foam earplugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt wasn’t a fun place to work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Josh Marcuse, executive director of the Pentagon\u2019s Defense Innovation Board, if the department wants to expand its competitive space, it must become technologically competitive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you want to be a technological competitive organization, you have to become a place where technologically savvy people want to work,\u201d he said during the roundtable. \u201cIf you can\u2019t become a place for people that have the skills you need but want to work, then guess what? They won\u2019t come to work for you. And that\u2019s the end of the story.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instilling such a culture is key to recruiting for one forward-looking pilot program within the Air Force, located in a startup-type space in a Boston skyscraper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not going to convince somebody who can get a job at Google or Wayfair or somewhere to come work for us unless you can offer them a fulfilling job in an environment where they want to be, with an open, collaborative workplace,\u201d Adam Furtado, lab director for the Kessel Run Experimentation Lab, told Defense News in a December visit to the facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kessel Run seeks to change how the Air Force \u2014 and by extension, the Department of Defense \u2014 develops and delivers software based on best practices from industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\t