DOJ clears the way for government to hire technologists still connected to their private sector employers

Ethics experts and public sector lawyers told Nextgov/FCW that they are skeptical about the arrangement of private sector technologists joining the government on leaves of absence while retaining their deferred compensation packages.

The Justice Department issued an opinion last week authorizing the Trump administration’s plan to allow employees from tech companies to work for the federal government while remaining employed by their companies and keeping their not-yet-vested company stocks. 

The administration will be onboarding managers from twenty-plus companies — including Anduril, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Palantir and xAI — as part of its U.S. Tech Force program, launched last year to recruit early-career engineers after the administration pushed over 20,000 technologists out of their government posts last year. 

The setup is an unusual one. Federal employees are subject to ethics rules meant to ensure that they work for the public interest.

The Office of Personnel Management now has DOJ ...