# Scott Kupor **Scott Kupor** has been **Director of the [[OPM]]** since **July 14, 2025**. The Senate confirmed him on July 9. He is the second-term administration's civil-service engineer. [[DOGE]] supplied the shock; Kupor writes the rules that make the new federal workforce permanent. He came to the job from nearly two decades at [[Andreessen Horowitz]], which makes him one of the clearest links between Silicon Valley management ideas and the machinery of government (see [[The Tech Right Hub]]). ## Background Kupor has two Stanford degrees, a B.A. in public policy and a J.D. (1996), and clerked for Fifth Circuit Judge Jerry Smith. He worked in investment banking, then at Loudcloud/Opsware, [[Marc Andreessen]] and Ben Horowitz's company, and stayed on at HP after its 2007 acquisition. He was a16z's first employee and became its managing partner and chief operating officer. From 2017 to 2018 he chaired the National Venture Capital Association and wrote *Secrets of Sand Hill Road*. He calls himself a fiscal conservative with libertarian views. He has argued for at-will federal employment and for dropping degree requirements. ## At OPM - **The drawdown, made official.** About **317,000** federal employees left in 2025 and about 68,000 were hired, beating OPM's own projection of 300,000 departures. Kupor called the cuts "ahead of schedule" and set a target of one hire for every four departures. Agencies now submit hiring plans to OPM and OMB, which gives the White House a single, government-wide view of who gets hired. OPM itself lost more than 1,000 staff, roughly a third of its workforce. - **Schedule Policy/Career.** OPM's final rule reviving [[Schedule F]] took effect on March 9, 2026. OPM estimated it would strip adverse-action appeal rights from up to about 50,000 career employees. In the new process an agency petitions the OPM director, and the director recommends positions to the President. The first batch, about 8,000 senior positions, moved under [[Executive Order 14410]] (June 3, 2026). Defending it, Kupor said the schedule "is really nothing new," and that it lets people "be removed effectively at-will" when personal views interfere with lawful directives. - **[[Schedule G]]** for noncareer policy advocates, and an end to the "rule of three" hiring requirement, which dated to the 1870s. - **The merit hiring plan.** Unions sued in November 2025, calling the essay questions about the President's executive orders a loyalty test. - **Culture-war guidance.** OPM told agencies that federal workers may pray at work and try to "persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views." It also ended Musk's weekly "five things" emails in August 2025. At a March 25, 2026 House hearing, Kupor cited the 99.7% of federal employees rated at or above expectations as proof the performance system is broken, not as proof the workforce is excellent. He did not answer when asked about OMB Director [[Russell Vought]]'s stated goal of making federal workers feel "traumatically affected." ## Why he matters Kupor is the part of the civil-service overhaul that is meant to last. Firings can be reversed and reorganizations undone, but rules, appeal rights and schedule designations persist, and in the new process all of them pass through his office. He is also a case study in the Silicon Valley-to-government pipeline, alongside the [[David Sacks News Log]] crowd. ## See also - [[OPM]] · [[Federal Workforce Structure Tree]] · [[How a Federal Agency Is Dismantled]] - [[Schedule F]] · [[Schedule G]] · [[Executive Order 14410]] · [[Senior Executive Service]] - [[Andreessen Horowitz]] · [[DOGE]] · [[Russell Vought]] · [[Watching]]