GSA official says veterans' preference in federal hiring is hampering tech recruiting
Veterans’ preference gives former armed forces members priority in hiring for certain agency positions. Yuliia Kaveshnikova / Getty Images
July 30, 2026 04:00 PM ET
A government workforce expert told Government Executive that many hiring rules, including veterans’ preference, have become “procedural hurdles rather than achieving the intended outcome” because they haven’t been updated in decades.
A senior official at the General Services Administration recently posted on social media that veterans’ preference in federal hiring is preventing his team from bringing on qualified tech-focused employees.
“Veterans preference is brutally unfair when taken to the extreme of blocking any consideration of non-veterans, but we're seeing that everywhere these days,” wrote Pete Waterman, the director of FedRAMP, a governmentwide program that sets security and risk standards for cloud products. “Even Tech Force wouldn't let us look at normal folks until we made offers to all the veterans first.”
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