Pete Waterman touched the third rail of federal hiring. He publicly criticized the use of veterans’ preference.
The thing about Waterman’s comments on his personal LinkedIn account, in which he expressed his frustrations with the process and how it kept FedRAMP from hiring the best and brightest cloud security engineers, is he said out loud what many federal executives have been saying privately for decades.
The problem Waterman highlighted, maybe less eloquently than he should’ve, has nothing to do with not supporting veterans or recognizing their sacrifice for the country. The issue Waterman shined the light on is all about the federal hiring process.
“Pete’s problem is he was dumb enough to stay it out loud, but he shouldn’t be punished for it. People have been saying this behind the scenes for years and have found ways around it,” said Traci DiMartini, the former chief human capital officer at the General Services Administration and the IRS. “It’s not veterans’ preference that is bad. It’s how we are adjudicating the best candidates for the job.”
Unfortunately for Waterman, some in the community didn’t see it that way.
GSA, where Waterman works as the director of the cloud security program known as FedRAMP, heard the complaints and placed him on administrative leave for expressing his frustration with the requirements. Waterman has since taken down his LinkedIn post.
Two unresolved issues
GSA Administrator Ed Forst said in a statement that the agency “categorically and completely disagree with a senior employee’s recent remarks denigrating veterans’ preferences in hiring.”
GSA says veterans represent approximately 30% of their workforce.
“GSA celebrates our veterans and military spouses. They are a critical backbone of our agency: amazing public servants and true heroes whose service continues to strengthen our nation. GSA has zero tolerance for comments that disparage or disrespect America’s veterans. The men and women who have worn and continue to wear our nation’s uniforms deserve our respect and unwavering support,” Forst said. “[Veterans] bring invaluable leadership, discipline and experience to our mission every day. Many of our team continue to serve as members of our military reserves. We applaud this dual commitment. We are better for it. This is the ethos of GSA and the federal government.”
Waterman declined to comment due to the ongoing administrative review.
Government Executive first reported Waterman’s LinkedIn comments.
Waterman’s situation highlights two big issues: The long-held frustration with the federal hiring process and the First Amendment rights of federal employees.
Let’s start with the First Amendment rights issue. While Waterman made clear that all of his LinkedIn posts were on his personal account, he also made clear he works for the government. Debra D’Agostino, a founding partner of the Federal Practice Group, said while federal employees don’t lose their free speech rights, there is a balancing act they must achieve.
“If commenting on matters of public concern, which means just about anything really, that should be First Amendment protected speech and they shouldn’t face any adverse action for it,” D’Agostino said in an interview with Federal News Network. “If you are identifying yourself as a government official on your private social media account, there is a heightened awareness of who you are and where you work. People will be seeing your posts, so saying it’s personal, I don’t think it will save the day.”
D’Agostino and other federal HR experts questioned GSA’s decision to place Waterman on administrative leave.
Jeff Neal, a former chief human capital officer at the Homeland Security Department and former chief human resources officer at the Defense Logistics Agency, said employees should be able to express their views about the veterans’ preference hiring rules or any other non-partisan policy.
“He was espousing a policy position and there is nothing wrong with that,” Neal said. “But people need to be careful with what they say, but if it’s a reasonable policy position and now others are saying that person needs to be fired, that’s ridiculous. The agency looks bad just because someone disagreed with a policy position that deserves to be debated.”
Getting around veterans’ preference
D’Agostino added she was surprised the agency placed Waterman on administrative leave.
“I’m not sure this is a legitimate use of administrative leave because what is the investigation? He posted it. That’s clear. Unless they plan to issue notice of proposed removal, I don’t know why they would put him on administrative leave,” she said. “While I would never tell a federal employee not to exercise their First Amendment rights, from practical standpoint this administration is likely to retaliate.”
Neal and DiMartini say the bigger issue Waterman is highlighting around veterans’ preference has been an open secret for decades.
“If you look at the federal hiring process and all the different hiring authorities that are out there today, almost all of these hiring authorities are designed to get around veterans’ preference. People will not admit that, but that’s the truth,” Neal said. “If you just want to hire the best people, you’d recruit, evaluate and hire them. What happens is people keep coming up with hiring authorities because they can’t do that.”
DiMartini said the problem goes deeper than any one hiring authority. She said the lack of resources and investment in the federal HR community are driving these frustrations and challenges.
“The process has been broken by other outside influences. The lack of training for HR staff, the lack of enough HR staff who know to ask about veterans’ passover authority and not enough people at the Office of Personnel Management to adjudicate these requests in a timely manner,” DiMartini said. “That all adds a ton of pressure to the hiring team. So when we put a job announcement out, we want to attract the best candidates, but a lot of times people agencies don’t want to invest in the upfront work to do that. Everyone wants to blame HR for all things they can’t get, but you have to do the work up front. That includes hiring managers having to put together the qualifications and the assessments so the HR staff can give them the most qualified candidates.”
Neal agreed that HR offices over the last 20-plus years have become less capable. In part, he said, it’s because they’ve become so reliant on software used for rating and ranking candidates.
“You end up with a lot of people on referral lists who are not only not the best qualified, but they aren’t qualified at all,” he said. “Then the hiring manager is stuck with bunch of people who aren’t qualified because they knew what answers on the questionnaires would give them the most points and many times people lie on their applications. To do their job well, HR people and hiring managers must define what makes someone best qualified, but too often that doesn’t happen.”
NAPA report offered an alternative
DiMartini said hiring managers need to have solid assessments to protect them against anyone who says they were biased. She said this all stems from HR departments being chronically underfunded, understaffed and not having enough resources to do work.
OPM has started to reform federal hiring. Last September, it finalized the “rule of many,” that tasked hiring managers with scoring job applicants on their relevant skills — and then ranking applicants based on those scores. From there, hiring managers can choose one of several options — a cut-off number, score or percentage — to pare down the applicant pool and reach a list of qualified finalists.
In May 2025, OPM issued a governmentwide merit hiring plan that directed agencies to recruit “individuals committed to improving the efficiency of the federal government,” and will have candidates on USAJobs fill out short essays about how they plan to support the administration’s priorities when applying for jobs.
These and other changes, however, don’t address the frustrations with veterans’ preference as a symptom of the bigger hiring disease.
Neal and DiMartini say there hasn’t been anyone in any administration or on Capitol Hill to take this on for many years.
In 2023, the National Academy of Public Administration suggested ways to improve veterans’ hiring preference to include expanding it to more veterans, holding agencies accountable in new ways and creating a direct hire authority.
Neal, who helped lead that white paper, said the goal was to simplify the entire federal hiring process without diminishing the laudable goals of hiring more veterans into public service.
“There would be no added points or putting them in categories. All there is, is identifying the best candidates, evaluating them and then picking the best qualified person. And if you get a veteran on the list and they are best qualified, they can be hired directly. The direct hire authority would be incentive to look for veterans who are best qualified,” Neal said. “Veteran preference needs to be modernized. I don’t think anyone believes the federal hiring process is good. It’s not fast or efficient and it turns off applicants. It has been developed over the years and that made it more and more complicated. I don’t think anyone wants veterans’ preference to go away, but it needs to be modernized and fixed. We just need to get people who have the guts to do it because for too long people think modernizing veterans’ preference means screwing veterans, but it means helping more veterans get hired.”
DiMartini said Waterman shouldn’t be hung out to dry for saying what she believes is “the worst kept secret in government.”
“Most HR people know hiring managers do everything they can do get around veterans’ preference because they don’t understand it, particularly at the higher ends of the grade scale, GS-13s and above. We as a community also don’t do a good enough job explaining what veterans bring to the table,” she said. “The government doesn’t do a good enough job explaining why veterans can work in the system and understand the job. It all comes down to hiring managers having to present a case to explain why a person is more qualified for the position. Many times we don’t get that. If the candidate had done an assessment and passed the assessment to show they are more qualified, then veterans’ preference or any other similar requirement wouldn’t be a problem.”
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