The talent the mirror needs

The Long Way By Samuel S. Kim

Somewhere on the mainland there is a CHamoru software developer earning roughly three times what GovGuam would pay for the same work. He has family here most likely. He visits when he can. He learned to code somewhere—maybe in the mainland, maybe at UOG. At some point, he did what young people do when they are deciding where to spend their lives: he ran the numbers and the numbers pointed away from this island. They almost always do.

He is not a character I invented. He is a statistical certainty. The 2020 census counted approximately 144,000 CHamorus living in the 50 states—more than twice the roughly 63,000 CHamoru people remaining on Guam.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national median salary for a software developer is $133,080, compared to a Guam-wide mean wage of $21.39 an hour, or roughly $44,500 a year. The logic of that gap has been quietly emptying this island of the people it most needs to hold on to. Every year. For decades. Without anyone making a deliberate decision to stop it.

This piece asks the harder question not what is broken, but whether anything can actually change and who would have to decide to change it.

The answer, it turns out, is hiding in plain sight. And the window to act is already open.

Every spring, the University of Guam graduates a class. Its computer science program, once small enough to fit in a single seminar room, has grown sharply from 15 declared majors in 2022 to 96 in 2024, driven by a renewed partnership with Guam Community College that creates a clear pathway from associate’s degree to bachelor’s. The students are real, the enrollment is growing and the skills being taught—software development, cybersecurity, cloud computing—are exactly the ones the island’s institutions say they cannot find.

The problem is what happens next. UOG’s four-year graduation rate is approximately 12 percent. Of those who graduate, the median salary six years after graduation is around $28,270. The island-wide mean wage, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was $21.39 an hour in May 2024, roughly $44,500 annualized. Students who spend even a summer off-island encounter a labor market that recalibrates expectations in ways that are nearly impossible to reverse.

So the pipeline fills and the pipeline drains. Guam’s net migration has been negative in every recent measured period. The people with the most portable skills are, almost by definition, the most likely to use them somewhere that pays more.

Here is what makes this moment different from every previous version of the same conversation: the money is already here.

The Department of Defense has committed roughly $7.3 billion in military construction on Guam between fiscal years 2024 and 2028. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced a $39 million investment in modernizing Guam’s Medicaid infrastructure—the very system that has failed its accountability audits for years. More than $155 million in federal broadband funds is being directed to telecommunications infrastructure the island genuinely needs. The $31 million Financial Management Information System now being phased into GovGuam departments requires, by design, technically capable people to implement, maintain and extend.

That is not a wish list. That is a construction schedule. And every dollar of it represents specific work—procurement management, system integration, data governance, program compliance, cybersecurity—that someone has to do.

Under current practice, most of it will be done by mainland firms whose employees will arrive, execute their contracts and leave. Guam will inherit the systems and the buildings. It will not inherit the people who understand why particular decisions were made, or how to adapt what was built when something breaks.

That outcome is not inevitable. It is, however, the default.

What few people outside government finance understand is that federal dollars are not just dollars. They come with reimbursement structures that can be used—deliberately, strategically—to fund things that the general fund never could. Under long-standing CMS policy, Medicaid IT system development qualifies for a 90 percent federal match rate; ongoing maintenance and operations qualify at 75 percent. This means that a GovGuam IT position funded through Medicaid administrative claims can, in theory, be compensated at rates that would make a diaspora developer pause before dismissing the idea. Washington covers the majority of the cost. The local budget carries a fraction. It requires a government willing to file the paperwork and a procurement office that understands what it is filing.

That person, in most cases, does not currently work for GovGuam. But that is a choice, not a law.

The diaspora is not gone. It is waiting to be asked the right question.

One in eight Guamanians has served in the U.S. Armed Forces, the highest per-capita rate of any U.S. jurisdiction. That means a significant share of the 144,000 CHamorus living on the mainland already hold security clearances rather than merely being eligible for one. Among them are accountants, nurses, attorneys and, with growing frequency, software developers, data analysts, program managers and IT architects who know what it means to work under federal compliance requirements.

Many would consider returning, or even engaging remotely, if the conditions were right. The conditions have not been right. GovGuam has not built mechanisms for remote hiring. There is no formal diaspora engagement program.

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Guam’s compensation structures, hiring timelines and institutional culture indicate that it is not serious about competing for the skills it once produced. That message can be changed. Not by waiting for the legislature to rewrite the civil service code, but by using the federal resources already flowing to fund positions structured around outcomes rather than office attendance, and procurement language written specifically enough to give Guam-connected firms a genuine first opportunity rather than a nominal one.

These are not complicated ideas. What they require is a government willing to act on them—and a public willing to ask, loudly, why it has not.

The developer in Seattle is not lost to this island. He is simply waiting for the island to decide it wants him back. The question is not whether the talent exists. The question is whether the institutions are willing to do what is necessary to deserve it.

Samuel S. Kim is a tech executive and engineering leader with over 20 years of R&D experience. He founded a 60-person research division in Seoul and holds an economics degree from UCLA. He writes as a resident and registered voter of Guam. He can be contacted at sk102.co.

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