5 ms·

I find the reaction to DOGE quite fascinating and it's really exposed just how different some work cultures are. In tech we face layoffs constantly, so much so

I find the reaction to DOGE quite fascinating and it's really exposed just how different some work cultures are. In tech we face layoffs constantly, so much so that's not a huge shock when a FAANG lays off hundreds or even thousands. We might get a couple of stories if the layoff is particularly large but the general consensus is "this is the way of the world, go find another job". Contrast that with the stories we are seeing about DOGE and the general reaction to layoffs and contraction of several govt agencies. I think the root of it lies in how both types of jobs are pitched. You get into tech knowing that you will most likely get laid off but you take the deal because compensation if very good in the field. This is in stark contrast to how a government job is pitched, you won't make the best salaries there, but it's a safe steady job with loads of benefits and you can easily build a career inside just a single agency. My personal feelings on this are mixed, on the one hand it always sucks to get laid off so I feel for the employees. But on the other hand, something like 40-50% of my paycheck goes out in taxes and I would prefer if my government actually spent it on things to improve my life versus dumb shit domestically or abroad.

jisnsm 2y ago
It could be worse. I live in southern Europe and not only are civil servants virtually unfirable, they also have much better salaries and benefits than they would have in the private sector.
- steveBK123 2y ago
  In the US civil servants are generally hard to fire, and get good benefits, but their salary is far lower than private sector in most cases.
arlongparker 2y ago
I think it’s very different in tech where we are compensated quite well and losing a job doesn’t mean falling off the face of capitalism. Most of us are able to have modest savings but most Americans are barely hanging on.
- alecco 2y ago
  Good luck going past 40 in tech.
  - localghost3000 2y ago
    I'm almost 50 and doing fine. Maybe that wouldn't be the case if I was less experienced though.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    50 here going strong and still an IC and I got my first job in BigTech at 46. When I lost my job in late 2023 I had three offers within three weeks including one that would have paid more than I was making - in cash - at BigTech. I didn’t want the stress and I wanted to get back to smaller companies. When I was looking again last year it all took 3 weeks to get the offer I have now. It only took that long to get scheduled for all of the interviews from an internal recruiter reaching out to me.
Bhilai 2y ago
There will always be dumb shit in every kind of spending. Heck, my family and kids spend on dumb shit. I bet half of the Amazon orders going to people's places is dumb shit. Can there be cuts in spending and expenses of the government, the answer will always be yes but treating the federal government like a startup is the next level of dumb shit. Its specially being done by people who have no knowledge of government systems work. A lot of people and systems depend on smooth functioning of federal government. I guess fuck around and find out.
- rob74 2y ago
  Or rather, fuck around and others will find out. I'm not denying some of USAID spending may have been "dumb shit", but some of it was also very important. But you don't have to take my word for it, how about the words of a former UK prime minister: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/07/donald-trump-elon-musk-usaid-poverty-america https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/07/donald... And, while the billions of dollars the US has spent per year on foreign aid until now sound impressive, if you compare the per capita amount with other rich countries, it's actually not that impressive (and these numbers include all foreign aid, not just USAID): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_aid#/media/File:20250107_Foreign_aid_given,_per_capita,_by_country.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_aid#/med...
  - scott_w 2y ago
    It’s not even good for the USA, long term. In today's The Rest is Politics, Rory Stewart highlighted that when the UK removed DFID and dropped its commitment to spending 0.7% of GDP on aid down to 0.5%, we went from being able to put in £100m to development projects to being able to commit £5m. He was, at an independent charity, able to put up £25m in comparison. What kind of soft power can a nation wield when you’re being outspent 5-to-1 by a charity now?
- pmg101 2y ago
  Unfortunately the people doing the fucking around will not be the people finding out.
steveBK123 2y ago
FAANG employees & Fed employees took a very different trade though. FAANG - You can have sky high compensation with moderate job security and roll-your-own (401K+savings) retirement. Note you mention 40-50% taxes which would imply you are in the sky high compensation bucket. You can also job shop and switch to any of a dozen competitors doing similar stuff. Fed - You can have moderate compensation with sky high job security and good retirement benefits. Some of these jobs cap out at what FANG pays new grads in cash comp. You can't go work for a competing government like China or Russia, legally.
- Jtsummers 2y ago
  > You can't go work for a competing government like China or Russia, legally. https://dodsoco.ogc.osd.mil/DoD-Personnel/Ethics-Topics-for-DoD-Personnel/Seeking-and-Post-Government-Employment/ https://dodsoco.ogc.osd.mil/DoD-Personnel/Ethics-Topics-for-... Feds can also be limited on who they work for or the kind of work they do after they leave government in the US private sector.
scarface_74 2y ago
The contrast is that there are these things called “laws” and the “constitution” where Congress passed laws and budgets and the President is supposed to execute those laws. No one expected a President to behave in an unconstitutional manner nor did they expect an unelected official to get access to their accounts. Also do you realize that only 1% of the federal budget is for government workers? And there is no way that 50% of your income goes to the Federal government. Even if you did make over $609K, only the money you made over that would be taxed at the 37% rate and Social security would have stopped way before that at $165K (?). Also, when I got my Amazoned, I was relatively sure that they could keep their promise of paying my 3.5 months severance + paid out PTO that gave me 4 months pay. Musk can’t even promise the people who sign that they will get paid past March.
- walljm 2y ago
  1% ??? that can't be true. the DoD's personel budget, by itself is 2.7% of the total budget for the whole federal government.
  - walljm 2y ago
    this was pulled from the 2024 monthly budget report from the treasury.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    I was wrong it’s 6.6% of the budget https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-reflections-on-the-size-and-composition-of-todays-federal-government/#:~:text=Compensation%20for%20federal%20employees%20cost,of%20that%20year's%20total%20spending. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-ref... If his goal is to cut 10% of the employees That 10% is less than 1% of the budget.
    - walljm 2y ago
      Ah, thank you. That's helpful.
pjc50 2y ago
The government, and especially places like USAID, CDC, NIH and so on, tends also to have a sense of mission that's very different from the Silicon Valley one. People often accept the lower salaries and bureaucracy of the public sector because they want to make a positive difference in the world. The UK civil service "fast stream" graduate training programme actually requires people to change roles every six months. I believe there are similar rules with a longer timeframe that cycle people through job roles later on in their career. These play a similar role to bank rules which require people to take two weeks contiguous holiday every year: it tends to expose any fraud that requires continuous coverup. The libertarian anti-government position denies the possibility of these roles improving anything, which is why this conflict arises.
jhedwards 2y ago
> But on the other hand, something like 40-50% of my paycheck goes out in taxes and I would prefer if my government actually spent it on things to improve my life versus dumb shit domestically or abroad. I agree here, but one thing that has come to light recently is that the federal work force is only ~6% of the federal budget. That means that most of those taxes are not going to pay the salaries of government workers. Also, a lot of the money from our taxes goes to public health, safety, resource management, and infrastructure. I'm happy to pay for things like that. I don't doubt that there is significant waste as well, but there have been a lot of egregious lies lately about how much waste there is and _where_ that waste is located.
- walljm 2y ago
  6% seems suspect. I would expect it to be higher... at least in the 20% to 30% range. Do you have a source?
  - toyg 2y ago
    That actually looks par for the course in "western" governments. The only items going over 20% are typically related to pensions, social security, and health services. Everything else (in isolation) is basically a pittance.
  - jhedwards 2y ago
    Sure, here's two: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60235 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60235 https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-reflections-on-the-size-and-composition-of-todays-federal-government/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-ref... Every publication I've looked at has the overall spending for federal employee salaries as around 280 billion. The total budget is around 6 trillion.
  - Jtsummers 2y ago
    https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60235#:~:text=In%20fiscal%20year%202022%2C%20the,the%20Department%20of%20Homeland%20Security. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60235#:~:text=In%20fiscal%20... FY 2022 spending was around $6.75 trillion, civilian pay was $271 billion, or around 4% of the spending for that year. You'll find the numbers have been hovering around 4-5% for quite a while.
rgbrenner 2y ago
Except Congress decides what the government will spend money on. Impoundment of appropriated funds -- what DOGE is doing -- requires the consent of congress[0]. If the Impoundment Control Act is thrown out, no institution will be safe, including the military, social security and medicare. Every program will be at the whim of whatever administration is in power at the time. $50B effective military budget will finally be possible under the next democratic administration--no matter if congress disagrees. And that's a very radical take on government. Even if that sounds good to you, the vast majority of americans do support at least some government programs. Social Security has significant support, for example. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_funds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_fu...
- salawat 2y ago
  An ideal operated as a verifiable, legally sanctioned Ponzi snd Congressional slush fund. Great idea, sadly co-opted by other interests.
- rob74 2y ago
  > whatever administration is in power at the time. $50B effective military budget will finally be possible under the next democratic administration Do you think there will be a next Democratic administration? The way things are going, the Republicans seem to be determined not to lose another election ever again. Sure, there will be elections, but there are elections in Russia, Belarus, Cuba, China and even North Korea too...
beej71 2y ago
> In tech we face layoffs constantly, so much so that's not a huge shock when a FAANG lays off hundreds or even thousands. One other difference is that in tech we watch companies get mismanaged into the dirt and shrug it off. There'll be another one to replace it soon enough. But I want to take a little more care with the government. Yes, there's inefficiency, but that doesn't mean the best approach to optimization is to just start shotgunning holes in the machine. Maybe that approach works (?) for Twitter, but that kind of upheaval in the government will have serious repercussions that I don't think I want to be on the receiving end of. I work for a state government, but I'm on a contract. They choose every year whether or not to renew it. So I get to enjoy the lower pay and the lack of job security. I don't know how many government employees are contract, but it's something to consider.
acomjean 2y ago
When I was an undergrad I had an engineering internship with the army Corp of Enigineers every summer in the 1990s. It was a very professional environment. I ended up going to the private sector after (they had a RIF (reduction in force)) the year I graduated. But the government employment pitch was more stability, less compensation, better work life balance. Honestly the engineering process wasn’t too different. The government projects were strictly funded, and used these cost codes where you had to bill every hour to a project. This was a PITA. The quality of the engineering designs wasn’t different. The government job had some inefficienies because of a lot of process. Eg we got a plotter running and wanted to try a few different pens, so we ordered a small sampling. It got held up while they looked for cheaper prices, a process that probably cost more than the pens my boss pointed out. but I can see why they would try that process for big ticket items. When I ended up at a big company it was frankly similar. One of my first engineering jobs in the private sector was capping a landfill that went privately managed, then when the management left they found 5 drums on site. Any savings by having the government turn over that contract were wasted by having us deal with that (turned out the drums were all rusted out, the contents long gone).
settsu 2y ago
The fact that you see corporate layoffs and what Elon Musk is doing in the U.S. government as in any way remotely comparable is... troubling.

jisnsm 2y ago

It could be worse. I live in southern Europe and not only are civil servants virtually unfirable, they also have much better salaries and benefits than they would have in the private sector.

steveBK123 2y ago
In the US civil servants are generally hard to fire, and get good benefits, but their salary is far lower than private sector in most cases.

arlongparker 2y ago

I think it’s very different in tech where we are compensated quite well and losing a job doesn’t mean falling off the face of capitalism. Most of us are able to have modest savings but most Americans are barely hanging on.

alecco 2y ago
Good luck going past 40 in tech.
- localghost3000 2y ago
  I'm almost 50 and doing fine. Maybe that wouldn't be the case if I was less experienced though.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  50 here going strong and still an IC and I got my first job in BigTech at 46. When I lost my job in late 2023 I had three offers within three weeks including one that would have paid more than I was making - in cash - at BigTech. I didn’t want the stress and I wanted to get back to smaller companies. When I was looking again last year it all took 3 weeks to get the offer I have now. It only took that long to get scheduled for all of the interviews from an internal recruiter reaching out to me.

Bhilai 2y ago

There will always be dumb shit in every kind of spending. Heck, my family and kids spend on dumb shit. I bet half of the Amazon orders going to people's places is dumb shit. Can there be cuts in spending and expenses of the government, the answer will always be yes but treating the federal government like a startup is the next level of dumb shit. Its specially being done by people who have no knowledge of government systems work. A lot of people and systems depend on smooth functioning of federal government. I guess fuck around and find out.

rob74 2y ago
Or rather, fuck around and others will find out. I'm not denying some of USAID spending may have been "dumb shit", but some of it was also very important. But you don't have to take my word for it, how about the words of a former UK prime minister: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/07/donald-trump-elon-musk-usaid-poverty-america https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/07/donald... And, while the billions of dollars the US has spent per year on foreign aid until now sound impressive, if you compare the per capita amount with other rich countries, it's actually not that impressive (and these numbers include all foreign aid, not just USAID): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_aid#/media/File:20250107_Foreign_aid_given,_per_capita,_by_country.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_aid#/med...
- scott_w 2y ago
  It’s not even good for the USA, long term. In today's The Rest is Politics, Rory Stewart highlighted that when the UK removed DFID and dropped its commitment to spending 0.7% of GDP on aid down to 0.5%, we went from being able to put in £100m to development projects to being able to commit £5m. He was, at an independent charity, able to put up £25m in comparison. What kind of soft power can a nation wield when you’re being outspent 5-to-1 by a charity now?
pmg101 2y ago
Unfortunately the people doing the fucking around will not be the people finding out.

steveBK123 2y ago

FAANG employees & Fed employees took a very different trade though. FAANG - You can have sky high compensation with moderate job security and roll-your-own (401K+savings) retirement. Note you mention 40-50% taxes which would imply you are in the sky high compensation bucket. You can also job shop and switch to any of a dozen competitors doing similar stuff. Fed - You can have moderate compensation with sky high job security and good retirement benefits. Some of these jobs cap out at what FANG pays new grads in cash comp. You can't go work for a competing government like China or Russia, legally.

Jtsummers 2y ago
> You can't go work for a competing government like China or Russia, legally. https://dodsoco.ogc.osd.mil/DoD-Personnel/Ethics-Topics-for-DoD-Personnel/Seeking-and-Post-Government-Employment/ https://dodsoco.ogc.osd.mil/DoD-Personnel/Ethics-Topics-for-... Feds can also be limited on who they work for or the kind of work they do after they leave government in the US private sector.

scarface_74 2y ago

The contrast is that there are these things called “laws” and the “constitution” where Congress passed laws and budgets and the President is supposed to execute those laws. No one expected a President to behave in an unconstitutional manner nor did they expect an unelected official to get access to their accounts. Also do you realize that only 1% of the federal budget is for government workers? And there is no way that 50% of your income goes to the Federal government. Even if you did make over $609K, only the money you made over that would be taxed at the 37% rate and Social security would have stopped way before that at $165K (?). Also, when I got my Amazoned, I was relatively sure that they could keep their promise of paying my 3.5 months severance + paid out PTO that gave me 4 months pay. Musk can’t even promise the people who sign that they will get paid past March.

walljm 2y ago
1% ??? that can't be true. the DoD's personel budget, by itself is 2.7% of the total budget for the whole federal government.
- walljm 2y ago
  this was pulled from the 2024 monthly budget report from the treasury.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  I was wrong it’s 6.6% of the budget https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-reflections-on-the-size-and-composition-of-todays-federal-government/#:~:text=Compensation%20for%20federal%20employees%20cost,of%20that%20year's%20total%20spending. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-ref... If his goal is to cut 10% of the employees That 10% is less than 1% of the budget.
  - walljm 2y ago
    Ah, thank you. That's helpful.

pjc50 2y ago

The government, and especially places like USAID, CDC, NIH and so on, tends also to have a sense of mission that's very different from the Silicon Valley one. People often accept the lower salaries and bureaucracy of the public sector because they want to make a positive difference in the world. The UK civil service "fast stream" graduate training programme actually requires people to change roles every six months. I believe there are similar rules with a longer timeframe that cycle people through job roles later on in their career. These play a similar role to bank rules which require people to take two weeks contiguous holiday every year: it tends to expose any fraud that requires continuous coverup. The libertarian anti-government position denies the possibility of these roles improving anything, which is why this conflict arises.

jhedwards 2y ago

> But on the other hand, something like 40-50% of my paycheck goes out in taxes and I would prefer if my government actually spent it on things to improve my life versus dumb shit domestically or abroad. I agree here, but one thing that has come to light recently is that the federal work force is only ~6% of the federal budget. That means that most of those taxes are not going to pay the salaries of government workers. Also, a lot of the money from our taxes goes to public health, safety, resource management, and infrastructure. I'm happy to pay for things like that. I don't doubt that there is significant waste as well, but there have been a lot of egregious lies lately about how much waste there is and _where_ that waste is located.

walljm 2y ago
6% seems suspect. I would expect it to be higher... at least in the 20% to 30% range. Do you have a source?
- toyg 2y ago
  That actually looks par for the course in "western" governments. The only items going over 20% are typically related to pensions, social security, and health services. Everything else (in isolation) is basically a pittance.
- jhedwards 2y ago
  Sure, here's two: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60235 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60235 https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-reflections-on-the-size-and-composition-of-todays-federal-government/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-ref... Every publication I've looked at has the overall spending for federal employee salaries as around 280 billion. The total budget is around 6 trillion.
- Jtsummers 2y ago
  https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60235#:~:text=In%20fiscal%20year%202022%2C%20the,the%20Department%20of%20Homeland%20Security. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60235#:~:text=In%20fiscal%20... FY 2022 spending was around $6.75 trillion, civilian pay was $271 billion, or around 4% of the spending for that year. You'll find the numbers have been hovering around 4-5% for quite a while.

rgbrenner 2y ago

Except Congress decides what the government will spend money on. Impoundment of appropriated funds -- what DOGE is doing -- requires the consent of congress[0]. If the Impoundment Control Act is thrown out, no institution will be safe, including the military, social security and medicare. Every program will be at the whim of whatever administration is in power at the time. $50B effective military budget will finally be possible under the next democratic administration--no matter if congress disagrees. And that's a very radical take on government. Even if that sounds good to you, the vast majority of americans do support at least some government programs. Social Security has significant support, for example. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_funds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_fu...

salawat 2y ago
An ideal operated as a verifiable, legally sanctioned Ponzi snd Congressional slush fund. Great idea, sadly co-opted by other interests.
rob74 2y ago
> whatever administration is in power at the time. $50B effective military budget will finally be possible under the next democratic administration Do you think there will be a next Democratic administration? The way things are going, the Republicans seem to be determined not to lose another election ever again. Sure, there will be elections, but there are elections in Russia, Belarus, Cuba, China and even North Korea too...

beej71 2y ago

> In tech we face layoffs constantly, so much so that's not a huge shock when a FAANG lays off hundreds or even thousands. One other difference is that in tech we watch companies get mismanaged into the dirt and shrug it off. There'll be another one to replace it soon enough. But I want to take a little more care with the government. Yes, there's inefficiency, but that doesn't mean the best approach to optimization is to just start shotgunning holes in the machine. Maybe that approach works (?) for Twitter, but that kind of upheaval in the government will have serious repercussions that I don't think I want to be on the receiving end of. I work for a state government, but I'm on a contract. They choose every year whether or not to renew it. So I get to enjoy the lower pay and the lack of job security. I don't know how many government employees are contract, but it's something to consider.

acomjean 2y ago

When I was an undergrad I had an engineering internship with the army Corp of Enigineers every summer in the 1990s. It was a very professional environment. I ended up going to the private sector after (they had a RIF (reduction in force)) the year I graduated. But the government employment pitch was more stability, less compensation, better work life balance. Honestly the engineering process wasn’t too different. The government projects were strictly funded, and used these cost codes where you had to bill every hour to a project. This was a PITA. The quality of the engineering designs wasn’t different. The government job had some inefficienies because of a lot of process. Eg we got a plotter running and wanted to try a few different pens, so we ordered a small sampling. It got held up while they looked for cheaper prices, a process that probably cost more than the pens my boss pointed out. but I can see why they would try that process for big ticket items. When I ended up at a big company it was frankly similar. One of my first engineering jobs in the private sector was capping a landfill that went privately managed, then when the management left they found 5 drums on site. Any savings by having the government turn over that contract were wasted by having us deal with that (turned out the drums were all rusted out, the contents long gone).

settsu 2y ago

The fact that you see corporate layoffs and what Elon Musk is doing in the U.S. government as in any way remotely comparable is... troubling.