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It sounds like they're firing the wrong 10%. From what I've heard, the problem at NASA is it has a lot of lifers who justify their positions through bureaucrac
by bryanlarsen 2y ago
It sounds like they're firing the wrong 10%.
From what I've heard, the problem at NASA is it has a lot of lifers who justify their positions through bureaucracy.
This reduction gets rid of the people at NASA who actually get stuff done. People who get stuff done can easily find jobs in industry, so are more likely to accept buyouts. It also gets rid of the young probationary employees who are still idealistic and have not yet been corrupted by the system.
- whatshisface 2y agoI imagine that laying off the best would lead to a decline in overall performance that would justify further cuts.
- robertlagrant 2y agoTo me, the question is: if it's true that a bunch of lifers are wasting people's hard-earned tax money by being there, therefore management have not done a good job over a long period of time, also taking salaries to do so, then what do you do about it?
- JohnBooty 2y agoA fair question to ask. But, whatever the solution is, "firing all of the new blood" seems pretty much the opposite of whatever the solution might be.
- robertlagrant 2y agoIs that what's happening? Edit: I didn't see the bit about probation. I think that's probably because you have to start with people on probation if you're making people redundant, right?
- micromacrofoot 2y agoNo, they're doing it to probationary employees because they're aren't protected by the same laws that require cause for firing. Political appointees require 30 days notice, rank-and-file must be given cause.
- JohnBooty 2y agoYeah. They have less protection, less political power to resist. They also presumably generally aren't running important things and filled with tribal knowledge so at least in the short term they are more disposable (if you don't care about the future)
- robertlagrant 2y agoI don't mean that - I mean it's unlikely you can have people on probation stay on while making other people redundant, just from the perspective of regulations or union rules around redundancy.
- imoreno 2y agoOverall, NASA doesn't strike me as a place full of people leeching off government salaries with no benefit. They create valuable stuff. But the article mentions things like committing to suboptimal projects just so some senior workers can keep doing the same job... That sounds pretty bad. Space agencies shouldn't be jobs programs.
- aerostable_slug 2y agoEveryone thinks that about agencies like NNSA and NASA, but then once you get under the covers it's a government agency like every other one. There are clerks and contract analysts and HR drones and people who push paper to other people who push paper in a self-perpetuating bureaucratic machine. Same thing with the Intelligence Community: lots of DMV-like cogs that have TS clearances but otherwise are little different than the masses occupying the Social Security office down the street.
- abenga 2y agoThen you fire those "HR drones" along with the ostensibly "useful" people and suddenly you can't reach the "useful" people to rehire them because you fired HR.
- alsoforgotmypwd 2y ago[flagged]
- vasco 2y agoAnd then they can find jobs at SpaceX.
- xyst 2y agoThis is the intended outcome from neoliberal parasites like Thiel and Musk. They want public government to look like an absolute joke so private corporations can take over with zero regulation and extract as much profit/wealth.
- floatrock 2y ago> People who get stuff done can easily find jobs in industry > It also gets rid of the young probationary employees who are still idealistic So you're saying there's suddenly a bunch of space engineers on the market looking to accept whatever terms some space contractor offers them? I wonder which space contractors already have a list with their names and personnel information...
- aloisdg 2y agofirst thought as well. Scary time. Unionize.
- rtkwe 2y agoThey're actively gutting the NLRB too, I doubt there will be any meaningful action out of that agency against antiunion activities no matter how blatant until at least Jan 20, 2029.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoIt's no accident that the NLRB was one of the first agencies to get gutted.
- rtkwe 2y agoLots of agencies that were looking into one of Musk's many companies were the first targets of DOGE.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoAnd the CFPB would be one of the ones looking into X as a payment platform which X has just partnered with Visa on [0] Timing is coincidental, of course.
- UncleMeat 2y agoIt is even worse than that. Musk is currently suing to argue that the NLRB is more-or-less entirely unconstitutional. There's a meaningful chance that labor organizing protections simply permanently end within the next couple years.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoYes, there are a lot of lifers and they have social connection to support each other. Every younger person I know who tried NASA (government jobs not subcontractor) has absolutely hated its culture and found the lack of productivity boring. At least in my small sample, they all left and went private. The ones who stay are happy to be doing little and can tolerate the politics.
- silexia 2y agoChange the laws so we can fire federal workers based on productivity instead of seniority.
- actionfromafar 2y agoOr change the laws so we can accurately measure productivity of the separate parts of a huge organisation!
- ffsm8 2y agoNow if I can just remember where I put my glass ball that told me who was how productive....
- mandevil 2y agoHow do you measure productivity, better than "I know it when I see it"? Software development is one of the best studied areas for what productivity is, and the thing that everyone agrees is that there are no good metrics for it. For all sorts of jobs above "tier 1 customer service (which can be measured in calls per hour)" it gets really hard to measure, and even that is very open to gaming in ways that lead to bad outcomes- e.g. the entire history of Goodhart's Law.
- silexia 2y agoLet their manager decide.
- mandevil 2y agoThe reason civil service protections exist is that when managers could fire everyone, and managers were chosen based on being the friend of the guy who just won the election, it lead to massive corruption and ineffective and hollowed out bureaucracy. This was realized by everyone 150 years ago, which is why they created civil service protections to begin with. You need a better solution to that problem, otherwise you are just repeating the mistakes of the 1870s. I'm prepared to believe that there is a better idea out there. But just going back to the 1870s, with all of its problems, for sure ain't it.
- p_ing 2y ago> People who get stuff done can easily find jobs in industry, so are more likely to accept buyouts. Who wants to give up a fed pension for a 401k?!
- JKCalhoun 2y agoIs it a pension? I thought they were on a government 401k (TSP).
- cratermoon 2y agoProbationary in the civil service does not equate to young or junior. A person with decades of experience can get promoted and must go through a probationary period.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoThanks for making my original point stronger. Firing the recently promoted seems insane -- aren't those your best employees?
- cratermoon 2y ago> aren't those your best employees? I would think so. Promoting someone implies they are exceeding expectations in their current role[1]. 1. I do acknowledge that in any large organization some people end up promoted despite not meeting the requirements of the job. I'll leave it to the reader to decide where that kind of promotion style might be at play currently.
- martin-t 2y agoWrong sadly depends on perspective. When you see someone seemingly contradicting their stated goals, ask yourself if perhaps they have different, unstated, goals.
- perihelions 2y ago- "they're firing the wrong 10%" This was something people overlooked about the CDC layoffs: those, likewise, targeted people who were administratively easy to fire, which in that case was highly skilled experts hired under an exceptional federal employment statute ("Title 42"), which allowed them far higher salaries than other public service workers—but without the standard protections. - "EIS officers are hired under Title 42, a mechanism that allows the federal government to bring in the best and the brightest, in some cases paying them at rates higher than the typical public sector wages. It offers workers fewer job protections, however, making Title 42 workers easier to fire." https://www.statnews.com/2025/02/14/trump-cdc-cuts-include-epidemic-intelligence-service-outbreak-investigators/ https://www.statnews.com/2025/02/14/trump-cdc-cuts-include-e...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jrs235 2y agoNormalization of deviance, the process of becoming inured to risky actions, is a useful concept for today that was developed to explain how the Challenger disaster, and later the 2003 Columbia disaster, happened. It's what DOGE is doing: becoming inured to risky actions.
- tomohawk 2y ago[dead]
- kamaal 2y ago>>the problem at NASA is it has a lot of lifers who justify their positions through bureaucracy Not every job in the world works well with 'Move fast, and break things' philosophy. Doing things quickly isn't even a goal for NASA. Doing things right is. Why do people keep saying every thing either needs to be as chaotic as a dorm room start up or cease to exist?