11 ms·

USDA fired officials working on bird flu, now trying to rehire them

192 points by pmags 2y ago

stephen_g 2y ago
This whole thing seems like such a farce... The conservative side of politics in Australia likes to do a much smaller version of this to "save money" whenever they've been in opposition and then get back in to Government - and all it leads to every time is paying far more to have the same work done by the big consulting companies. You hear stories like people being fired from their public service jobs, then being hired by the consulting firm and being back the next week, now with the consulting firm charging more than double what they were paid before for their time - and they're doing the exact same job they were doing...
- defrost 2y ago
  The taxpayers lose out, the rent seekers that own the middle man consulting companies now get a good chunk of the increased charge to taxpayers .. this is why they suppport the conservative side of politics that makes this possible.
  - __d 2y ago
    And the consulting companies provide lucratively paid, post-politics jobs to those who cut the public service payroll.
    - omnimus 2y ago
      This might be true for some high up possition but the actual day to day workers suddenly have middle men squzzing them too. So they end up payed less.
- alexpetralia 2y ago
  This is exactly what "small government" and "big business" means
- suraci 2y ago
  This looks like stories of some public services, like bus services. The government sold 'unprofitable' public services to companies. companies raised the price, but somehow it's still 'unprofitable', so the government has to provide subsidies to companies, or buy it back at a higher price than they sold it for
  - tutorialmanager 2y ago
    A great example is the city of Chicago selling its parking meters for 1.15 billion dollars. Now considered one of the biggest financial mistakes the city ever made
    - pjc50 2y ago
      Chicago was also involved in the interest rate swap "mis-selling"; see https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/press_releases/2024/march/interest-swap-end.html https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/press... Having sold a fairly sophisticated and expensive financial product with nasty downside risks to lots of states and cities, Wall Street then went on to rig the underlying number: https://www.reuters.com/legal/ten-big-banks-settle-us-interest-rate-swaps-rigging-litigation-2024-06-27/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/ten-big-banks-settle-us-intere... (although market conditions since the financial crisis would have caused the buyers to lose money anyway)
  - pjc50 2y ago
    See UK trains. The track is unprofitable (legacy maintenance) and had to be brought back into public ownership for safety reasons. The staff are shuffled between various paper-thin "franchise" employers. The one profitable bit is train leasing; the privatization created ROSCOs, which are train landlords, who get the real profits from public subsidy. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/18/profits-of-uks-private-train-leasing-firms-treble-in-a-year https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/18/profits-of-...
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    "government" and "unprofitable public services" Should never be in the same sentence. Especially for the 4th largest country by landmass. The only legitmate ways you justify cutting public transit is 1. a superior form of transit has been established for a while 2. Literally no one is using the transit for whatever reason (which is nearly impossible) 3. mass extinction occurs and there's no one left to transit (though at that point transit is the least of our issues) It's not supposed to be a direct profit. You Transport people around to businesses to sell to, work to operate the city with, and overall stimulate the economy.
- RicoElectrico 2y ago
  Conservatives of the US seem to be positively evil when compared to conservatives most elsewhere in the developed world, who at least seem to have some notion of social contract.
  - blooalien 2y ago
    > "Conservatives of the US seem to be positively evil" ... This is because the U.S. has become so excessively politically polarized in recent years. The typical "conservative" here is more like the "extreme right" elsewhere around the world. They're literal "extremists", taking those political views to the furthest extremes they can think of, and actively hating anyone and anything that's not totally in line with that extremist viewpoint. (The political "left" has become much the same in the other direction here these days as well, thus exacerbating the issue from the "other side".) It's really not a "winning combination" for humanity in general. When (some) folks say "both sides are the same", I suspect that's what they're referring to. They're both becoming increasingly "extremist" in their respective viewpoints, and unwilling to move toward "the middle" even a tiny bit to allow for any productive discussion or compromise that could benefit everyone involved.
    - pjc50 2y ago
      "both sides" when it blatantly only one side is the reason you're in this mess.
      - lionkor 2y ago
        This exact comment is part of the issue, you see? You're saying what Trump said, too, when asked about the divide in the country: "Oh, you know, we are only divided because of THEM". Very ironic.
        6510 2y ago
        Imagine this, if you provide state of the art free education with all the trimmings. Will the voter become more stupid? Back in the days in NL we had university grads stocking shelves in the supermarket. It was hard to see the point of it. How useful that was became obvious when it was abolished and political parties pretty much had to explain their program as if the voter was 5 years old. The thing is, hardly anything is that simple. Picture a field with spherical cows all over. Everything comes with an explanation simplified to the point it becomes a lie. Every politician needs to carefully keep up with the basket of lies. More and more lies are added on top. One might as well start lying for real and profit from it. If the lion share of voters buys into everything anyway??? This was funny https://youtu.be/T4kNUS7w8Tk https://youtu.be/T4kNUS7w8Tk If god wanted us to give power-point presentations he would have provided screens? Maybe the real budget isn't in the books? https://youtu.be/q_IoizTAL6w https://youtu.be/q_IoizTAL6w https://home.solari.com/fasab-statement-56-understanding-new-government-financial-accounting-loopholes/ https://home.solari.com/fasab-statement-56-understanding-new... http://files.fasab.gov/pdffiles/handbook_sffas_56.pdf http://files.fasab.gov/pdffiles/handbook_sffas_56.pdf
- ciconia 2y ago
  > every time is paying far more to have the same work done Some predictions: - The 2025 US budget will increase compared to 2024. - The 2025 US budget deficit will increase compared to 2024. - At the end of 2025 the US national debt will have increased compared to 1/1/25.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    This is very likely. They'll do a Liz Truss budget of massive tax giveaways. I'll add "bond yields will go up" to that list.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    Not exactly groundbreaking predictions given the trillion or so dollars in tax cuts being proposed.
- lionkor 2y ago
  "The U.S. is only divided because of them, not because of us"
- pabs3 2y ago
  Isn't that the whole point of those sort of actions? Send public money into private hands. Just like when they sold off public assets like a telco (Telstra), or a bank (CommBank) etc.
- alsoforgotmypwd 2y ago
  Of course it is. It's both for show and a distraction from whatever else is going on like seizing unitary power and normalizing deviancy.
- jrs235 2y ago
  >then being hired by the consulting firm and being back the next week Who owns the consulting firms? They are tied to the conservatives doing this. They are now getting a free cut from the backs of the people.
- chneu 2y ago
  It's called starve the beast. The strategy is to identify government agencies or programs that conservatives don't like. Then they cut funding or put up obstacles for that agency. Over time the agency can't complete it's stated goals because of a lack of funding or restrictions. Then conservatives claim the program doesn't work and it's a waste of money. I've seen this repeatedly my entire life in American politics. It's so dumb.
- spwa4 2y ago
  Of course ... were you expecting the people who got fired to just forgive and forget? No, go to a large consultancy, get hired for twice your normal pay, renting you out to your previous employer for ... nobody cares, but WAY more than they paid you before.
dashundchen 2y ago
What a clown show. After they made the same fuck up firing the inspectors of our nuclear weapons. > The layoffs concerned a number of Republican lawmakers, who privately warned the Trump administration that such cuts could hamper the government’s bird flu response and asked them to reconsider, according to two Republican sources with direct knowledge of the situation. This is so infuriating - "privately". You know a good chunk of Republicans in Congress are educated people aware these many of these cuts are a mix of illegal, unconstitutional or dangerous to national security. But for the sake of their reelection campaign two years from now they're rolling over and ceding any oversight authority they have. Show a spine, if you're going to give all your Branch's power to a dictator you might as well let DOGE dissolve congress and save us the salaries.
- koolba 2y ago
  > You know a good chunk of Republicans in Congress knows these many of these cuts are a mix of illegal, unconstitutional or dangerous to national security When the dust settles on the buckshot of related cases and they make their way to the SCOTUS, it will be confirmed that the executive branch has unilateral power to fire people working in the executive branch. If it’s constitutional, it’s de facto legal. And I think it will be at least 7-2 as well.
  - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
    The executive branch has the power to fire people, but not to cut departments when those departments are established by congress.
  - eightysixfour 2y ago
    Ahh yes, the constitutional power the executive has to say “I don’t like what the legislative signed into law and funded, so I just won’t do it.”
  - harimau777 2y ago
    If "legal" just means "whatever the supreme court says it is" without regard to corruption or logic then the word legal has more or less lost any useful meaning.
suraci 2y ago
This happened multiple times over the course of a few days, and it makes me think, what's the pattern behind it? My guess is, departments don't want layoffs, but they don't want to contradict the higher-ups either, so they fire and rehire. this can work because DOGE only has administrative power and cannot decide the budget, only those who can decide on departmental budgets truly have the power to influence the size of the department btw, i just found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfzCjHCTmo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfzCjHCTmo
- selectodude 2y ago
  >My guess is, departments don't want layoffs, but they don't want to contradict the higher-ups either, so they fire and rehire. Your guess is very wrong. Everybody is hired and fired by OMB (run by loyalist Russell Vought). They are now firing people directly without going through any sort of triage of who is actually somebody that needs to be let go - they are running pulls on internal HR data and firing every person who fits the criteria of "can be fired". Shockingly, this sort of insane scattershot firing of the federal workforce is stupid! and catches a lot of people who need to be doing their jobs for us to do things like keep track of nuclear waste and track the spread of bird flu.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    Their default play seems to be across the board firing all probationary employees. It's happened at so many departments it's hard to deny/ignore. Then anywhere that was/has investigated a Musk company gets an extra layer of layoffs in their investigative arms.
  - yibg 2y ago
    Externally it doesn't even seem like there is a "can be fired" criteria. It seems like there is some high level bucket of "these shouldn't be fired", and the rest is just pull plugs and see what breaks immediately. Which incidentally also spills into the "shouldn't be fired" pool as in this case and the earlier nuclear one. This seems like the same approach as the Elon going into twitter's data center to physically remove servers story. Except instead of pulling servers, they're pulling jobs instead.
adamiscool8 2y ago
[flagged]
- healsdata 2y ago
  The absolute cruelty you've shown here is absolutely astounding. That "minor interruption" is the well-being, livelihood, and lives of real people. You'd never walk up to someone who lost their home, had love one die, or suffered a debilitating illness because of your "scream test" and talk to them about the "major results".
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    I'm quite certain they wouldn't do it twice.
    - throwaway173738 2y ago
      I’m pretty sure those would be considered fighting words in court.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  - adamiscool8 2y ago
    Depends on the results. Being accidentally fired for a few days is not going to cause debilitation, death, and destitution.
- OccamsMirror 2y ago
  The scream test is for servers. Not the livelihoods of real people and potential impact of things like unchecked bird flu on the country. We're truly seeing the loss of humanity, or even the pretense of it, with this administration.
trhway 2y ago
it reminds how about 20 years ago at Sun Microsystems they laid off several hundreds in one org with intention to rehire back pick-and-choosing ~100 best. Fail. Pretty much everybody took the package and went onto better pastures, especially the best ones.
- TomK32 2y ago
  Yeah, humans are funny with their feelings and such. Maybe Musk is an autist afterall and not a sociopath.
  - blooalien 2y ago
    > "Maybe Musk is an autist afterall and not a sociopath." Maybe he's a little of both. I doubt they're mutually exclusive. One can be both of those things I believe, yes?
  - me_me_me 2y ago
    I am so happy it was a drink driver that hit me, I was afraid they did this on purpose. Why does it matter what musk is, when he is actively trying to make your life worse. No matter the motives.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      ehh, if it was an accident it was bad luck I was there. If it was on purpose I got a lotta stuff to prepare to get that guy away from me. But this metaphor isn't really aligning with Musk anymore.
  - alphager 2y ago
    We autistic people have feelings and empathy. We have trouble expressing feelings and reading feelings of others, but we know that we and other people have feelings. Musk may or may not be an autist, but his deranged treatment of people is not because of autism.
- ben_w 2y ago
  Similar story is how my dad got early retirement. Offered to everyone, management very upset that he, with a decade or so of experience on that specific project, actually took it.
zombiwoof 2y ago
The smugness of silicon valley meets the inefficiency of big government What could go wrong
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- janice1999 2y ago
  It's becoming clear much of that "inefficiency" is hidden complexity which non-experts fail to grasp, redundancy and safety (e.g. nuclear safety) and areas that lobbyists just don't want to exist, like every regulator acting in the public interest.
  - snailmailstare 2y ago
    The stranger part is that AFAICT, eliminating all of this complexity is a rounding error unless the topic is the military or mandatory spending. They went white as sheet when someone suggested they would touch something that could matter.
  - npteljes 2y ago
    People, including me, are really, really bad at estimating risk and the real price of safety. It all looks very inefficient and everyone is so sad being parted with the safety money when there is no apparent danger. But when danger comes, suddenly the mood changes and people pay out of the ass to get out of trouble. This push and pull is at a lot of places where decisions around resources are made. Like in their private lives, when people don't really talk to each other right up until they are about to lose the other, like a parent, or their partner.
unyttigfjelltol 2y ago
You'd think from all Elon Musk's press with DOGE that this is his only job. But he's actually simultaneously CEO of 4 major companies, which explains how he's spread a bit too thin to correctly supervise the "Big Balls" layoff machine.
- jjulius 2y ago
  Yet all of his employees, at all of his companies, had better damn well be in the office.
  - ivewonyoung 2y ago
    Not a good comparison, anyone's higher ups have the authority to call for an RTO with a consequence of being fired. Trump can do that to Musk, Tesla's board/shareholders can do that. SpaceX investors can potentially gang together and do that depending on Musk's voting share control. Same with XAi, Boring Company etc.
    - jjulius 2y ago
      It's a perfectly cromulent comparison. I'm a firm believer in leading by example. If he's going to swing his "muh RTO" dick around in public the way that he has, while also expecting his employees to put in the hours and effort that he has historically expected of them, while he's off LARP'ing as president and America's savior, he can fuck right off. The suggestion that, "It's not a good comparison because he's a boss and he can make the rules," might be technically true, fine, but it doesn't make it any less hypocritical.
      - ivewonyoung 2y ago
        > I'm a firm believer in leading by example. Then do that wherever you have authority to do for subordinates, and for companies you found or are CEO of. Maybe you already did, do tell us about your accomplishments. Telling others how to run their own company feels strange, especially given how Musk led two companies to great success. > he can fuck right off With what authority or credentials do you say that? That is just your opinion that a lot of others don't seem to share, and they actually put their money where their mouth is, by being shareholders, investors and employees. Or hiring him like Trump did. You are free to short Tesla stock if you truly believe that. Or quit if you're a Tesla employee or in one of his other companies. You're free to vote and campaign against his boss in the govt. A lot of people work multiple jobs and are hired while being transparent about them. I don't see a problem with that if their superiors are okay with it. He lead SpaceX and Tesla to great success, so a lot of people think he has proven that he can multitask successfully. If you or your subordinates(if you have any) have not proven to be capable of doing then don't automatically assume absolutely no one in the world can do that.
yieldcrv 2y ago
[flagged]
etchalon 2y ago
Apparently Musk thinks his "cut everything and then see what we really need" approach was successful at Twitter, despite revenue being down, usage down, and numerous competitors appearing which are decimating its user base. But hey, the site is still running. So, success.
- dpkirchner 2y ago
  Don't forget the company being so weak it has resorted to suing its former customers because they decided to stop buying the company's product. I wonder what the government equivalent will be.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Legal requirement to loan to the government at negative interest rates. Just imagine the voice: "It’s not a tax, folks—no, no, the fake news will say that, but it’s not a tax. It’s a beautiful, tremendous investment in our great government, the best government in the world—people are saying it. And look, some very smart people, the best people, they tell me, ‘Sir, this is how we build a stronger economy,’ and I say, ‘You know what? You’re right!’ Because let’s be honest, negative interest—some people don’t get it, but I get it—it’s a winning deal, okay?" (No, not a real quote).
- sillyfluke 2y ago
  >But hey, the site is still running. So, success. more like, I'm the co-presidennt of the United States. So, success.
- pfannkuchen 2y ago
  He did remove the censors in a way that makes the site unappealing to a lot of people, but at the same time 1,000x’d the amount of discussion on previously censored topics. Like the discussions on there look like something out of 4chan these days. A generous interpretation might be that Elon thought that re-enabling public discussion in certain verboten topics is important enough to light a big wad of cash on fire. It’s not hard to predict that letting people talk about those things openly will scare off a lot of people. I would be surprised if he is surprised.
ProfessorZoom 2y ago
if you aren't re-adding, then you're not deleting enough
- tbrownaw 2y ago
  Move fast and break things!
- aaron695 2y ago
  [dead]
Jiro 2y ago
If you read the wording of this article carefully it says that the employees were fired in error. By referring to several different firings and by juxtaposing statements, the article tries to give the impression that Trump's rules demanded that they be fired and that Trump then had to change his mind, but it doesn't say that. Don't believe it when articles insinuate more than they actually say.
- watwut 2y ago
  Your argument amounts to "they were different kind of harmful and incompetent then you assume". If you fired necessary people in error, you are the incompetent one doing damaging firings. No one has the duty to pretend it was something better. Obviously Trump personally did not changed opinion, people executing his policy under his terms made predictably bad firing.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  >the employees were fired in error. Gee, almost like there should be a process to fire public employees instead of treating it like a private business. They did this multiple times with other adminsitrations (the DoE as an example) so I'm not giving the benefit of the doubt.
Swoerd 2y ago
[dead]
spwa4 2y ago
Do what consultants do "you fired me (or rescinded my contract)? You want me back? Not a problem! I will charge double (you will pay me double), of course" I got a "yes" to this twice. One of those, double the pay I was hired for for 2 years. You'd think they'd get better at this. How many times has Trump/Musk made idiotic decisions to fire people? The nuclear safety inspectors (and rumored, some nuclear weapons experts) they fired was ... last week? https://time.com/7225798/doge-fires-national-nuclear-security-administration-energy-rehires-musk-trump/ https://time.com/7225798/doge-fires-national-nuclear-securit... Morons.

192 points by pmags 2y ago

This whole thing seems like such a farce... The conservative side of politics in Australia likes to do a much smaller version of this to "save money" whenever they've been in opposition and then get back in to Government - and all it leads to every time is paying far more to have the same work done by the big consulting companies. You hear stories like people being fired from their public service jobs, then being hired by the consulting firm and being back the next week, now with the consulting firm charging more than double what they were paid before for their time - and they're doing the exact same job they were doing...

defrost 2y ago
The taxpayers lose out, the rent seekers that own the middle man consulting companies now get a good chunk of the increased charge to taxpayers .. this is why they suppport the conservative side of politics that makes this possible.
- __d 2y ago
  And the consulting companies provide lucratively paid, post-politics jobs to those who cut the public service payroll.
  - omnimus 2y ago
    This might be true for some high up possition but the actual day to day workers suddenly have middle men squzzing them too. So they end up payed less.
alexpetralia 2y ago
This is exactly what "small government" and "big business" means
suraci 2y ago
This looks like stories of some public services, like bus services. The government sold 'unprofitable' public services to companies. companies raised the price, but somehow it's still 'unprofitable', so the government has to provide subsidies to companies, or buy it back at a higher price than they sold it for
- tutorialmanager 2y ago
  A great example is the city of Chicago selling its parking meters for 1.15 billion dollars. Now considered one of the biggest financial mistakes the city ever made
  - pjc50 2y ago
    Chicago was also involved in the interest rate swap "mis-selling"; see https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/press_releases/2024/march/interest-swap-end.html https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/press... Having sold a fairly sophisticated and expensive financial product with nasty downside risks to lots of states and cities, Wall Street then went on to rig the underlying number: https://www.reuters.com/legal/ten-big-banks-settle-us-interest-rate-swaps-rigging-litigation-2024-06-27/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/ten-big-banks-settle-us-intere... (although market conditions since the financial crisis would have caused the buyers to lose money anyway)
- pjc50 2y ago
  See UK trains. The track is unprofitable (legacy maintenance) and had to be brought back into public ownership for safety reasons. The staff are shuffled between various paper-thin "franchise" employers. The one profitable bit is train leasing; the privatization created ROSCOs, which are train landlords, who get the real profits from public subsidy. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/18/profits-of-uks-private-train-leasing-firms-treble-in-a-year https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/18/profits-of-...
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  "government" and "unprofitable public services" Should never be in the same sentence. Especially for the 4th largest country by landmass. The only legitmate ways you justify cutting public transit is 1. a superior form of transit has been established for a while 2. Literally no one is using the transit for whatever reason (which is nearly impossible) 3. mass extinction occurs and there's no one left to transit (though at that point transit is the least of our issues) It's not supposed to be a direct profit. You Transport people around to businesses to sell to, work to operate the city with, and overall stimulate the economy.
RicoElectrico 2y ago
Conservatives of the US seem to be positively evil when compared to conservatives most elsewhere in the developed world, who at least seem to have some notion of social contract.
- blooalien 2y ago
  > "Conservatives of the US seem to be positively evil" ... This is because the U.S. has become so excessively politically polarized in recent years. The typical "conservative" here is more like the "extreme right" elsewhere around the world. They're literal "extremists", taking those political views to the furthest extremes they can think of, and actively hating anyone and anything that's not totally in line with that extremist viewpoint. (The political "left" has become much the same in the other direction here these days as well, thus exacerbating the issue from the "other side".) It's really not a "winning combination" for humanity in general. When (some) folks say "both sides are the same", I suspect that's what they're referring to. They're both becoming increasingly "extremist" in their respective viewpoints, and unwilling to move toward "the middle" even a tiny bit to allow for any productive discussion or compromise that could benefit everyone involved.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    "both sides" when it blatantly only one side is the reason you're in this mess.
    - lionkor 2y ago
      This exact comment is part of the issue, you see? You're saying what Trump said, too, when asked about the divide in the country: "Oh, you know, we are only divided because of THEM". Very ironic.
      - 6510 2y ago
        Imagine this, if you provide state of the art free education with all the trimmings. Will the voter become more stupid? Back in the days in NL we had university grads stocking shelves in the supermarket. It was hard to see the point of it. How useful that was became obvious when it was abolished and political parties pretty much had to explain their program as if the voter was 5 years old. The thing is, hardly anything is that simple. Picture a field with spherical cows all over. Everything comes with an explanation simplified to the point it becomes a lie. Every politician needs to carefully keep up with the basket of lies. More and more lies are added on top. One might as well start lying for real and profit from it. If the lion share of voters buys into everything anyway??? This was funny https://youtu.be/T4kNUS7w8Tk https://youtu.be/T4kNUS7w8Tk If god wanted us to give power-point presentations he would have provided screens? Maybe the real budget isn't in the books? https://youtu.be/q_IoizTAL6w https://youtu.be/q_IoizTAL6w https://home.solari.com/fasab-statement-56-understanding-new-government-financial-accounting-loopholes/ https://home.solari.com/fasab-statement-56-understanding-new... http://files.fasab.gov/pdffiles/handbook_sffas_56.pdf http://files.fasab.gov/pdffiles/handbook_sffas_56.pdf
ciconia 2y ago
> every time is paying far more to have the same work done Some predictions: - The 2025 US budget will increase compared to 2024. - The 2025 US budget deficit will increase compared to 2024. - At the end of 2025 the US national debt will have increased compared to 1/1/25.
- pjc50 2y ago
  This is very likely. They'll do a Liz Truss budget of massive tax giveaways. I'll add "bond yields will go up" to that list.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  Not exactly groundbreaking predictions given the trillion or so dollars in tax cuts being proposed.
lionkor 2y ago
"The U.S. is only divided because of them, not because of us"
pabs3 2y ago
Isn't that the whole point of those sort of actions? Send public money into private hands. Just like when they sold off public assets like a telco (Telstra), or a bank (CommBank) etc.
alsoforgotmypwd 2y ago
Of course it is. It's both for show and a distraction from whatever else is going on like seizing unitary power and normalizing deviancy.
jrs235 2y ago
>then being hired by the consulting firm and being back the next week Who owns the consulting firms? They are tied to the conservatives doing this. They are now getting a free cut from the backs of the people.
chneu 2y ago
It's called starve the beast. The strategy is to identify government agencies or programs that conservatives don't like. Then they cut funding or put up obstacles for that agency. Over time the agency can't complete it's stated goals because of a lack of funding or restrictions. Then conservatives claim the program doesn't work and it's a waste of money. I've seen this repeatedly my entire life in American politics. It's so dumb.
spwa4 2y ago
Of course ... were you expecting the people who got fired to just forgive and forget? No, go to a large consultancy, get hired for twice your normal pay, renting you out to your previous employer for ... nobody cares, but WAY more than they paid you before.

dashundchen 2y ago

What a clown show. After they made the same fuck up firing the inspectors of our nuclear weapons. > The layoffs concerned a number of Republican lawmakers, who privately warned the Trump administration that such cuts could hamper the government’s bird flu response and asked them to reconsider, according to two Republican sources with direct knowledge of the situation. This is so infuriating - "privately". You know a good chunk of Republicans in Congress are educated people aware these many of these cuts are a mix of illegal, unconstitutional or dangerous to national security. But for the sake of their reelection campaign two years from now they're rolling over and ceding any oversight authority they have. Show a spine, if you're going to give all your Branch's power to a dictator you might as well let DOGE dissolve congress and save us the salaries.

koolba 2y ago
> You know a good chunk of Republicans in Congress knows these many of these cuts are a mix of illegal, unconstitutional or dangerous to national security When the dust settles on the buckshot of related cases and they make their way to the SCOTUS, it will be confirmed that the executive branch has unilateral power to fire people working in the executive branch. If it’s constitutional, it’s de facto legal. And I think it will be at least 7-2 as well.
- adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
  The executive branch has the power to fire people, but not to cut departments when those departments are established by congress.
- eightysixfour 2y ago
  Ahh yes, the constitutional power the executive has to say “I don’t like what the legislative signed into law and funded, so I just won’t do it.”
- harimau777 2y ago
  If "legal" just means "whatever the supreme court says it is" without regard to corruption or logic then the word legal has more or less lost any useful meaning.

suraci 2y ago

This happened multiple times over the course of a few days, and it makes me think, what's the pattern behind it? My guess is, departments don't want layoffs, but they don't want to contradict the higher-ups either, so they fire and rehire. this can work because DOGE only has administrative power and cannot decide the budget, only those who can decide on departmental budgets truly have the power to influence the size of the department btw, i just found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfzCjHCTmo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfzCjHCTmo

selectodude 2y ago
>My guess is, departments don't want layoffs, but they don't want to contradict the higher-ups either, so they fire and rehire. Your guess is very wrong. Everybody is hired and fired by OMB (run by loyalist Russell Vought). They are now firing people directly without going through any sort of triage of who is actually somebody that needs to be let go - they are running pulls on internal HR data and firing every person who fits the criteria of "can be fired". Shockingly, this sort of insane scattershot firing of the federal workforce is stupid! and catches a lot of people who need to be doing their jobs for us to do things like keep track of nuclear waste and track the spread of bird flu.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  Their default play seems to be across the board firing all probationary employees. It's happened at so many departments it's hard to deny/ignore. Then anywhere that was/has investigated a Musk company gets an extra layer of layoffs in their investigative arms.
- yibg 2y ago
  Externally it doesn't even seem like there is a "can be fired" criteria. It seems like there is some high level bucket of "these shouldn't be fired", and the rest is just pull plugs and see what breaks immediately. Which incidentally also spills into the "shouldn't be fired" pool as in this case and the earlier nuclear one. This seems like the same approach as the Elon going into twitter's data center to physically remove servers story. Except instead of pulling servers, they're pulling jobs instead.

adamiscool8 2y ago

[flagged]

healsdata 2y ago
The absolute cruelty you've shown here is absolutely astounding. That "minor interruption" is the well-being, livelihood, and lives of real people. You'd never walk up to someone who lost their home, had love one die, or suffered a debilitating illness because of your "scream test" and talk to them about the "major results".
- deleted 2y ago
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- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  I'm quite certain they wouldn't do it twice.
  - throwaway173738 2y ago
    I’m pretty sure those would be considered fighting words in court.
    - deleted 2y ago
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    - deleted 2y ago
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- adamiscool8 2y ago
  Depends on the results. Being accidentally fired for a few days is not going to cause debilitation, death, and destitution.
OccamsMirror 2y ago
The scream test is for servers. Not the livelihoods of real people and potential impact of things like unchecked bird flu on the country. We're truly seeing the loss of humanity, or even the pretense of it, with this administration.

trhway 2y ago

it reminds how about 20 years ago at Sun Microsystems they laid off several hundreds in one org with intention to rehire back pick-and-choosing ~100 best. Fail. Pretty much everybody took the package and went onto better pastures, especially the best ones.

TomK32 2y ago
Yeah, humans are funny with their feelings and such. Maybe Musk is an autist afterall and not a sociopath.
- blooalien 2y ago
  > "Maybe Musk is an autist afterall and not a sociopath." Maybe he's a little of both. I doubt they're mutually exclusive. One can be both of those things I believe, yes?
- me_me_me 2y ago
  I am so happy it was a drink driver that hit me, I was afraid they did this on purpose. Why does it matter what musk is, when he is actively trying to make your life worse. No matter the motives.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    ehh, if it was an accident it was bad luck I was there. If it was on purpose I got a lotta stuff to prepare to get that guy away from me. But this metaphor isn't really aligning with Musk anymore.
- alphager 2y ago
  We autistic people have feelings and empathy. We have trouble expressing feelings and reading feelings of others, but we know that we and other people have feelings. Musk may or may not be an autist, but his deranged treatment of people is not because of autism.
ben_w 2y ago
Similar story is how my dad got early retirement. Offered to everyone, management very upset that he, with a decade or so of experience on that specific project, actually took it.

zombiwoof 2y ago

The smugness of silicon valley meets the inefficiency of big government What could go wrong

deleted 2y ago
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janice1999 2y ago
It's becoming clear much of that "inefficiency" is hidden complexity which non-experts fail to grasp, redundancy and safety (e.g. nuclear safety) and areas that lobbyists just don't want to exist, like every regulator acting in the public interest.
- snailmailstare 2y ago
  The stranger part is that AFAICT, eliminating all of this complexity is a rounding error unless the topic is the military or mandatory spending. They went white as sheet when someone suggested they would touch something that could matter.
- npteljes 2y ago
  People, including me, are really, really bad at estimating risk and the real price of safety. It all looks very inefficient and everyone is so sad being parted with the safety money when there is no apparent danger. But when danger comes, suddenly the mood changes and people pay out of the ass to get out of trouble. This push and pull is at a lot of places where decisions around resources are made. Like in their private lives, when people don't really talk to each other right up until they are about to lose the other, like a parent, or their partner.

unyttigfjelltol 2y ago

You'd think from all Elon Musk's press with DOGE that this is his only job. But he's actually simultaneously CEO of 4 major companies, which explains how he's spread a bit too thin to correctly supervise the "Big Balls" layoff machine.

jjulius 2y ago
Yet all of his employees, at all of his companies, had better damn well be in the office.
- ivewonyoung 2y ago
  Not a good comparison, anyone's higher ups have the authority to call for an RTO with a consequence of being fired. Trump can do that to Musk, Tesla's board/shareholders can do that. SpaceX investors can potentially gang together and do that depending on Musk's voting share control. Same with XAi, Boring Company etc.
  - jjulius 2y ago
    It's a perfectly cromulent comparison. I'm a firm believer in leading by example. If he's going to swing his "muh RTO" dick around in public the way that he has, while also expecting his employees to put in the hours and effort that he has historically expected of them, while he's off LARP'ing as president and America's savior, he can fuck right off. The suggestion that, "It's not a good comparison because he's a boss and he can make the rules," might be technically true, fine, but it doesn't make it any less hypocritical.
    - ivewonyoung 2y ago
      > I'm a firm believer in leading by example. Then do that wherever you have authority to do for subordinates, and for companies you found or are CEO of. Maybe you already did, do tell us about your accomplishments. Telling others how to run their own company feels strange, especially given how Musk led two companies to great success. > he can fuck right off With what authority or credentials do you say that? That is just your opinion that a lot of others don't seem to share, and they actually put their money where their mouth is, by being shareholders, investors and employees. Or hiring him like Trump did. You are free to short Tesla stock if you truly believe that. Or quit if you're a Tesla employee or in one of his other companies. You're free to vote and campaign against his boss in the govt. A lot of people work multiple jobs and are hired while being transparent about them. I don't see a problem with that if their superiors are okay with it. He lead SpaceX and Tesla to great success, so a lot of people think he has proven that he can multitask successfully. If you or your subordinates(if you have any) have not proven to be capable of doing then don't automatically assume absolutely no one in the world can do that.

yieldcrv 2y ago

[flagged]

etchalon 2y ago

Apparently Musk thinks his "cut everything and then see what we really need" approach was successful at Twitter, despite revenue being down, usage down, and numerous competitors appearing which are decimating its user base. But hey, the site is still running. So, success.

dpkirchner 2y ago
Don't forget the company being so weak it has resorted to suing its former customers because they decided to stop buying the company's product. I wonder what the government equivalent will be.
- ben_w 2y ago
  Legal requirement to loan to the government at negative interest rates. Just imagine the voice: "It’s not a tax, folks—no, no, the fake news will say that, but it’s not a tax. It’s a beautiful, tremendous investment in our great government, the best government in the world—people are saying it. And look, some very smart people, the best people, they tell me, ‘Sir, this is how we build a stronger economy,’ and I say, ‘You know what? You’re right!’ Because let’s be honest, negative interest—some people don’t get it, but I get it—it’s a winning deal, okay?" (No, not a real quote).
sillyfluke 2y ago
>But hey, the site is still running. So, success. more like, I'm the co-presidennt of the United States. So, success.
pfannkuchen 2y ago
He did remove the censors in a way that makes the site unappealing to a lot of people, but at the same time 1,000x’d the amount of discussion on previously censored topics. Like the discussions on there look like something out of 4chan these days. A generous interpretation might be that Elon thought that re-enabling public discussion in certain verboten topics is important enough to light a big wad of cash on fire. It’s not hard to predict that letting people talk about those things openly will scare off a lot of people. I would be surprised if he is surprised.

ProfessorZoom 2y ago

if you aren't re-adding, then you're not deleting enough

tbrownaw 2y ago
Move fast and break things!
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]

Jiro 2y ago

If you read the wording of this article carefully it says that the employees were fired in error. By referring to several different firings and by juxtaposing statements, the article tries to give the impression that Trump's rules demanded that they be fired and that Trump then had to change his mind, but it doesn't say that. Don't believe it when articles insinuate more than they actually say.

watwut 2y ago
Your argument amounts to "they were different kind of harmful and incompetent then you assume". If you fired necessary people in error, you are the incompetent one doing damaging firings. No one has the duty to pretend it was something better. Obviously Trump personally did not changed opinion, people executing his policy under his terms made predictably bad firing.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
>the employees were fired in error. Gee, almost like there should be a process to fire public employees instead of treating it like a private business. They did this multiple times with other adminsitrations (the DoE as an example) so I'm not giving the benefit of the doubt.

Swoerd 2y ago

[dead]

spwa4 2y ago

Do what consultants do "you fired me (or rescinded my contract)? You want me back? Not a problem! I will charge double (you will pay me double), of course" I got a "yes" to this twice. One of those, double the pay I was hired for for 2 years. You'd think they'd get better at this. How many times has Trump/Musk made idiotic decisions to fire people? The nuclear safety inspectors (and rumored, some nuclear weapons experts) they fired was ... last week? https://time.com/7225798/doge-fires-national-nuclear-security-administration-energy-rehires-musk-trump/ https://time.com/7225798/doge-fires-national-nuclear-securit... Morons.