4 ms·
Also, support for the DOGE mission is entirely orthogonal to DOGE's actual goals and what they are doing so far. Sure, maybe there is broad support for making
by blactuary 2y ago
Also, support for the DOGE mission is entirely orthogonal to DOGE's actual goals and what they are doing so far.
Sure, maybe there is broad support for making government more efficient, but that is not in any way what Elon Musk is trying to do. So if there is broad support for DOGE those people are entirely wrong to believe they are aligned with Elon, and entirely wrong about supporting DOGE as the means to achieve their goals.
That being the case, these same people cannot be trusted to understand our government and how it functions and where the inefficiencies are. If you support the DOGE mission you do not actually support making the government more efficient, so alluding to that support is a red herring. Worse than a red herring, it shows that their anti-government views are not based in reality and facts.
- dcow 2y agoI haven’t seen the main impetus for the layoffs brought up yet: the people let go were unable or unwilling to send an email listing 5 things they accomplished in the last week, twice. People are acting like DOGE is attacking tech support recklessly with a chainsaw. This appears to be a targeted cut of insubordinate or redundant individuals.
- nosianu 2y ago> This appears to be a targeted cut of insubordinate or redundant individuals. What a wild take! Only some of sooo many reports all over the media 5-6 days ago that you somehow missed: "Key US agencies tell staff not to answer Musk email on what they did last week" https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0qrj20g5vo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0qrj20g5vo "Elon Musk’s Federal Worker Emails: Agency Leaders Can Decide If Employees Must Reply, White House Says" https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/02/25/elon-musks-federal-worker-emails-agency-leaders-can-decide-if-employees-must-reply-white-house-says/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/02/25/elon-mu... And the latest from today: "Some government employees are instructed — again — to not respond to 5 things email as Musk doubles down" https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/01/5-things-email-national-security-00002746 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/01/5-things-email-nati...
- dcow 2y agoSounds like insubordination.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sarchertech 2y agoMost of the agency heads telling employees not to respond were just installed by the President within the last few weeks. They answer directly to the President. The email was sent by someone at OPM who also answers directly to the President. The President has issued no formal orders regarding these emails. He did issue an executive order telling employees to comply with DOGE requests but this email came from OPM not DOGE. There whole thing is an unclear clusterfuck.
- blactuary 2y agoA previous memo from the exact same email address as the "5 bullets" email told employees that this email account was being established as a way to communicate with every single federal employee at once, and stated clearly that no one was obligated to reply to any messages from the email account. They can't even figure out what the hell they are doing and be consistent with their own messages. Once again, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
- ceejayoz 2y agoA judge has ruled otherwise. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/27/opm-firing-probationary-federal-agency-employees-judge-ruling-00206615 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/27/opm-firing-probatio... > A judge ruled Thursday that the Office of Personnel Management — the central human resources office for the federal government — broke the law when it ordered other federal agencies to terminate thousands of “probationary” employees. > “OPM does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe to hire and fire employees within another agency,” the judge said.
- blactuary 2y ago"the people let go were unable or unwilling to send an email listing 5 things they accomplished in the last week" This is entirely false. This is so incredibly false that I am actually shocked you were willing to post it. It is hard for me to imagine anything more absurd and untrue someone could have said about this topic. I tremble with fear thinking about what your media diet must look like in order for you to believe this absolute nonsense.
- dcow 2y agoIt’s from TFA.
- vpribish 2y agoIt absolutely is not. The article says no such thing and you show yourself as an untrustworthy participant in this discussion.
- dcow 2y ago> Those impacted in the wee hours of Saturday morning also received emails late Friday from DOGE with the subject line, “What did you do last week? Part II.” They were asked first last last week. And then again on Friday. —— > According to Politico, the emails — prompting employees to list their weekly accomplishments by Monday — were widely distributed across multiple agencies, including the State Department, the IRS, and the NIH. I’m not making this shit up…
- scintill76 2y agoThese quotes support the existence of the emails, which people here aren't disputing. They say nothing about whether the only layoffs were those who didn't respond, which was implied by your original statement that "the people let go were unable or unwilling to send an email listing 5 things they accomplished in the last week."
- blactuary 2y agoThe emails went to every federal employee, not any specific agencies. You don't seem to know anything about this whatsoever
- sgarland 2y agoIf a random person joined your company’s Slack and said “tell me what you do, or I will fire you,” and your CEO then said to ignore it, which one would you go with?
- dcow 2y agoIf the board of my company (my CEO’s boss) showed up in Slack and asked, I would probably listen to my CEO’s boss. And what a poor CEO for risking his entire workforce and his own position on a political squabble.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 2y agoI think it's a great moment for the CEO to have a spine and show the stupidity of the board in that moment. "To the board: if you have this level of distrust for my management, you should fire me immediately. This request is out of line, and shows great disrespect for our employees as well as myself. If you are dissatisfied with the information you receive about the company's operations and performance, you can talk to me and my staff about that. I will not allow you to display such callous disregard for the people under my leadership."
- dcow 2y agoI’m sure this great CEO will continue to be a great leader under other management, then. We’ll see if Cuban actually follows through on his offer or if it’s just political virtue signaling.
- yongjik 2y ago> If the board of my company (my CEO’s boss) showed up in Slack and asked ... You would write "Ask HN: my company has thousands of employees, a board member showed up in Slack and told everyone to write him a weekly summary, or we'll be fired, what to do?" and everybody would be like "WTF that's beyond stupid, name the company, also it's time to polish your resume!" yada yada. Don't be obtuse.
- sarchertech 2y ago
- troupo 2y agoElon Musk is not the boss or the king to order employees to submit to his will. And yet you act like he is. Who is he to order DoD or DoJ employees to write this email?
- dcow 2y agoDOGE is not equal to Elon
- troupo 2y agoWho are DOGE to order DoD and DoJ employees to write this letter?
- sarchertech 2y agoNeither DOGE nor Elon wrote this email. OPM did. Since OPM is now ran by a former Elon employee, they probably sent it at Elon’s request. Maybe the President was informed beforehand maybe not. It doesn’t matter either way. The President has the authority to order employees to perform certain tasks but he has to do it through proper channels. OPM doesn’t have the authority to order non-OPM employees to perform specific duties. They never have in the past. And the President has issued no executive orders stating that OPM has this authority now.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 2y agoThe request was at best a bad joke, and I think you know that too. If the real purpose, as Musk later stated, was to see who would respond and who would not, with no consideration of content, why deceive? Be direct: "This is a test of government employee email deliverability and responsiveness. Please reply to this email when you receive it. An empty reply is fine, you do not need to put anything in the email." If you want to know what people are working on, you work with the management chains because those are the people whose job it is to know what their people are working on. You take your time to dig into the data, talk to people at all levels, understand the structure and the work. This request, in the way and fashion it was made, shows an incredible lack of disrespect, distrust, and disregard for federal employees across the board. If I were a government employee and received that mail, I would be unable to avoid expressing my own disrespect and distrust in my reply. These emails sets up a self-fulfilling prophecy where government fails to serve the people. Some people leave public service. Others stay but are disillusioned and checked out because they know their actual job performance no longer matters, the whims of a billionaire who voted with his wallet to make himself co-president can destroy their livelihood at any moment. Over time, you have people who are unable to leave and thus will do what they're told out of fear, and unqualified loyalists who just do what they're told.
- dcow 2y agoI think it’s a brilliant and effective way to route out insubordination and dead workers.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 2y agoI hope you never end up in a position of management, because it's a real shitty way to manage people.
- dcow 2y agoOn every team I’ve worked on there is an expectation of at least weekly updates. Usually a daily or every other daily standup. The request is not unreasonable. I can never know what I’d do when faced with a position where I believed some of my budget was going to pay dead and inactive employees, and where members of the management chain were insubordinate and unwilling to help identify the issue and even complicit. I’d guess I’d just fire them all. Is that more humane?
- s1artibartfast 2y agoWhere are you getting the idea that the email is related at all? For government offices were I know workers, firing is based on 100% seniority, completely independent of performance or email responses.
- dragonwriter 2y ago> For government offices were I know workers, firing is based on 100% seniority, completely independent of performance or email responses. Reductions in force due to mission/budget/etc. changes, etc., which are based on seniority, not firings, which are (where civil service protections apply) exclusively for documented misconduct or incompetence and have due process protections. It’s true that private industry (at least outside of unionized workplaces) leverage at-will employment to blur the line between mission/budget-based staffing reductions and for-cause firings, but the civil service isn’t at will and the line is a sharp legal distinction.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoI was speaking to current rank and file layoffs. Are you agreeing they fall under seniority dismissal?
- dragonwriter 2y agoTo be legal, without individual cause, they would have to, but they don't appear to have followed the law for either seniority-based reductions or for-cause firings (and in at least some cases there appear to have been directives given to falsely characterize broad policy-focus based dismissals as for-cause firings.)