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Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

296 points by rob74 2y ago

sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
The disruption is (part of) the point. Degrading the ability of government employees to do their jobs leads to greater inefficiency and more failure, which can then be pointed at to validate assertions that government isn't efficient and produces bad outcomes.
- infinghxsg 2y ago
  [dead]
- bloomingkales 2y ago
  I think people didn’t want to believe it when they blamed DEI for the helicopter crash. The algebra looks like this: Privatize FAA = x + y Where x is any discovery or event related to the FAA, and where y is any red meat justification (dei|immigration|trans). There are many such equations: Strategic bitcoin reserve = x + y. Long two years, just going to leave this here. They will always find x and y to complete their equations: https://www.cato.org/commentary/privatize-faa https://www.cato.org/commentary/privatize-faa
  - SecretDreams 2y ago
    > Long two years Probably a lot longer than two at this rate :/.
  - rob74 2y ago
    Since you mention the FAA, I wonder what will happen if the NTSB's report on the Washington disaster doesn't match Trump's preconceived conclusions, e.g. by placing most of the blame on the (female) helicopter pilot. If he interferes there, that will be the final straw convincing me that the US is unfortunately no better than the "banana republics" it used to make fun of anymore...
    - mschoch 2y ago
      [dead]
    - exe34 2y ago
      > If he interferes there, How will you know at this point? Would he need a sharpie this time, or will he just shout at them over the phone and change the conclusions?
    - wat10000 2y ago
      I doubt he'll care at that point. It’s already been (subjective) years since that crash.
      - rob74 2y ago
        Not sure if he'll care about the specific accident, but he always cares when someone contradicts him...
    - myvoiceismypass 2y ago
      I mean he changed the path of a hurricane via sharpie in the first term. He is incapable of admitting being wrong ever.
- adapt_and_laugh 2y ago
  And if more federal employees quit because of the poor conditions, it’s just more people they don’t have to worry about laying off.
  - Etheryte 2y ago
    The Twitter playbook, except for the government.
    - drivingmenuts 2y ago
      At this point, anyone remaining at Xitter has to be aware that they are working for a neo-Nazi. And anyone using Xitter in a country that has a history of fighting Nazi's in WWII has to be aware of who they're supporting. It's maddening how many people just don't seem to give a shit.
      - ponector 2y ago
        Not only a neo-Nazi, but also for Russians as well.
      - baggachipz 2y ago
        Lots of people (in the US and abroad) were pretty ok with the Nazis the first time around, until they weren't.
        motbus3 2y ago
        The narrative is more complex than that if I am not mistaken. It seems the general public outside the affected regions were not completely aware on what was going on with concentration camps. This does not mean they were not aware of at some level. It is quite common for old people to say that they only became aware of many of the atrocities months or years later the war was over. The US was not keen on putting pressure to concentration camps as, well, they had their own full of "japs and n*"
      - alxjrvs 2y ago
- _aavaa_ 2y ago
  It is the whole point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBH9TmeJN_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBH9TmeJN_M
  - therealdrag0 2y ago
    That’s Depressing
- selykg 2y ago
  Absolutely insane that this is what we've come to. It is mind blowing to me that this is what people want. We are regressing this country so rapidly that we are likely to become one of those shithole countries the president so loudly proclaimed Haiti, El Salvador and others were.
  - Larrikin 2y ago
    Getting into government to make it worse to show that government is bad has been a pillar of the Republican party since Reagan. They just used to pretend about it.
  - Aurornis 2y ago
    > It is mind blowing to me that this is what people want. It is not what people want. The Trump administration’s popularity is already below 50%, and much lower among independents (around 30% depending on the poll). Many people aren’t yet aware of what’s happening. A lot of the electorate is getting their news from filtered sources like Fox News or various far right media outlets. Joe Rogan has gone all in on praising Musk and Trump. People who get their information from Trump are being fed lies that are obvious to anyone not inside the bubble. They don’t know what’s happening because their heroes are telling them it’s all necessary and good. When you start polling people on the actual actions taken, things being cancelled, and consequences the approval is very low. Anecdotally, I have some extended family who were very pro-Trump. One of them recently discovered that her job was funded through a federal grant, and now it’s likely going to be cut even though she doesn’t work for the government directly. They also discovered that one of their family members is covered by Medicaid through an avenue that’s looking like it will be cut. They went through a stage of disbelief, but now they’re in a phase where they’re sure everything will be fine and Trump will get it fixed. It’s only a matter of time until they realize that they were the intended targets of the cuts, not accidental damage.
    - silverquiet 2y ago
      > It’s only a matter of time until they realize that they were the intended targets of the cuts, not accidental damage. I suspect that other scapegoats can be found to blame for their problems; as you say, their news sources will offer them all sorts of filters to deflect blame from the obvious source.
- VoodooJuJu 2y ago
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- rob74 2y ago
  Not sure if they even think they need to prove their assertions, after all Musk (same as his "boss"/BFF) has made the most outlandish claims without a shred of evidence (the "radical-left Marxist vipers" at USAID). To me it looks more like they are already 100% convinced that any work done by federal employees is completely worthless, so they can indiscriminately fire anyone they wish without doing any harm. Same for the attrition tactics - they tell people to return to the office and at the same time end leases for offices etc.
- stronglikedan 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - snozolli 2y ago
    I have no doubt that it can be cut down by 50% without adversely affecting anything long term. As long as you don't care about American soft power, or the many lives we save with our humanitarian programs, you may be right. If you do care about these things, then you're already demonstrably wrong. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/health/usaid-contract-terminations.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/health/usaid-contract-ter... More children are going to die, around the world, in the immediate future. Sorry, eggs, this guy has an omelette to make.
  - natosaichek 2y ago
    Can you point to some of the stuff (presumably doge) that you particularly approve of? Id like to better understand this perspective
  - AlecSchueler 2y ago
    > I have no doubt that it can be cut down by 50% without adversely affecting anything long term. Is this percentage based on anything more than vibes? Does it matter to you which eggs get broken and do you agree with the methods being employed to choose/break them? And sorry for all the questions but how do you feel about the conflicts of interests with people like Musk overseeing so much of this?
  - mordae 2y ago
    JFYI federal government headcount of 2M people has stayed constant over last 100 years with ever increasing population and things to take care of. I wouldn't call that bloat, honestly. What has been growing a lot are mostly municipalities, which I guess boils down to more people helping disadvantaged kids in schools, which I guess is nice and more policing, which many are calling to shrink and replace with something less violent. US government is not bloated. It's corrupt by the revolving door policy, which definitely won't be fixed by letting people go. But even with revolving doors some things have worked for you. Such as predicting weather, fighting diseases, disrupting or bribing competing nations, opening new markets and protecting your fucking imaginary property everybody in the world fucking hates.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  But they should've shown their assertions and proof thereof beforehand. It's been pointed out that they say organizations are wasteful, but those are vague weasel words; show some numbers, do a root cause analysis and fix what is broken. But the goal is not to fix what isn't working, it never was - it's a diversion and an excuse to dismantle the federal government, checks and balances, and move to an unchecked oligarchy/autocracy. Taking the whole country with them, of course.
- mihaaly 2y ago
  And there will be lots of people pretending that this is a beliveable assertions. Basically all will either pretend believing or refuse believing above the mental level of this old infant elected as president, so almost everyone.
- everdrive 2y ago
  I'm starting to think the "government is inefficient" folks have never actually worked in any corporate job. I've worked in two companies since I left the federal government 5-10 years ago, and both were significantly less efficient, and less effective than the federal agency I worked for. I'm sure that's not _always_ true, but it just seems like any large organization full of people is difficult to keep efficient.
  - everyone 2y ago
    That's my experience too.. When the public sector wastes something its an error. For a corp, its business as usual. As long as number-goes-up it doesnt matter to them what they are doing.
  - stvltvs 2y ago
    Same experience. The "government = inefficient" propaganda has been repeated ad infinitum for decades so that now it feels like a law of nature to people. My experience is however that every large org is inefficient in its own unique way, no matter which sector.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
      It's parroted by people who see the government as "inefficient" at generating profit, not as inefficient at providing a service. Why should plebs be entitled to clean water without an 80% margin?
      - consteval 2y ago
        Profit in it of itself is an inefficiency. It's a bandaid for the fundamental problems of the private sector. The fact the public sector isn't burdened by a requirement to make profit isn't a downside, it's a super power.
        onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
        It's only a super power if you're buying those services instead of providing them for a profit (99.9%). It's anathema if you're competing against someone who doesn't need to make a profit - when you're trying to make an 80% monopolistic margin (0.1%).
- deadbabe 2y ago
  I have to ask with all this disruption, what if we were hit with a massive 9/11 scale attack right now?
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    Unfortunately war does tend to have a way of rallying both sides together. Tribalism tends to just need an "other" group to demonize. A 9/11 scale attack would make it pretty easy for supporters of both parties to turn their sights on whoever they think attacked us.
    - rurp 2y ago
      That's certainly true in general but I can't think of an attack that was preceded by such a visible effort to make the country more vulnerable. There would be some rallying effect, but it might be smaller and shorter lived than usual especially if the response is bungled. Then again, things might have become so cultish that reality completely stops mattering and trump skates by once again without any responsibility.
      - _heimdall 2y ago
        Reality isn't simple enough to peg responsibility on any one person. Unless you go with the "shit rolls down hill" approach and ultimate land blame for everything on the person in charge, it'd be extremely hard to find a clear line between 6 weeks of Trump's presidency and an attack on the scale of 9/11. Maybe you could tie it back to connections with his first term, but any attack on that scale takes years to plan, not weeks, and has plenty of facets to consider when it comes to what motivated the attackers to actually do it.
- CivBase 2y ago
  This is too conspiratorial for me. If the point was to make the government less efficient to justify political platforms, why have private companies been doing the same thing for the last 3 years when there's no political upside for them? I'm not saying the RTO policy is good. I'm very skeptical of it myself. But this explanation doesn't seem to hold water - especially when better explanations are out there. They could be using it to thin out their staff without layoffs. They could be propping up real estate values. They could be dealing with sunk costs on office space and looking to justify them. They could be accomidating poor managers who cannoy evaluate employee productivity without seeing butts in seats every day. Not to mention some people really actually do work less efficiently from home. I can't say exactly what proportion or what the overall productivity impact is. It's probably very hard to measure. But it isn't hard to imagine leaders (in both the public and private sectors) genuinely believing the RTO movement will improve overall productivity. It also isn't hard to imagine large organizations doing a poor job when implementing their RTO effort. I saw similar issues with the RTO effort in my private company. The same issues also happened with the WFH effort during the pandemic. Mismanagement is commonplace in large organizations.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    They could just be doing it to be petty and cruel to "government workers" in general. There doesn't always have to be a genius 5D-chess play. It's very possible the administration simply believes the federal workforce is full of their political opponents and just wants to grief them. A major component of the campaign and their base of support is rooted in cruelty to out-groups, so they're technically delivering a campaign promise to their base by just making people miserable.
- red020 2y ago
  [dead]
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    I'm not seeing that in either the deportation/removal rates, nor the encounters rate. Which time period 2021-2024 should I be looking at to see this? I'm looking only at annual rates, not month by month.
    - Izkata 2y ago
      It wouldn't show up in deportation rates because they're not talking about deportation, they're talking about people illegally entering the country. That administration was enabling it through the CBP One app, up to some limit per day (which I remember being 2000 but am not sure that's right). https://homeland.house.gov/2024/10/24/startling-stats-factsheet-fiscal-year-2024-ends-with-nearly-3-million-inadmissible-encounters-10-8-million-total-encounters-since-fy2021/ https://homeland.house.gov/2024/10/24/startling-stats-factsh... > However, the end result is the same—tens of thousands of inadmissible aliens being released into the interior every month. This is evident through the number of appointments scheduled through the CBP One mass-parole program, which skyrocketed to more than 852,000 since January 2023. Also there is a massive spike in encounters during those years: https://ohss.dhs.gov/khsm/cbp-encounters https://ohss.dhs.gov/khsm/cbp-encounters
      - alabastervlog 2y ago
        Spike in encounters, and spike in deportations, no? I’d expect to see both drop, but certainly deportations, if what was claimed had happened, but I’m not seeing it. [edit] if the stopped-doing-their-job thing had happened, not CBP One, I’m aware of that.
- clord 2y ago
  I was under the impression these offices closed during the pandemic and the return to office order is bringing people back into those places. If that’s the case I don’t think this is some sort of planned disruption but rather poor planning. Incompetence vs malice right?
- NoGravitas 2y ago
  It's also intended to frustrate people so that they are encouraged to quit.
- agumonkey 2y ago
  Hey, I thought this was a french right thing only, but somehow it's global tradition.
datadeft 2y ago
It kind of weird to have employees without an office. How could that happen?
- Aurornis 2y ago
  That’s how remote works. People don’t have a physical office because they work from home or another location.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > That’s how remote works DOGE is “targeting remote-work arrangements” [1]. [1] https://www.wsj.com/opinion/dont-let-doge-kill-remote-work-hybrid-families-efficiency-090f6374 https://www.wsj.com/opinion/dont-let-doge-kill-remote-work-h...
    - philipwhiuk 2y ago
      Yes, hence the article.
- nemomarx 2y ago
  with WFH it doesn't seem very weird to me? why have the central office if the work is getting done anyway
  - datadeft 2y ago
    I WFH for 20 years but never had a job where we did not have an office.
- thunfischtoast 2y ago
  The US-government is interspersed with oligarchs who want to diminish the ability of the government to actually act so that they can argue why everything should be privatized.
- francisofascii 2y ago
  People that work "in the field" don't need a home office. I know a hydrologist who now has to go to the office, when much of his work is travelling around sampling groundwater. Another person I know works at OSHA, where she also travels to various work sites, but now has to go into the home office. Ridiculous waste of travel to have to go the the home office only to then leave to go somewhere else.
Havoc 2y ago
This must be the promised efficiency
- SpaceL10n 2y ago
  It's part of the promised pain. Trump promised us some pain. He said it was necessary before things can get better.
  - hobs 2y ago
    Sounds like what an abuser would say when they want you to let them hit you more.
  - rescripting 2y ago
    Its much easier to destroy than to build, and this is thoughtless destruction. How can anyone expect thoughtful reconstruction?
    - metalliqaz 2y ago
      there is no intention of reconstruction. destroy government to ensure nothing stands in the way of the oligarchy. they want to create the world's first trillionaire at our expense
  - bloomingeek 2y ago
    Finally someone remembers this quote! He told the GOP voters what was coming and they still gave him the keys to the kingdom. When Medicaid is severely limited, we'll see if they get the message. (for instance, childbirth costs and seniors in nursing homes.)
  - EasyMark 2y ago
    The problem is it's all pain and no reward or even minor titillation other tha MAGAs enjoying watching the house burn down while they're in it.
kept3k 2y ago
[flagged]
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  An organization allegedly about reducing waste is creating it instead, by arbitrarily forcing a tight timeline and using heavy, specific, and inflexible top-down mandates that don’t let those closer to the work use the information they have (say, that their offices aren’t ready to work in). Spending freezes, blanket firing of tons of provisional workers (fun fact: the recently-promoted are also provisional, this doesn’t just mean brand new workers), and other measures have probably also disrupted the ability of offices to sensibly execute the orders. That is, it’ll take them longer to get the offices ready. One might begin to think it’s not about waste.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - timr 2y ago
    > An organization allegedly about reducing waste is creating it instead The point you missed in the parent comment was that this is temporary. I don't have a strong opinion on the matter, but if the way we discover that government offices were sitting vacant for years (i.e. big waste) is by having people return to them and be unproductive for a few days (i.e. small waste), then the trade will be worth it. I doubt anyone wants employees to be sitting in offices that aren't functional. We have discovered something bad...which would seem to be part of the reason of doing it. The counterargument is obvious to anyone willing to think about it for a few seconds, but the article doesn't even bother addressing it. They even admit that the headline office without wifi was only without wifi for a few hours: > In one Department of Health and Human Services office, there was no Wi-Fi or full electricity in the first hours when people returned last week. ...and yet this is in the headline. This all reeks of cherry-picking.
    - alabastervlog 2y ago
      I didn't miss the point. This waste could have been avoided, is the thing, and anyone who cared about running and knew how to run an organization well, might have. Such a person might even have guessed there were excellent reasons that the executive has not, previously, been run by one single person issuing surprising and very specific decrees that reach down to the lowest-level workers, across large swaths of it at once, and not done that. > I don't have a strong opinion on the matter, but if the way we discover that government offices were sitting vacant for years (i.e. big waste) is by having people return to them and be unproductive for a few days (i.e. small waste), then the trade will be worth it. This doesn't save anything. Now utilities and maintenance costs are higher. It's more spending. Leasing out or selling the buildings would have cut waste. > I doubt anyone wants employees to be sitting in offices that aren't functional. I don't know how many times and ways people involved in the admin have to say that their goal is to wreck the federal bureaucracy before people believe them.
criddell 2y ago
It seems like some of the people who don't think our government is functional are determined to make it so.
- stetrain 2y ago
  > It seems like some of the people who don't think our government is functional are determined to make it so. This has been the playbook for all of my life at least. Probably longer than that.
- xyst 2y ago
  The result of 40+ years of pseudoscience from neoclassical and neoliberal economists. America is cooked.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
Wild that oil & gas subsidies, Medicare negotiating more drugs and foreign military base reductions are off the table. But god forbid we see another hurricane coming.
- mexicocitinluez 2y ago
  > Medicare negotiating more drugs I don't care what side you fall down on, the only reason someone would rollback Medicare negotiating drug prices is so that they can make more money on their big pharma stocks. I can't believe a bunch of grown adults voted for this shit.
  - russdill 2y ago
    Most of the people I talk to seem to have one thing they are holding on to as the thing they'll get out of their vote. Like "he's going to eliminate the income taxes I pay on my social security" etc The thing is almost never true, and even if he were is a horrible self centered justification.
    - thrance 2y ago
      He already passed tax cuts, but only for the wealthy. Literally reversed Robinhood.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > he already passed tax cuts, but only for the wealthy Well, they’re about to expire and their extension hasn’t been passed yet. But yes. I’m getting a tax cut while the farmers who voted for him get tariffed out of their export markets. Sort of wild.
        mexicocitinluez 2y ago
        The next tax cuts are why they're going ham tryign to find things to cut because it's going to blow an enormous whole in the deficit.
mirekrusin 2y ago
[flagged]
Aurornis 2y ago
> “The only thing a return to the office has given me is an hour of traffic while driving and a loss in efficiency,” said the worker, who requested anonymity for fear of job reprisals. RTO in a nutshell. As someone who chose my living location based on where my family wants to live first and jobs second, this sudden turn to RTO mandates is infinitely depressing. Most of my work involves talking to people in different offices, states and countries anyway, so RTO means doing the e-mail and video call work but from a different location that requires battling traffic both ways. It’s insane that this is being done in the name of “efficiency”
- incangold 2y ago
  Same situation. Going to the office and opening a Zoom call with colleagues in India and a city hundreds of miles away. Madness.
- drcongo 2y ago
  Harder to sell Teslas to people who work from home.
- danaris 2y ago
  It's insane that anyone actually believes that it's being done for efficiency. It's not, and never was. It's being done a) to drive people to quit, so they don't have to lay them off, and b) to restore the power dynamic to the status quo ante, where your manager could just look over at your cubicle and see you in your seat, and know that whether or not you were working, you were still there to bow to them. (And many of them genuinely have zero metric for gauging "how much is Aurornis working?" besides measuring the amount of time a butt is in a seat, and are desperate to avoid having to admit that.)
  - Ajedi32 2y ago
    > many of them genuinely have zero metric for gauging "how much is Aurornis working?" besides measuring the amount of time a butt is in a seat This is a legitimate problem though. Obviously making people do all their work from a centralized office location is a horribly inefficient solution, but it is a solution, and if there really is widespread slacking happening it might still be more efficient than doing nothing.
navane 2y ago
[flagged]
itsthecourier 2y ago
[flagged]
- happytoexplain 2y ago
  You're tired?
- chollida1 2y ago
  > time after time it has been shown in average people is way less productive months after moving to remote. Interesting. Can you show a few of these studies? I find it hard to get data on this sort of thing.
- Steve16384 2y ago
  > time after time it has been shown in average people is way less productive months after moving to remote. Any sources on that?
- anonzzzies 2y ago
  How far/long do you commute to your office?
- behringer 2y ago
  Simple fix. Pay for the commute and then we'll see how efficient rto vs wfh is.
- exe34 2y ago
  > time after time it has been shown in average people is way less productive months after moving to remote. [citation needed]
- mistercheph 2y ago
  Grug bad say WFH bad, Grug hate meaningless job, Grug want hide at home, no traffic for Grug
trhway 2y ago
i do wonder how Musk is planning to get FAA approvals for SpaceX if the federal stuff is decreased. Is he going to wait many weeks, months, years like the others will be waiting or is he personally going to cut the line? Or may be getting rid of FAA permits at all? Back to the time of great unlimited aviation and rocketry innovation. I personally have a bunch of non-traditional designs i'd like to get airborne/launched which if we lucky would fly and stay airborne on the planned trajectory and for the planned amount of time :)
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
  Why not just ignore the law like they're mostly doing already?
  - wat10000 2y ago
    The law only matters to the extent that it’s enforced. Get rid of all the enforcers, and you’re home free.
    - ramses0 2y ago
      ...and then the judges, so anything that does get enforced gets ignored. It's like someone bringing a lighter and matches to a board game tournament: "there's nothing in the rules against it..."
- utf_8x 2y ago
  You don't need FAA approval if you cancel the FAA...
- exe34 2y ago
  He'll just get his own account to approve his flights.
- philipwhiuk 2y ago
  SpaceX is taking over FAA contracts, I'm sure they won't have any trouble getting approved. Permits will be for the little guys.
ethagknight 2y ago
And yet, the federal government was paying for all these things, city-scale numbers of unused office space. I’ve worked on the GSA side and seen first hand.
- mexicocitinluez 2y ago
  > And yet, the federal government was paying for all these things, city-scale numbers of unused office space Do you know what a lease is? I can dumb it down a bit if you need.
CapricornNoble 2y ago
Interesting that the CNN article makes no mention of how badly under-utilized government office spaces are. https://wolfstreet.com/2025/01/25/doge-seeks-to-shed-vast-amounts-of-government-office-space-heres-how-much-the-government-leases-and-where-and-what-it-can-shed-during-trumps-term/ https://wolfstreet.com/2025/01/25/doge-seeks-to-shed-vast-am... “A recent report from Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa who chairs the Senate DOGE caucus, found that not one of the headquarters for any major agency or department in Washington is more than half full. GSA-owned buildings in Washington, D.C., average about a 12% occupancy rate. The government owns more than 7,500 vacant buildings across the country, and more than 2,200 that are partially empty.” DOGE is hamfisted in its execution but why are we spending massive amounts of money for office buildings while people work from home? I'm a fan of remote work and would prefer that we crash the Commercial Real Estate market by canceling leases rather that stuffing people back into cubicle farms, but I think the context of trying to kill two birds with one stone (improve building utilization and also identify who is actually doing work and not just fucking off) makes some sense.
- zug_zug 2y ago
  Well a few thoughts. I feel like your question is trying to excuse reckless disregard (at best) as mere incompetence. I don't think if you sum up all the value on all the leases of wasted buildings it would be a drop in the bucket against the psychological damage (e.g. distrust in the system) being caused by this administration. Like unless it's more than 1% of the national budget (i.e. > 67 billion a year) then it isn't worth the chaos. And a competent administration that wanted to end leases really shouldn't have started RTO, so let's try not to fabricate plausible deniability here.
  - CapricornNoble 2y ago
    >I feel like your question is trying to excuse reckless disregard (at best) as mere incompetence. Ehh, sometimes I'm really not sure how many of the sloppy decisions that are made are malicious, and how many are incompetent. >Like unless it's more than 1% of the national budget (i.e. > 67 billion a year) then it isn't worth the chaos. For people like Musk, chaos is a feature not a bug. Shaking a lot of low-value-add employees and processes out of their comfort zones is the point. >And a competent administration that wanted to end leases really shouldn't have started RTO I think the Scheme of Maneuver is: Phase 1: Bring everyone into the otherwise-nearly-empty offices. Phase 2: Figure out who is dead weight. Fire them. Phase 3: Figure out what max occupancy should be after the fat has been cut from the workforce, and cut all unneeded office space. Phase 4: Maybe allow some limited WFH (I'm not holding my breath on this one).
charlysl 2y ago
They want to destroy the so called "dark state" by scaring and scarring officials out of their wits to do their biding, "the art of the deal", trimming the budget is the excuse.
nokun7 2y ago
[flagged]
- pixxel 2y ago
  [dead]
- pseudalopex 2y ago
  > those little shops, daycares, and coffee spots need people around to stay afloat This is a strange inversion of priorities. Day cares and coffee spots exist to serve their customers. And you have lost sight of many important things if you think parents should be prevented from caring for their own children to support day care businesses.
  - nokun7 2y ago
    Didn't parents care for their children before? So then why do you think California - arguably the most liberal state - is also implementing a return to work mandate?
yapyap 2y ago
The united states of america is being dismantled from the inside
pjmorris 2y ago
"Bad government is the natural product of rule by those who believe government is bad." - Thomas Frank
- pyronik19 2y ago
  We have like 100 years of bad government by people who love government to dispel this nonsense.
  - hedora 2y ago
    Yeah, we’d be much much better off if the Great Depression was still happening, and Hitler got to slaughter our ancestors. I’m guessing the congress critters are pretty nostalgic for stuff like polio, tuberculosis, measles and the bubonic plague. Also, screw breathable air and drinkable water, even more than the internet and microwave. Above all else, ballpoint pens and velcro need to just stop. Excuse me. It’s rush hour. I need to go yell at a busy bridge until the thing just falls the fuck over.
    - pjmorris 2y ago
      What have the Romans ever done for us? What have the New Dealer's ever done for us?
  - pjmorris 2y ago
    If only we had bad markets instead, like the good old days. What metrics would you use to assess the quality of life you think best?
  - pjmorris 2y ago
    Maybe if we'd stuck it out with Hoover... "given a chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, and we shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this Nation." (campaign trail, 1928) He only got four of those years.
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    Which span was that? Must all be prior to 1981.
postepowanieadm 2y ago
But why did the government keep offices that couldn't be used?
- aembleton 2y ago
  Might have had a long term lease
  - metalliqaz 2y ago
    I think they own the buildings
linuxftw 2y ago
[flagged]
- wesselbindt 2y ago
  This has nothing to do whatsoever with RTO.
- philipwhiuk 2y ago
  > Now, they have to get dressed and at least physically show up to collect a paycheck. If they possessed real, marketable skills, they would just leave the government and seek employment elsewhere. You will have to pry these jobs from their cold, dead hands as they're never quitting voluntarily. Right sure, everyone is obsessed by money.
- system33- 2y ago
  So cut those people. They will continue to be a problem. Can’t fire them because of the rights of federal employees? Get the law changed. Actually solve an actual problem, not wave a machete around cutting the government in half.
- mihaaly 2y ago
  "fed employees I encountered every day did little to nothing" so arguing for the action plan of "get dressed and at least physically show up to collect a paycheck" "they would just leave the government and seek employment elsewhere" when "There aren't any well paying jobs in the private sector" (because of "immigrants" and "corporations") What a mental system ... or whatever! It is true then: there are people looking up to the level of Trmup!
motbus3 2y ago
Cause the problem to prove the point that there is a problem. It is common in any office environment
mystifyingpoi 2y ago
> (...) returned to ethernet cords in piles around the floor, random wires sticking out of walls, and motion-sensor lights that weren’t working correctly I don't understand that part, maybe I'm missing something - what happened there? Why would the abandoned workplace not look exactly the same as they left it? Where did the ethernet cords appear from? Someone stole TVs from the walls?
- mexicocitinluez 2y ago
  So, this thing called Covid hit. It was a pandemic, and because it was infectious, a large push to work remotely was made (both in private and public businesses). When employers realized that work was being done despite not being in the office, they started to shutter their offices (ya know, to save money). I can't believe I have to explain to another adult why offices after Covid don't look the same.
  - xyst 2y ago
    Some people just live under a rock; or they have never been impacted by god awful management decisions. Sometimes I wonder what that life looks like? Maybe just sipping champagne at beach side (or on the couch) all day in ignorance. Watch whatever reality trash is on streaming services. All while the world burns around them.
  - hotsauceror 2y ago
    What an insulting and willfully obtuse answer, that does not address any of these perfectly reasonable questions. When you leave your house on vacation, do you rip the cords out of the outlets and pile them on the floor, and dismount all the TVs?
    - mexicocitinluez 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - joquarky 2y ago
      > What an insulting Note that especially in this instance, offense was taken, not given
thrance 2y ago
Out-of-touch billionaires who never did an actual day of work in their entire lives are convinced all workers are lazy slobs collecting social security checks while procrastinating their WFH jobs on their couch. They hate us, and now that they're in power, they're showing us just how much.
nailer 2y ago
Governments leasing offices that don’t have utilities connected seems to point to more government waste.
- pseudalopex 2y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43257316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43257316
xyst 2y ago
The power dynamic between labor and capital (or managers in this case) in the US has shifted so much since our grandparents generation. It’s hard to ignore it now. Our rights and safety nets have been stripped away. 40+ years of trickle down economics and other failed neoclassical/neoliberal economic theory have directly caused the situation we are in.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
  Are you seriously making an argument that workers have worse conditions now than in the 60s? Feel free to make an argument that we are moving in the wrong direction NOW, but not that we have moved in the wrong direction entirely since the 60s.
  - 16mb 2y ago
    40 years ago would be after 1985.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
      "40+" not "40 exactly". Are you implying that you agree things were worse in the 60s, but somehow magically at their prime in 85? Or are you just being pedantic?
atlgator 2y ago
Every RTO order, public sector or private, is about creating attrition. Not efficiency, productivity, or performance. Attrition.
bigbacaloa 2y ago
[dead]
9283409232 2y ago
Anyone who still thinks Elon Musk is trying to make the government more efficient is willfully ignorant at this point. Elon, Peter Thiel, and JD Vance all want to dismantle government. Trump is a pawn in this.
xrd 2y ago
I wish Elon would walk into the offices with a toilet seat around his head and scream out "this is what an asshole looks like!"
jl6 2y ago
At least some of the issues in the headline are temporary inconveniences, some fixed within hours apparently: > In one Department of Health and Human Services office, there was no Wi-Fi or full electricity in the first hours when people returned last week. The broader issue is: what even is the point, if Trump has abandoned any pretence of seeking a balanced budget anyway?
thro93939dj 2y ago
[flagged]
mirekrusin 2y ago
This situation reminds me how people were declaring the end of twitter with swift, unconventional moves. It's worth looking back from time perspective.
- abeppu 2y ago
  Yes, it's a valuable lesson that, though it may become a nazi cesspit and vastly more annoying to interact with, an organization can survive for a surprisingly long time as a shambolic remnant of its former self, doing less and less well for fewer people. As I understand it: - twitter became less appealing to advertisers so revenue dropped - you can't really firmly track the valuation over time after it was delisted but Fidelity late last year estimated its value had declined by 80%. There's a bump from people speculating that Musk's political position will somehow enrich it, but I don't think that's evidence that twitter itself was well-managed. - a bunch of communities that had previously been very active on twitter did just kinda fizzle or go elsewhere as using their product became deeply unpleasant
  - mirekrusin 2y ago
    It still works last time I checked – with fraction of headcount and with people working from the office. Twitter had few months runway until it'd run out of money and go bankrupt. Bloomberg analysis says (despite advertisers and communities leave etc) platform earnings seem to be staying at $1.2 billion a year. Reports from Feb 2025 say that X doubled its adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) from $682 million in 2021 (the last full year before the takeover) – so they are on right track increasing profitability and big part of it likely due to workforce cut from 7500 to 1500 (they did more moves than that, all of them have some impact). It seems argument around layoffs and working from the office leading to doomsday scenario (it'll stop working, it's gone etc. sentiments at the time) have been refuted with time.
    - abeppu 2y ago
      Your argument seems to be entirely financial rather than what twitter _does_. My understanding is their MAUs and DAUs have fallen. Fewer people are looking at it or posting on it, less often. https://soax.com/research/twitter-active-users https://soax.com/research/twitter-active-users https://mashable.com/article/twitter-x-daily-active-users-drop-under-elon-musk https://mashable.com/article/twitter-x-daily-active-users-dr... I think it's interesting that you mention bloomberg as saying that things are going ok. My recent read was that they thought twitter was just messing with numbers. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-20/behind-musk-s-x-turnaround-pick-and-choose-financials https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-20/behind-mu... Key quotes: > its improved fortunes owe much to heavily adjusted financials and investors’ fear of missing out > The 2024 figures weren’t audited, but the 2023 figures were, said one of the people. None of them would qualify for generally accepted accounting principles, also known as the GAAP standard that the US Securities and Exchange Commission requires for publicly traded companies. ... i.e. the recent numbers aren't trustworthy > Even under those unusual calculations, X’s debt burden was roughly nine times adjusted earnings — far beyond the baseline of six that bank regulators characterize as risky. > The threat of litigation — and Musk’s advisory role to Trump — has been a topic of conversation among some advertisers as they decide whether to return, according to several ad industry sources. While few believe X’s product or ad offerings have improved in the past year, marketers are weighing the possible downside of ignoring X and what that might mean in terms of retaliation from Musk. ... i.e. to the extent that some advertisers have returned, it's b/c they think they'll be punished if they don't, not because it's a good way of reaching an audience or promoting their brand. I think the actual revenue story is worse than the usage story. My first searches show that their Q4 revenue was $2.5B, roughly half of where it was in 2021. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/ Analogously, I don't think any of the recent sudden moves mean that the federal government at large is _over_ ("doomsday scenario") except for the departments that the administration actually wants to kill, but I think the current administration is setting the government up to do less and less well. Possibly it will be a great financial outcome for Musk. (edited to add missing bloomberg link)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
TiredGuy 2y ago
This seems like a really political article with not really any tech-related content... Also note the article starts with the qualifier "in the first few hours", meaning it's not like they're sitting there all day every day with no lights/wifi. This seems like an exaggerated, politically motivated piece that doesn't belong on HN.
thatgerhard 2y ago
really soon there will be enough desks and computers for all of them without buying anything more
soupfordummies 2y ago
There's not even enough parking at a lot of offices. Despite an up to 50 mile commute, some are being told "well, you could take the bus. Or uber. Or walk." The whole point of it is to be miserable. The decision makers literally said that! Meanwhile traffic around the city has gotten WAY worse too. So it's not just the feds that are affected either.
seanmcdirmid 2y ago
Bug closed - WAI. Sorry I’m just becoming way too cynical.
danny_codes 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Vought?wprov=sfti1#Project_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Vought?wprov=sfti1#Pro... Just so everyone is aware, Vought is the man behind the moron (the Donny). He is the architect of Project 2025. His goal is to traumatize the civil service to bring about a re-christianization of America, which he believes can only be done by expanding the power of the executive branch. We are living through the machinations of a religious fanatic.
westondeboer 2y ago
Lights? They are scrambling right now to get monitors and keyboards
SuperSandro2000 2y ago
Doing great work at dismantling the US and making it a 3rd world country.

296 points by rob74 2y ago

The disruption is (part of) the point. Degrading the ability of government employees to do their jobs leads to greater inefficiency and more failure, which can then be pointed at to validate assertions that government isn't efficient and produces bad outcomes.

infinghxsg 2y ago
[dead]
bloomingkales 2y ago
I think people didn’t want to believe it when they blamed DEI for the helicopter crash. The algebra looks like this: Privatize FAA = x + y Where x is any discovery or event related to the FAA, and where y is any red meat justification (dei|immigration|trans). There are many such equations: Strategic bitcoin reserve = x + y. Long two years, just going to leave this here. They will always find x and y to complete their equations: https://www.cato.org/commentary/privatize-faa https://www.cato.org/commentary/privatize-faa
- SecretDreams 2y ago
  > Long two years Probably a lot longer than two at this rate :/.
- rob74 2y ago
  Since you mention the FAA, I wonder what will happen if the NTSB's report on the Washington disaster doesn't match Trump's preconceived conclusions, e.g. by placing most of the blame on the (female) helicopter pilot. If he interferes there, that will be the final straw convincing me that the US is unfortunately no better than the "banana republics" it used to make fun of anymore...
  - mschoch 2y ago
    [dead]
  - exe34 2y ago
    > If he interferes there, How will you know at this point? Would he need a sharpie this time, or will he just shout at them over the phone and change the conclusions?
  - wat10000 2y ago
    I doubt he'll care at that point. It’s already been (subjective) years since that crash.
    - rob74 2y ago
      Not sure if he'll care about the specific accident, but he always cares when someone contradicts him...
  - myvoiceismypass 2y ago
    I mean he changed the path of a hurricane via sharpie in the first term. He is incapable of admitting being wrong ever.
adapt_and_laugh 2y ago
And if more federal employees quit because of the poor conditions, it’s just more people they don’t have to worry about laying off.
- Etheryte 2y ago
  The Twitter playbook, except for the government.
  - drivingmenuts 2y ago
    At this point, anyone remaining at Xitter has to be aware that they are working for a neo-Nazi. And anyone using Xitter in a country that has a history of fighting Nazi's in WWII has to be aware of who they're supporting. It's maddening how many people just don't seem to give a shit.
    - ponector 2y ago
      Not only a neo-Nazi, but also for Russians as well.
    - baggachipz 2y ago
      Lots of people (in the US and abroad) were pretty ok with the Nazis the first time around, until they weren't.
      - motbus3 2y ago
        The narrative is more complex than that if I am not mistaken. It seems the general public outside the affected regions were not completely aware on what was going on with concentration camps. This does not mean they were not aware of at some level. It is quite common for old people to say that they only became aware of many of the atrocities months or years later the war was over. The US was not keen on putting pressure to concentration camps as, well, they had their own full of "japs and n*"
    - alxjrvs 2y ago
_aavaa_ 2y ago
It is the whole point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBH9TmeJN_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBH9TmeJN_M
- therealdrag0 2y ago
  That’s Depressing
selykg 2y ago
Absolutely insane that this is what we've come to. It is mind blowing to me that this is what people want. We are regressing this country so rapidly that we are likely to become one of those shithole countries the president so loudly proclaimed Haiti, El Salvador and others were.
- Larrikin 2y ago
  Getting into government to make it worse to show that government is bad has been a pillar of the Republican party since Reagan. They just used to pretend about it.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  > It is mind blowing to me that this is what people want. It is not what people want. The Trump administration’s popularity is already below 50%, and much lower among independents (around 30% depending on the poll). Many people aren’t yet aware of what’s happening. A lot of the electorate is getting their news from filtered sources like Fox News or various far right media outlets. Joe Rogan has gone all in on praising Musk and Trump. People who get their information from Trump are being fed lies that are obvious to anyone not inside the bubble. They don’t know what’s happening because their heroes are telling them it’s all necessary and good. When you start polling people on the actual actions taken, things being cancelled, and consequences the approval is very low. Anecdotally, I have some extended family who were very pro-Trump. One of them recently discovered that her job was funded through a federal grant, and now it’s likely going to be cut even though she doesn’t work for the government directly. They also discovered that one of their family members is covered by Medicaid through an avenue that’s looking like it will be cut. They went through a stage of disbelief, but now they’re in a phase where they’re sure everything will be fine and Trump will get it fixed. It’s only a matter of time until they realize that they were the intended targets of the cuts, not accidental damage.
  - silverquiet 2y ago
    > It’s only a matter of time until they realize that they were the intended targets of the cuts, not accidental damage. I suspect that other scapegoats can be found to blame for their problems; as you say, their news sources will offer them all sorts of filters to deflect blame from the obvious source.
VoodooJuJu 2y ago
[dead]
rob74 2y ago
Not sure if they even think they need to prove their assertions, after all Musk (same as his "boss"/BFF) has made the most outlandish claims without a shred of evidence (the "radical-left Marxist vipers" at USAID). To me it looks more like they are already 100% convinced that any work done by federal employees is completely worthless, so they can indiscriminately fire anyone they wish without doing any harm. Same for the attrition tactics - they tell people to return to the office and at the same time end leases for offices etc.
stronglikedan 2y ago
[flagged]
- snozolli 2y ago
  I have no doubt that it can be cut down by 50% without adversely affecting anything long term. As long as you don't care about American soft power, or the many lives we save with our humanitarian programs, you may be right. If you do care about these things, then you're already demonstrably wrong. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/health/usaid-contract-terminations.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/health/usaid-contract-ter... More children are going to die, around the world, in the immediate future. Sorry, eggs, this guy has an omelette to make.
- natosaichek 2y ago
  Can you point to some of the stuff (presumably doge) that you particularly approve of? Id like to better understand this perspective
- AlecSchueler 2y ago
  > I have no doubt that it can be cut down by 50% without adversely affecting anything long term. Is this percentage based on anything more than vibes? Does it matter to you which eggs get broken and do you agree with the methods being employed to choose/break them? And sorry for all the questions but how do you feel about the conflicts of interests with people like Musk overseeing so much of this?
- mordae 2y ago
  JFYI federal government headcount of 2M people has stayed constant over last 100 years with ever increasing population and things to take care of. I wouldn't call that bloat, honestly. What has been growing a lot are mostly municipalities, which I guess boils down to more people helping disadvantaged kids in schools, which I guess is nice and more policing, which many are calling to shrink and replace with something less violent. US government is not bloated. It's corrupt by the revolving door policy, which definitely won't be fixed by letting people go. But even with revolving doors some things have worked for you. Such as predicting weather, fighting diseases, disrupting or bribing competing nations, opening new markets and protecting your fucking imaginary property everybody in the world fucking hates.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
But they should've shown their assertions and proof thereof beforehand. It's been pointed out that they say organizations are wasteful, but those are vague weasel words; show some numbers, do a root cause analysis and fix what is broken. But the goal is not to fix what isn't working, it never was - it's a diversion and an excuse to dismantle the federal government, checks and balances, and move to an unchecked oligarchy/autocracy. Taking the whole country with them, of course.
mihaaly 2y ago
And there will be lots of people pretending that this is a beliveable assertions. Basically all will either pretend believing or refuse believing above the mental level of this old infant elected as president, so almost everyone.
everdrive 2y ago
I'm starting to think the "government is inefficient" folks have never actually worked in any corporate job. I've worked in two companies since I left the federal government 5-10 years ago, and both were significantly less efficient, and less effective than the federal agency I worked for. I'm sure that's not _always_ true, but it just seems like any large organization full of people is difficult to keep efficient.
- everyone 2y ago
  That's my experience too.. When the public sector wastes something its an error. For a corp, its business as usual. As long as number-goes-up it doesnt matter to them what they are doing.
- stvltvs 2y ago
  Same experience. The "government = inefficient" propaganda has been repeated ad infinitum for decades so that now it feels like a law of nature to people. My experience is however that every large org is inefficient in its own unique way, no matter which sector.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
    It's parroted by people who see the government as "inefficient" at generating profit, not as inefficient at providing a service. Why should plebs be entitled to clean water without an 80% margin?
    - consteval 2y ago
      Profit in it of itself is an inefficiency. It's a bandaid for the fundamental problems of the private sector. The fact the public sector isn't burdened by a requirement to make profit isn't a downside, it's a super power.
      - onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
        It's only a super power if you're buying those services instead of providing them for a profit (99.9%). It's anathema if you're competing against someone who doesn't need to make a profit - when you're trying to make an 80% monopolistic margin (0.1%).
deadbabe 2y ago
I have to ask with all this disruption, what if we were hit with a massive 9/11 scale attack right now?
- _heimdall 2y ago
  Unfortunately war does tend to have a way of rallying both sides together. Tribalism tends to just need an "other" group to demonize. A 9/11 scale attack would make it pretty easy for supporters of both parties to turn their sights on whoever they think attacked us.
  - rurp 2y ago
    That's certainly true in general but I can't think of an attack that was preceded by such a visible effort to make the country more vulnerable. There would be some rallying effect, but it might be smaller and shorter lived than usual especially if the response is bungled. Then again, things might have become so cultish that reality completely stops mattering and trump skates by once again without any responsibility.
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      Reality isn't simple enough to peg responsibility on any one person. Unless you go with the "shit rolls down hill" approach and ultimate land blame for everything on the person in charge, it'd be extremely hard to find a clear line between 6 weeks of Trump's presidency and an attack on the scale of 9/11. Maybe you could tie it back to connections with his first term, but any attack on that scale takes years to plan, not weeks, and has plenty of facets to consider when it comes to what motivated the attackers to actually do it.
CivBase 2y ago
This is too conspiratorial for me. If the point was to make the government less efficient to justify political platforms, why have private companies been doing the same thing for the last 3 years when there's no political upside for them? I'm not saying the RTO policy is good. I'm very skeptical of it myself. But this explanation doesn't seem to hold water - especially when better explanations are out there. They could be using it to thin out their staff without layoffs. They could be propping up real estate values. They could be dealing with sunk costs on office space and looking to justify them. They could be accomidating poor managers who cannoy evaluate employee productivity without seeing butts in seats every day. Not to mention some people really actually do work less efficiently from home. I can't say exactly what proportion or what the overall productivity impact is. It's probably very hard to measure. But it isn't hard to imagine leaders (in both the public and private sectors) genuinely believing the RTO movement will improve overall productivity. It also isn't hard to imagine large organizations doing a poor job when implementing their RTO effort. I saw similar issues with the RTO effort in my private company. The same issues also happened with the WFH effort during the pandemic. Mismanagement is commonplace in large organizations.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  They could just be doing it to be petty and cruel to "government workers" in general. There doesn't always have to be a genius 5D-chess play. It's very possible the administration simply believes the federal workforce is full of their political opponents and just wants to grief them. A major component of the campaign and their base of support is rooted in cruelty to out-groups, so they're technically delivering a campaign promise to their base by just making people miserable.
red020 2y ago
[dead]
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  I'm not seeing that in either the deportation/removal rates, nor the encounters rate. Which time period 2021-2024 should I be looking at to see this? I'm looking only at annual rates, not month by month.
  - Izkata 2y ago
    It wouldn't show up in deportation rates because they're not talking about deportation, they're talking about people illegally entering the country. That administration was enabling it through the CBP One app, up to some limit per day (which I remember being 2000 but am not sure that's right). https://homeland.house.gov/2024/10/24/startling-stats-factsheet-fiscal-year-2024-ends-with-nearly-3-million-inadmissible-encounters-10-8-million-total-encounters-since-fy2021/ https://homeland.house.gov/2024/10/24/startling-stats-factsh... > However, the end result is the same—tens of thousands of inadmissible aliens being released into the interior every month. This is evident through the number of appointments scheduled through the CBP One mass-parole program, which skyrocketed to more than 852,000 since January 2023. Also there is a massive spike in encounters during those years: https://ohss.dhs.gov/khsm/cbp-encounters https://ohss.dhs.gov/khsm/cbp-encounters
    - alabastervlog 2y ago
      Spike in encounters, and spike in deportations, no? I’d expect to see both drop, but certainly deportations, if what was claimed had happened, but I’m not seeing it. [edit] if the stopped-doing-their-job thing had happened, not CBP One, I’m aware of that.
clord 2y ago
I was under the impression these offices closed during the pandemic and the return to office order is bringing people back into those places. If that’s the case I don’t think this is some sort of planned disruption but rather poor planning. Incompetence vs malice right?
NoGravitas 2y ago
It's also intended to frustrate people so that they are encouraged to quit.
agumonkey 2y ago
Hey, I thought this was a french right thing only, but somehow it's global tradition.

datadeft 2y ago

It kind of weird to have employees without an office. How could that happen?

Aurornis 2y ago
That’s how remote works. People don’t have a physical office because they work from home or another location.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > That’s how remote works DOGE is “targeting remote-work arrangements” [1]. [1] https://www.wsj.com/opinion/dont-let-doge-kill-remote-work-hybrid-families-efficiency-090f6374 https://www.wsj.com/opinion/dont-let-doge-kill-remote-work-h...
  - philipwhiuk 2y ago
    Yes, hence the article.
nemomarx 2y ago
with WFH it doesn't seem very weird to me? why have the central office if the work is getting done anyway
- datadeft 2y ago
  I WFH for 20 years but never had a job where we did not have an office.
thunfischtoast 2y ago
The US-government is interspersed with oligarchs who want to diminish the ability of the government to actually act so that they can argue why everything should be privatized.
francisofascii 2y ago
People that work "in the field" don't need a home office. I know a hydrologist who now has to go to the office, when much of his work is travelling around sampling groundwater. Another person I know works at OSHA, where she also travels to various work sites, but now has to go into the home office. Ridiculous waste of travel to have to go the the home office only to then leave to go somewhere else.

Havoc 2y ago

This must be the promised efficiency

SpaceL10n 2y ago
It's part of the promised pain. Trump promised us some pain. He said it was necessary before things can get better.
- hobs 2y ago
  Sounds like what an abuser would say when they want you to let them hit you more.
- rescripting 2y ago
  Its much easier to destroy than to build, and this is thoughtless destruction. How can anyone expect thoughtful reconstruction?
  - metalliqaz 2y ago
    there is no intention of reconstruction. destroy government to ensure nothing stands in the way of the oligarchy. they want to create the world's first trillionaire at our expense
- bloomingeek 2y ago
  Finally someone remembers this quote! He told the GOP voters what was coming and they still gave him the keys to the kingdom. When Medicaid is severely limited, we'll see if they get the message. (for instance, childbirth costs and seniors in nursing homes.)
- EasyMark 2y ago
  The problem is it's all pain and no reward or even minor titillation other tha MAGAs enjoying watching the house burn down while they're in it.

kept3k 2y ago

[flagged]

alabastervlog 2y ago
An organization allegedly about reducing waste is creating it instead, by arbitrarily forcing a tight timeline and using heavy, specific, and inflexible top-down mandates that don’t let those closer to the work use the information they have (say, that their offices aren’t ready to work in). Spending freezes, blanket firing of tons of provisional workers (fun fact: the recently-promoted are also provisional, this doesn’t just mean brand new workers), and other measures have probably also disrupted the ability of offices to sensibly execute the orders. That is, it’ll take them longer to get the offices ready. One might begin to think it’s not about waste.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- timr 2y ago
  > An organization allegedly about reducing waste is creating it instead The point you missed in the parent comment was that this is temporary. I don't have a strong opinion on the matter, but if the way we discover that government offices were sitting vacant for years (i.e. big waste) is by having people return to them and be unproductive for a few days (i.e. small waste), then the trade will be worth it. I doubt anyone wants employees to be sitting in offices that aren't functional. We have discovered something bad...which would seem to be part of the reason of doing it. The counterargument is obvious to anyone willing to think about it for a few seconds, but the article doesn't even bother addressing it. They even admit that the headline office without wifi was only without wifi for a few hours: > In one Department of Health and Human Services office, there was no Wi-Fi or full electricity in the first hours when people returned last week. ...and yet this is in the headline. This all reeks of cherry-picking.
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    I didn't miss the point. This waste could have been avoided, is the thing, and anyone who cared about running and knew how to run an organization well, might have. Such a person might even have guessed there were excellent reasons that the executive has not, previously, been run by one single person issuing surprising and very specific decrees that reach down to the lowest-level workers, across large swaths of it at once, and not done that. > I don't have a strong opinion on the matter, but if the way we discover that government offices were sitting vacant for years (i.e. big waste) is by having people return to them and be unproductive for a few days (i.e. small waste), then the trade will be worth it. This doesn't save anything. Now utilities and maintenance costs are higher. It's more spending. Leasing out or selling the buildings would have cut waste. > I doubt anyone wants employees to be sitting in offices that aren't functional. I don't know how many times and ways people involved in the admin have to say that their goal is to wreck the federal bureaucracy before people believe them.

criddell 2y ago

It seems like some of the people who don't think our government is functional are determined to make it so.

stetrain 2y ago
> It seems like some of the people who don't think our government is functional are determined to make it so. This has been the playbook for all of my life at least. Probably longer than that.
xyst 2y ago
The result of 40+ years of pseudoscience from neoclassical and neoliberal economists. America is cooked.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

Wild that oil & gas subsidies, Medicare negotiating more drugs and foreign military base reductions are off the table. But god forbid we see another hurricane coming.

mexicocitinluez 2y ago
> Medicare negotiating more drugs I don't care what side you fall down on, the only reason someone would rollback Medicare negotiating drug prices is so that they can make more money on their big pharma stocks. I can't believe a bunch of grown adults voted for this shit.
- russdill 2y ago
  Most of the people I talk to seem to have one thing they are holding on to as the thing they'll get out of their vote. Like "he's going to eliminate the income taxes I pay on my social security" etc The thing is almost never true, and even if he were is a horrible self centered justification.
  - thrance 2y ago
    He already passed tax cuts, but only for the wealthy. Literally reversed Robinhood.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > he already passed tax cuts, but only for the wealthy Well, they’re about to expire and their extension hasn’t been passed yet. But yes. I’m getting a tax cut while the farmers who voted for him get tariffed out of their export markets. Sort of wild.
      - mexicocitinluez 2y ago
        The next tax cuts are why they're going ham tryign to find things to cut because it's going to blow an enormous whole in the deficit.

mirekrusin 2y ago

[flagged]

Aurornis 2y ago

> “The only thing a return to the office has given me is an hour of traffic while driving and a loss in efficiency,” said the worker, who requested anonymity for fear of job reprisals. RTO in a nutshell. As someone who chose my living location based on where my family wants to live first and jobs second, this sudden turn to RTO mandates is infinitely depressing. Most of my work involves talking to people in different offices, states and countries anyway, so RTO means doing the e-mail and video call work but from a different location that requires battling traffic both ways. It’s insane that this is being done in the name of “efficiency”

incangold 2y ago
Same situation. Going to the office and opening a Zoom call with colleagues in India and a city hundreds of miles away. Madness.
drcongo 2y ago
Harder to sell Teslas to people who work from home.
danaris 2y ago
It's insane that anyone actually believes that it's being done for efficiency. It's not, and never was. It's being done a) to drive people to quit, so they don't have to lay them off, and b) to restore the power dynamic to the status quo ante, where your manager could just look over at your cubicle and see you in your seat, and know that whether or not you were working, you were still there to bow to them. (And many of them genuinely have zero metric for gauging "how much is Aurornis working?" besides measuring the amount of time a butt is in a seat, and are desperate to avoid having to admit that.)
- Ajedi32 2y ago
  > many of them genuinely have zero metric for gauging "how much is Aurornis working?" besides measuring the amount of time a butt is in a seat This is a legitimate problem though. Obviously making people do all their work from a centralized office location is a horribly inefficient solution, but it is a solution, and if there really is widespread slacking happening it might still be more efficient than doing nothing.

navane 2y ago

[flagged]

itsthecourier 2y ago

[flagged]

happytoexplain 2y ago
You're tired?
chollida1 2y ago
> time after time it has been shown in average people is way less productive months after moving to remote. Interesting. Can you show a few of these studies? I find it hard to get data on this sort of thing.
Steve16384 2y ago
> time after time it has been shown in average people is way less productive months after moving to remote. Any sources on that?
anonzzzies 2y ago
How far/long do you commute to your office?
behringer 2y ago
Simple fix. Pay for the commute and then we'll see how efficient rto vs wfh is.
exe34 2y ago
> time after time it has been shown in average people is way less productive months after moving to remote. [citation needed]
mistercheph 2y ago
Grug bad say WFH bad, Grug hate meaningless job, Grug want hide at home, no traffic for Grug

trhway 2y ago

i do wonder how Musk is planning to get FAA approvals for SpaceX if the federal stuff is decreased. Is he going to wait many weeks, months, years like the others will be waiting or is he personally going to cut the line? Or may be getting rid of FAA permits at all? Back to the time of great unlimited aviation and rocketry innovation. I personally have a bunch of non-traditional designs i'd like to get airborne/launched which if we lucky would fly and stay airborne on the planned trajectory and for the planned amount of time :)

onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
Why not just ignore the law like they're mostly doing already?
- wat10000 2y ago
  The law only matters to the extent that it’s enforced. Get rid of all the enforcers, and you’re home free.
  - ramses0 2y ago
    ...and then the judges, so anything that does get enforced gets ignored. It's like someone bringing a lighter and matches to a board game tournament: "there's nothing in the rules against it..."
utf_8x 2y ago
You don't need FAA approval if you cancel the FAA...
exe34 2y ago
He'll just get his own account to approve his flights.
philipwhiuk 2y ago
SpaceX is taking over FAA contracts, I'm sure they won't have any trouble getting approved. Permits will be for the little guys.

ethagknight 2y ago

And yet, the federal government was paying for all these things, city-scale numbers of unused office space. I’ve worked on the GSA side and seen first hand.

mexicocitinluez 2y ago
> And yet, the federal government was paying for all these things, city-scale numbers of unused office space Do you know what a lease is? I can dumb it down a bit if you need.

CapricornNoble 2y ago

Interesting that the CNN article makes no mention of how badly under-utilized government office spaces are. https://wolfstreet.com/2025/01/25/doge-seeks-to-shed-vast-amounts-of-government-office-space-heres-how-much-the-government-leases-and-where-and-what-it-can-shed-during-trumps-term/ https://wolfstreet.com/2025/01/25/doge-seeks-to-shed-vast-am... “A recent report from Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa who chairs the Senate DOGE caucus, found that not one of the headquarters for any major agency or department in Washington is more than half full. GSA-owned buildings in Washington, D.C., average about a 12% occupancy rate. The government owns more than 7,500 vacant buildings across the country, and more than 2,200 that are partially empty.” DOGE is hamfisted in its execution but why are we spending massive amounts of money for office buildings while people work from home? I'm a fan of remote work and would prefer that we crash the Commercial Real Estate market by canceling leases rather that stuffing people back into cubicle farms, but I think the context of trying to kill two birds with one stone (improve building utilization and also identify who is actually doing work and not just fucking off) makes some sense.

zug_zug 2y ago
Well a few thoughts. I feel like your question is trying to excuse reckless disregard (at best) as mere incompetence. I don't think if you sum up all the value on all the leases of wasted buildings it would be a drop in the bucket against the psychological damage (e.g. distrust in the system) being caused by this administration. Like unless it's more than 1% of the national budget (i.e. > 67 billion a year) then it isn't worth the chaos. And a competent administration that wanted to end leases really shouldn't have started RTO, so let's try not to fabricate plausible deniability here.
- CapricornNoble 2y ago
  >I feel like your question is trying to excuse reckless disregard (at best) as mere incompetence. Ehh, sometimes I'm really not sure how many of the sloppy decisions that are made are malicious, and how many are incompetent. >Like unless it's more than 1% of the national budget (i.e. > 67 billion a year) then it isn't worth the chaos. For people like Musk, chaos is a feature not a bug. Shaking a lot of low-value-add employees and processes out of their comfort zones is the point. >And a competent administration that wanted to end leases really shouldn't have started RTO I think the Scheme of Maneuver is: Phase 1: Bring everyone into the otherwise-nearly-empty offices. Phase 2: Figure out who is dead weight. Fire them. Phase 3: Figure out what max occupancy should be after the fat has been cut from the workforce, and cut all unneeded office space. Phase 4: Maybe allow some limited WFH (I'm not holding my breath on this one).

charlysl 2y ago

They want to destroy the so called "dark state" by scaring and scarring officials out of their wits to do their biding, "the art of the deal", trimming the budget is the excuse.

nokun7 2y ago

[flagged]

pixxel 2y ago
[dead]
pseudalopex 2y ago
> those little shops, daycares, and coffee spots need people around to stay afloat This is a strange inversion of priorities. Day cares and coffee spots exist to serve their customers. And you have lost sight of many important things if you think parents should be prevented from caring for their own children to support day care businesses.
- nokun7 2y ago
  Didn't parents care for their children before? So then why do you think California - arguably the most liberal state - is also implementing a return to work mandate?

yapyap 2y ago

The united states of america is being dismantled from the inside

pjmorris 2y ago

"Bad government is the natural product of rule by those who believe government is bad." - Thomas Frank

pyronik19 2y ago
We have like 100 years of bad government by people who love government to dispel this nonsense.
- hedora 2y ago
  Yeah, we’d be much much better off if the Great Depression was still happening, and Hitler got to slaughter our ancestors. I’m guessing the congress critters are pretty nostalgic for stuff like polio, tuberculosis, measles and the bubonic plague. Also, screw breathable air and drinkable water, even more than the internet and microwave. Above all else, ballpoint pens and velcro need to just stop. Excuse me. It’s rush hour. I need to go yell at a busy bridge until the thing just falls the fuck over.
  - pjmorris 2y ago
    What have the Romans ever done for us? What have the New Dealer's ever done for us?
- pjmorris 2y ago
  If only we had bad markets instead, like the good old days. What metrics would you use to assess the quality of life you think best?
- pjmorris 2y ago
  Maybe if we'd stuck it out with Hoover... "given a chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, and we shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this Nation." (campaign trail, 1928) He only got four of those years.
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  Which span was that? Must all be prior to 1981.

postepowanieadm 2y ago

But why did the government keep offices that couldn't be used?

aembleton 2y ago
Might have had a long term lease
- metalliqaz 2y ago
  I think they own the buildings

linuxftw 2y ago

[flagged]

wesselbindt 2y ago
This has nothing to do whatsoever with RTO.
philipwhiuk 2y ago
> Now, they have to get dressed and at least physically show up to collect a paycheck. If they possessed real, marketable skills, they would just leave the government and seek employment elsewhere. You will have to pry these jobs from their cold, dead hands as they're never quitting voluntarily. Right sure, everyone is obsessed by money.
system33- 2y ago
So cut those people. They will continue to be a problem. Can’t fire them because of the rights of federal employees? Get the law changed. Actually solve an actual problem, not wave a machete around cutting the government in half.
mihaaly 2y ago
"fed employees I encountered every day did little to nothing" so arguing for the action plan of "get dressed and at least physically show up to collect a paycheck" "they would just leave the government and seek employment elsewhere" when "There aren't any well paying jobs in the private sector" (because of "immigrants" and "corporations") What a mental system ... or whatever! It is true then: there are people looking up to the level of Trmup!

motbus3 2y ago

Cause the problem to prove the point that there is a problem. It is common in any office environment

mystifyingpoi 2y ago

> (...) returned to ethernet cords in piles around the floor, random wires sticking out of walls, and motion-sensor lights that weren’t working correctly I don't understand that part, maybe I'm missing something - what happened there? Why would the abandoned workplace not look exactly the same as they left it? Where did the ethernet cords appear from? Someone stole TVs from the walls?

mexicocitinluez 2y ago
So, this thing called Covid hit. It was a pandemic, and because it was infectious, a large push to work remotely was made (both in private and public businesses). When employers realized that work was being done despite not being in the office, they started to shutter their offices (ya know, to save money). I can't believe I have to explain to another adult why offices after Covid don't look the same.
- xyst 2y ago
  Some people just live under a rock; or they have never been impacted by god awful management decisions. Sometimes I wonder what that life looks like? Maybe just sipping champagne at beach side (or on the couch) all day in ignorance. Watch whatever reality trash is on streaming services. All while the world burns around them.
- hotsauceror 2y ago
  What an insulting and willfully obtuse answer, that does not address any of these perfectly reasonable questions. When you leave your house on vacation, do you rip the cords out of the outlets and pile them on the floor, and dismount all the TVs?
  - mexicocitinluez 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - joquarky 2y ago
    > What an insulting Note that especially in this instance, offense was taken, not given

thrance 2y ago

Out-of-touch billionaires who never did an actual day of work in their entire lives are convinced all workers are lazy slobs collecting social security checks while procrastinating their WFH jobs on their couch. They hate us, and now that they're in power, they're showing us just how much.

nailer 2y ago

Governments leasing offices that don’t have utilities connected seems to point to more government waste.

pseudalopex 2y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43257316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43257316

xyst 2y ago

The power dynamic between labor and capital (or managers in this case) in the US has shifted so much since our grandparents generation. It’s hard to ignore it now. Our rights and safety nets have been stripped away. 40+ years of trickle down economics and other failed neoclassical/neoliberal economic theory have directly caused the situation we are in.

onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
Are you seriously making an argument that workers have worse conditions now than in the 60s? Feel free to make an argument that we are moving in the wrong direction NOW, but not that we have moved in the wrong direction entirely since the 60s.
- 16mb 2y ago
  40 years ago would be after 1985.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
    "40+" not "40 exactly". Are you implying that you agree things were worse in the 60s, but somehow magically at their prime in 85? Or are you just being pedantic?

atlgator 2y ago

Every RTO order, public sector or private, is about creating attrition. Not efficiency, productivity, or performance. Attrition.

bigbacaloa 2y ago

[dead]

9283409232 2y ago

Anyone who still thinks Elon Musk is trying to make the government more efficient is willfully ignorant at this point. Elon, Peter Thiel, and JD Vance all want to dismantle government. Trump is a pawn in this.

xrd 2y ago

I wish Elon would walk into the offices with a toilet seat around his head and scream out "this is what an asshole looks like!"

jl6 2y ago

At least some of the issues in the headline are temporary inconveniences, some fixed within hours apparently: > In one Department of Health and Human Services office, there was no Wi-Fi or full electricity in the first hours when people returned last week. The broader issue is: what even is the point, if Trump has abandoned any pretence of seeking a balanced budget anyway?

thro93939dj 2y ago

[flagged]

mirekrusin 2y ago

This situation reminds me how people were declaring the end of twitter with swift, unconventional moves. It's worth looking back from time perspective.

abeppu 2y ago
Yes, it's a valuable lesson that, though it may become a nazi cesspit and vastly more annoying to interact with, an organization can survive for a surprisingly long time as a shambolic remnant of its former self, doing less and less well for fewer people. As I understand it: - twitter became less appealing to advertisers so revenue dropped - you can't really firmly track the valuation over time after it was delisted but Fidelity late last year estimated its value had declined by 80%. There's a bump from people speculating that Musk's political position will somehow enrich it, but I don't think that's evidence that twitter itself was well-managed. - a bunch of communities that had previously been very active on twitter did just kinda fizzle or go elsewhere as using their product became deeply unpleasant
- mirekrusin 2y ago
  It still works last time I checked – with fraction of headcount and with people working from the office. Twitter had few months runway until it'd run out of money and go bankrupt. Bloomberg analysis says (despite advertisers and communities leave etc) platform earnings seem to be staying at $1.2 billion a year. Reports from Feb 2025 say that X doubled its adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) from $682 million in 2021 (the last full year before the takeover) – so they are on right track increasing profitability and big part of it likely due to workforce cut from 7500 to 1500 (they did more moves than that, all of them have some impact). It seems argument around layoffs and working from the office leading to doomsday scenario (it'll stop working, it's gone etc. sentiments at the time) have been refuted with time.
  - abeppu 2y ago
    Your argument seems to be entirely financial rather than what twitter _does_. My understanding is their MAUs and DAUs have fallen. Fewer people are looking at it or posting on it, less often. https://soax.com/research/twitter-active-users https://soax.com/research/twitter-active-users https://mashable.com/article/twitter-x-daily-active-users-drop-under-elon-musk https://mashable.com/article/twitter-x-daily-active-users-dr... I think it's interesting that you mention bloomberg as saying that things are going ok. My recent read was that they thought twitter was just messing with numbers. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-20/behind-musk-s-x-turnaround-pick-and-choose-financials https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-20/behind-mu... Key quotes: > its improved fortunes owe much to heavily adjusted financials and investors’ fear of missing out > The 2024 figures weren’t audited, but the 2023 figures were, said one of the people. None of them would qualify for generally accepted accounting principles, also known as the GAAP standard that the US Securities and Exchange Commission requires for publicly traded companies. ... i.e. the recent numbers aren't trustworthy > Even under those unusual calculations, X’s debt burden was roughly nine times adjusted earnings — far beyond the baseline of six that bank regulators characterize as risky. > The threat of litigation — and Musk’s advisory role to Trump — has been a topic of conversation among some advertisers as they decide whether to return, according to several ad industry sources. While few believe X’s product or ad offerings have improved in the past year, marketers are weighing the possible downside of ignoring X and what that might mean in terms of retaliation from Musk. ... i.e. to the extent that some advertisers have returned, it's b/c they think they'll be punished if they don't, not because it's a good way of reaching an audience or promoting their brand. I think the actual revenue story is worse than the usage story. My first searches show that their Q4 revenue was $2.5B, roughly half of where it was in 2021. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/ Analogously, I don't think any of the recent sudden moves mean that the federal government at large is _over_ ("doomsday scenario") except for the departments that the administration actually wants to kill, but I think the current administration is setting the government up to do less and less well. Possibly it will be a great financial outcome for Musk. (edited to add missing bloomberg link)

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

TiredGuy 2y ago

This seems like a really political article with not really any tech-related content... Also note the article starts with the qualifier "in the first few hours", meaning it's not like they're sitting there all day every day with no lights/wifi. This seems like an exaggerated, politically motivated piece that doesn't belong on HN.

thatgerhard 2y ago

really soon there will be enough desks and computers for all of them without buying anything more

soupfordummies 2y ago

There's not even enough parking at a lot of offices. Despite an up to 50 mile commute, some are being told "well, you could take the bus. Or uber. Or walk." The whole point of it is to be miserable. The decision makers literally said that! Meanwhile traffic around the city has gotten WAY worse too. So it's not just the feds that are affected either.

seanmcdirmid 2y ago

Bug closed - WAI. Sorry I’m just becoming way too cynical.

danny_codes 2y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Vought?wprov=sfti1#Project_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Vought?wprov=sfti1#Pro... Just so everyone is aware, Vought is the man behind the moron (the Donny). He is the architect of Project 2025. His goal is to traumatize the civil service to bring about a re-christianization of America, which he believes can only be done by expanding the power of the executive branch. We are living through the machinations of a religious fanatic.

westondeboer 2y ago

Lights? They are scrambling right now to get monitors and keyboards

SuperSandro2000 2y ago

Doing great work at dismantling the US and making it a 3rd world country.