4 ms·

In general it is a good practice to assume other parties are making a good faith effort, but after so many obvious cockups, that grace has been exhausted. My a

In general it is a good practice to assume other parties are making a good faith effort, but after so many obvious cockups, that grace has been exhausted. My assumption is that there is a lot of blow-back so they are restoring a few high profile names so they can say, "see, we aren't stopping science!". It is good this handful of people are back on the job, but I assume the NIH is like most other organizations -- the top name isn't doing the work themselves. They lead a team of people and their expertise is used to provide them direction and as a resource to help analyze surprising results. If the top experts lose their staff, I doubt they'll get nearly as much done. Having the 65 year old braintrust spending hours pipetting and staining samples is wildly inefficient. DOGI.

mlinhares 2y ago
Also, if you're nearing retirement and you look at this mess, you're not coming back, there won't be anything to be done. Its a trap. They'll get these folks back, there will be nobody else to do the work and they'll come back and say "see, these people were useless, we were right in firing them".
- the_snooze 2y ago
  >Its a trap. Trust is efficient. Lack of trust is inefficient. If someone untrustworthy like Musk fired me and suddenly wanted a do-over, I'd counter with a completely selfish arrangement like a $500/hr contracting rate with some non-trivial amount due up front.
  - anonzzzies 2y ago
    Yep, exactly. I do that over far less. And otherwise, f off. People are way too nice to people screwing you over. Unlike we often see here, there are really good business owners who would (and do) sell all they have to keep all the staff through rough times. But those usually are (all I guess?) small businesses; I have the good fortune to contract (yes they even bend over backwards, both unconnected company owners, to keep their contractors) with 2 of them. And they pay well above market in the EU; American wages while they are from the EU. Most others will try to screw you and they call it 'it is not personal, it's just business'; while that's true, it rings hollow when you just did your stinking best. We are led to believe (mostly because of US tech in my case), that you need to work yourself to death while accepting everyone will throw you in a meat grinder whenever they wake up on the wrong side. Musk as poster child of this. But you make money! Sure, so especially for those, and especially in a pickle, our hourlies are bizarrely high and they still come back.
  - cyanydeez 2y ago
    The entire republican party setup a self-fullfilling prophecy of distrust, deep state, etc etc.
    - kelnos 2y ago
      That's another standard bit of the GOP playbook: accuse the other side of a bunch of bad stuff (regardless of whether or not it's true; especially if it isn't) to distract from the fact that the GOP is already doing that bad stuff.
  - tombert 2y ago
    Tangential, but I almost never get to tell this story. In 2012 I was fired from a job (on my birthday!). I hated this job, I hated my coworkers, I really hated my manager, I was pretty sure that the higher-ups were alcoholics since they always smelled like beer or whiskey, and the work was mind-numbing where quite literally 3/4 of my work was designing nametags even though I was ostensibly a "Java developer". Anyway, I got fired, and while getting fired always sucks, I was a little relieved that I didn't have to show up anymore. The following Monday, I got a phone call from my manager demanding that I provide the password to unlock the Macbook that they had me using. I explained to him that I think it's a bad idea to share my password with people that I don't trust. He then told me that I "had" to provide it, to which I said "I really don't think I do, actually. I don't work for <company name> anymore. What are you going to do, fire me?" This went back and forth for another thirty seconds, and eventually I said "Here's what we'll do, I'll drive over there, unlock the laptop, and drive back home, and you pay for my entire trip. I charge $200/hour." He was clearly pissed off, eventually hung up, and I never heard back from them. A part of me likes to think that maybe they had to trash the laptop because they were too incompetent to figure out how to wipe the drive.
    - chias 2y ago
      As someone who has recently had to start managing a fleet of macbooks: amusingly, this may very well be what happened. Modern macs are not like a PC where you can just wipe it, due to a need to lock down on the secondary market for stolen macbooks. Assuming your old employer does not have an Apple Business Manager account and/or didn't purchase the laptop through it, then if the Recovery Lock gets triggered, then it is for all intents and purposes bricked unless you can provide an Activation Lock Bypass Key or have the user either log in or provide their AppleID password. I think every company goes through a phase of having to call a few ex employees and ask them to please pretty-please let them know their AppleID password before realizing that if you're going to have a Macbook fleet, you had better start doing Apple Business Manager. I don't know if this is how things were in 2012, but at least these days: if they needed your password, and you never gave it to them, they probably did have to discard the device.
      - 2y ago
smt88 2y ago
> In general it is a good practice to assume other parties are making a good faith effort This has never been true for this administration, which A) already had a previous term to show us how incompetent its leaders are, and B) is working from a decades-old playbook of making government more dysfunctional so that people lose faith in it and want to eliminate it.
- vkou 2y ago
  It's quite possible that the playbook they are looking at is more similar to C) starting a fire in the reichstag...
theteapot 2y ago
Who's they? The Department of Health and Human Services?
- tasty_freeze 2y ago
  There are proximate causes and there are the real causes. Yes, HHS let them go, but the reality is DOGE told HHS to cut them.
  - theteapot 2y ago
    The article states: > "It’s unclear to what extent the employee lists used in the RIFs were influenced by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) .."
    - maronato 2y ago
      The lack of transparency around DOGE is a feature.
- timewizard 2y ago
  DOGE has embedded itself into every federal cabinet department. They've got the gumroad guy poking around in the VA right now.
AIPedant 2y ago
[dead]

mlinhares 2y ago

Also, if you're nearing retirement and you look at this mess, you're not coming back, there won't be anything to be done. Its a trap. They'll get these folks back, there will be nobody else to do the work and they'll come back and say "see, these people were useless, we were right in firing them".

the_snooze 2y ago
>Its a trap. Trust is efficient. Lack of trust is inefficient. If someone untrustworthy like Musk fired me and suddenly wanted a do-over, I'd counter with a completely selfish arrangement like a $500/hr contracting rate with some non-trivial amount due up front.
- anonzzzies 2y ago
  Yep, exactly. I do that over far less. And otherwise, f off. People are way too nice to people screwing you over. Unlike we often see here, there are really good business owners who would (and do) sell all they have to keep all the staff through rough times. But those usually are (all I guess?) small businesses; I have the good fortune to contract (yes they even bend over backwards, both unconnected company owners, to keep their contractors) with 2 of them. And they pay well above market in the EU; American wages while they are from the EU. Most others will try to screw you and they call it 'it is not personal, it's just business'; while that's true, it rings hollow when you just did your stinking best. We are led to believe (mostly because of US tech in my case), that you need to work yourself to death while accepting everyone will throw you in a meat grinder whenever they wake up on the wrong side. Musk as poster child of this. But you make money! Sure, so especially for those, and especially in a pickle, our hourlies are bizarrely high and they still come back.
- cyanydeez 2y ago
  The entire republican party setup a self-fullfilling prophecy of distrust, deep state, etc etc.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    That's another standard bit of the GOP playbook: accuse the other side of a bunch of bad stuff (regardless of whether or not it's true; especially if it isn't) to distract from the fact that the GOP is already doing that bad stuff.
- tombert 2y ago
  Tangential, but I almost never get to tell this story. In 2012 I was fired from a job (on my birthday!). I hated this job, I hated my coworkers, I really hated my manager, I was pretty sure that the higher-ups were alcoholics since they always smelled like beer or whiskey, and the work was mind-numbing where quite literally 3/4 of my work was designing nametags even though I was ostensibly a "Java developer". Anyway, I got fired, and while getting fired always sucks, I was a little relieved that I didn't have to show up anymore. The following Monday, I got a phone call from my manager demanding that I provide the password to unlock the Macbook that they had me using. I explained to him that I think it's a bad idea to share my password with people that I don't trust. He then told me that I "had" to provide it, to which I said "I really don't think I do, actually. I don't work for <company name> anymore. What are you going to do, fire me?" This went back and forth for another thirty seconds, and eventually I said "Here's what we'll do, I'll drive over there, unlock the laptop, and drive back home, and you pay for my entire trip. I charge $200/hour." He was clearly pissed off, eventually hung up, and I never heard back from them. A part of me likes to think that maybe they had to trash the laptop because they were too incompetent to figure out how to wipe the drive.
  - chias 2y ago
    As someone who has recently had to start managing a fleet of macbooks: amusingly, this may very well be what happened. Modern macs are not like a PC where you can just wipe it, due to a need to lock down on the secondary market for stolen macbooks. Assuming your old employer does not have an Apple Business Manager account and/or didn't purchase the laptop through it, then if the Recovery Lock gets triggered, then it is for all intents and purposes bricked unless you can provide an Activation Lock Bypass Key or have the user either log in or provide their AppleID password. I think every company goes through a phase of having to call a few ex employees and ask them to please pretty-please let them know their AppleID password before realizing that if you're going to have a Macbook fleet, you had better start doing Apple Business Manager. I don't know if this is how things were in 2012, but at least these days: if they needed your password, and you never gave it to them, they probably did have to discard the device.
    - 2y ago

smt88 2y ago

> In general it is a good practice to assume other parties are making a good faith effort This has never been true for this administration, which A) already had a previous term to show us how incompetent its leaders are, and B) is working from a decades-old playbook of making government more dysfunctional so that people lose faith in it and want to eliminate it.

vkou 2y ago
It's quite possible that the playbook they are looking at is more similar to C) starting a fire in the reichstag...

theteapot 2y ago

Who's they? The Department of Health and Human Services?

tasty_freeze 2y ago
There are proximate causes and there are the real causes. Yes, HHS let them go, but the reality is DOGE told HHS to cut them.
- theteapot 2y ago
  The article states: > "It’s unclear to what extent the employee lists used in the RIFs were influenced by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) .."
  - maronato 2y ago
    The lack of transparency around DOGE is a feature.
timewizard 2y ago
DOGE has embedded itself into every federal cabinet department. They've got the gumroad guy poking around in the VA right now.

AIPedant 2y ago

[dead]