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Also, it's completely destroying an incredibly valuable asset: The reputation of being a stable long-term employer! (This is possibly their corrupt intent.) Th

by Terr_ 2y ago

Also, it's completely destroying an incredibly valuable asset: The reputation of being a stable long-term employer! (This is possibly their corrupt intent.) The immediate "savings" reduced workforce (even assuming the same level of work gets done) can easily be obliterated by the long-term damage of needing to pay more to attract equally-qualified applicants away from the private sector. Some quick napkin-math just to illustrate: * Assume the stupid and illegal firings continue, shrinking the workforce to 90%. * Assume payroll expenses move the same, to 90%. * Now workers require 5% more to be hired at a flaky employer with dodgy benefits. * After just two years, the "savings" are erased. Every year the broken trust continues makes it worse.

vintermann 2y ago
If a corporation did this, we'd rightly accuse them of pumping their quarterly numbers at the expense of long-term viability.
kelnos 2y ago
> This is possibly their corrupt intent. Trump's OMB head has said as much: they want to demoralize the federal workforce and make them dread going to work every day. They want to give the federal government the reputation of being a bad, undesirable, unstable place to work. This is all no accident.
fastball 2y ago
Do we actually want "I just want a stable job" people being a significant part of the federal governments workforce? I generally wouldn't want those people to work for my company, so not sure why I'd want them to work in my government.
- flir 2y ago
  > Money is not the point of a government.
  - fastball 2y ago
    Yes, exactly. People who just want a stable job are in it for the (stable) money.
    - flir 2y ago
      You just made an argument about government based on a comparison with the private sector, and now you're agreeing that government and the private secctor have fundamentally different goals. Got to admit, I'm a bit lost.
      - fastball 2y ago
        The argument wasn't based on a comparison to the private sector. The argument is based on the fact that I prefer people who passionate about their jobs vs people who just want a stable paycheck. However the argument also applies to the private sector, which is why I mentioned it.
        mulmen 2y ago
        Have you considered that government employees accept less pay because they are passionate?
        fastball 2y ago
        So this begs the question why we need "stable employment" as a hallmark of the government sector in order to attract talent.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        ModernMech 2y ago
        Hard to be passionate about a job that might not be there tomorrow.
        2y ago
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
  Do you want to attract talent or people who take anything they can get? People who know what they're worth aren't going to waste investing their time into an employer who can't even guarantee that they'll still have a job next week. Mundane government employees are some of the most dedicated workers I've met. There's a deep array of jobs that aren't flashy but are foundational and depend on staff who can build up long institutional knowledge.
  - fastball 2y ago
    > Mundane government employees are some of the most dedicated workers I've met And you think the reason they are dedicated is because they mostly care about having a "stable job"?
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      Thars like saying "the reason the best employees are good is that they are paid the most money". You're putting the cart ahead of the horse here. They are dedicated partially because they can spend their time focused on doing their job and not grinding leet code looking for the next pay bump in 2 years. Those pay scales are very strict in government, and very predictable.
- loktarogar 2y ago
  > Do we actually want "I just want a stable job" people being a significant part of the federal governments workforce? Yes, if you can't offer someone market rates then you need to offer them other things to fill that void. Stability is one of them, and is actually a good thing in government, when politics is so volatile. If the workforce is fired every time a new party comes into power, you don't have a stable government. Working with those constraints, you _can_ improve things, by building better systems and processes, that better use the resources you have. That's far better long term, but it's not as fast and does not generate headlines for DOGE.
  - AStonesThrow 2y ago
    > If the workforce is fired every time a new party comes into power What if the workforce is never fired, and government jobs acquire a reputation for ingrained incompetence, promotion from within for the unqualified, and a management so frustrated by their inability to turn over poorly-performing workers that nearly nothing productive gets done anymore? What if the workforce is full of appointments by the Old-Boy network, and jobs are personal favors or quid pro quo rather than based on qualifications or education? What about that sort of workforce?
    - const_cast 2y ago
      [dead]
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      What if we just arrested every person who broke every tiny archaic law we can think of? What if we run out of prisons and decide to outsource them to foreign counties? What about this sort of criminal system? I don't know why we are talking in such extreme what ifs. If you really think the government let's anyone with a pulse in you never applied for a government position. At least not one in a medium-large city. You have a lot of test taking and a process that can take months. Maybe even longer if you need clearance (at that point it's best to go private sector since they'll get you cleared while you work on non-xlearajce stuff). Yes, there is corruption and nepotism. Can you name a single industry where there isn't? How about we setup more channels to report and hold it accountable instead of using it to dismiss the concept of a government job? We'd all win there.
- autoexec 2y ago
  > Do we actually want "I just want a stable job" people being a significant part of the federal governments workforce? Yes. People looking for a stable job put down roots and grow communities. They gain deep knowledge of the systems and people they work with, and they gain valuable wisdom from experience. I have no idea why you wouldn't want people looking for a stable job at your company. Why would you want an employee who was looking to work at a place where they were likely to be fired for no reason at any moment and couldn't expect any of their co-workers to still be there tomorrow?
  - fastball 2y ago
    The comment I replied to was holding out the federal government as an especially stable employer, as compared to the private sector. Sure, you don't want a reputation for firing people a week after you hired them, but A. that is not what is happening here B. not doing that doesn't mean it is actually desireable for the federal government to be seen as a more stable alternative to the private sector. Said another way: any company can have the reputation GC claims the federal government does, but most don't. Why is that?
    - autoexec 2y ago
      Because most companies don't care about their employees. Many of America's largest private employers like Amazon and Walmart have extremely high turnover, so it's no wonder people are looking for a more stable employer. Government workers are far more likely to be unionized which means they can get better working conditions and actual pensions. Government workers can take far more pride in being public servants than they would peeing in a bottle for amazon. It's no surprise there is less turnover. Any company could have a reputation for treating employees so well that people want to work there and stick around until they retire, but they usually don't because screwing over their employees makes them more money. Governments are freed from having to prioritize maximizing profits at the cost of everything else.
      - fastball 2y ago
        > Government workers can take far more pride in being public servants than they would peeing in a bottle for amazon. It's no surprise there is less turnover. See, this is where you're losing me. One the one hand you are arguing that part of what makes working for the government desirable is the job itself / the work being done (which sounds good to me), but then you are immediately conflating that with a reputation for being a "stable employer" (read: not firing people when maybe you should), which is not how I want my tax dollars to be used. I don't want the federal government to be a jobs program that keeps people on payroll just because it "isn't worried about profits". Profits aren't my concern, spending is, and the federal government should absolutely be worried about spending, because money doesn't grow on trees. I want the federal government to be exactly as big as it needs to be in order to deliver on the democratically decided goals of the American people. If we can't attract the right talent to run the government, we should either scale back our federal ambitions or we should pay more up front.
- benterix 2y ago
  Maybe a similar process occurred in Trump's head when he approved Musks cleansings. The weak point of this attitude is that those folks had a job with crappy pay but at least some stability, now they have none, so good luck finding people desperate enough to work for the government.
- bdhcuidbebe 2y ago
  > Do we actually want "I just want a stable job" people being a significant part of the federal governments workforce? Yes, absolutely.
- hollerith 2y ago
  >Do we actually want "I just want a stable job" people being a significant part of the federal governments workforce? Yes we do. Software development is unusual in that if a coder's mind goes off the rails and he starts committing bad code, the organization can easily use `git reset` to revert his changes. Most jobs aren't like that. For example, on the factory floor, if a machine operator gets too creative, inspired or enthusiastic about the work, people tend to start losing limbs. And the managers of the factory floor are keenly aware of that, which is why passion is not a quality they want in their machine operators and neither is wanting to change the world.
- razakel 2y ago
  Governments are not startups. Boring and predictable is what the public and the markets want.
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  We had federal employee turn over every political cycle. It was horrible to the point the two parties got together and created the Federal Civil Service concept so that positions would have stability.
dmurray 2y ago
The saved money and the payroll for new money are both in dollars per year, not one-time costs. So the additional premium needs to be 10%, not 5%, to erase the benefits, and it doesn't matter how many years you look at. (I'm ignoring one-time costs like severance pay and signing/relocation bonuses which I don't think were the point of your message, and also the elasticity effect where you can pay existing workers the same even if it costs more to hire new ones. And I agree with your point in general that this is not a sensible way to save money, I just think your numbers are wrong).
benterix 2y ago
> Also, it's completely destroying an incredibly valuable asset: The reputation of being a stable long-term employer! (This is possibly their corrupt intent.) Yeah but what's the plan? They already have crappy pay and now it gets unstable - who'd want to work for the government? Only desperates.
- Doxin 2y ago
  > who'd want to work for the government? No one and I think that's the point. The current administration seems hell-bent on making corporations able to do whatever they please. Destroying government institutions is probably a good way to go about achieving that.
const_cast 2y ago
Nobody considers long term damage, particularly in a business sense. If you look at the history of American company that have failed or are currently failing, there is one common denominator: short-term decision making. As soon as business have even an ounce of success, they immediately give up on and start optimizing for the now, not the tomorrow. Take a look at Tesla. They invested a lot in the early days of their company and it paid off heavily. But as soon as they saw market success, they took a page from GM. Stop innovating immediately, start cutting quality. You’re safe now, no need to be competitive. No need to think about the future, it’s secured. But it’s not secured, and this ambivalence is their downfall. Smarter, long-term thinking business will run Tesla into the ground, as history has shown with GM.

by Terr_ 2y ago

vintermann 2y ago

If a corporation did this, we'd rightly accuse them of pumping their quarterly numbers at the expense of long-term viability.

kelnos 2y ago

> This is possibly their corrupt intent. Trump's OMB head has said as much: they want to demoralize the federal workforce and make them dread going to work every day. They want to give the federal government the reputation of being a bad, undesirable, unstable place to work. This is all no accident.

fastball 2y ago

Do we actually want "I just want a stable job" people being a significant part of the federal governments workforce? I generally wouldn't want those people to work for my company, so not sure why I'd want them to work in my government.

flir 2y ago
> Money is not the point of a government.
- fastball 2y ago
  Yes, exactly. People who just want a stable job are in it for the (stable) money.
  - flir 2y ago
    You just made an argument about government based on a comparison with the private sector, and now you're agreeing that government and the private secctor have fundamentally different goals. Got to admit, I'm a bit lost.
    - fastball 2y ago
      The argument wasn't based on a comparison to the private sector. The argument is based on the fact that I prefer people who passionate about their jobs vs people who just want a stable paycheck. However the argument also applies to the private sector, which is why I mentioned it.
      - mulmen 2y ago
        Have you considered that government employees accept less pay because they are passionate?
        fastball 2y ago
        So this begs the question why we need "stable employment" as a hallmark of the government sector in order to attract talent.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        ModernMech 2y ago
        Hard to be passionate about a job that might not be there tomorrow.
        2y ago
HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
Do you want to attract talent or people who take anything they can get? People who know what they're worth aren't going to waste investing their time into an employer who can't even guarantee that they'll still have a job next week. Mundane government employees are some of the most dedicated workers I've met. There's a deep array of jobs that aren't flashy but are foundational and depend on staff who can build up long institutional knowledge.
- fastball 2y ago
  > Mundane government employees are some of the most dedicated workers I've met And you think the reason they are dedicated is because they mostly care about having a "stable job"?
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    Thars like saying "the reason the best employees are good is that they are paid the most money". You're putting the cart ahead of the horse here. They are dedicated partially because they can spend their time focused on doing their job and not grinding leet code looking for the next pay bump in 2 years. Those pay scales are very strict in government, and very predictable.
loktarogar 2y ago
> Do we actually want "I just want a stable job" people being a significant part of the federal governments workforce? Yes, if you can't offer someone market rates then you need to offer them other things to fill that void. Stability is one of them, and is actually a good thing in government, when politics is so volatile. If the workforce is fired every time a new party comes into power, you don't have a stable government. Working with those constraints, you _can_ improve things, by building better systems and processes, that better use the resources you have. That's far better long term, but it's not as fast and does not generate headlines for DOGE.
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  > If the workforce is fired every time a new party comes into power What if the workforce is never fired, and government jobs acquire a reputation for ingrained incompetence, promotion from within for the unqualified, and a management so frustrated by their inability to turn over poorly-performing workers that nearly nothing productive gets done anymore? What if the workforce is full of appointments by the Old-Boy network, and jobs are personal favors or quid pro quo rather than based on qualifications or education? What about that sort of workforce?
  - const_cast 2y ago
    [dead]
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    What if we just arrested every person who broke every tiny archaic law we can think of? What if we run out of prisons and decide to outsource them to foreign counties? What about this sort of criminal system? I don't know why we are talking in such extreme what ifs. If you really think the government let's anyone with a pulse in you never applied for a government position. At least not one in a medium-large city. You have a lot of test taking and a process that can take months. Maybe even longer if you need clearance (at that point it's best to go private sector since they'll get you cleared while you work on non-xlearajce stuff). Yes, there is corruption and nepotism. Can you name a single industry where there isn't? How about we setup more channels to report and hold it accountable instead of using it to dismiss the concept of a government job? We'd all win there.
autoexec 2y ago
> Do we actually want "I just want a stable job" people being a significant part of the federal governments workforce? Yes. People looking for a stable job put down roots and grow communities. They gain deep knowledge of the systems and people they work with, and they gain valuable wisdom from experience. I have no idea why you wouldn't want people looking for a stable job at your company. Why would you want an employee who was looking to work at a place where they were likely to be fired for no reason at any moment and couldn't expect any of their co-workers to still be there tomorrow?
- fastball 2y ago
  The comment I replied to was holding out the federal government as an especially stable employer, as compared to the private sector. Sure, you don't want a reputation for firing people a week after you hired them, but A. that is not what is happening here B. not doing that doesn't mean it is actually desireable for the federal government to be seen as a more stable alternative to the private sector. Said another way: any company can have the reputation GC claims the federal government does, but most don't. Why is that?
  - autoexec 2y ago
    Because most companies don't care about their employees. Many of America's largest private employers like Amazon and Walmart have extremely high turnover, so it's no wonder people are looking for a more stable employer. Government workers are far more likely to be unionized which means they can get better working conditions and actual pensions. Government workers can take far more pride in being public servants than they would peeing in a bottle for amazon. It's no surprise there is less turnover. Any company could have a reputation for treating employees so well that people want to work there and stick around until they retire, but they usually don't because screwing over their employees makes them more money. Governments are freed from having to prioritize maximizing profits at the cost of everything else.
    - fastball 2y ago
      > Government workers can take far more pride in being public servants than they would peeing in a bottle for amazon. It's no surprise there is less turnover. See, this is where you're losing me. One the one hand you are arguing that part of what makes working for the government desirable is the job itself / the work being done (which sounds good to me), but then you are immediately conflating that with a reputation for being a "stable employer" (read: not firing people when maybe you should), which is not how I want my tax dollars to be used. I don't want the federal government to be a jobs program that keeps people on payroll just because it "isn't worried about profits". Profits aren't my concern, spending is, and the federal government should absolutely be worried about spending, because money doesn't grow on trees. I want the federal government to be exactly as big as it needs to be in order to deliver on the democratically decided goals of the American people. If we can't attract the right talent to run the government, we should either scale back our federal ambitions or we should pay more up front.
benterix 2y ago
Maybe a similar process occurred in Trump's head when he approved Musks cleansings. The weak point of this attitude is that those folks had a job with crappy pay but at least some stability, now they have none, so good luck finding people desperate enough to work for the government.
bdhcuidbebe 2y ago
> Do we actually want "I just want a stable job" people being a significant part of the federal governments workforce? Yes, absolutely.
hollerith 2y ago
>Do we actually want "I just want a stable job" people being a significant part of the federal governments workforce? Yes we do. Software development is unusual in that if a coder's mind goes off the rails and he starts committing bad code, the organization can easily use `git reset` to revert his changes. Most jobs aren't like that. For example, on the factory floor, if a machine operator gets too creative, inspired or enthusiastic about the work, people tend to start losing limbs. And the managers of the factory floor are keenly aware of that, which is why passion is not a quality they want in their machine operators and neither is wanting to change the world.
razakel 2y ago
Governments are not startups. Boring and predictable is what the public and the markets want.
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
We had federal employee turn over every political cycle. It was horrible to the point the two parties got together and created the Federal Civil Service concept so that positions would have stability.

dmurray 2y ago

The saved money and the payroll for new money are both in dollars per year, not one-time costs. So the additional premium needs to be 10%, not 5%, to erase the benefits, and it doesn't matter how many years you look at. (I'm ignoring one-time costs like severance pay and signing/relocation bonuses which I don't think were the point of your message, and also the elasticity effect where you can pay existing workers the same even if it costs more to hire new ones. And I agree with your point in general that this is not a sensible way to save money, I just think your numbers are wrong).

benterix 2y ago

> Also, it's completely destroying an incredibly valuable asset: The reputation of being a stable long-term employer! (This is possibly their corrupt intent.) Yeah but what's the plan? They already have crappy pay and now it gets unstable - who'd want to work for the government? Only desperates.

Doxin 2y ago
> who'd want to work for the government? No one and I think that's the point. The current administration seems hell-bent on making corporations able to do whatever they please. Destroying government institutions is probably a good way to go about achieving that.

const_cast 2y ago

Nobody considers long term damage, particularly in a business sense. If you look at the history of American company that have failed or are currently failing, there is one common denominator: short-term decision making. As soon as business have even an ounce of success, they immediately give up on and start optimizing for the now, not the tomorrow. Take a look at Tesla. They invested a lot in the early days of their company and it paid off heavily. But as soon as they saw market success, they took a page from GM. Stop innovating immediately, start cutting quality. You’re safe now, no need to be competitive. No need to think about the future, it’s secured. But it’s not secured, and this ambivalence is their downfall. Smarter, long-term thinking business will run Tesla into the ground, as history has shown with GM.