Live data from Hacker News

US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

bbc.com

311–320 of 839 posts

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#311

If anything this whole DOGE scenario has illuminated is how confused and overconfident many in this country are. We are stumbling fools without systems and rules (organizations, institutions, laws, regulations, ...) to rely on. I wonder how much behavior like this stems from weak regulation in the US to begin with. It seems like it would reinforce the rise of agents that assume they can ask for forgiveness after acti…

[flagged]

> If you got your information from economic facts comparing Europe to USA this comment it hilarious

I don't understand what you mean. Can you please point me to resources to help inform me instead of pointing and laughing?

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#312
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and it's usually easily undone Because employees are automatons that have no feelings and won’t hold a grudge.

A grudge? They've just been put into a strong negotiating position, because now both parties acknowledge that these are key employees.

Yes good, and now because their value is appreciated they can be paid what they will be paid in the private sector, perhaps ~180k/y instead of 60k/y. So if you fire 2/3 of the workforce and pay those that remain what they are "worth", you have saved exactly what ?

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are wrong on two accounts. There are plenty of ways for getting rid of underperformers in a goverment organisation. I've seen entire teams being sacked, and also some of the hardest working people I know work for goverment organisations. Also, you cannot run the goverment like an startup that is always running on the edge. A majority of startups fail and that's fine, but one goverment organisation failing could c…

You're right it's not a startup. It's an organization in a town that voted 90%+ in favor of keeping their jobs, not being prosecuted, or some kind of "threat to democracy". You can't run an organization if the ground troops are resistant to executing the vision of leadership

Management is as much about convincing people you’re right as it is about getting your way always. Sometimes your subordinates are right and a good manager can still work with that situation. Even in a professional army like the US military there is disagreement and negotiation. This idea that we are all troops in some kind of militia who should blindly follow one person’s will is the bottom half of fascist ideology.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#314

The US is busy making the biggest own-goal one could imagine. From a position of world-wide dominance and respect, it is being destroyed at a rate that is too quick for most to even start to comprehend what the outcome of these actions will be. I suspect the consequences of these actions will be carried for the rest of our lives, as they are not so easy to turn back. Lots of other countries are standing by watching w…

[flagged]

I mean ignoring all the trade that will wither away to/from America and slowly be diverted to other countries instead (lost American money/opportunity), there's also lost tourism money from people not wanting to come spend their vacations there (lost money).

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the catastrophic things that were predicted form Brexit didn’t really happen though

Yes they did? Is this a joke? Or have you not been following the UK’s descent into poverty and irrelevance?

The UK’s GDP per capita trajectory diverged around the end of the Great Recession. That was before the Brexit vote (2016) and long before the actual Brexit (2020). France and Italy have been stuck in more or less the same doldrums since the same time: https://datacommons.org/place/country/FRA?utm_medium=explore...

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Brexit took the spot previously. Not sure if US can top it, but they sure as hell trying.

All the catastrophic things that were predicted form Brexit didn’t really happen though

It is significantly worse the most pundits predicted.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the catastrophic things that were predicted form Brexit didn’t really happen though

Yes they did? Is this a joke? Or have you not been following the UK’s descent into poverty and irrelevance?

I'm as anti-Brexit as they come, but it didn't change the UK's direction much. It's still the 2nd richest European state (with the 1st declining fast), the 3rd largest tech ecosystem worldwide, one of the premier military powers. Brexit wasn't great, or even good, but it's not disastrous.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You have clearly never worked in any sizeable workforce, and I can assure you your basic presumption that large private sector workforces does not have broken processes is childishly naive. The "problem" is you, making assumptions of waste where there is none to speak off, unless you can provide some actual data to back that up. The average federal employee earns about $60k/y, they are not there for the money. Firing…

I've worked in several large federal departments, and private sector companies that are even larger by headcount.

Trust me, basic performance management processes that exist in the private sector are almost entirely absent in the public sector.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#320

This is LITERALLY the twitter layoffs playing out again. They fired people who had credentials and other things they needed so had to hire them back. Everything else aside why repeat the same mistakes? Just go a little slower and give agencies time to compile accurate lists of necessary employees

Very similar to the story about the Supercharger network. Apparently the boss of the team was told to make layoffs, she did some but not enough to please Musk, so Musk in a face to face meeting demanded she make more. She said they couldn't without affecting delivery. Musk fired her. Then fired the team. Then hired the team back because she was correct. But not before lots of ongoing projects got stalled because cont…

In that case I'd say it seems to have proven effective for Musk multiple times now, so why stop now? In his experience, he can just keep shit-canning feds until something immediately bad happens - say he is sorry and give them a job back.

As others have already pointed out, the real damage is silent, has already been done, and will be suffered by generations to come while being able to blame others.

Post reply on HN