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

cnn.com

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

#321

Post by alabastervlog »

timr wrote: post #318
alabastervlog wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are clearly lots of ways to avoid this kind of waste, but all of them go back for years, and were not done. What waste? The offices? Filling them doesn't reduce the waste. No, the waste is lost hours of productivity, and chaos making these offices less efficient. You solve that by rolling this out very differently. The waste I'm talking about is entirely avoidable and 100% DOGE's fault. [EDIT] > where someone…

You're focusing on the trees and missing the forest. Please go back and re-read my original comment. Small waste: the few hours/days of lost productivity while offices are re-opened. Big waste: the empty offices that were sitting there while nobody was using them, for years. Maybe they could have avoided the small waste by being more careful and methodical, or maybe that would have taken 10x longer. I don't know, and…

> Big waste: the empty offices that were sitting there while nobody was using them, for years.

Occupied offices cost more.

[EDIT]

Let me put it this way:

I have two cars. I don't need two. I need one. I never use one of them.

You're telling me I can make that wasted second car non-waste by towing it everywhere with the first one.

No, that increases costs. Getting rid of the car would reduce waste.

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

#322

Post by philistine »

ffsm8 wrote: post #287
no_wizard wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advanced is doing some heavy lifting. The US military is far a cut above everything else, in terms of tactical readiness, sheer firepower and especially effective size. We outspend any other nation - China included of which we spend an estimated 2.5 times more than - and we have been in that lead position for decades, not just years. While yes, US forces haven’t squared off against conventional militaries of any note…

I agree with the spirit of your statement, I truly believe that the US military is the by far most advanced and well equipped force on earth. Nonetheless, I feel the need to point out that it's budget is a terrible indicator for that. I'm not even american and have heard just how massively overcharged everything is that's sold to the US military. It's entirely possible that i.e. China, that can produce their military…

Doesn't square with any sort of real data we have. The West have better, and more, of everything. For crissakes, the Germans have artillery that fires while driving full speed with the same precision as any other nation's artillery.

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

#323

Post by mirekrusin »

pseudalopex wrote: post #311
mirekrusin wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My argument is around cutting workforce and requirement to be present in the office in context of efficency in general. Sentiment of people predicting total failure back then feels like flashback now.

I saw few predictions of rapid collapse. Many predictions of slow or delayed reductions in revenue, active users, content quality, service quality, and ability to deliver new features. abeppu's argument was efficiency and health are not the same.

One off, politically driven reductions in advertisers and user groups is not caused by unhandled load from reduced workforce or implications of work from office policy.

Despite this out migration, so far their health looks exceptionally good. They're running at 20% of original workforce (!).

Just think about it (and I really mean it - taking aside personal dislikes, political views etc) – you have a company, you cut 80% of workforce and it still seems to work very well. This is insane.

It's also not one off example - he is well known for speedrun stunts (ie. e2e completion of colossus supercomputer in memphis in 4 months >).

The argument is – can you do something similar with government as well? As a body that is notorious for inefficiency it seems plausible the answer is yes.

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

#324

Post by agumonkey »

sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #2

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.

Hey, I thought this was a french right thing only, but somehow it's global tradition.

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

#325

Post by [deleted] »

philistine wrote: post #322
ffsm8 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the spirit of your statement, I truly believe that the US military is the by far most advanced and well equipped force on earth. Nonetheless, I feel the need to point out that it's budget is a terrible indicator for that. I'm not even american and have heard just how massively overcharged everything is that's sold to the US military. It's entirely possible that i.e. China, that can produce their military…

Doesn't square with any sort of real data we have. The West have better, and more, of everything. For crissakes, the Germans have artillery that fires while driving full speed with the same precision as any other nation's artillery.

[deleted]

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

#326

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ben_w wrote: post #296
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Destroy a Starship on the pad? Possible. Destroy a Starship during ascent? That's much harder. There are two problems: You have to have enough greater acceleration that you can catch it, and you have to have good enough targeting (and maneuverability) to actually hit it. Those are highly non-trivial problems.

You don't have to catch it from behind, just put yourself in it's path and let Starship's own kinetic energy cause the damage with your own velocity being nearly stationary vs the ground at the time. Aiming is one of the easier things: huge target, multi-gigwatt heat signiature.

> Aiming is one of the easier things: huge target, multi-gigwatt heat signiature

You’re describing boost-stage missile intercept. It’s incredibly hard.

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

#327

Post by philistine »

ljm wrote: post #293
hnthrow90348765 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Russia is destabilizing the US and winning which is why I think we're acting like that. And it seems all of our military and counterintelligence capabilities can't stop it. Too much offense, not enough defense, it seems.

To say that Russia is destabilising the US basically takes the agency of the US out of the equation. Makes the US (the so-called greatest country in the world, so-called leaders of the free world) unaccountable for its own actions. The US is destabilising itself with the help of Russia.

Bingo. Most americans are at the phase where they are trying to absolve themselves of necessary responsibility.

I don't have to pick up a sign to try and defend my country, it's Russia's fault.

I don't have to fight against my president to preserve democracy, it's Russia's fault.

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

#328

Post by dfxm12 »

hedora wrote: post #226
inetknght wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> checks and balances part no longer exists It honestly hasn't existed for decades.

States rights might save us. If I was a governor of a blue state, I’d be strongly encouraging laid off government workers to work for my state. I’d also be working to eliminate the trade deficit (including federal taxes and spending) with rest of the US. Why subsidize this crap if it’s not going to lead to economic prosperity, security, or even pretending the constitution still exists?

"States rights" is not going to save us. Conservative think tanks push "state rights" so hard because they know they can get overrepresented in state government via gerrymandering/voter suppression. Anything that slips through the cracks after that can be appealed to a higher court, up to SCOTUS, which they have made sure is full of judges sympathetic to them. A recent example would be SCOTUS overturning the Chevron doctrine and its possible effects on California's environmental rules.

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

#329

Post by no_wizard »

ffsm8 wrote: post #287
no_wizard wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advanced is doing some heavy lifting. The US military is far a cut above everything else, in terms of tactical readiness, sheer firepower and especially effective size. We outspend any other nation - China included of which we spend an estimated 2.5 times more than - and we have been in that lead position for decades, not just years. While yes, US forces haven’t squared off against conventional militaries of any note…

I agree with the spirit of your statement, I truly believe that the US military is the by far most advanced and well equipped force on earth. Nonetheless, I feel the need to point out that it's budget is a terrible indicator for that. I'm not even american and have heard just how massively overcharged everything is that's sold to the US military. It's entirely possible that i.e. China, that can produce their military…

As the comment from phillistine notes this doesn’t square with known data and I have no evidence to the contrary.

To which I want to add, that even though the DoD modes have its own (and worth addressing) budget process issues they’re at least largely getting what they are paying for in most circumstances as well as continuing to fund R&D at a fairly robust clip.

In the area of defense R&D in particular that large gap in budgetary spending will matter a lot more than building any “well known” military equipment as the next generation will come online faster than other nations can keep up without ramping their own spending

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

#330

Post by no_wizard »

gloosx wrote: post #217
hnthrow90348765 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to be difficult to get more of a smoking gun than a plan to drop sanctions and ceasing offensive cyber operations against Russia, as well as the US's lopsided Ukrainian peace deal and pulling financial support for Ukraine. Russia has no military advantage against ours, so there is no reason to placate them due to a threat of war (nukes excluded here, unless Russia has rapidly outpaced us). The only thing t…

>Russia has no military advantage against ours Recent battle experience is kind of an advantage. Russia is running a full-scale war against US and NATO weaponry in Ukraine for three years, studying it and refining its tactics. What was the last battle for USA? Houthis in Yemen? Few airstrikes and limited engagements. It is very naive to believe Putin doesn’t want to cripple the US economy or that war is not a real th…

And the Russians had to get re-enforcement from North Korea to bolster the bodies they’re losing to a significantly smaller force.

Western military tactics are still working well against Russian commanders, but they being simply larger population wise, can if they’re willing, win a war of attrition simply because the Ukraine doesn’t have the bodies or internal resources to fight forever. It’s the same strategy general Grant used to decisively win the US civil war

Putin really waited out the US election. For reasons I can’t seem to grok Trump wants to ally with the world’s dictators. He’s proven himself a reliable ally to Putin at this point.

Had Trump lost the election I imagine we would see Russia seriously considering or even starting its withdrawal from the conflict.

Back to the military bit again: there is no way the war in the Ukraine is showing anything other than how vulnerable and poorly aged the equipment of the Russian military is and how their tactics have not improved much if any since the 1980s

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