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20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

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Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#291

Post by dastbe »

djohnston wrote: post #239
scottyah wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They churn through employees fast and they usually exit through burnout (no offloading) and the people wanting to work there skew towards young people who don't know what they're doing. A lot of work gets delayed, dropped, etc and some bad suppliers even take advantage of that ("the last person said they'd do X"). I know it's en-vogue to hate on Elon companies, and a lot of people would love to hear that the World's…

It's remarkable that, for a bunch of young people who don't know what they're doing, they've completely decimated any competitors - both public and private.

all the other competitors are unserious and/or treating it as a money siphoning scheme. in particular, the public contractors siphoning money from the government and blue origin siphoning money from bezos.

It would be surprising if spacex wasn't just awful at paying things on time, as there's no reason they should have actual financial difficulties.

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#292

Post by ben_w »

robocat wrote: post #250
reaperducer wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't Twitter workers still trying to get their severances and they took the offer when Twitter actually had the money to pay. Considering that SpaceX is so far behind on its bills that dozens and dozens of companies in Texas have had to place liens against the company, my guess is that neither the Twitter people, nor the SpaceX people, nor the federal buyout people will ever see a dime. For some reason, links to st…

The article mentions $2.5MM liens which is drastically less than 1% of expenses of $1445MM ("[SpaceX] generated $55 million in profit on $1.5 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2023") It don't appear to be because SpaceX is having trouble paying. I would guess SpaceX are delaying payment as much as possible because it is cheap lending and because it's run as an extremely mercenary company. Their costs of…

While interesting, I don't see how it might make any difference to any federal workers' decisions?

Musk doesn't pay "because he can get away with it" isn't better or worse than "because there's a money shortage"; and in any case, the federal government being delinquent is a very different kind of catastrophe, as is it making promises it refuses to keep.

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#293

Post by toast0 »

numpad0 wrote: post #189

Not an American, but the reported resignation process of just sending arbitrary content email with subject "resign" to "hr@opm.gov" feels like the real aim is to collect emails and response time data to establish cluster system health metric to determine which nodes can be murdered safely. It's almost strange to me that this aspect, and stupidity of injecting non-compiling code to human mainframes collective that run…

> Not an American, but the reported resignation process of just sending arbitrary content email with subject "resign" to "hr@opm.gov" feels like the real aim is to collect emails and response time data to establish cluster system health metric to determine which nodes can be murdered safely.

Is that all it takes? Think they check DKIM and SPF?

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#295

Post by dghlsakjg »

robocat wrote: post #250
reaperducer wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't Twitter workers still trying to get their severances and they took the offer when Twitter actually had the money to pay. Considering that SpaceX is so far behind on its bills that dozens and dozens of companies in Texas have had to place liens against the company, my guess is that neither the Twitter people, nor the SpaceX people, nor the federal buyout people will ever see a dime. For some reason, links to st…

The article mentions $2.5MM liens which is drastically less than 1% of expenses of $1445MM ("[SpaceX] generated $55 million in profit on $1.5 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2023") It don't appear to be because SpaceX is having trouble paying. I would guess SpaceX are delaying payment as much as possible because it is cheap lending and because it's run as an extremely mercenary company. Their costs of…

Who give a shit what their revenue is. It tells me nothing about how they pay their vendors.

2.5mm in liens is just how much they have proveably shorted construction workers in Texas. It doesn't count other vendors doing work that isn't elegible for a lien, or how many workers got shorted, but it just wasn't enough to worry about.

If you were one of the 70+ businesses that held a lien against them, you would think differently.

> It don't appear to be because SpaceX is having trouble paying.

Having the cash to be paid out, and having the systems in place to pay your bills are two different things.

> I would guess SpaceX are delaying payment as much as possible because it is cheap lending and because it's run as an extremely mercenary company.

Violating the terms of your contract isn't cheap lending. It is fraud. The fact that they are getting away with it isn't a defense.

> Their costs of deliquent payment are likely below their lending costs. So optimally don't pay until the cost of deliquency exceeds lending costs (maybe ≈ junk bond rate per year).

Consistently and intentionally violating the terms of payment is, as noted above, fraud. They are getting away with, and they might continue to get away with it, but mercenary businesses getting away with crime is a bad thing.

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#296

Post by kfrzcode »

Shank wrote: post #15

I think the main issue for anyone wanting to take the offer is simply: this was never authorized by congress, so the money to pay people to September is questionable if it exists at best. Meanwhile, there's a government funding deadline on March 14, 2025. So there's a very real chance at this deal offering something closer to ~1 month of pay before it suddenly gets dropped due to budget negotiations. It would be an i…

The list of expenditures never authorized by Congress is staggering. You're spot-on about the authorization risk but it's just the latest in a perpetual issue. Congress has normalized funding "zombie programs" through autopilot appropriations rather than proper reauthorizations. Notable zombie programs include VA health, women's health spending, NIH research...

House Rule XXI (blocking unauthorized spending) gets waived a majority of the time. 50% of expired programs haven't been reviewed in 10+ years. 2023 alone saw $236B in improper payments.

So IMO while the buyout could get axed the pattern suggests they'll likely kick the can with another CR. Perhaps this administration will try to force a different tack, I suppose we'll see.

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#297

Post by [deleted] »

reaperducer wrote: post #192
Larrikin wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't Twitter workers still trying to get their severances and they took the offer when Twitter actually had the money to pay.

Aren't Twitter workers still trying to get their severances and they took the offer when Twitter actually had the money to pay. Considering that SpaceX is so far behind on its bills that dozens and dozens of companies in Texas have had to place liens against the company, my guess is that neither the Twitter people, nor the SpaceX people, nor the federal buyout people will ever see a dime. For some reason, links to st…

[deleted]

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#298

Post by ziddoap »

reverendsteveii wrote: post #235
ziddoap wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's only illegal if the law gets enforced. It is completely valid to say something is illegal and unenforced. Consider that non-enforcement doesn't suddenly make something legal. Enforcement can start at any time. (Will it? Who knows!)

But for purposes of debating what someone should do illegal and unenforced generates the same outcomes as legal and if we're only concerned about outcomes it's rational to treat them as equivalent.

>what someone should do illegal and unenforced generates the same outcomes as legal

Illegal + unenforced can generate the same outcome as legal. Or someone can get arrested later when the enforcement begins.

There's a big difference.

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#299

Post by ben_w »

renewiltord wrote: post #276
djohnston wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's remarkable that, for a bunch of young people who don't know what they're doing, they've completely decimated any competitors - both public and private.

These guys are idiots, fucking morons, and can’t get anything right. Somehow they’re also outcompeting us on everything. It isn’t clear why, but it must be because we are smarter.

China very effective at copying all the stuff SpaceX is doing despite this being deliberately made difficult by ITAR, suggests there's a lot of room for the American (and ESA) competitors to be structurally inept without needing Musk's staff to be demonstrating an unusual (as opposed to industry standard) degree of genius.

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#300

Post by Jtsummers »

Almondsetat wrote: post #287
ziddoap wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's only illegal if the law gets enforced. It is completely valid to say something is illegal and unenforced. Consider that non-enforcement doesn't suddenly make something legal. Enforcement can start at any time. (Will it? Who knows!)

How can something be illegal before any judge ruled on it?

> How can something be illegal before any judge ruled on it?

If someone steals from you and there's been no conviction, was a crime committed or not? You're still out whatever was taken, but by your logic no theft has occurred until after someone has been convicted of committing the crime.

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