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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

#341

Post by joquarky »

hotsauceror wrote: post #208
mexicocitinluez wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, this thing called Covid hit. It was a pandemic, and because it was infectious, a large push to work remotely was made (both in private and public businesses). When employers realized that work was being done despite not being in the office, they started to shutter their offices (ya know, to save money). I can't believe I have to explain to another adult why offices after Covid don't look the same.

What an insulting and willfully obtuse answer, that does not address any of these perfectly reasonable questions. When you leave your house on vacation, do you rip the cords out of the outlets and pile them on the floor, and dismount all the TVs?

> What an insulting

Note that especially in this instance, offense was taken, not given

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

#342

Post by CapricornNoble »

zug_zug wrote: post #132
CapricornNoble wrote: post #70

Interesting that the CNN article makes no mention of how badly under-utilized government office spaces are. https://wolfstreet.com/2025/01/25/doge-seeks-to-shed-vast-am... “A recent report from Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa who chairs the Senate DOGE caucus, found that not one of the headquarters for any major agency or department in Washington is more than half full. GSA-owned buildings in Washington, D.C.…

Well a few thoughts. I feel like your question is trying to excuse reckless disregard (at best) as mere incompetence. I don't think if you sum up all the value on all the leases of wasted buildings it would be a drop in the bucket against the psychological damage (e.g. distrust in the system) being caused by this administration. Like unless it's more than 1% of the national budget (i.e. > 67 billion a year) then it i…

>I feel like your question is trying to excuse reckless disregard (at best) as mere incompetence.

Ehh, sometimes I'm really not sure how many of the sloppy decisions that are made are malicious, and how many are incompetent.

>Like unless it's more than 1% of the national budget (i.e. > 67 billion a year) then it isn't worth the chaos.

For people like Musk, chaos is a feature not a bug. Shaking a lot of low-value-add employees and processes out of their comfort zones is the point.

>And a competent administration that wanted to end leases really shouldn't have started RTO

I think the Scheme of Maneuver is:

Phase 1: Bring everyone into the otherwise-nearly-empty offices.

Phase 2: Figure out who is dead weight. Fire them.

Phase 3: Figure out what max occupancy should be after the fat has been cut from the workforce, and cut all unneeded office space.

Phase 4: Maybe allow some limited WFH (I'm not holding my breath on this one).

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

#343

Post by tatersolid »

dfxm12 wrote: post #236
bananapub wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he lied over and over during his campaign, e.g. telling people he had no idea what Project 2025 was and that he wasn't going to do any of it. voters are very very dumb for believing him, but he did lie.

I don't think voters are dumb. The more I talk to Trump voters to understand why they voted how they did, the more it becomes clear that they knew he was serious when campaigning on taking rights away from and making life harder for marginalized people in America, and this is what they voted for, everything else be damned.

Every Trump voter I know wanted exactly one thing: lower taxes. That’s it, at whatever cost. That’s the Republican base.

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

#344

Post by hotsauceror »

joquarky wrote: post #341
hotsauceror wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an insulting and willfully obtuse answer, that does not address any of these perfectly reasonable questions. When you leave your house on vacation, do you rip the cords out of the outlets and pile them on the floor, and dismount all the TVs?

> What an insulting Note that especially in this instance, offense was taken, not given

I'm not sure I follow you.

The comment was demeaning; offense was clearly intended, to belittle the GP's intelligence.

To call a statement that is intended to insult, "insulting", seems to be accurate? It was not intended to indicate offense on my part, but to chastise for unnecessary hostility. Maybe I'm reading your reply wrong, though.

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

#345

Post by Freedom2 »

hedora wrote: post #258
mystifyingpoi wrote: post #133

> (...) returned to ethernet cords in piles around the floor, random wires sticking out of walls, and motion-sensor lights that weren’t working correctly I don't understand that part, maybe I'm missing something - what happened there? Why would the abandoned workplace not look exactly the same as they left it? Where did the ethernet cords appear from? Someone stole TVs from the walls?

The federal government is generally pretty efficient. They probably sold off surplus equipment. They definitely have been consolidating office space. It could be that the remaining leases were cheaper to keep than buy out, or that selling the buildings didn’t make sense. Regardless, there’s no reason for them to hire facilities people to maintain vacant space. Leaving furniture in those places would attract vermin, r…

> The federal government is generally pretty efficient.

Then either Musk and Trump are lying about needing to focus on government efficiency, or some of the brightest and most brilliant minds that the American people willingly voted for are wrong.

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

#346

Post by kept3k »

alabastervlog wrote: post #24
kept3k wrote: post #13

[flagged]

An organization allegedly about reducing waste is creating it instead, by arbitrarily forcing a tight timeline and using heavy, specific, and inflexible top-down mandates that don’t let those closer to the work use the information they have (say, that their offices aren’t ready to work in). Spending freezes, blanket firing of tons of provisional workers (fun fact: the recently-promoted are also provisional, this does…

I can’t believe my original comment has been flagged. Was not trying to start an argument, just my 2 cents.

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

#347

Post by kept3k »

timr wrote: post #143
alabastervlog wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An organization allegedly about reducing waste is creating it instead, by arbitrarily forcing a tight timeline and using heavy, specific, and inflexible top-down mandates that don’t let those closer to the work use the information they have (say, that their offices aren’t ready to work in). Spending freezes, blanket firing of tons of provisional workers (fun fact: the recently-promoted are also provisional, this does…

> An organization allegedly about reducing waste is creating it instead The point you missed in the parent comment was that this is temporary . I don't have a strong opinion on the matter, but if the way we discover that government offices were sitting vacant for years (i.e. big waste) is by having people return to them and be unproductive for a few days (i.e. small waste), then the trade will be worth it. I doubt an…

I can’t believe my original comment has been flagged. Thanks for being collaborative with my comment.

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

#348

Post by dfxm12 »

tatersolid wrote: post #343
dfxm12 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think voters are dumb. The more I talk to Trump voters to understand why they voted how they did, the more it becomes clear that they knew he was serious when campaigning on taking rights away from and making life harder for marginalized people in America, and this is what they voted for, everything else be damned.

Every Trump voter I know wanted exactly one thing: lower taxes. That’s it, at whatever cost. That’s the Republican base.

In some cases, like some small business owners, people living in some states with higher than average taxes, people paid more in taxes during his first term, due to his tax plan limiting deductions. Additionally, the next administration froze tax increases for people making under $400k. Harris campaigned on this as well.

Again, I don't think people are stupid. I do think they'll say one some things in mixed company to hide their racism.

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

#349

Post by EasyMark »

SpaceL10n wrote: post #31
Havoc wrote: post #9

This must be the promised efficiency

It's part of the promised pain. Trump promised us some pain. He said it was necessary before things can get better.

The problem is it's all pain and no reward or even minor titillation other tha MAGAs enjoying watching the house burn down while they're in it.

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

#350

Post by acdha »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #117
piva00 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can't be only attributed to ignorance, you see many comments here on Hacker News defending it with vitriol I had never experienced on this forum even during Trump's 1st presidency. Somehow Americans have really bought into it, the lies, the disinformation, the destruction. I cannot understand, the moving targets shift (CRT, immigration, DEI, cancel culture, wokeness, whatever is next) so it isn't about them whatso…

We know that Russia has run a very long, very extensive disinformation campaign against the west. It might be expected that that extends to HN. Not everything posted here is someone's actual opinion. Some of it is deliberate propaganda and attempts to manipulate. That's hard to accept, given what HN was once. The difference between ten years ago and last year was noticeable; the difference between last year and this…

Russian propaganda isn’t magic: rather, the people crafting it are very adept at finding and exploiting existing fault lines and the areas where the major American media and tech companies can be exploited to amplify a message. They aren’t doing anything which, say, Rush Limbaugh wasn’t doing in the pre-Internet era, and it’s not like they aren’t just part of the larger disinformation sphere.

What they did was see the way 9/11 reset what was allowed in mainstream American discourse, and that as conservatives moved into a tightly-managed bubble they were also willing to give up the idea of verifiable facts in favor of what felt right. That created a big weakness for a patient adversary as they didn’t need to try to get people to trust, say, RT but rather pick which existing voices to quietly support or try seeding ideas to.

I think it’s better to treat them like a catalyst or the accelerant on a fire where they didn’t start it but they both made it worse and might not have much control over it at this point.

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