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4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

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Re: 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

#361

Post by aerostable_slug »

Aurornis wrote: post #258
eagerpace wrote: post #125

I’m trying to think how I feel about this. I’ve been obsessed with space for a long time, remember traveling to see my first rocket launch of the shuttle in 2006. Follow the commercial development closely since then. Their science missions are inspiring, but not as inspiring as they ought to be. NASA needs an overhaul. This isn’t how I would do it, but that’s not how things work in the real world. SLS is the elephant…

> It’s a jobs program limping along decades old technology when the commercial options are better. I’ve worked with a few former NASA employees now. They all said the same thing: There were some amazing, passionate people at NASA but they were all surrounded by people who were only there to attend meetings and collect paychecks. Getting anything done was impossible because you had to navigate webs of org structure an…

I share your experience.

The national labs are also a lot like this.

Re: 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

#362

Post by gorbachev »

timeon wrote: post #191
spwa4 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a LOT of people have been left out of economic progress in Europe especially, and in the US. They want, even need change, and Trump came with a "believable" story for change. As in, more change than a president Harris would have delivered. Unless we get economic progress more equally spread this will get worse and worse.

Why it will get worse? They got what they voted for.

The issue is that what they voted for isn't going to improve anything in their personal circumstances. Not only because what's happening doesn't actually fix any of the issues, but even worse, it's being used to siphon money to private hands friendly with Trump.

There are no good outcomes until people stop voting for these grifters and con men.

Re: 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

#363

Post by lupusreal »

Pfhortune wrote: post #336
DSingularity wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What do you propose to replace those institutions? The needs thereof do not go away. For-profits in the private sector? Are they going to be feeding Gazans? You don’t fix a house’s plumbing by detonating a bomb under the foundation.

Privatizing government institutions won't do anything to help, but it is nonetheless the case that the American government has a large amount of responsibility for what's going on. The reason why American companies cannot simply sell food to Gaza is because the government of Israel controls access to Gaza and the government of America supports them in this.

Without the American government's various anti-BDS laws, it would be much easier for American organizations to apply pressure to Israel to stop their genocide. Furthermore, without the American government providing support for Israel, they'd be in a much tighter spot and would face significantly stronger incentives to stop.

Re: 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

#364

Post by OrvalWintermute »

poemxo wrote: post #341
samrus wrote: post #153

I understand wanting to make the organization more efficient, but i don't think this is what's happening here. I think this is the classic republican strat of gutting federal agencies, pointing to the inefficiencies caused by the loss of institutional knowledge, and using that as an excuse to privatize to their friends. The fact that Elon's DOGE suggested these cuts lines up

This makes sense. A GS doesn't earn that much, but if they resign and go work for SpaceX and get paid as a contractor, doesn't this just cost the taxpayer more?

The normal formula we use is a range from 1.8x to 2.4x for fully loaded contractor labor rates based on contractor salary.

I presume we’ll be paying up to $576,000 for a senior engineer (GS15) equivalent from SpaceX

Re: 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

#365

Post by treis »

jzb wrote: post #303
noobermin wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not worth making this point anymore. Bannon et al have been explicit for decades now they want to destroy the federal government. It's ideological, that's it quite simply. All these discussions about efficiency, even more so the debt given they just blew up the debt to never before seen levels just shows that sincerity is not deserved when talking to Rs.

It is worth making the point: a lot of people simply don’t see it (yet?) for what it is and still support the people doing it.

Because this is more like dialing it back to pre-covid:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES9091000001

Unfortunately the two choices are expansion and haphazard reduction

Re: 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

#366

Post by eagerpace »

cma wrote: post #312
eagerpace wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hesitated posting this because my very moderate east coast American perspective seems to be appreciated less and less here. I posted this on a lazy Sunday morning and it got a lot of positive initial comments and discussion. Then a few hours later it turned negative. Science is great but launch vehicle innovation is where the problem is so that’s why I focused on SLS. We could easily have 100 JWSTs today if somethi…

Can you expand on what you mean by token uses? Wasn't Saturn V used for golf on the moon?

I’m speaking of SLS. It’s a solution in search of a problem.

Re: 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

#367

Post by giantg2 »

nine_zeros wrote: post #340
giantg2 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and they can't even fill the positions they have under that cap. '“Whether the root cause is a lack of money, that’s still to be determined. Or whether it’s how we’re spending the money that’s already appropriated,” Boliek said.' From your article.

> Yes, and they can't even fill the positions they have under that cap. Yes, they can't even fill positions - that is how incompetent Republicans are.

"I saw they increased pay by 5%, authorized retention bonus, and are supposed to add about a 5% increase in the number of license workers." From the context.

You can also read the articles back in the context, including things like the audit where they are investing if it's that they don't get enough money or if they aren't spending it well. If you can make technological advancements that increase efficiency, then it's stupid to just throw more bodies at the problem. Studying the problem makes sense before political finger pointing.

They can't fill and retain the positions because of a number of factors, but in a large part the pay is about $45k/yr and people find better options. They had almost 25% vacancies after covid, likely due to the wage growth in many other low paying sectors.

Re: 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

#368

Post by mittensc »

LtWorf wrote: post #112
mittensc wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Italy and sweden are dictatorships now? The problem here is that anything becomes a dictatorship to you the second anyone you don't like is elected. edit: oh I see it's a newly created account for the purpose of trolling… silly me.

what do italy and sweden have to do with anything?, deflect again?

Also, who are you and why do you think I would care enough to troll you?

I'm answering to what you posted.

New accounts are for anonimity since you can't clean up history easily on hn if you doxx yourself... you might want to try that.

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