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

bbc.com

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

#661

Post by johnnyanmac »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #7
sour-taste wrote: post #2

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

Problem is, it’s not backfired - the example you cited “worked”, because it rapidly identified key personnel without weeks or months of subjective analysis and political posturing by workers and their supervisors. I think in federal government the risks are much higher, and Musk is being an idiot by exposing the America public to those risks, but the feedback loop for him on these previous experiments has been positi…

"works" implies that they are able to a) find those personnel and b) win them back over. It seems like they shokingly cannot do either.

It's also still weird because a lot of the firings focused on probationary workers.Very few would prove themselves in a year, so they did have to defer to key personell in he end to figure out "hey, he needed those people". Except he may not get those worers back.

> but the feedback loop for him on these previous experiments has been positive, not negative.

Sure, positve for his ego. He didn't care about recovering the supercharger conractors, he didn't care about repairing his adverts' relationships on Twitter and even threatened to sue as if they are obligated to advertise on his plaform. Call me treachorous but I don't think he really cares about making an efficient government. He's just funding his tax cuts.

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

#662

Post by steve_adams_86 »

tialaramex wrote: post #554
atq2119 wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Half the people in the country either a) want to watch everything burn, because the system has served them poorly for too long I believe this as well, but it still baffles me. Don't people have a sense that things can always get worse?

Nope. "Nothing could be worse than this" is really common even though it's a complete failure of imagination.

Absolutely. In part it’s a privilege to believe this. Many of us have had such remarkably and almost impossibly easy lives.

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

#663

Post by johnnyanmac »

cloverich wrote: post #573
TheJoeMan wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Scream test is very valuable for time efficiency, in general. In this application though, I think they’re realizing sometimes it’s difficult to reverse, such as firing the new blood who just moved to DC and have been there only a year… like I would feel so abused, why go back?

If they tell you it was a scream test, and it turns out your team was actually pretty important and also gives you a raise, you might. Especially if you have nothing else lined up.

Yeah that's the thing, the government can't unilaterally give raises like that. reason #20 this was a horrible move.

>Especially if you have nothing else lined up.

Sadly, yes. I do find the irony here that the FEDS said the economy was recovering and Trump promised to fix inflation and make jobs. Then he's taking advantsge of the bad market to force people he abused back.

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

#664

Post by Spooky23 »

bbor wrote: post #272
ty6853 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feds consumed It's hard to take these apocalyptic premonitions about federal government reduction seriously.

…youre saying that life was good from 1870-1910? Reconstruction and the gilded age?? I mean, there was technological and medical improvements, sure, and continued urbanization. But that’s… those are some of our nations most shameful, inequal, racist years in its entire history. The federal government as it exists now was just getting started after we realized we needed it thanks to the civil war, and many local democ…

Many are very much in favor of cutting these services.

As President Musk said, “that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity”

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

#665

Post by johnnyanmac »

derangedHorse wrote: post #190
itronitron wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> federal employees are much more likely to return Not necessarily. It's generally understood that federal employees accept a lower salary in exchange for career stability. If a career as a federal employee now has higher risk then at least some people will be expecting a higher salary.

I think that incentive is part of the problem. Federal employees should get paid more with a reasonable expectation of being fired. The amount of people I know in government positions who give 0 consideration to the quality of their work because they know they won’t be fired astounds me.

They don't get paid more because the government is not a profit center. It gets money from the citizens and then appropriates those funds. raises and promotions need to be a strict process because all government workers have public salaries. They can probably pay a little more, but not anything close to competitive.

>The amount of people I know in government positions who give 0 consideration to the quality of their work because they know they won’t be fired astounds me.

blame the incentive structure, not the players. Government being efficient and saving money results in less budget next time. They are punished for their improvement. If Musk wanted governent efficiency, that's the angle to approach. Protecting against lower budgets after a high performance review would do wonders.

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

#666

Post by johnnyanmac »

roenxi wrote: post #233
someothherguyy wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is firing large amounts of people on a whim going to solve the problem of people not caring about their work? From what it sounds like (w.r.t. Agenda 47 / Project 2025) DOGE is fund seeking for massive planned programs, not returning money to the citizenry or restructuring for efficiency. It sounds like they are illegally looting agencies and programs that congress already funded, so they can fund the admin's pro…

It doesn't look like DOGE is trying to fund anything; at this stage my guess is they're trying to hack off the propaganda arm of the CIA/NSA and the web of NGOs on the theory that it is funding anti-Trump messaging. Otherwise targeting USAID for savings early is a bit pointless; what is $50 billion a year to the US government? They're $36 trillion in debt with no plausible path out of the hole. Annual deficit is arou…

>Hard to say without more visibility into what they're doing.

They want to fund corporate tax cuts. the cut from 22 to 15 percent is estsimated to be worth 100-200b dollars of income for the government per year. That's about the yearly funding of the DoED.

So we aren't saving money nor paying off debt. we are just funding corporate profits.

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

#667

Post by johnnyanmac »

ty6853 wrote: post #211
throw0101d wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> […] they should be in the private industry producing goods and services for the population rather than the inherently wasteful government positions. In this particular case, the government positions were maintaining the US's nuclear arsenal. Not sure how "wasteful" having a nuclear deterrent is.

Could we privatize the arsenal to increase efficiency?

If you're not joking: what private entity would you trust to not start WW3?

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

#668

Post by johnnyanmac »

pfdietz wrote: post #255
throw0101d wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> […] they should be in the private industry producing goods and services for the population rather than the inherently wasteful government positions. In this particular case, the government positions were maintaining the US's nuclear arsenal. Not sure how "wasteful" having a nuclear deterrent is.

The profit-making part is when we pull back from being world policeman and instead sell nuclear weapons and weapon systems. Sorry, we won't go to war for you, but how about some H-bombs, Taiwan?

We're really going to pull a Cuban Missle Crisis again? but x10? I guess they'll be cheered on this time.

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

#669

Post by johnnyanmac »

bigmattystyles wrote: post #183
adtac wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All key personnel were immigrants? Why did the others come back? Also, since the H1B were key to operations and therefore smart, couldn't at least some of them have found a new employer? 61% of the H1B population switched jobs that year, so why did all key H1B come back? I think key personnel came back because they wanted to. It's the simplest explanation.

With h1b i think you have 60 days to find someone else to sponsor you or you have to leave the country. 60 days is no time at all to find and start a new job. Even if you’re smart.

Even in the best markets, I still had a 6 week interview to offer stage (5 stages). 45 days and if they decided someone else is better I may be out of luck restarting the process.

With a Visa, I would not take such a risk. Given the job market, they either need to extend the period, or somehow mandate companies decide on a full time candidate within 30 days of first conact. It's gotten beyond out of hand.

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

#670

Post by eksx »

The last few weeks of government action has shown me one thing. When the democrats take over next there will be no reason they can’t make the health care insurance sector government controlled. I think the vast majority of people would support them.
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