"... in exchange for getting to work from home — probably on administrative leave — until Sept. 30. It was
very similar to an email Twitter employees got shortly after Musk took over, down to the same subject line. But while the Twitter email saw employees resign in '
droves,' the current round is unlikely to have the same effect. The Trump administration is about to discover why reforming the government is so different from — and so much harder than — reforming the private sector.... Federal workplaces... select people who are risk-averse and willing to trade higher pay and autonomy for a job that offers excellent benefits and a low likelihood of getting fired.... These are not mercurial young tech workers, ready to flounce off to the next start-up if management isn’t to their liking. These workers are older... with an average tenure... three times longer than that of a typical private-sector employee. And their jobs often have no equivalent in the private sector. I will be surprised if many of them resign.... [T]hese kinds of buyouts often see star performers leave while the laggards cling to jobs they can’t easily replace...."
Writes Megan McArdle, in
"Trump, Musk are about to learn why reforming the government is so hard/Musk’s cutbacks at Twitter might have worked. The federal government is a different beast" (WaPo)(free-access link).
Star performers and laggards — are those the 2 groups? Just because you're not a highly energized risk-taker doesn't mean you're a slow-moving loser. What sort of person belongs in this bureaucracy?
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Is it still true that government work is significantly lower paid? I know it used to be true that the pay was lower, but the benefits made it attractive. I was under the impression that this had changed over the last few decades and the pay had become more in line with private sector work.
Federal workplaces... select people who are risk-averse and willing to trade higher pay and autonomy for a job that offers excellent benefits and a low likelihood of getting fired...
What's shocking them right now is that the prospect of getting fired is dramatically increasing.
This story is spot on. Per my exposure to federal workers over quite a few years, they fall into three rough categories:
1. Aggressive stars or power-hungry predators. They want to be in control and have no fear of anything. They are literal psychopaths in office suits, but typically quite skilled and capable. Some are the true "Deep State," and will eagerly play rough with Trump, Musk, or anyone. If they are not directly aggressive, they set up strategic road blocks per extensive knowledge of quirky federal laws, regulations, and rules. They indeed have six ways to Sunday for making your life hell. Legally.
2. Local people who wanted a job and found a local government job. Their parents may be government employees, so that's the family business. They are not a lot different than non-government employees anywhere. They have a high tolerance for following rules and learning obscure niche skills. Outsiders do not begin to understand written sentences with a dozen government acronyms in each, but these people do it all the time.
3. Security seekers and mindless stones. Some people accept a patronage or DEI job and then keep it for life. They know full well that this is the best job they could ever hope to find (and are lucky to get it), so they will follow the rules or jump through hoops to keep it. Before remote work they'd show up in robes and slippers, but reliably show up every day. They will go to the office again. They know the minimum legal requirements to avoid getting fired and follow the rules, as the firing process is complex, slow, and arcane. Gridlock in DC has kept them around for many decades.
Another major group is black people.
We have a problem if elected officials cannot control the unelected bureaucrats . The cost of our government is outrageous. The debt service costs are going to overwhelm us soon not already. This may be our last chance at right sizing government. In a sane world the President would have the power to fire anyone within the executive departments.
The WSJ had an article earlier this week on the fears of the federal workforce and it included a picture (since removed) that was nearly entirely of black women
That group is distributed among the others. Some occupations have an extremely high black presence (e.g., DEI roles), while others do not (e.g., STEM). Many federal jobs go to black people because of the locations of most federal worksites. This includes DC, multiple agencies and facilities in Maryland, and the huge Navy facilities around Norfolk, VA. While there are more blacks than in the national workforce, there are fewer Hispanics / Latinos. This is driven by location, as many federal agencies have had specific Hispanic DEI recruiting programs since the 1970s.
Most of that spending goes to the military, military veterans, Social Security, and Medicare. These are generally quite popular programs and difficult to cut. But without major cuts, Trump playing in the margins.
1. Take over a couple of other countries as if they were companies.
2. Eliminate redundancies.
3. Profit!!!
I was a federal worker for 20 + years and I agree. In my area, there was a fourth element, ex, or retired military that possessed arcane knowledge particular to production of weapons parts and their employment. These morph into number ones and twos over time.
It might be a good idea to cut jobs in the WH: Last in, first out.
Voluntary redundancy offers are expensive. Employers lose their best workers: those who know they can easily get a job elsewhere. The best and brightest take the money and run, and then later on get hired back in as consultants to clean up the mess that the 'residue' created. Just like American businesses.
Tte deficit is primarily driven by underfunded Medicare and unfunded Medicaid under the Obamacares umbrella. Education prices are next in the redistributive change schemes forcing shared responsibility (e.g. progressive prices).
For equal work, I'd say no. The top-line salary may be 20% or 25% below similar contract work, but with benefits the actual pay can easily be 20% HIGHER than the total pay given to contractors. This comes through pensions plus voluntary retirement plans, medical insurance, many vacation days, generous sick leave policies, etc.
Some career paths are basically limited to government, and the employees would struggle to find any work at all on the outside. This is due to the niche character of some jobs. Consider that no one in private industry is a Grant Manager, few are Contract Managers, few are skilled to analyze obscure data for the 200-page dust catcher reports required by Congress, and few have the skills to read and intepret 1,000 page laws for operations.
Private industry pays a lot more for generic and marketable tech skills such as a star programmer or cybersecurity expert. The government contracts out a lot of that work to numerous DC-area tech firms (e.g., Amazon Web Services, Lockheed, Leidos, Deloitte, etc. etc.).
McArdle used to be interesting before she became a fount of conventional wisdom. What if the objective is not cost savings but simply eliminating people who don't want to work for Trump?
"Star performers and laggards — are those the 2 groups"
yes! 20% and 80% I
@Joe Bar: Some military veterans morph into #3 when they get a Veterans' Preference role that has nothing to do with their knowledge, skills, and abilities, nor their interests. Veterans completely dominate some career paths in a given agency, whereby even veterans in command set up jobs to work around the toxicity of irrelevant and unqualified veterans.
A good percentage of federal contract work involves doing the work or redoing the work of the #3s. "Fake it 'till you maket it" they say, as consultants do their jobs.
Last in, first out = lots and lots of near-retirement people with their eyes on the exits stay in place, and they smother change like a wet blanket. If the government had half decent IT/computer systems, many jobs would be eliminated through automation. Easily. But Congress doesn't want to do that.
Regarding the resignation offer, I see two groups accepting:
1. Those already planning to retire in the next 8 months. Still, many have a mountain of saved leave time and strong retirement funding, so this offer means very little. It locks in a firm departure decision for benefits similar to what they already have.
2. Recent hires who don't like their jobs or government work at all, and were already planning to exit. It's not clear that resigning would be financially better than holding on as long as possible and then taking unemployment if they get laid off before finding a new job.
Enigma, that seems like a chicken-or-the-egg kind of situation - are government jobs heavily minority because the towns they are in are minority-heavy or does the existence of the jobs (and government employers willing to disproportionally give them to minorities) draw minorities into these towns?
The DC drones are not at all like the twitter folks. The drones are just that, devoid of marketable skills that would interest any other employers. They are entrenched because of the alleged difficulties of terminating them. 90% of these people could disappear overnight and no one would notice. President Trump is just the one to expell the dead wood and fat.
But...but...who will do all the lazy girl jobs? Won't somebody think of all the lazy girls? Anybody?
Enigma said...
"Most of that spending goes to the military, military veterans, Social Security, and Medicare. "
Yes. And if you eliminated nearly everything else, you would at least save a few hundred billion and the country would function just fine. Pro-government folks don't want you to find that out.
It’s a good strategy by the administration. The arrogant will assume the Hawaiian judges will let them keep their jobs…at least a couple more years and hopefully forever…but what if it isn’t forever? Now you’re out of work and unemployable in the private sector along with tens of thousands of your peers, trying to survive…
Choose wisely…
CONGRESS funds the government and specific functions. CONGRESS makes it hard to fire employees. Yes, the government would function quite well with automation and fewer employees. But, CONGRESS wants those jobs for political reasons.
Trump is akin to a "flash bang" grenade -- lots of light and sound but not so much explosive potential.
…you can bet this only goes on for four more years until we’re saved…but what if you aren’t?
Sure, just get those votes through CONGRESS. Many of the other programs are extremely popular and/or provide value to CONGRESS in one way or another. The President has limited potential here.
I for one am happy that we don't have our best and brightest working in government. It would suck all the competence out of the actual productive segments of our society. Somebody - maybe Milton Friedman - once said, be thankful you don't get all the government you pay for.
@tommyesq: The comment eater deleted my detailed answer. It may show up.
In brief, lots of jobs are on the east coast in old cities and where black people live. They were built up before the western population grew. DC, Maryland, and Virginia have huge black populations and old government facilities. With the Civil War, anti-slavery people introduced early DEI-like programs and hired many black people.
McArdle is correct. It will be costlier, but if you want to reform the bureaucracy the best strategy is to sideline workers who gum up the works. If you can’t fire them or entice them to leave of their own accord have them count paper clips or blades of grass.
Is this program even legal? I am pretty sure Congress has not authorized spending for it. In this way it is the same thing as Biden’s loan forgiveness.
McArdle is correct. It will be costlier, but if you want to reform the bureaucracy the best strategy is to sideline workers who gum up the works. If you can’t fire them or entice them to leave of their own accord have them count paper clips or blades of grass.
Is this program even legal? I am pretty sure Congress has not authorized spending for it. In this way it is the same thing as Biden’s loan forgiveness.
That's not too far from the truth. Many goverment jobs are mind-numbingly stupid and turn simple tasks into 3-month or 2-year affairs. A project or report can easily require the signatures of 2-dozen "officials" before it's authorized and complete. This is what political patronage and strategic gridlock means in practice.
"It would suck all the competence out of the actual productive segments of our society."
Unfortunately, the 80/20 rule applies to the private sector as well, the difference being that they usually don't survive as long. The number of C-Suite execs that spend most of their day engaged in unprofitable activities is larger than people think.
Yes, those big ticket items are appropriate. But that isn’t all the spending. When you hear that we are giving Gaza $50 million for condoms, we have a problem. And it is the ridiculous shit like that that adds up. The Federal DOE is redundant to State education efforts and should be cut. Biden’s ridiculous inflation reduction act was ridiculous spending that had nothing to do with military, social security, or medicare.
I’m not persuaded that we need to keep civil servants because they are incapable of finding another job. I could be flippant as a past President and say “learn to code”, but a good work ethic is what you need. One sign of a good work ethic is showing up to work. If you show up to work, willing to work, then your new employer can teach you to do what you need to do.
As for feeling comfortable in a job, I found that I was most comfortable when I knew I had the ability to get another job. Assuming your employer will always employ you is a dangerous situation to put yourself.
For decades and decades various agencies have done exactly that. They've had busy-work "rubber rooms" for problem employees who are hard to fire. In turn, they bring in contractors and pay double salaries to get the work completed. Those rubber rooms were always in the legal gray area, but funded with a wink and a nod by Congress. They also fund do-nothing federal unions that have the appearance of a labor union but no actual power. These unions "negotiated" remote-work deals with Biden and were described as "our union partners." Trump tore that fiction up, as similar to Biden's claim regarding the ERA: "the 28th Amendment is the law of the land."
If you can get the proper visitor passes, you might observe many government workers who "show up" in their robes and slippers. They have blankets and heaters under their desks too, as it makes napping so much more comfortable.
Short answer: Patronage helps elected people win reelection. Patronage guarantees that workers in a redundant agency will vote (and donate) to YOU. Politics is like sausagemaking. There is little logic, no integrity, and many greased palms.
I'm pretty sure the reason the delayed resignation program only extends through the end of the fiscal year is to avoid any requirement for Congress to approve this. I'm not going to bother to research it, but I suspect Congress has already appropriated the funds for these pay pools throughout the end of the fiscal year. An extension into the new FY would probably constitute a Non-Deficiency Act violation.
What if I told you I had a contract employee pass, enigma? I remember when a branch chief was looking for some office space and found the daily afternoon poker game his employees where playing. The mistake many of us made was thinking the employees involved might get fired.
That story reads as Trump fan fiction. As CONGRESS allocates funding and votes on the budget, CONGRESS has far more power about which jobs get funded. If Trump SIGNS THE BUDGET, HE AGREES WITH THE WILL OF CONGRESS. If Trump vetoes the budget then everyone gets angry and the government shuts down (which can't last more than a few weeks).
Federal employees and their employment conditions are the consequence of CONGRESSIONAL ACTIONS. It is true that he can get rid of political appointees and likely many in adjacent roles, but that's a relative fraction of the total workforce. It is true that they might sue and lose, but lawsuits often take years to resolve and the post-Trump government may reverse his decisions and give them money anyway (see what Biden did for various Trump fires).
I think Trump's actions in 2025 serve as intimidation more than real change, as he faced open defiance early in 2017 (i.e., James Comey; Sally Yates). He is demanding at least surface obedience.
What sort of person belongs in this bureaucracy?
Any bureaucracy will include a subset of workers who exist to say "No" to good ideas because it would mean they'd have to do something new and different.
The comparison to the private sector varies a lot. In smaller locales, federal work is much more competitive; in larger cities, it lags. Generic office clerical is probably fairly competitive, but management will pay more in the private sector. Agency librarians may get paid more than in the private sector because their skills are specialized. Prosecutors make much less than white-collar defense lawyers but more than the drug or immigration defense bar. Lawyers and accountants who deal with big business are making far less than their private-sector counterparts; the trade-off is working 40-50 hours a week rather than 70. That's probably true for most positions that have an equivalent in big business (and large industries have lots of people who read 1000-page laws; heck, they are usually the ones who write them). IT, security, and cleaning are generally contracted out.
I vote to give Derve a swerve.
- Krumhorn
This reminds me of the mainstream media’s favorite argument that deporting illegal aliens is too expensive.
Basically, the argument is the government has already irrevocably fucked the taxpayer and there’s nothing you can do about it. Haha.
@Tom T: I was thinking of research as much as clerical. Some are quasi-academic but highly specialized and compete against similar university pay. Still, clerical jobs are a huge part of where cuts may happen (e.g., thousands of contracting staff). I defer to you about legal positions, as that's not my specialty.
do not care if it is hard.
Do not care if it is difficult. DO IT ANYWAY.
I was a Federal drone before the bliss of retirement. In my last duty station I was given extra duties at my first three evaluation because I delivered. These duties were stripped from another, equally graded, employ because he did not. We both got the same base pay and my "award" for this disparity averaged $3-400 per year.
On my fourth year evaluation I got the same rating, but only a $200 bonus because according to the guy who added the tasks to my load, my timeliness had slipped just a bit. Pointing out my added duties was "no excuse".
I hunkered down and exceeded all goals the next year. Plus I initiated and managed new initiatives that improved the program. Got an "Outstanding" on my rating.... but was told there was no award money available that year. It seemed HQ had gotten it all.
SO, yeah there are a LOT of just doing the job types. When the worst employee and the best get within 1 percent of each other the incentives are negligible. It took a force of will (and a sadly rare belief in mission) to continue to strive in that atmosphere. When I found it increasingly difficult to meet my own standards I filed for retirement.
FWIW as I approached retirement some of the consulting firms I worked with approached me to go to work with them. A previous co-worker, now a consultant, suggested I ask for "at least" double my Fed salary as a minimum.
So we should nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
"These workers are older... with an average tenure... three times longer than that of a typical private-sector employee." Yes, risen above level of performance, now burned out and coasting.
A sideways headshake when I hear an employee say "...my job..." The employer comes to the table with the job - the need for help, and the $$ as compensation. The employee brings his body and mind.
Plenty of private-sector employees would also balk at the idea of suddenly deciding to quit your job without another job lined up. Some level of risk aversion is the natural consequence of providing for one's family. There's no telling what the job market will look like in eight months, particularly because it will be dependent on who takes the deal.
Also, the big underlying uncertainty is that anyone who submits a resignation is nonetheless still fully employed by the federal government. The President is basically just affording unscheduled leave. I doubt that anything about it is binding, so the administration can change its mind, rescind the deal, and call them back to work at any time up until September 30 (in the same way that they're rescinding telework agreements). If nothing else, no other reputable employer is going to offer any federal employee a new job during that period.
Enigma: Agreed; that all makes sense.
My favorite public sector employee axiom:
“20% of employees do 80% of the work.”
Once you've been in the public sector long enough it's hard to transition to private employment. The high-flying go-getters either get out early or become laggards themselves. I suppose it's possible that some government employees have marketable skills. Looking at the top of the pyramid, though, "geniuses," like Buttigieg, Raimondo, and Jake from the State Department haven't turned out well.
Agreed that it's not a simple matter of star performers and laggards. I assume my late brother did his job well. He put a lot of effort into it and enjoyed it. He had the brains to make it outside the bureaucracy, but not the social skills or the drive. He found a niche that gave him security and an opportunity to use his talents without having to keep up with corporate demands and pressures -- not unlike academia, but without the obnoxious kids. He published, but didn't have to worry about perishing if he didn't.
"CONGRESS funds the government" Those who work for the executive can be terminated by the executive. Also, since the prior administration established that congress and the courts can be ignored, that's a new precedent. And, there seems to be significant interest in the buy out option. I think that that is explosive potential. Time.will tell. Well, that and the demonstrably psychotic behavior of the democrats
Back when I worked for a large county government entity, we had trouble retaining IT staff. This was back in the '90s and early 2000s. We basically functioned as IT training where people would learn and then go private for a lot more $$$. Quite a lot of deadwood around, too. For a few years the division I was in moved from a cruddy building into a newer private office tower and the building management had to send around notices that people had to dress appropriately because, yes, people would come into the office in pajamas.
Non-Deficiency Act
Anti-Deficiency Act
That Act, Misappropriation Act, Bonafide Need rule. Staying out of trouble in gov't acquisitions 101!
The political agency heads are emplaced for obedience to the Party and for meeting a political marketing objective. They are not the "top" of anything -- they float in another system entirely. The accuracy of your general analysis depends on the OPM Job Series involved:
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/classifying-general-schedule-positions/#url=Standards
Some people have no trouble transitioning while others have no job opportunities outside the academic-government-think tank system, or the technology-government-consulting system, or the academic-government-non profit system. Many fresh-out-of-grad-school people struggle in private industry too -- largely because of ego and disdain for ordinary work.
In general, there's a lot of musical chairs and some have terrible social skills. They may adapt, hunker down in a safe job, or leave and work at Starbucks.
"and willing to trade higher pay and autonomy for a job that offers excellent benefits and a low likelihood of getting fired...." Studies have shown that government workers no longer work at a deficit to private workers, particularly those in the DC area.
I've found that to be true pretty much anywhere, though.
Remember when Megan used to be interesting? I do. Now, she’s just on the leftmedia bandwagon denigrating Trump and his efforts.
Her concern is entirely theoretical. It may be correct it may not be. The only way to find out is to perturb the system and then to observe how it responds. Based on that real world reaction to DOGE, musk and company will then react and respond in another way to help achieve their goals.
The problem with most of the elites in this country if they are limited to liberal arts education. One of the things that most people that have no technical problem solving background is that there is an iterative approach to tackling large complex systems that are in disarray and that you keep revising your working theory on a solution until you are successful or until you decide you have to completely give up as there are no solutions and whatever you're working on needs to be junked.
Factoring education/qualifications, I'd say federal/state work is significantly better paid than the private sector. Simply by enduring, an unskilled high-school graduate can easily end up with a six-figure salary.
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