This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Some thoughts on the infamous OPM e-mail:
Whether the OPM e-mail asking federal employees to send a five bullet point list of what they achieved in the last week to a OPM e-mail address apparently controlled by Musk and/or @DOGE has turned into an even bigger scissor statement that is usual for US partisan politics. What is going on? (Well, it seems like it was an unconventional proof-of-liveness check on the federal employee base with no plan to read the responses, but I am more interested in the response)
First point - if this came from management, it would be a completely reasonable request. It would be odd if it came from senior management rather than your direct line manager (does a top executive have time to read all those replies?) but not necessarily irregular. It is the kind of thing I can absolutely imagine the CEO doing at a founder-mode startup with a few thousand employees. But it didn't come from management. It came from HR (literally, in the sense that the sender shows up as "HR" in Outlook, and in practice in that it came from OPM, which is effectively HR for the civilian federal government). Indeed, it came from an anonymous role account in HR. (Musk tweeted that the e-mails originated with him, but two courts have ruled, at Musk's request, that Musk is a notorious shitposter and it is legally unreasonable to take a Musk tweet seriously, so they are still legally anonymous)
If I received such an e-mail from HR in my day job at a bank (and I don't think any other large manager-mode organisation would be different), it would be unprofessional to do what the e-mail says and send a quick response cc my direct line manager. In a normal corporate (or, I assume, public sector) environment, you take at least some steps to make sure you don't accidentally become a patsy in someone else's political maneuver against your boss or department. So if I got such an e-mail, my immediate response would be to forward to my line manager* with a note saying something like "Not sure what is going on here - will hold off on replying until you are able to investigate" - and if I did eventually reply, I would agree the reponse with my manager. But the more likely outcome (unless senior management had been warned about the exercise beforehand) would be that the rapid large-scale escalation would lead to the head of the department sending an all-staff e-mail saying "Please don't respond until we have investigated what is going on here" and trying to get hold of someone in the CEO's office urgently. (And struggling to do so, because every senior manager in the organisation would be doing the same thing).
And this is just looking at the office politics perspective, From the infosec angle, this is worse. The e-mail said "don't send classified information", but if you work in a job where you are actually trying to keep secrets, there isn't a short, safe unclassified summary of what you did last week. I am not an expert on the US classification system, but I do know that producing an unclassified summary of classified information (including, for example, the classified information you worked on in the last week) is difficult work that only a few people in each department are qualified to do. The rule in corporate finance departments at banks (where almost all staff have access to market-moving non-public information such as upcoming mergers) and it is "Do not discuss live deals with anyone outside the department, even in general terms." For a corporate financier, sending a meaningful response to that e-mail would be a firing offence. The various department heads (including Trump's own political appointments like Kash Patel) in national security related departments who told their staff not to respond are doing the obviously correct thing.
tl;dr - the freakers-out are right - sending out an all-staff e-mail of this type from HR was irregular, and would have been massively disruptive to any large organisation other than a startup used to working around a hyperactive micromanaging founder-CEO.
* If the rumours are true that Musk is sending these e-mails from a jury-rigged server rather than an official secure US government system, then the e-mail would show up as external in Outlook, and my actual immediate response would be to report it to IT security as a possible phishing attack.
You can have AI evaluate them, no problem. They're actually pretty sharp now!
More options
Context Copy link
Everyone's trying to rules lawyer the object level demand but if you stop and think about it for half a second this was obviously a PR move intended to play out in the perceptions of non-employee citizens. I'm not convinced it's a good one, but everyone saying it's useless/illegal/going to be ignored is missing the whole point. It makes federal employees as a group look bad regardless of how they react to it. You respond? The worst responses will be used against you. You ignore it? The low compliance level is spouted off on X for two months as Elon claims federal employees don't think they're accountable to citizens or their democratically elected representative. It whips up support for DOGE's role and potentially for actual action later (Through congress, which has always been the only avenue we were ever gonna get lasting fedgov headcount cuts through).
More options
Context Copy link
Posted this further down, but it seems relevant enough to have been a top-post response.
Bottom line- I think this OPM email event has resulted in Musk undercutting himself and DOGE for the foreseeable future, and greatly reigned in its potential to reign in agencies without the backing of those agencies own leaders.
There were two groups of people who got emotionally invested in this OPM exchange and thought it was a serious threat- people who didn't understand from the start that Musk and OPM do not have HR power over the government (and so were afraid he could fire them for non-compliance with his OPM messages and changed their behavior accordingly), and people who wanted Musk and DOGE to benefit from a presumption of HR power over the government (including Musk). As far as DOGE's longer-term ambitions go, this interplay has significantly limited Musks' potential inter-agency influence going forward, by drawing the first of clear lines on the limits of his power.
Higher up in the thread, @ControlFreak mentioned a past poster who made a general point that good leadership entails never giving an order that will not be obeyed. The original poster was making a point on individual leadership and how if you have to appeal to formal authority as a basis of leadership you're probably not the 'real' leader. Between de jure and de facto power, de jure authority only matters if it can be translated into de facto impacts. A person with a formal title but who no one listens to isn't an actual leader.
In leadership in general, this means that there are some pretty hard limits to leadership that relies on coercion. The coercive powers may be considered legitimate / followed by others, but even within the organization in which that applies, it creates cultures of compliance where people (might) adhere to the point on the pain of punishment, but little more. Despite the economic theory that an avoided cost is worth as much [value] as a benefit, people who will work harder for the prospect of carrots tend to work as little as possible to avoid punishments. Even within organizations, where you can carry out threats of negative administrative actions, effective use of threats against compliance comes from being clear, limited, and not the primary means of influence.
Outside of an organization, where you cannot carry out threats, making demands / threats you cannot enforce is worse than bad practice- it actively makes your influence worse, by highlighting your impotence.
A significant part of the fear-factor surrounding Musk and DOGE are that there are (were) no clear limits to its power. As an agent of the Chief Executive, there are significant powers that come with the President's sanction, but not unlimited ones. Just to start, the power of the DOGE under the President cannot exceed the President's on authorities. Further, even the Presidency has limitations of what it can do internally- some of these deriving from a Constitutional level (such as the ability of Congress to regulate the military), and some from established law and case law (the executive branch having to go through certain processes when making / removing regulations). And in so much that the President does support someone, that person may have a lot of power in the Executive Branch... but the moment the President does not support someone, they have no authority. Live by the sword (of Chief Executive empowerment), die by the sword (of lack of Chief Executive empowerment).
So from the start, people knew- or should have known- that DOGE's power wasn't unlimited. However, it wasn't clear where the limits were. The takedown of USAID greatly heightened this fear, as if DOGE could take down an agency like USAID, what couldn't it do? Therefore, the fear of DOGE went along with the uncertainty of what it could do.
This incident has drawn a great big bold underline of at least one limit- the DOGE does not have HR power bypassing the Department Heads.
There are long and often historical reasons why this would be a Bad Idea regardless. The term 'chain of command' exists because the 'chain' is a visual metaphor of how one link may be higher, but does not directly touch the links below, i.e. does not bypass the intermediary links. This is so that superiors do not buy their subordinate intermediaries to micro-manage subordinate echelons (where the higher level leader is often disconnected from facts on the ground), and also so that subordinates do not bypass their direct superiors to appeal to the next-higher level leader unnecessarily (both undermining the leader and distracting the higher leader). Exceptions to bypassing the chain exist, but the chain exists for a reason, and so does the metaphor.
By making the power play and being refuted, Musk and DOGE has started to expose the limits of its power.
DOGE will not have direct interaction powers with employees, and thus not be able to leverage its institutional power for maximum advantage vis-a-vis individual workers. DOGE HR efforts will have to work through existing HR channels- which in turn means through, and with the support of, the Department heads who oversee such channels.
This, in turn, makes Musk / DOGE dependent on the cooperation of Department Heads whose departments he wants to cut down- which creates a direct contradiction in interests, since institutional power = authority x manpower x money, and DOGE shutting down sub-departments would decrease.
That doesn't mean such things won't happen- the Trump administration has appointed a lot of department heads with skepticism towards their own departments for a reason, so there probably will be grounds for cooperation if DOGE finds and raises an issue [Department Head] is sympathetic with. DOGE may also be able to pull another USAID scalp, by breaking down a quasi-independent organization (and, like USAID, nominally putting it into another department- which increases the department's potential institutional power).
But it also means that if DOGE/Musk come head to head with [Department]/[Department Head], Musk will either be blocked or have to appeal to Trump to override...
...and if/when Trump sides against Musk, that will be yet another nail tying down the limits of Musk/DOGE's influence.
For such an easily predictable- and I'm fairly sure predicted- sequence of events for an overreach, Musk started to dispel the ambiguous premise of power that DOGE depended on, and has starting revealing the outlines of his institutional influence. Not a good plan, given it was both unnecessary and will limit the credibility of his future threats, and something that anyone who opposes Musk should be thankful for Musk's decision to pick a fight with his nominal political allies, the department heads who just pushed his demand back in.
I don't think there is another USAID-sized scalp to pull. There is a reason why the right-leaning man in the street always picks foreign aid as the first thing to cut - it is by far the most unpopular medium or large government programme.
One of the problems that conservatives have governing is that they have convinced their own supporters that the government spends large sums of money on wokestupid bullshit, when in fact wokestupid bullshit is cheap and healthcare for gramps is expensive. The $880 billion in Medicaid cuts in the House Budget resolution dwarf anything DOGE is doing - indeed I am cynical enough to think that a large element of what DOGE is doing is kayfabe to make susceptible voters think that the extension of the Trump I tax cuts is being paid for by something other than Medicaid cuts.
I agree that another USAID-sized scalp is unlikely. I also think that the social spending cuts are where the real money are. I'd even agree that DOGE and USAID are basically a smokescreen / firecracker diversion- the loud sparkly distraction to the much more substantitive cut that couldn't be done without it.
I think there are other scalp areas to pull, though I think it's far more likely to be in collaboration with agency heads rather than in antagonistic opposition to them.
The USAID takedown was not-so implicitly staged (physical resistance in a non-working Sunday in DC, for Rubio to be appointed on Monday?) over the access to the data networks, using the executive authority card borrowed from Trump. This was part of the Trump Administration's establishment of control over the information space (literally) of the executive branch, and to demonstrate formal control over the information.
This establishes precedent that allows / enables / 'forces' Department Heads to grant some level of access to DOGE to various networks for program reviews. And these, in turn, 'force' Trump appointees- many viewed with skepticism or hostility- to either go along with unpopular things ('I can't help it, DOGE made me), or- as in the case of the OPM- champion their agency against the DOGE. (See the OPM email- bad from a DOGE-independent-power perspective, good for making alignment with the agency head seem good for continued employment as a protector.)
I'm all on board with the kayfabe, and suspect that going forward access to data won't be so confrontational, and DOGE will often happen to identify areas that Secretaries and such won't be so unhappy to 'have' to cut.
Not really, no.
Reduction in force applicable consistent with applicable law runs into the point that applicable law is what authorizes and appropriates for those work forces. Moreover, the OPM memo makes some, hm, substantial carve outs.
So if you're not even touching the Department of Defense (which according to google has about 1/3rd of the non-military government labor force, or 30%) and you're not touching the postal service (one fifth, or 20%), in just two carve outs you've already exempted over 50% of the government's non-military employee base. And on top of that, if the analysis of the welfare state cuts is that cutting hurts, don't.
There is an expression that when you look in terms of overall budget, the US is either a welfare state with the world's biggest military, or a military with a welfare state. The welfare state is the dominant part of the budget by far, and most of that spending is automatic based on eligibility and not discretionary spending. Of the discretionary spending, about half is on defense.
Trump is not a fiscal conservative.
Trump is in an alliance with fiscal conservatives, who believe that cutting the scale government is key to reducing / reigning in government spending. In turn, these fiscal conservatives don't believe that the military should be cut, but tend to believe the better way to control military spending is to avoid various conflicts (like Ukraine support).
There is a confluence of interests in that Trump wants to cut the government because he views it as a basis of resistance (because the Democrats loudly boasted of the fact last time around), and the fiscal conservatives see it as an opportunity to cut back the regulatory state (which includes advocating for / overseeing constant expansions of entitlemet spending).
This is why the framing has been 'efficiency' and 'waste' rather than the people executing them per see. USAID was publicized in the way it was because it was an easy scalp with a number of silly things to point at. Discussing the waste in turn distracts from who was administrating those actions.
This is also why OPM's memo talks in terms of 'redundancies' and 'low performers.' If a veteran is fired because they were a bad worker, the political salience is lost if it turns into some form of 'bad worker says he shouldn't be fired because he's a veteran.'
None of these parts are about consumer prices, which themselves have a politically priced-in expectation of rising due to the trade barrier disputes.
Setting aside the end of some artificially low prices that were pursued last year for domestic political advantage (such as the Biden administration cutting off LNG exports in 2024, which forced the gas to be sold domestically for cheaper domestic industry and all that matters), Trump's base generally has priced in that trade disputes mean short-term issues for longer-term improvements.
The less politically engaged may not, but that won't matter as much for another two years.
Again, priced in.
Which is why Trump and Musk and such are going in quick and hard. They have probably built in the assumption they won't be able to make such cuts later. Trump is a lame duck president regardless, and you should generally expect the governing part to lose their trifecta quickly.
I endorse Monzer's interpretation that a fair bit of the recent discord is basically just a smoke screen / distraction at some proposals to cut more politically popular things which amount to larger fractions of the budget.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No, this is just a dodge, because wokestupid rarely gets its own line on the budget. the hundred mil for nursing home administrators who certify that all their employees have taken trans-affirming elder care training from wokestupid 501(c) comes directly out of the money for real care, and if you cut it you're obviously trying to murder grandma (as she yells "where's my penis? Why am I in a dress? What did you do to me?!")
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Okay but Trump, who backs Musk, can fire the department heads at will. And has done for many other departments.
So getting them on board seems relatively simple.
This assumes the conclusion that Trump will back Musk over his department heads, regardless of what political costs Trump would pay. When Trump is also backing those department heads. That is, after all, why they are the department heads.
Which, in turn, leads to the natural policy level counter-play: to pit Trump against Musk, by having political allies in Congress- such as the Chairpersons of the committees who stand to lose if Musk has his way- to hold Trump's legislative agenda hostage in the senate. They hold Trump's agenda at risk if Trump fires Musk's target of the hour and clears the programs they cared about. Trump tells Musk to not get in the way of his (Trump's) priority.
At which point, you are transitioning to two separate additional limits on Musks' power: the requirement for active support from Trump, and the power of Congresscritters to trump Musk with Trump.
Even if Trump wants to back Musk over the department heads, firing a senate-confirmed department head is a politically expensive to Trump because he has to get a replacement confirmed. In addition, Trump knows that running a revolving-door administration was part of why he got so little done in his first term.
So the newly-confirmed appointees have a degree of power in their own right. Musk's power, on the other hand, is entirely borrowed (unless he has rooted enough government systems that he is able and willing to blow up the government in classic "don't fire the sysadmin until his replacement is in post" style.)
We are in full agreement! I endorse your elaboration.
The premise that DOGE can fire anyone derives from a misreading of the USAID takedown. That created confusion / alarm, but the idea that Musk had firing authority over anyone, even Trump's appointees, is a misreading.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
We can use observed evidence to distinguish between the two scenarios. Did OPM have the authority, either formal or practical, to ask for this? Is this normal or unusual?
Well:
I don't think you'd see this if this wasn't unusual and strange.
Also, the thing where Elon tweeted people would be fired for not responding (and the recent second chance), but that wasn't actually in the e-mail - and the combination of Elon's threat of firing, the ambiguity about his power to do that as the leader of DOGE, and the shifting and differing guidance in replying between agencies - is terrible management, and I think demonstrates that Elon does not have a careful plan and is not acting with a huge amount of competence in this case. He's not acting like a strong leader, he's not establishing that his orders are followed - he's creating an image of someone who's a bit unstable, who's lashing out, claiming more power than he actually has. If you actually want Elon to control the government, stuff like this doesn't help!
I vaguely recall one of our resident military folks (maybe it was Hlynka, which would be sad) who had a fantastic post about some stories or lessons or what-have-you, and it had a line that stuck with me about one of the most important lessons of leadership: "Never give an order that will not be followed."
It's a multi-agent environment (Hlynka watch, even if Hlynka didn't make the above-referenced comment), and it's exceedingly difficult to force people to follow such an order. You end up having to go pretty over the top on it, which really ends up causing problems. And even if you don't, the mere giving of an order that will not be followed displays that you are completely out of touch with the reality on the ground. Whether or not that reality is "good", you are out of touch with it. Subsequent orders will absolutely be interpreted through a lens of, "...yeah, but this guy's out of touch and doesn't have a clue about how things work or what's going on."
I miss our resident soldier.
But yes unless there’s a bigger PR game at work, this seems foolish.
More options
Context Copy link
This?
https://www.themotte.org/post/499/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/102547?context=8#context
That would be the one. Thanks!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I recently left pricate industry to go work in the government (DoD specifically) for the second time in what is legitimately the most important job I've ever had. I've always worked in research and tech, so government is a big pay cut, but I also really like what I'm doing, and I like that work doesn’t take over my life even though I'm legitimately contributing a lot.
My issue with this whole thing is this:
First, everything I work on is classified. Sure, I could come up with some unclassified bullet points like "developed Python codes", "worked through mathematical problems", "investigated some API's, fou d other data sources", "worked through more complicated math when the first approximation wasn't good enough", but what is this proving? How does it show my job is necessary or valuable?
Second, my boss, my bosses boss, etc. up my chain of command know what I'm working on and they're all impressed. Are my five bullet points going to be used to somehow override theor judgment of me? We al we already have to do evaluations at work. We do self evaluations and our managers evaluate us. My evaluations are really high. They always have been in every job I've had. Why the fuck do I have to send 5 bullet points to Elon Musk and be subject to some randos judgment based on that?
Finally, I read a news article that said AI is going to be used to determine which jobs are necessary based on these bullet points. I'm not sure what the source is on that--maybe it's wrong. It seems likely to me, though, because there's no way they're going through each email by hand. Again, fuck that. My job is legitimately important, for reasons I can't talk about here.
For all the complaints I see here about federal beurocracy and waste and the cold, methodical nature of beurocrats, I have to wonder, what is thay based on? Federal offices are just, like, normal work places. And the people who work there are normal people, who would be very unlikely to enact some conspiracy of hiring fake employees, faking vasge swipes, faking timecards, etc--no more likely than anyone else, certainly.
One more comment: In my previous industry job, we got a new CIO at one point. He really liked my boss, who he promoted to a position directly below him, and she knew how valuable I was, and so the CIO ended up really liking me as well. He put me in charge of some stuff, and I talked to him semi-regularly.
The problem was, he had no idea what he was doing. He laid off all our middle management in tech, which a year later we still hadn't recovered from. He snatched up tons of people who were laid off from Amazon, Google, etc. bloating our AI/ML. He decided he wanted us to move off the cloud and develop tech that we could sell to other companies, even though it wasn't a tech company.
He started canceling contracts with vendors. Firing contractors. Building on prem systems. I had VP's and their assistants screaming at me that we were blowing things up and I had to change the CIO's mind. . . But of course, i couldn't do anything. High up people started quitting.
At one point (this wasn't actually his fault), I was trying to requisitions funds for a project I'd veen told to start, which involved keeping 3 contractors who did very important work on our financial syatems. I argued and fought but finance kept telling me we couldn't keep the contractors, even though they were the only thing preventing another group of external contractors from pushing changes that would routinely destroy our payroll systems.
Anyway, long story short, I quit that job and came back to the federal government. I'll be damned though if it isn't starting to feel like a repeat of the same situation.
More options
Context Copy link
Isn't this just Musk's intention? I'm sure he could do it in a more orderly fashion if he wanted but that wouldn't express his disruptive intent and contempt for bureaucracy as clearly. The version of reality where everyone instantly obeys him without checking with their bosses is what he's working towards I suppose but it will require employees who check their brains at the door and have a clear loyalty to a single leader rather than a line manager, job function or their own ideas about their job. (Cough, fascist.)
If Musk's goal is to "express his disruptive intent and contempt", or to translate - get a lot of attention on
TwitterX.com for being based and owning the libs - he is certainly accomplishing that. I would hope Musk would have greater goals though. This is all beneath him.More options
Context Copy link
Is it? If I imagine myself in a random federal employee's position, the events around this email would make me update towards "it's safe to ignore Musk and proceed as usual". Organised people who are methodical in prosecuting their grudges are scarier than cholerics with limited attention span who randomly lash out - if you just give the latter enough to lash out at, eventually they will just start swinging their arms wildly without hitting anything.
The catch is that he doesn’t have to score a direct hit to make people miserable. If I’m fired, even if I know it’s illegal, what’s my recourse? Months of lawsuit while half the country jeers at me. Maybe years, depending on how thoroughly Trump stalls the courts. In the meantime I’ve still got to eat.
I agree that it’s less threatening than waking up one morning to find Hans Landa was running my department.
More options
Context Copy link
Musk needs a good woman. Jiang Qing or lady Macbeth would clean all that right up.
I'm thinking Agrippina the Younger or perhaps Laodice I would be more suited for him.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, wouldn’t it be scarier if Musk focused on only one agency, established sort of a protocol/playbook to clean it up and then moved to the next? Currently this looks like a scatterbrained approach.
Maybe, but on the other hand it might give the next agencies in line some time to prepare their resistance. It's quite clear that this is not and was never going to be a cooperative effort, the agencies involved, at the levels below the president selected heads, were going to fight tooth and nail. In that context, keeping ambiguity as to who is going to be "attacked" has value.
More options
Context Copy link
On reflection I'm inclined to change my mind and agree with this and the post before. I do think doing it this way signals his allegiance clearly (he sees the whole of government administration as the enemy). And if he were to simply fire everyone who didn't reply, THAT would create an incendiary effect. But I agree the message currently being sent is that his main objective is just getting attention.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I work for the federal government. OPM is called the government's HR, but they're more like the government's HR policy group and each agency has it's own HR that handles day to day things. So OPM sets a rule like all time cards will use code 10 for work time and 20 for annual leave etc so each agency can hire software that complies with OPM's time reporting standard and they can get competitive bids, but day to day at each agency the agency HR will onboard employees and write policies that take OPM standards and apply them to the agency's needs.
In a corporate world this is more like an industry orgnaization suddenly deciding they need a copy of your last weekly progress report (because every single bureacracy I have ever been involved with requires employees to report to their manager their progress) on things and those go up the chain at higher more general aggregation. And yes that might be legitimate if htey want to flood congress with them for some reason but when it is it's going to be accompanied by support from all the member corporations that yes this is different but we will benefit from doing this.
There's also a bunch of not classified but private information which carries penalties if it's disclosed. Most of this can be shared but it requires an agreement between agencies where they agree how the shared information will be used and protected. So it's not just writing a summary of activities it's writing a summary of activities that is approved to send outside of any of these agreements.
It also caught every agency head flat footed which is why you see directives to their line employees differing and sometimes flip floping.
Further and this is the part that really upsets me, it violates OPM's own policies about using this email address which are supposed to include a note to employees that all responses to the email are completely voluntary and employees are always able to opt out by ignoring the email. Requiring a response violates the Privacy Act (congress makes all sorts of rules that limit the executive in various ways) which is why government employees move so slowly, especially on new things they have to make very very sure they aren't violating any of those rules.
This seems too absurd to be true but it's apparently not even the most absurd bit of this law. The federal government is restricted from collecting PII on its own employees, which includes mere names and email addresses, without it being necessary to accomplish a purpose authorized by law or executive order.
The federal government is not one single organization. If you work for the VA or the USPS, you have as much right as any other US citizen not to have your PI (yes, even just your work email) handed over to the FBI or the IRS without going through proper authorization.
That expectation doesn't exist in the private sector. The boss is expected to have access to everything you do on company devices.
If Alphabet wants to import all of Waymo's email comms for training Gemini, they have that right.
Or if they suspect employee X is barely or not-at-all working, they can dig around without needing to check with the employee first.
Maybe it would make sense to place limits around criminal investigations, but not giving the employer carte blanche to view the data generated by their employees on company devices is just hamstringing the employer's ability to manage its employees.
This is total bullshit. Your line manager and probably anyone above you within your department in most cases has access to everything you do, but outside your department this is not the case at all. Internal firewalls exist in many companies for many, many departments, especially where legal, compliance, auditing, HR or similar issues are concerned.
They do, but the way this would presumably happen is that someone at Gemini would ask someone above them at Alphabet if this was possible, this senior manager would then decide and then they would inform someone senior at Waymo that they should co-operate with Gemini and send them X tranche of data, and this would get passed back down the chain of command to whoever actually would do the work of facilitating the use of the data. What would absolutely not happen is that someone senior at Gemini would just email a low-level data manager at Waymo saying 'please send us all your email comms'.
The point of this is that Trump might have the right to request any piece of data from within the government, but Musk/DOGE are not automatically vested with his powers simply because they were appointed/created by him. Kash Patel (for example) does not answer to Musk, he answers to Trump. If there is to be a request for information on what all his employees do, then it has to go up the chain to Trump and down again to the FBI.
At least at my job, which is a large company but not government large, people generally know who the CEO's lieutenants are. If one of them asks for something directly, beyond verifying it's not a phishing attack, and unless I needed to push back because I knew it was going to break something, I'd just do it and send a note to my manager.
Email is almost never used here, nearly all comms are internal chats on our own platform, so phishing is pretty unlikey.
And if the CEO or his lietuenants wanted to look at all my emails, they'd just ask the department responsible for that, without any need to justify themselves. They can also look at everything on my phone, they can even view a live stream of my desktop.
Fair enough, though that's generally at odds with what I've experienced.
Even in this case though I don't think Musk is firmly established as being more Trump's Lieutenant than any of his Cabinet appointees. What powers he has actually been vested with and how they interact with department heads seems pretty unclear, so it's pretty understandable that the latter don't want to set the precedent that Musk can now take decisions for them or act over their heads. I have to imagine that in your or anyone else's workplace that if anyone was doing anything on this scale they would never do it without at least consulting/warning the heads of department. If someone working with (but not actually on the instruction of) the CEO sent an email to everyone in finance saying 'send me X information on your productivity or I might sack you' without even informing the CFO (or COO or whoever) the latter would usually be justifiably furious.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Why?
Because J Edgar Hoover and Nixon abused it.
More options
Context Copy link
Why should a government agency need permission to access your data? I guess that's a question whose answer hinges on your opinion of the government and what its limits should be. But if you're okay with the FBI and the IRS and the NSA looking up anyone they want any time for any reason, sure, then federal employees should not be immune. Or are you arguing that by virtue of being a federal employee, you should not have the same privacy rights as other US citizens?
Why should the executive not be able to look up employee PI like emails.
Just like my CEO can look at my email and give it to anyone they damn want to in their company why can’t the president do the same?
It's not the President asking for the information, it's an anonymous email from OPM. Which, contrary to what people keep saying, is not the "HR department" for the federal government. They have zero authoriity to do this. Musk does not have unlimited authority, transferable to whoever he has sending emails from OPM, because Trump told him to "be more aggressive."
If they are executing a request from the President, the President needs to say so.
The President can presumably ask for anyone's .gov email address, but that's not what's happening here.
Sure you can say those things. It doesn’t make it true. Again you are suggesting that the OPM (an executive department within the WH) can’t get employee emails?
Are you sure they have zero authority?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think people are obfuscating deliberately and hiding up behind Information Security as a shield. One of the basic requirements of working with sensitive information is the ability to compartmentalise what is sensitive and what is not so you can effectively do your job.
You could absolutely write a brief summary with dot points of what you did in 90% of cases in the federal government.
Some examples:
Intelligence officer saying they attended 'several' 'operational and strategic meetings' where further details can be provided to someone that has a suitable security clearance.
Finance/Contract Manager saying 'spent 20 hours reviewing/drafting various contracts (with no mention of what deals, live or dead)'
If you are not willing to provide information, say why in a polite professional tone: Eg, I can't provide further details due to the sensitive nature of my work, however my workload can be confirmed by my line manager or department head (don't even need to name who that is).
This is so much better than just 'nuh uh, I work in 'Three Letter Agency' so I won't even respond'.
Edit: I generally agree that it should have been better coordinated, with direct approval given by Trump to provide legitimacy quoted in the request and the request sent to Department Heads to enact within their organisation. The Department heads should have been given reasonable discretion to exempt (by which I mean self-audit) roles that work with sensitive information, but provide a report back to DOGE about how many roles they found to not provide sufficient answers.
If Trump has put his people in place as department heads, he should trust them to enact his policy (eg Patel and Gabbard get a lot of rope here).
Applying the department's rules on classified information is a free space, you do it by doing nothing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Unpopular opinion: they should've quit bitching and just done it.
Musk is playing 5D chess, demanding an objectively simple task to demand compliance/submission and using it as leverage to secure more power. He knows that a lot of the chronic /r/fednews posters will have a massive hysterical breakdown and is counting on it to give him more political power and make these people look ridiculous and out of touch. A normal person thinks 'that's easy' and has little sympathy.
It should not take even 5 minutes to produce a list of 5 things you've done this week if you've been working seriously. If you're dealing with secret information, you ought to be smart enough to obfuscate a technically correct but secure answer.
The guy working on the top secret AI-powered satellite missile guidance system can say "I helped train a model and adjusted hyperparameters" or "Fixed bugs in the navigation software" and that's of no significant value to any adversary. If they have your email address and you work in the Advanced Aerospace Development department, they're going to expect that's what you're doing. It might break the sacred rules some bureaucrat thought up for individual/collective deflection of responsibility but normal people thinking wisely would not be worried about the Chinese finding out that Americans are designing aircraft or honing satellite guidance systems. They already know a hell of a lot more than that, the US MIC leaks like a collander and Chinese spying has been punching great big holes in it.
This is a foolish take. "We already leak, so what's the harm in helping adversaries create a more complete organizational map of IC employees."
Yes, the Chinese probably already know you work on classified projects and the US cares about AI and missile technology. You're still giving them info by saying "I (random government employee) write python code." A tiny bit of information, but they have AI too.
IC employees are deeply indoctrinated in avoiding giving away information. "Respond to this email from someone with no actual authority to demand information, explaining what you do" is an insane requirement that will trigger every red flag.
Entire OPM database of personal data on secret clearances was stolen not just once but allegedly twice. Your CIA network in China got pwned because people thought what fools sand people can fool the dastardly orientals. Dozens of dead, allegedly.
So your 'IC' community is probably the laughing stock of the world and at this point, can hardly look any worse. Oh yeah, and didn't some set of NSA hacking tools got leaked too ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach#Data_theft
And god knows what was stolen, hacked and then hushed up.
Way too late to worry about your 'IC employees'. That's like Europe worrying about their competitiveness or economic dynamism. About twenty years too late, more like 30 at this point.
Even if you were commenting from an informed point of view (you are not), you are missing the point. Compromises don't mean you just throw in the towel and stop trying to protect anything.
US intelligence community is the same as any other intel community- a farce that pretends to be something more bc of a shroud of secrecy.
They have mystique and maybe some good people in technical departments, but overall it's a joke. US counterintelligence was completely pwned by Chinese in 1990s. The institutions have been rotting for decades.
Seeing that mandarin US Navy recruiting video and being told it's probably real by veterans, US government is yellow-peril occupied government no matter how much Trump is going to bloviate.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The promblem isn't writing a list. That's a five minute job. It's sending a list to another agency that your certain doesn't violate the privacy act, the purpose act, and a million other little gotchas like:
Processes and operations are pretty broad, if I work in an agency covered by this law, and I meet with one of the corporations to discuss their processes and operations to make sure we're asking for data that we keep very secret and my bullet point discusses that meeting how much can I legally say and is OPM one of the exceptions provided by law. Now I have to run my bullet points by the agency's attorneys to determine those answers and that means I have to explain the full meeting, my summary, and that's what takes all the time.
If that's what you want to pay me and an attorney pretty generously to do, I'll happily send you weekly bullet points, but given I get to potentially chill in jail for a bullet point I'm going to take that time every single week to clear anything I send, and all of my coworkers are going to do the same thing.
It sounds like the US government is running pretty inefficiently if performing this simple task turns into a giant legal drama. If everyone is terrified of performing simple tasks in a straightforward fashion because it may violate some unknown body of incomprehensible laws, it strengthens the argument for Gordian-style reform...
Heads Musk wins, tails he wins.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Okay, so what is the benefit to doge from a hundred thousand emails saying the moral equivalent of "bug fixes and performance improvements" / "updated localization files"? This level of detail is not enough to determine who is actually doing useful work (does anyone actually need that model that's being trained?) and at the same time the volume is too large to actually go through these emails and come to any conclusions, unless doge employs the ol' Ctrl+f as they did for scientific grants.
The benefit to DOGE is that they can use the data to make a list of DOGE-uncooperative federal employees that should be prioritized for dismissal. They don't even need to open the responses, just making a spreadsheet with "answered email: yes/no" is a useful data point.
If you are confident that you are useful and friendly to the administration, you will answer. If you aren't, then you won't, and will be be subject to increased scrutiny.
I'm getting a little lost in the motttes and baileys. Your other response was talking about sentiment analysis to find people who dislike the administration. Now you claim that sending a response, any response, is enough to be put on the good boy list. Which, exactly, is it?
In reality, you won't answer because your boss told you not to do it, because his boss told him to tell you not to do it, because his boss etc etc. and that's how any job works.
Write something completely anodyne but non-confrontational to appease Tiberius or join your supervisor on the proscription list. There's no way you'll get in trouble for writing "Performed my official job duties as job title at gov agency". I predict that many are going to disobey their immediate superiors and comply with the email as best they can. Don't be snarky, the thing LLMs are best at is sentiment analysis.
Nobody's immediate supervisor is telling anyone to ignore the email. The directives are coming from agency heads or higher--Trump appointees like Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard. People in my agency didn't even get the email, although the two Trump appointees who are in my chain of command have told their people not respond if we do.
Edit: I should say nobody's immediate supervisor is using their own discretion to tell people not to respond. The information is passed down from higher up through the chain of command.
More options
Context Copy link
Happy to place bets on the number of federal employees fired for not responding to this email if you're willing to make this interesting. Otherwise, talk is cheap and this isn't ancient Rome.
So they do need to open the responses? Or they don't? Let's put the cards on the table so we all know what we're discussing here.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Clustering of denials throughout the government can be honed in on through analysis and targeted for further investigation. Some of this clustering would be legitimate and some of it would not.
Even in the case of intelligence/defense departments and the like, DOGE could then do a more nuanced investigation/direction to the department head with Trump's approval (to be fair they should have done this to begin with, but the perfect is the enemy of the good).
Cool, so to get Elon off your back you and your department just need to tell him you're hard at work fixing bugs and updating localization files, and then the eye of sauron will move on. This isn't SpaceX and you can't expect Elon to personally understand all aspects of the business that is government, after all.
Surely you guys have read "seeing like a state"? This is not how you make legible those who are trying to be illegible.
It is one very low hurdle of what will be many hurdles put in front of federal government employees. There will be low hanging fruit harvested out of this. Just like auditing welfare records found people over 200 years old, there will be govt employees who will be unable to 'be illegible'.
This is at best Musk not knowing what he's looking at and at worst totally made up. There's zero evidence of this and back of the envelope math demonstrates that the table Musk posted can't possibly be correct given how much money is spent on SS.
Thanks for the article. I unironically appreciate someone bringing the receipts on that and basically confirming that it was a rhetorical nothingburger.
I still predict that the email will trip up some of the indolent or otherwise provide information that will direct further investigations.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The benefit is sniping the people who kick up a huge fuss, performatively showing themselves as enemies and finding the employees that don't exist (who won't answer). Musk will drag up a few cases like the Spanish guy who never showed up for work in 12 years and was only uncovered when he got an award for dedicated service. It's half publicity stunt, half humiliation/submission ritual.
Also they'll probably run it all through Grok 3 and have it spit out something politically useful that some hysterical fed puts down in a moment of foolishness.
I've yet to see a job where complaining about your task is grounds for termination and I don't even work in the public sector.
Or employees who happen to be on vacation when Musk sent this email (or the upcoming final warning, apparently).
It must surely be trivial, given musk's team's apparent level of access, to figure out when each employee badged in / logged in to their account.
last(1)has been around for probably sixty years and I know at least my company has a database with every single badge swipe. That would actually be a useful signal, but that's not what we're looking at.I think they "probably" won't because they haven't done this yet and I don't see why they would start. Not that you could actually fit all this into grok's context window anyway.
It's not so much termination as identifying and outmanoeuvring opponents. Their optimal narrative is 'Help evil billionaire Musk is making us cut critical services like kidney machines', not 'Help, evil billionaire Musk is making us explain what we got done last week'. He's forcing them to play his game.
If I were running fake employees, I'd arrange for them to log in on the clock. But it'd be a little harder for them to achieve things and send email. The smarter cheats will create some fake responses quickly but I expect he'll catch out some of the stupider/slower ones who can't access their faked emails or make other errors trying covering it up. He's fishing for anecdotes and political power with this tactic.
Also, you can scan text over multiple context lengths.
As far as I can tell, the opponents here are all civil servants, so consider the opponents identified. It's not obvious to me how demanding snippets from them is outmaneuvering and I don't feel that it's been made clearer by this thread.
I don't get it. We're postulating that managers in the civil service are hiring people who don't do anything and faking their logins and badge swipes (presumably the managers are personally benefiting in some way), but sending an email with some bullshit bullet points is a bridge too far to keep the gravy train rolling? Doesn't pass the sniff test. If they can log in they can send an email.
Actually achieving things is neither necessary nor sufficient to send this email, and it's not proof either way.
How, exactly? We already agreed that many of these updates could/should be of the "bug fixes and performance improvements" format due to classified work. There's no way to detect who's doing useful work and who isn't at that granularity.
I don't see why this is necessary given that he can basically just make anything up and people will believe it at this point (see the claim of millions of 150 year olds collecting SS).
Much like your motivated-misunderstanding here identifies you as an enemy of Musk, sentiment analysis of the responses will identify other federal employees unable to sufficiently disguise their animosity towards DOGE and the Trump administration.
If you weren't motivated to misunderstand you would realize that they aren't looking for people who don't do work, they are happy enough to create a proscription list of feds who fail to disguise their contempt in their email responses.
Perhaps those people aren't stupid and are also engaging in motivated-misunderstanding. If it bothers you, that means it's working. This is current year +9, 9th year of the post-truth era, you should have caught on by now.
I am pretty sure nearly all federal employees are against this because the stated goal of this administration is to make them (the federal employees) miserable. Don't need to send an email to figure that one out.
Official guidance from the chain of command is now for federal employees not to respond to these messages (see other comments on this topic), undercutting both Musk's stated goal of getting responses to these emails as well as his authority. I guess they should have started with login times!
Who said I'm bothered? People believe the damndest things.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If anything, Musk was the one outmaneuvered by those who intend to resist him.
There were two groups of people who got emotionally invested in this OPM exchange and thought it was a serious threat- people who didn't understand from the start that Musk and OPM do not have HR power over the government (and so were afraid he could fire them for non-compliance with his OPM messages and changed their behavior accordingly), and people who wanted Musk and DOGE to benefit from a presumption of HR power over the government (including Musk). As far as DOGE's longer-term ambitions go, this interplay has significantly limited Musks' potential inter-agency influence going forward, by drawing the first of clear lines on the limits of his power.
Higher up in the thread, @ControlFreak mentioned a past poster who made a general point that good leadership entails never giving an order that will not be obeyed. The original poster was making a point on individual leadership and how if you have to appeal to formal authority as a basis of leadership you're probably not the 'real' leader. Between de jure and de facto power, de jure authority only matters if it can be translated into de facto impacts. A person with a formal title but who no one listens to isn't an actual leader.
In leadership in general, this means that there are some pretty hard limits to leadership that relies on coercion. The coercive powers may be considered legitimate / followed by others, but even within the organization in which that applies, it creates cultures of compliance where people (might) adhere to the point on the pain of punishment, but little more. Despite the economic theory that an avoided cost is worth as much [value] as a benefit, people who will work harder for the prospect of carrots tend to work as little as possible to avoid punishments. Even within organizations, where you can carry out threats of negative administrative actions, effective use of threats against compliance comes from being clear, limited, and not the primary means of influence.
Outside of an organization, where you cannot carry out threats, making demands / threats you cannot enforce is worse than bad practice- it actively makes your influence worse, by highlighting your impotence.
A significant part of the fear-factor surrounding Musk and DOGE are that there are (were) no clear limits to its power. As an agent of the Chief Executive, there are significant powers that come with the President's sanction, but not unlimited ones. Just to start, the power of the DOGE under the President cannot exceed the President's on authorities. Further, even the Presidency has limitations of what it can do internally- some of these deriving from a Constitutional level (such as the ability of Congress to regulate the military), and some from established law and case law (the executive branch having to go through certain processes when making / removing regulations). And in so much that the President does support someone, that person may have a lot of power in the Executive Branch... but the moment the President does not support someone, they have no authority. Live by the sword (of Chief Executive empowerment), die by the sword (of lack of Chief Executive empowerment).
So from the start, people knew- or should have known- that DOGE's power wasn't unlimited. However, it wasn't clear where the limits were. The takedown of USAID greatly heightened this fear, as if DOGE could take down an agency like USAID, what couldn't it do? Therefore, the fear of DOGE went along with the uncertainty of what it could do.
This incident has drawn a great big bold underline of at least one limit- the DOGE does not have HR power bypassing the Department Heads.
There are long and often historical reasons why this would be a Bad Idea regardless. The term 'chain of command' exists because the 'chain' is a visual metaphor of how one link may be higher, but does not directly touch the links below, i.e. does not bypass the intermediary links. This is so that superiors do not buy their subordinate intermediaries to micro-manage subordinate echelons (where the higher level leader is often disconnected from facts on the ground), and also so that subordinates do not bypass their direct superiors to appeal to the next-higher level leader unnecessarily (both undermining the leader and distracting the higher leader). Exceptions to bypassing the chain exist, but the chain exists for a reason, and so does the metaphor.
By making the power play and being refuted, Musk and DOGE has started to expose the limits of its power.
DOGE will not have direct interaction powers with employees, and thus not be able to leverage its institutional power for maximum advantage vis-a-vis individual workers. DOGE HR efforts will have to work through existing HR channels- which in turn means through, and with the support of, the Department heads who oversee such channels.
This, in turn, makes Musk / DOGE dependent on the cooperation of Department Heads whose departments he wants to cut down- which creates a direct contradiction in interests, since institutional power = authority x manpower x money, and DOGE shutting down sub-departments would decrease.
That doesn't mean such things won't happen- the Trump administration has appointed a lot of department heads with skepticism towards their own departments for a reason, so there probably will be grounds for cooperation if DOGE finds and raises an issue [Department Head] is sympathetic with. DOGE may also be able to pull another USAID scalp, by breaking down a quasi-independent organization (and, like USAID, nominally putting it into another department- which increases the department's potential institutional power).
But it also means that if DOGE/Musk come head to head with [Department]/[Department Head], Musk will either be blocked or have to appeal to Trump to override...
...and if/when Trump sides against Musk, that will be yet another nail tying down the limits of Musk/DOGE's influence.
For such an easily predictable- and I'm fairly sure predicted- sequence of events for an overreach, Musk started to dispel the ambiguous premise of power that DOGE depended on, and has starting revealing the outlines of his institutional influence. Not a good plan, given it was both unnecessary and will limit the credibility of his future threats, and something that anyone who opposes Musk should be thankful for Musk's decision to pick a fight with his nominal political allies, the department heads who just pushed his demand back in.
More options
Context Copy link
Musk is shaping the narrative. In the election I heard there were stories about people Trump fucked over by refusing to pay for services, getting them bogged down in legal disputes, wrecking small businesses. I don't know the context, I didn't look into it. But that's not what dominated the headlines! It was Haitians eating people's pets, it was Bidenflation, it was Kamala talking complete nonsense and cackling... Trump shapes narratives very well.
The smartest civil servants want to make their case on the 'look how the cuddly animals are starving and the children are being abused' battlefield, not the 'I don't want to send an email' battlefield.
Maybe they missed the 'you need to reset your email password' messages they send out on the fake worker's email account (they don't check it) and end up sending a flurry of reset requests to IT. That's kind of suspicious. It's easy to lose an email address like this.
Maybe Musk is also checking who's logging in and is just doing this email stunt publicly for the political effect because it's more attention-grabbing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
But this isn’t, like, a fact of the universe caused by the legitimate praxis of those jobs. Rather, this is itself administrative bloat designed to give bullshit jobs to the summarisers or inflate the self-importance of managers who want to pretend that their work is super serious. Everything you said constitutes organisational-calcification red tape that SHOULD be dismissively cut through, not “omg the freak-out-ers are right”.
Rules like 'never discuss what you do with those outside the department' are obviously necessary in many agencies, if you want to call that red tape then fine, seems like a pretty important piece of tape. Obviously it would be a terrible precedent in such agencies to say 'actually you can discuss your work if you, as an individual employee, decide on a random ad hoc basis that its probably fine this time'. In most cases a reasonably discrete summary probably does exist, but it plainly can't be up to individual employees when and how they get to share information about what they do in cases where discretion is important.
Can you elaborate? Because I think it unironically would be perfectly fine.
Better that everyone know USG’s secrets than I have to pay taxes to keep them under wraps.
An individual cannot always see the full implications of sharing particular pieces of information and unlikely to be aware of the full complexities of laws governing not only information the government wishes to keep confidential but also things like privacy laws. Private employers very often have blanket rules against sharing information (even internally) too, especially if you are in any field relating to things like law/compliance/audit/HR, this isn't some case of bloat peculiar to the bureaucracy, and it's for much the same reason. It's not their information to give out, it's their department's.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is not accurate on their part. I heard from someone that, shortly after Trump’s inauguration, the “HR” OPM account sent a test email asking federal employees to simply reply “Yes” to confirm that the email address was valid. So they already know which email accounts are valid.
This is not exactly the same as: I am clued in, turned on, and working hard. I imagine there was a week to respond "Yes", but it's different when asked for details on a short deadline. It sends a different signal.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
others mentioned , on twitter, that this selects for people who are the best at bullshitting.
how many people can the administration fire? i would like to see the TSA be trimmed, but I would not hold my breath on that.
The beauty of doing this as a random unplanned one-off is that if you're a Milton lost in the cracks, you haven't practiced bullshitting well enough to have a good story lined up.
I don't know how good it will be at determining who gets an A+ and who gets a D-, but I suspect it will reveal who to give some Fs to.
More options
Context Copy link
Seems like a "bureaucracy not measured in bureaucrats" case. Trimming the TSA would just result in having longer waits at airports, as it's not like the TSA would relax its checks just because they are understaffed. You can't fight the bureaucracy ratchet in such a disorganised way - if you only reduce the number of bureaucrats, then the bureaucracy will clamour for more staff, whereas if you only reduce the number of tasks, then the bureaucracy will lobby for more tasks. Good luck telling the electorate that they should accept a 0.0001% greater rate of terrorism, anyway, when the next instance of aviation-related terrorism happens.
Public opinion is pretty firmly that the Thousands Standing Around/Theater Security Administration is a jobs program for Walmart rejects which doesn't actually stop any terrorist attacks, though.
Do you expect this to withstand the ensuing media blitz if 1. Trump downsizes the TSA, 2. a terrorist attack happens?
There are several interlocking factors that make any September 11 lookalike impossible, at least in a way that TSA checks can help to prevent.
Passenger agency. September 11 got 3/4 successes because every previous plane hijack had been to hold the passengers hostage, not to use the plane as a battering ram. This meant that in 3/4 cases the passengers didn't zerg-rush the terrorists. That's over now. Flight 93 will happen every single time. Indeed, this response is so ingrained that it goes off accidentally some amount of the time when somebody is misidentified as being a terrorist.
Plain-clothes police on board planes. Usually these guys mostly wind up having to prevent a would-be terrorist from being lynched, due to #1, but they do provide an added layer of protection.
Cockpit security doors. These do trade off "passenger is a terrorist" against "pilot is himself a terrorist", but "pilot is a terrorist" is specifically something that can't be stopped by the TSA checks; he doesn't need any unauthorised items to fly a plane into a building. This is basically a matter for background checks on pilots, and TTBOMK they do a decent job at weeding out terrorists (though a worse job at weeding out random suicides).
I can think of a single case, when the plane crashed next to where Les Miserables starts.
WP's list. There have been a few, even only counting full-sized jets.
More options
Context Copy link
I thought the Malaysia one was considered probably a suicide now?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
To be blunt, if a terrorist attack happens, it strengthens the case for stronger borders (if foreigners did it) and is terrible optics for a domestic terrorist's cause (because terrorism is antisocial, obviously). That's how I see it at least.
More options
Context Copy link
I mean, DOGE in general has. So yes.
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not Hydro but I absolutely expect this to withstand the ensuing media blitz. Who gives a shit about what the media wants or does anymore? Trump would be more at risk from an alternative media blitz, and that just won't happen in this scenario. Most people understand that the TSA doesn't do anything worthwhile or productive anyway.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I guess adding another layer here is that taking adverse action against people who did not respond to the email would probably be unlawful. There are laws that govern how agencies (including OPM) within the federal government are permitted to collect data or information about government employees. There's already a lawsuit about this particular system and whether it meets the requirements. In that case OPM filed a Privacy Impact Assessment which states, in relevant part:
"Respond to this email or we'll take adverse action against you" is hardly voluntary. Forget about agency heads. The very entity apparently sending the email on Musk's behalf has to repudiate the consequences he described or, uh, admit they lied to a federal court?
My suspicion is that he’s not just going to immediately fire anyone who doesn’t answer. The people whose accounts don’t answer will probably be placed on a list for further investigation and cross-checking. I think he’s looking for literal Mafia-style Union no-show jobs, not just slackers.
I am skeptical. He's tweeting they are going to do another email and totally for real fire the people who don't respond this time!
The downsizing of the civil service is starting to sound like China's Final Warning.
I dunno man. I just saw GSA got a RIF notice. More to come. If they keep this up for 2 years, I expect it to be material.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Public servants have the pleasure of serving outside of the strictures of capitalism. The park service guy whose job it is to tell tourists about the flowers every day has an absurd privilege that this is what his job gets to be.
The idea that these people are seething THIS much about simply being asked what they do is infuriating to me. The American taxpayers work as de facto indentured servants for almost a third of their working lives to pay the salaries of these people. The balls for them to freak out and do these petty protests (hang a flag from the top of El Capitan) is ridiculous and embarrassing.
You’re a public servant. If you don’t want to be accountable to the actual president of the United States, then go try your luck getting a job telling people about the flowers in the private sector. You might be surprised at how many jobs there are for that with a typical HR structure (my guess is: 0. The closest would be working as a grounds keeper for some oligarchs garden, maybe?)
This is flatly wrong. Less than half of federal spending goes on salaries, and among this by far the largest group of employees is the military.
I think that federal contractors and weapons manufacturers should be under even MORE scrutiny than park rangers and USAID trans-musical directors, and I assume (hope) anybody taking a salary from the military is already under intense scrutiny all the time.
This argument doesn’t move my needle at all.
This is a total non-sequitur, I was merely responding to the characterisation from the above comment.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Even half is incredibly generous. The actual fraction of the federal budget that is employee expenditures is in the 5 to 6 percent range.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Actually gonna make an account just for this comment.
I highly doubt there's a guy whose only job is to sit around and talk about flowers all day. I've worked with state botanists and park rangers before and I can assure you that they're tracking and recording all sorts of information about plant health, species diversity and stuff like that too on top of the typical work of making sure that people are following the rules (one place for example called Rocky Face Mountain in NC has a lot of endangered and rare plants so people come trying to collect them which endangers the populations there).
Even if that's all they did was sit around and tell tourists about plants all day, that would still a job regardless because public education is a form of work. Again, it's not just what they do, they're expected to do all sorts of different things but "telling tourists about the flowers" requires a bunch of domain knowledge about the local flora, which is a lot more complex than you might think. Especially since we tend to set up a fair bit of these parks in areas where biodiversity is high like Yosemite or the aforementioned Rocky Face. Our parks are like museums, but of nature. People love museums, people love zoos, and people love the parks and they like hearing and seeing and learning about cool things on the parks. We have one mountain (I forget the name I only went twice) where they have a bunch of signs set up on the trails explaining the history of the mountain, various plants, etc and it's actually a pretty popular spot for school trips.
It does actually happen in the private sector. One of my biology professors had personally met and worked with Tim Sweeney when he bought up a lot of land in NC for preservation. I didn't hear too much details on what they did (after all it was just a side topic in class) but lots of people like nature and they like knowing about nature and preserving nature.
Their work helps to create awesome resources like this https://auth1.dpr.ncparks.gov/flora/index.php. I don't know the other states resources but we have entire databases around what plant species occur in what counties, their various different attributes and descriptions, etc. Natural plant diversity is an important part of the ecosystem, from the beetles/flies/bees that pollinate them to the herbivores that eat them, to the carnivores that eat those. Also good proof that they're not just "telling tourists about flowers"
Which leads back around to how they are under a lot of threat, even plants that are famous worldwide like the Venus fly trap exists almost entirely within a 50 mile radius of Wilmington NC, and despite how easy it is to get legal seeds and plants now they still have to monitor and track for poachers and illegal collectors threatening the local populations. Hey, that related back to part 1!
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/national-park-ranger-fired-dream-job-emotional-viral-letter/
Here's a quote from this person's letter:
You're right, it sounds like some of the other things they do other than talk about plants is talk about bird songs.
And this is abstractly valuable. Do you think this means they should be able to demand that people make sacrifices in their own lives to give money for this?
I'd say that they have a responsibility to recognize that demanding we all pay for this stuff is a privilege, and recognize that as much as they might not enjoy, they might have to do things like send 5 bullet points describing what they do every week. I think it would be reasonable to ask them to send an email every day detailing what they did. I've certainly had various slack bots and things that have asked that of me, and I didn't throw a protest or pen and melodramatic letters about it.
A random worker writing a letter trying to appeal to parents is not some full job description of everything they do. If that's genuinely what you got your idea of park service work from then you should reconsider how you source your information and beliefs going forward.
Another topic you don't seem to have any knowledge about. Maintaining a healthy ecosystem and biodiversity isn't some abstract value, it helps keeps the world we're living in stable. This is the system of our world and we are not yet an interstellar species. A nd it helps with things like pharmaceutical research. So much of the medicine we have right now comes from random plants. Famously aspirin came from Willow bark originally but we also have stuff like heart medications from Foxglove research. You can find tons of examples like this from random plants and animals. Likewise you can get from basic internet searches plenty of studies talking about this very thing https://aacrjournals.org/cancerdiscovery/article/14/3/392/734905/Biodiversity-Medicine-New-Horizon-and-New https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5735771/ etc etc etc you can look up for plenty of examples.
You’re wrong about where I get my characterization of federal workers. Especially parkies.
Correct. The people who we hired to do it should take their job more seriously.
That was the source you gave for your information.
That was a reference I gave to a story that has been in the news, and the one that I alluded to.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I’m pretty much here. I don’t understand just why these people are so allergic to the idea of having to prove to representatives of the elected government that they did five productive things in a week. Like how out of touch are they, that they don’t think they need to answer a question that most people with private sector jobs have to answer — what is it you actually do here, any why should you continue to get a paycheck from us. Rest assured, for even the lowest employee of any private business, if they are only doing 5 things in an entire week, they would be laid off as soon as possible. It’s an absurdly low standard. I think in most jobs if you only did five things a day, you’d be out. That’s all the public wants— they want everyone in the public sector to actually be held to some standard of actual productive work. We’re paying for it, and its unreasonable that they don’t think they need to do anything.
I work for the government, I have no problem sending 5 bullets to my manager every week (I've been doing that every week since I joined in various ways). My team is small and we do quite a bit that sounds good in a bullet point. The issue is sending information about a whole lot of my work (unclassified but I work with private corporate data) is very restricted and some of those restrictions are on disclosing processes and operations outside of my agency. So it's trivial to write 5 bullet points to my boss or his boss or the director if I need to, but when they are going aoutside my agency it's much trickier. I have a bunch of laws I need to follow to make sure that nothing I summarize could be construed as a disclosure that violates on of the many laws meant to protect the information corporations trust us to use legally. If I report over 3 weeks that I met with the corporation to discuss a change and then that the resolution of that change have I disclosed enough of a business operation or process to violate the law? I'm not an attorney, I have no idea, but but if that resolution takes 10% of my week, and solved problems that a dozen people have been asking me to fix for the last month, I can be pretty proud of getting that fixed internally. And if there's a fuck up I face criminal penalties.
Further, OPM doesn't have an agreement with my agency to protect the information we share with them, so I also have to consider that if a competitor FOIAs something that includes the data in my bullet points, have I given away anything that could aggregate to being competitive information. We can laugh and deny the attempt but OPM doesn't have to.
There are a ton of things that have to be considered when sending information outside an agency because we're bound by various laws and legal agreements on what we can do but the other agency isn't. That's not a great result but the alternative is something where every agency is forced to play under the most restrictive rules of all agencies and that's much much worse.
I'm not bitching about this on /r/fednews I wouldn't post there or any of the other fed reddits, but it's not as simple a request as it seems like it should be.
More options
Context Copy link
I'm half convinced all of the indignant posts on /r/fednews from so-called federal employees are North Korean agitprop designed to repulse ordinary people and get them excited about firing them in service of destroying state capacity.
I mean you can have too much state capacity. In fact, I think we passed that point before my birth. There are very few aspects of modern life that aren’t touched on by the government. And globally, we give out a lot of cash with very little vetting of where the money goes and what it does once it gets there. I think the excitement is about finally clawing back a bit and making sure that we’re actually benefiting from the money spent, and that any aid money given out goes to something beneficial to both the country it’s given to and the interests of the USA.
More options
Context Copy link
North Korean secret base:
Kim jong-un: "How do we fight the Americans today, general?"
General: "We must destroy their very foundations, your excellency"
Kim: "And what is the foundation of a modern society?"
General: "Education, of course"
Kim: "Then we shall destroy their... Department of Education"
Both: "WAHAHAHAHAHA"
Yeah, no is going to miss these workers.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That heavily depends on your definitions. I've done a dozen things per day or one thing for an entire week depending on how you lump or split the tasks.
One example of a morning (today):
One example of a week (most of a year ago):
(The weeks before and after that were similar, but not quite as monotonous)
I've had weeks that could be accurately described as "tried to figure out why functionality X in project Y stops working on a seemingly random basis" (it turned out to be a cpu bug).
I've burnt more weeks of my life than I care to admit on building throwaway prototype proof-of-concepts that showed that said concept did not, in fact, work.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't know about your workplace, but I've never had a job where I had to prove that to HR (the rough private sector equivalent of OPM here) or shareholders (the rough private sector equivalent of the "public" here) directly. That's always been strictly between me and my direct management.
Not in a formal sense, but managers are held to justifying every employee, and yes, employees do have to sometimes write up their own job descriptions to send to HR. Other times, your direct supervisor informs HR of what tasks you are doing. The only really unusual thing is that the employee is asked to send that information directly to DOGE, and that there aren’t these kinds of job audits happening regularly (which is why DOGE is necessary). The interesting bit is that not only are the employees shocked by the demand that they show some form of actual productivity, but their immediate supervisors are telling them not to comply. If there’s a giant red flag of “these people know their employees do shit all all day” it’s them saying “don’t you dare tell DOGE what you do all day.”
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
yeah, but the upside is limited. no 'exits' or huge bonusses with park job. most of the waste is not from these jobs; it's medical costs when people get sick and cannot pay, for example. that is a big one.
That applies to a vanishingly small % of the private workforce, though.
That's what people are missing here. A 100k remote job with minimal requirements and a generous pension? Where you can't be fired? That is a dream job for 90% of the population, even if it pales in comparison to what FAANG employees get.
You don't get exits or huge bonuses by managing a Panda Express either. In fact, almost no one gets exits or huge bonuses. Imagine thinking that is normal.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I wouldn't call that a 'waste', per se, if the medical services billed for are needed by the patient and actually provided to them. (If doctors are getting paid for procedures that were never performed, on patients who never existed, throw the Physicians' Desk Reference at them.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You're welcome to apply if it's such a good deal. Well, you aren't, because land management is in a hiring freeze, but you would have been before Jan 20.
Actually, I did, and they didn't take me because I'm not a DEI-favored category or a disabled veteran. When I worked government HR I noticed that disabled veterans took up the majority of our white male hiring quota. I only got that HR job because I can speak Spanish, which put me in a different hiring pool with fewer disabled veterans in it.
More options
Context Copy link
Securing federal employment is, in fact, incredibly competitive exactly because the job is such a good deal. For large swathes of educational backgrounds it is not just a competitive compensation package, but top 5% or so. What this means, in practice, is the federal workforce is highly credentialed. Lots of people with obscure masters and Ph.D degrees who some computer software and some generic HR person found to pattern match to a long winded job description.
Do you have a specific example in mind? Within land management, it's been my experience that if you know how to jump through the hoops on USAJobs (which takes a little Googling but is hardly a special qualification) and are willing to apply to multiple remote duty locations, entry-level jobs are pretty much there for the taking. There are some competitive positions (climbing rangers in Denali NP, hazard tree removal in Yosemite, smokejumpers and most hotshot crews) but they're competitive for a reason and nobody starts out there. There are a lot of remote duty locations that would like to hire more people than the number of minimally-qualified applicants they receive.
I'll also note that if there is, say, a GS-5/6/7 ladder biology tech position in a hypothetical DOI pipevine swallowtail conservation program for which a Ph.D. on the pipevine swallowtail is a de facto requirement (and I emphasize I don't know of such a thing), 1) that seems like a fairly reasonable meritoratic outcome and 2) it's not actually all that great of a deal, is it now.
My experience is with engineers and lawyers. Outside of the prestige positions like DOJ which are a revolving door between biglaw and the feds (and even then, the career prosecutors tend to be unimpressive compared to the shortlived people who leave), these agencies generally serve as landing spots for people who have washed out or are tired of actually working.
And even your hypothetical doesn't seem like a bad deal for this person. What good is a swallowtail Ph.D in the world? Its actually a great example of the problem with federal hiring. That person is unlikely to be qualified to do any real work at all. They have a silly degree indicating a silly personality.
And yet they're competitive for the top 5% compensation packages for their educational background? My guess is that it's probably a smaller paycheck but with shorter hours and better job stability, which isn't necessarily off the market average seller's indifference curve. In the other direction, it's worth noting that sometime in the last decade OPM spun up special non-GS pay scales for doctors and IT guys because even with benefits and job stability the GS compensation packages weren't attracting enough new hires.
That's market heterogeneity for you. Grinding billable hours at biglaw isn't a bad deal for the right kind of person, spending a month at a time at sea in the Alaskan fishing fleet isn't a bad deal for the right kind of person, cutting firewood for cash sale when you feel like it and living cheap isn't etc. But none of it, in expectation, is a free lunch. You could argue, of course, that the government shouldn't be in the pipevine swallowtail business at all, but that seems to me like an entirely separate matter.
It isn't though. That is a major issue with federal employment, that there is no similar market based job, because there is no market for the "skills" for huge swathes of the workforce. They'd have to take large pay decreases going into the private sector because they are, typically, extremely over-credentialed but also not very good at doing things that produce value. Much of the government is full of pipevine swallowtails. Large numbers of people who's job is to give out free money for various projects.
If your definition of "real value" implies a market outcome, sure, that follows. I still think this is separate from the question of whether Federal employment is a good deal for the employee, but at this point I'm content to let anyone still reading make up their own mind on a) the object-level goodness of the deal and b) whether these are, in fact, separate questions.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If you are a non-minority non-veteran, those jobs are all but closed to you.
I've definitely met enough white guys with no military service working those jobs to say this is false.
He's directionally correct. I was an HR manager for a federal agency for a couple years. I was the only white male who wasn't a disabled veteran, I got the job by having the highest test score of anybody fluent in Spanish in our district. (so essentially I got the job for being Hispanic)
You get 5 bonus points on the exam for minority status and 5 points for disabled veteran status. People assume this is 5% but it's actually 5 questions on a 35 question test. If a black disabled veteran gets a 26/35 on the exam, they get an adjusted score of 36/35 and hired over a non-disabled veteran white male who got a 35/35. The test is really quite easy and most applicants get close to a perfect score, making it nearly impossible to get in without qualifying for "bonus points". This is why the postal service has so many black employees.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Somebody forgot to tell me or damn near everyone I work with, I guess. (Quite a few Mexicans, but there are a lot of Mexicans living around here in general and working outside around here specifically.).
I won't say affirmative action in government land management hiring has never happened, but it's massively overblown in online discussions by people who think it's called the National Forest Service, don't know the difference between district rangers, LEO rangers, interp rangers, and backcountry rangers, have never submitted an application or visited a potential duty station or Googled "how to write a resume for USAjobs", etc. etc.
Mexicans are one of our DEI-favored groups so you're agreeing while pretending that you're not agreeing. Mexicans get the bonus points for being brown and Cubans don't (unless they're black). How many Cubans did you meet?
Approximately 100% of the Cubans in the surrounding three counties, so one guy. And he wasn't from there, he came there for the job.
I believe your observations, but I also believe my observations: it's been fairly easy for me to get land management jobs without any special status, I've worked with a bunch of guys who had the same experience, and minorities aren't overrepresented relative to their presence in the recruiting pool (local high school and junior college sports, general private sector blue-collar labor.). Were you working for a land management agency? Entry-level fire, at least, has been mostly direct hiring authority since 2020 or so, with no obvious change in the composition or quality of new hires, so I don't think the points system is even applicable--the postings would specifically say no vet pref. Before that, they asked for racial self-ID on USAJobs but not in the agency questionnaire where they ask about vet status, displaced Fed status, and how much of an expert you are with a shovel--which is not to say they weren't using the race data, but it does seem like further evidence against it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm glad to see the Space Force has begun recruitment, and avoided the accusations of ripping off 40k's Space Marines in favor of poaching Airborne infantry.
(I presume this isn't as exciting as it sounds haha)
Law enforcement officer, not low Earth orbit. (Yet.).
I suppose "officer" is redundant, I've generally heard them referred to as LEOs and I think the USAJobs postings usually say "ranger (law enforcement)".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I work in a giant corporation. If HR tried to send this email, my senior management would (politely) blow a hole in them so large, the crater would be visible from space.
Kash and Gabbard had it right: "thanks OPM, we will manage our own".
Obviously the answer is send a troll email
yeah this is a ham-fisted way of doing it
More options
Context Copy link
And honestly the only response anyone thinking through should have expected. Institutional power is legal authority + budget + manpower. An institution like OPM is only one of those.
One better-
Do, that, but-
Reply All
In an email with a header that starts "DO NOT REPLY ALL"
To the entire government.
More options
Context Copy link
This is a bad analogy. This email is not HR department going rogue; it’s HR department executing a project that was mandated by CEO, and under a clear and explicit coordination with said CEO. Your senior management would not resist the HR in these circumstances.
Also, only a small fraction of government employees have security clearance, and if you lie to your employer about your work being classified when it’s not to obstruct them, it is grounds for disciplinary proceedings.
The flipside is that HR would, after getting the mandate from the CEO, would never send it before coordinating with my senior management.
Indeed, in the model of "this is a CEO-mandated data gathering activity", I'd have expected the heads of the various agencies to write their own email: "Hi Team, as per the direction of {CEO} our HR team to do {whatever it is}. Shortly you will receive an email about {PROJECT}, please do your best to help {HR TEAM} complete this important activity".
The fact that Kash and Gabbard (and Bondi?) ended up writing the exact opposite means that the project very apparently doesn't appear to have any such mandate. And, if we're being honest, that's not out of Trump's personality to do -- to tell subordinate 1 to go do something without telling subordinates 2,3,4 to support 1.
There are a large number of legitimate reasons to redact activity besides security clearances.
But yes, withholding it without a reason from a program or project is malfeasance.
Another issue in this context is you need the management alignment to warn against phishing emails.
If you demand all employees do what emails that say they are from HR demand be done or else be fired if they don't, you are going to have a lot of employees that do what emails that say they are from HR demand be done on fear of being fired if they don't.
Which is an excellent way to gain malware and lose information to scammers.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This makes me wonder about a tangential question: what fraction of federal workers use their email on a daily basis? It seems a very desk-jockey centric view to send out a bulk email and expect all employees to respond in days.
What about the park rangers in remote places: I've been to National Park offices that didn't take credit cards because they were mostly off-grid within the last couple years. Wildland firefighters? Do USPS mail carriers have work email? TSA agents? Or anyone taking a whole week of vacation? There are whole classes of useful (well, we can debate the TSA separately) jobs that involve showing up, doing the work, and calling it a day without ever sitting at a desk deliberately taking time to answer emails on a daily basis, and government-wide emails seem unlikely to be a good medium to reach everyone on their levels.
People on vacation, people on parental or medical leave, people working overseas in remote locations on official business. The whole thing just doesn't really make sense.
More options
Context Copy link
At big institutions even the janitor has a work email and checks it regularly.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is such a non-issue in my opinion. The correct analogy would be that you receive a phone call directly from the CEO's deputy, where he verifies his identity, and tells you "you're about to receive an email saying...". In such a situation, I imagine the calculus would be different. Reporting it as a phishing attack would be malicious compliance or outright disruptive and you should expect to be on the CEO/deputy's shit list.
I'm sure there are a lots of things DOGE intends to do with this special project. Identifying the most disruptive federal employees is hopefully at the top of this list. The best strategy for any fed employee is to keep their head down and get lost in the hundreds of thousands of other low level fed workers. The email is brilliant because this stuff is like catnip to the most ideological of trump's enemies. They literally cant resist fighting back and "Resisting". It's truly a brilliant move.
This is the setup to actual scams.
Not that step 2 is typically an email from HR. The usual point of these scams is to trick you into thinking you should open and respond to an external email.
More options
Context Copy link
That's not quite the analogy. The CEO announced publicly that he would be sending emails. So, sure, employees know that the CEO is sending an email and to expect one. But external phishers also know that employees are expecting an email from the CEO.
Generally speaking, at scale getting employees not to divulge sensitive information to phishing attempts is a really hard problem. Even giving very specific, clear instructions (expect it in this time interval, from this domain, from this identity) is going to fail, because it always fails, even when dealing with workers with high technological and intellectual capacity. The only thing that kind of works is "don't trust anything from external domains."
More options
Context Copy link
If that email didn't copy at least 1 person direct management chain, it would be extremely irregular.
The main reason, of course, is that if the CEO or his deputy wanted me to do something, he would want to direct my management chain to make that happen and to supervise it and to remove any roadblocks.
My guess is that part of the idea is to route around management. Presumably do-nothing employees are already known to their managers, but have been receiving some sort of protection for years.
Which is a recipe for failure.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Depends on if the CEOs deputy is in my management chain. If the CEO asks me for a status report it's weird, but sure, he gets it. But if e.g. the VP of a division not my own sends it, that's a different question.
More options
Context Copy link
Eeeeeeh. I'm generally pro-DOGE, but I don't think you appreciate the justified paranoia of the average federal employee or contractor. Because the relentless phishing attempts are truly out of this world. And it's not beyond the capabilities of our adversaries to take whatever email DOGE is sending out, and then create a phishing template out of it. The fact that Elon tweets so damned much about everything he's doing just makes this all the easier.
Add to that the fact that they get training monthly about cyber security best practices, usually with an emphasis on phishing. Add to that the typical level of incompetence in the government.
Thankfully this had nothing to do with national secrets, but I was at a federally museum in DC once. I had to scan a QR code to pull up the webpage to pay for tickets to a specific exhibit. I had a shitty old phone with a 3rd party QR scanner. Unknown to me, since I used it so rarely, the QR scanner had been turned into malware. I scanned the code, and instead of giving me the URL it represented, an ad appeared pretending to be the link I scanned. I only know this in retrospect. It took me to a suspicious looking website asking me to sign up for something with my credit card. Doubtful, I showed the person at the desk with the QR code directing people how to buy tickets. They squinted at it for a moment, and then confidently told me it was the correct website. It wasn't, it stole my credit card, I didn't get tickets, and they just shrugged. I had even showed them the website twice thinking that it really didn't look right. I should have trusted my gut, but my wife was riding my ass to stop being paranoid and just get the tickets already before they sell out, and our kid was hungry and bored. It was a frustrating lesson in trusting my gut and ignoring everything else.
I get phishing emails as a contractor literally every day. I work at a small company. I know literally everybody in the company. I know the people in these emails are fictitious. Sometimes I get emails "from" people who actually work at the company asking for shit it's nonsensical for them to ever ask for, with a replyto that's bullshit, or some url shortening link that they'd never actually use. Or other shenanigans. It never ends. I'd say I'd seen it all, but once or twice a year they come up with something new that really gives me pause.
Eventually you just get worn down, and you start to ignore everything that isn't from a known point of contact, preferably not even over email. Slack is preferred in my organization.
Ideally this is the sort of thing cryptographic signatures are supposed to be good for. "Email from the CEO asking us to buy gift cards? Did he sign it with a valid RSA key that is signed by our CA? No? Then I'll just wait for clarification."
Even though much of the infrastructure for this exists in the large organization I work in, it doesn't get used for the broadcast emails that go to everyone (actually, a small subset are, but only one department seems to care), even though it would seemingly be useful. But I suppose the crypto dream of the '90s will always be "the future" because
normiesnon-nerds don't understand or appreciate it.More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Just for the record, I work for the federal government and what you are wondering about is exactly what happened. Some of us got the email, others didn't, we all requested clarification from our supervisor, who immediately said "everyone hold up until I figure out what is going on." The commander said the same thing shortly thereafter, and about twenty four hours later we received the directive from very high up in the chain of command to not respond to the email at this time.
Exactly why I am feeling bearish on Trump. Internal enemies, exactly the issue his first term, seem to not have been dealt with. His underlings, perhaps even one personally chosen by him (EDIT: like Gabbard), overriding his will.
It's not internal enemies. What the fuck am I supposed with an email from "hr@opm.gov" that has never emailed me before? Asking clarification from my chain of command is the right and proper thing to do. If I had seen the email prior to all the news discussion, I would have assumed it was a phishing scam. The entire project was amateur hour from Elon.
I don't think @some was saying you were an "internal enemy" for sending it up the chain; they were talking about whoever gave the "directive from very high up" to ignore the email even after some time had passed.
Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth are Trump's enemies?
I didn't say it made sense, I said it was what @some meant. Guy has me blocked for some reason, I'm not endorsing his points.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, DOGE efforts are highly irregular, and massively disruptive to government agencies. That’s kinda the point. Your analysis of the email thing is somewhat superfluous, because we already knew that the DOGE exists precisely to get the government out of the ruts it’s been stuck following. And, of course, nobody is surprised that many employees don’t like it.
Sounds like an attempt at percussive maintenance. I thought the whole point of DOGE was to get a team of smart outsiders led by a certified genius to fix government inefficiency - this is the opposite.
How do you know that this is opposite? How do you know that it is not the best, or even not a good way to tackle this problem? This sort of argument would be more convincing if there was an alternative way of going about doing this that was clearly better. Do you know any? I don’t. On the other hand, I know that Elon Musk has a track record of using very similar procedures across his companies, and in these cases, they apparently have been very successful.
I think that we will find out quite soon whether this was a good plan or not.
I think this is the only plan that will actually allow the government to cut the bloat out of the budget and bring these organizations back to being under the elected government. If you’re just asking politely if they’d mind telling us how many people they need, the answer will be “actually all of them”. If asked about the budget the answer will be “actually, we need more money.” And that’s not even getting at the hundreds of programs that are useless, redundant, or counterproductive.
One in USAid turns out that we actually funded cement works in Gaza. That cement that American taxpayers paid for built the tunnels under Gaza. Then, after 10/7, we sent Israel millions in weapons to blow up the tunnels we spent millions to supply the cement to build. Now I ask you, how the heck does America gain from this? How does this create stability in MENA let alone the rest of the world?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
...
What do you think a 'certified genius' leading a team of 'smart outsiders' fixing government efficiency should look like?
I'm not sure, but I don't think it would all that distinguishable from what we are observing.
The guy already tested this approach in his Twitter takeover, it obviously worked (i.e. made Twitter VASTLY more efficient) there despite him having to adjust course a few times.
More options
Context Copy link
There's a great Patio11 Twitter thread about the repeated failures of government payroll modernization inititives.
You can't "play by the rules" and get anything done. Every inefficiency is someone's personal cutout. The agency will not simply allow DOGE to cut waste. DOGE has to force the agency to do it.
The best way to do that would be to devise the appropriate plan and then get the head of the agency, the one selected by Trump, to supervise and execute it.
DOGE has to force the agency to do it and the worst conceivable way to force it would be by not having the direct leadership of the agency on board.
I feel that 'appropriate plan' is hiding a gargantuan amount of assumptions where you ask the civil service to reduce headcount and they return to you and say that they need to hire more. It's a Yes, Minister bit, but it would be exactly what would happen. If the civil service had the ability to de-bloat itself we wouldn't have a ketamine-fueled billionaire taking a chainsaw to the institutions. There is no 'best way' to do it: you're going to be Washington Monument'd for a papercut, you might as well go for the head.
I mean, there is this institution called Congress that can set funding and headcount and whatnot. In this respect, the Presidency is much unlike a modern CEO who has both supervisory and fiscal authority.
When the dust settles, if this all fails, the blame will be placed on the blob rather than on the ham-fisted execution. So it goes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not sure they are necessarily at odds. Musk seems pretty famous for prioritizing speed over getting things right the first time and yet this doesn't stop him from not only getting things right but getting them right faster than others. For instance, IIRC he spent millions on complex machinery for Starship before deciding that it should be made out of stainless steel and had to basically eat the loss; Starship is still poised to be the heaviest-lift reusable rocket ever built at a time when other reusable rockets are still struggling to compete with Starship's smaller predecessors.
Anyway, I don't take for granted that Musk is necessarily making the best decisions or the right ones in his newest venture, but I also don't think that "smart outsiders led by a certified genius" and "percussive maintenance" are at odds inherently.
OK, I've been a bit negative about this elsewhere in the thread, but this is understandable.
Still, if DOGE are prioritizing speed over getting things right, then it has to be open to feedback in order to get on the right track, even if it means eating the L. Much of the criticism here can be reframed that way -- hey they are quickly iterating and look, here's a strategy that didn't work.
Open to feedback from who though?
Should he take feedback from Democrats who want the project to fail? Federal employees losing their do-nothing job? Random internet commenters who've never run a lemonade stand? Presumably, Elon is taking feedback from people who he trusts.
I'm kind of in the awkward position of thinking "Gee, this looks bad", but then realizing that there's a reason why Elon is where he is and I'm not. I wouldn't bet against him.
Oh sure. But part of that is "Elon is willing to do the wrong thing in order to more quickly iterate to find the right thing".
That is not at all contradictory to the thought of "gee this looks wrong".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, 100%. And it sounds like Elon is probably getting said feedback by the way agency directors are handling it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm a huge fan of this Musk philosophy in his engineering ventures. Testing often-too-flawed engineering ideas as fast as you can is much cheaper and much faster than trying to come up with something flawless on the first try, and seemingly-ironically it tends to give you a less flawed final product too. I'm not sure how well that works with people rather than objects The fourth Falcon 1 wasn't working while scared that mistakes had been made that blew up the first three. The Falcon 9 landing engines weren't going to change careers because SpaceX tried out parachutes first. The machine-welded stainless steel Starship tanks aren't going to quit and find a job where composite tanks and hand-welded steel tanks don't get abused and wrecked.
I'm not sure how well the philosophy works with people. Federal government work in many cases is seen as a tradeoff: lower compensation than equivalent skills would get you in the private sector, but with better job security to make up for it. If he significantly cuts headcount without cutting output (or if Congress follows up with more deliberate cuts) then maybe making that deal worse is still fine? We'll have fewer interested applicants, but we'll also have fewer jobs we need to fill, so we won't have to raise pay to compensate for the drop in supply? But this isn't like an engineering experiment where the experimenter is the only one who learns something and failure is just one of the things we can learn; here the experimentees are learning too and failure can have more lasting consequences.
The real problem is Federal Government programs work with people so when a policy fucks up like a rocket design doesn't just blow up a rocket it means the rocket blew up in someones back yard and now their neighbor's homes are covered in a liquid oxygen enhanced fire. This created an environment that strongly favors never changing anything unless you can show the change will be flawless on the first try.
More options
Context Copy link
The DC suburbs are the richest in the country. What part of that indicates lower compensation?
It seems more like, instead of lower compensation, it's simply lower standards, and the job security incentivizes the layabouts, the malingerers, and the otherwise unsuitable who could not command anywhere near the same remuneration anywhere else.
The DC suburbs are indeed very rich relative to a lot of the country, but it's not the federal employees who are holding up that average. The most a typical federal employee can make in DC is $191,900 as a GS15 Step 7-10 (note that $191,900 is a hard cap government wide and DC has one of the highest locality pay adjustments of any city in the country). That's a great salary by most standards, but bear in mind that GS15 positions are rare (most feds will retire never having reached a GS15 position) and you may gain one step a year after earning the position (OPM claims it takes on average 18 years to reach Step 10).
On top of that, as you say the DC suburbs are some of the richest in the country, and it's consequently incredibly expensive to live here. So while that $191,900 looks good, it's just getting into the range where you could comfortably buy a non-"fixer upper" house inside the Beltway without needing a contribution from your spouse's salary.
There are numerous industries in DC where you could make more with less experience like tech, law, defense contracting, lobbying, general federal contracting etc. Consider that those last three are all industries whose existence is predicated on their ability to suckle from the federal teat. If there's any villain in the story of modern government inefficiency I'd suggest we look at the contractors before we start vilifying the feds.
Federal pay scale for DC: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/pdf/2024/DCB.pdf
Part of the deal is going back and forth from government to industry and then to government. It is why the private sector pay is pretty good.
A couple making 380k combined with strong benefits and time off…isn’t a bad living.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, yes, yes! People aren't engineering, although sometimes similar principles may apply.
It's interesting, low government pay is a complaint I've heard articulated before, and I think there might actually be something to substantially slashing personnel roles while increasing personnel pay.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It has to catch up to him at some point. He's playing from the Tiberius Gracchus playbook. Either he will be assassinated by an insane person or the next Democratic administration will put him in solitary.
But imagine betting on black and winning every time 10 times in a row. At some point you must think you have plot armor.
I just hope he can defeat the blob before they inevitably get him.
In terms of his strategy, I think both he and Trump and throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. If they meet resistance, they move on, but they are relying on their greater energy and competency to overwhelm the defenses of the other side. They know they have 2 years to do this, 4 years max. The Trump coalition is unstable without the great man. No one can speak to the rubes like he can. So time is of the essence. And it's why the preferred strategy for the other side is delay. "Of course we want to increase government efficiency, but we just need to do it the right way", says the party that obviously doesn't want to increase efficiency.
Gabbard is not the blob, is she? I thought we were all bullish on her.
If someone with your values is pushing back on you, maybe this is one instance for actual mistake theory.
More options
Context Copy link
Not just that, but betting exponentially increasing amounts on black and winning while crowds of people are insisting that you'd be stupid not to quit or stupid not to bet on red.
I fear he's currently spiraling on psychoactive drugs or something, but trying to picture things from his point of view I don't see how someone with that personal history can manage to pull himself out of making mistakes like that before it's too late. Hypothetically, if you're Musk and you think extra ketamine just gets rid of those damn depressive periods, but people are trying to tell you that they're also making your manic periods reckless, why should you listen to them? Ignoring the naysayers always worked great before!
Ketamine has merit for treatment resistant depression. Now, I don't know what it would do for someone who is bipolar (Musk has claimed, and then denied, having it), but as drugs to try to solve your mental health concerns, there are worse.
I do expect that whatever he does want to use, recreational or otherwise, he has the best doctors money can buy nominally overseeing it. Not that he necessarily listens to them.
More options
Context Copy link
If he is on drugs, they are working great.
I recently learned more about how xAI built Colossus, the supercluster that trained Grok3. It's amazing, and probably only Musk could do it in such a short time. Grok went from zero to top or near top in less than 2 years. And xAI is his like third or fourth most important project after SpaceX, DOGE, and Tesla.
Certainly this superhuman level of exertion isn't possible for much longer, but I'd never bet against him. It feels more and more that we're all just NPCs in whatever simulation he created.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link