From what I've heard, the problem at NASA is it has a lot of lifers who justify their positions through bureaucracy.
This reduction gets rid of the people at NASA who actually get stuff done. People who get stuff done can easily find jobs in industry, so are more likely to accept buyouts. It also gets rid of the young probationary employees who are still idealistic and have not yet been corrupted by the system.
> It also gets rid of the young probationary employees who are still idealistic
So you're saying there's suddenly a bunch of space engineers on the market looking to accept whatever terms some space contractor offers them? I wonder which space contractors already have a list with their names and personnel information...
Timing is coincidental, of course.
A strike by NASA employees would hurt NASA employees far more than it would anyone else. I'm sure Elon and the prez would love a walkout by said employees.
Congress, not unions, should be the guardian of civil servant rights. But of course, public service unions are the largest donors to Congress, which then drives the narrative of a corrupt and bloated civil service.
I mean, I don't have stats in front of me but how could possibly public service unions compete with the largest companies in the world?
This was something people overlooked about the CDC layoffs: those, likewise, targeted people who were administratively easy to fire, which in that case was highly skilled experts hired under an exceptional federal employment statute ("Title 42"), which allowed them far higher salaries than other public service workers—but without the standard protections.
- "EIS officers are hired under Title 42, a mechanism that allows the federal government to bring in the best and the brightest, in some cases paying them at rates higher than the typical public sector wages. It offers workers fewer job protections, however, making Title 42 workers easier to fire."
https://www.statnews.com/2025/02/14/trump-cdc-cuts-include-e...
Edit: I didn't see the bit about probation. I think that's probably because you have to start with people on probation if you're making people redundant, right?
Political appointees require 30 days notice, rank-and-file must be given cause.
Same thing with the Intelligence Community: lots of DMV-like cogs that have TS clearances but otherwise are little different than the masses occupying the Social Security office down the street.
Who wants to give up a fed pension for a 401k?!
I would think so. Promoting someone implies they are exceeding expectations in their current role[1].
1. I do acknowledge that in any large organization some people end up promoted despite not meeting the requirements of the job. I'll leave it to the reader to decide where that kind of promotion style might be at play currently.
Not every job in the world works well with 'Move fast, and break things' philosophy.
Doing things quickly isn't even a goal for NASA. Doing things right is.
Why do people keep saying every thing either needs to be as chaotic as a dorm room start up or cease to exist?
It's what DOGE is doing: becoming inured to risky actions.
When you see someone seemingly contradicting their stated goals, ask yourself if perhaps they have different, unstated, goals.
Software development is one of the best studied areas for what productivity is, and the thing that everyone agrees is that there are no good metrics for it. For all sorts of jobs above "tier 1 customer service (which can be measured in calls per hour)" it gets really hard to measure, and even that is very open to gaming in ways that lead to bad outcomes- e.g. the entire history of Goodhart's Law.
This was realized by everyone 150 years ago, which is why they created civil service protections to begin with. You need a better solution to that problem, otherwise you are just repeating the mistakes of the 1870s. I'm prepared to believe that there is a better idea out there. But just going back to the 1870s, with all of its problems, for sure ain't it.