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Comment by fnordpiglet | Hacker News Reader

Most people need their jobs to pay their rent and have health insurance and aren’t programmers with a LinkedIn inbox full of recruiters to draw on. They weren’t making a ton of money to begin with and many desperately need the job. Public service has nice long term benefits like a pension, but most federal employees are not well off by any measure.

I find people who feel glee at the suffering of these families disturbing.

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That’s my point really. People just assume government workers are lazy and don’t do much but in reality a lot of these people play CRITICAL roles. Having been on both sides, government workers aren’t more or less efficient versus private counterparts. I can go on and on about lazy and zero-skill people in private enterprises that survive purely on “networking”. And we saw evidence of this during the pandemic when a lot of these people were exposed.

This country would literally fall apart within the week and people will beg them to return.

If we could all group together, such a resignation wouldn't even last a day. It's the ultimate prisoners dilemma and we're slowly running out of options less drastic. everyone would benefit and few would lose their jobs compared to this still-fast slashing.

also, nitpick:

>aren’t programmers with a LinkedIn inbox full of recruiters to draw on.

It's not 2022 anymore. Those LinkedIn inboxes are empty for me. This market sucks.

a general strike is great and all, but didn't Reagan call the bluff with those air traffic controllers and just hire all new ones? Replacing top scientists in all the institutions is basically impossible, but for the most part, a lot of positions would be certainly easy to fill. Park rangers? Forest service employees? lab techs? These are jobs that tons of people with a Bachelor's would be more than happy to fill. Government employees generally want to keep their job for life. So most are more inclined to hide under the covers and try to avoid the spotlight. Though I have seen many get antagonistic and incredulous with recent events but I think it should be clear that people need to keep up. With this recent email sent out saying "reply or you're fired," I mean it's cute some people think they aren't going to reply, but they must do that at their own peril. I'd be replying quick.

Park rangers and lab tech are highly skilled highly contextual roles. You can’t just go and pull someone off the street and make them experts in running assay machines or have decades of knowledge of a park and its terrain. There are plenty of people who can be churned for sure, but why are we doing this to them? There are ways of restructuring that’s thoughtful and mission enhancing, this is just wanton destruction to both our institutions and peoples lives and livelihoods - all because less than a majority voted for a single person - who is going against the will of the legislature and the majority of people. Politics aside, this is a time of sorrow and life altering trauma for a great many people. The profound lack of empathy for them and the acting like they’re somehow the “enemy” is just heartless.

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