GOLIKEHELLMACHINE: DOGE Is Four Letters

We Have Been These People

2025-04-03T00:00:00Z

What do you do?

I review and authorize permits that may result in environmental impacts, specifically to aquatic resources — wetlands, rivers, mudflats, etc. We review permits from applicants that include Ma and Pa businesses, small business, large corporations, and municipalities. My job is to identify potential adverse and beneficial effects to aquatic resources, and, through laws like NEPA and the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, NHRA, Magnuson-Stevens, and many others, I ensure that applicants avoid and minimize adverse effects. Where adverse effects cannot be avoided or minimized, they are mitigated.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

After high school, and after attempting and failing college for the first time, I joined the Army during The Surge of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I joined as a M1A2 Main Battle Tank crewman (19k). I spent two 12-months tours in Iraq, before I got out on honorable discharge.

With my G.I. Bill, I started going to school in the evenings, while I worked construction during the day. It was working outside in Florida where I fell in love with nature, and all of the natural beauty the state had to offer, so I switched to an environmental degree program, and I got a job in undergrad doing ecological work for a small stipend, until I graduated. Once I graduated, I applied for the job I have now using the (now defunct) Pathways Program for recent grads. I've been doing this job for the last 8 years, and have enjoyed serving my community, while also helping others be better stewards of our natural resources.

What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?

Personally, I believe in our organization's mission. Even given my love for the environment, I think it's important that we authorize and help inform development. That could mean more housing, or better municipal infrastructure. Doing this job allows myself and my colleagues to help private citizens and developers build in ways that don't cripple our natural resources, or jeopardize the existence of endangered species. I've been a part of several instances of relocation of endangered species that would have been impacted by development, we have authorized emergency permits to help fix eroding shorelines, I've been a part of beach renourishment reviews, and I've worked closely with FEMA to write environmental assessments to authorize housing developments for those impacted by storms.

What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?

I don't want to speak for the American people. However, what I will say is, without us, there would be significantly less federal oversight when large developers plan and execute their work. The risk that you will have less consideration given to neighboring properties, to water quality, to impact on natural resources and to native species will be high. In some cases, where state and local governments step in, things might not be as bad. However, I am not optimistic about the ability for state and local governments to be completely unbiased when it comes to large developers and their lobbyists. Unfortunately, corruption exists at every level of government. It's my opinion that access to local and state officials, where local protections to natural resources can be exempted or waived, is easier and, therefore, more common. With federal oversight there is a robust bureaucratic machine that levels the playing field, where the rules are the same for developers in all 50 states.

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it's all going to impact your work and your mission?

Unfortunately, it means many people I work with are in a more dangerous position. I have people that now suffer a commute of more than two hours. Or, others who are new mothers, or have spouses that rely on the health insurance this job provides. It makes it harder for them to do their work to advance our mission. That, in turn, makes development suffer, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of government inefficiency. It puts our organization at risk, as well as our mission, and that risks the protection of natural resources and species.

I sympathize with the blue collar worker who isn't able to go to work because their boss doesn't have a permit. I sympathize with officials and developers who legitimately want to improve housing supply, or improve municipal infrastructure and have to go through the permitting process. I agree that our process could be more modernized, more efficient, and better serve the American public.

However, the wholesale slashing of government agencies, the trauma inflicted on the federal workforce, and the crippling of partner agencies we rely on to execute the mission is not the solution to this problem, and it will not bring change that improves the lives of Americans.

Instead, I fear, it will result in less protection for our natural resources, and lead to growing economic and environmental disparity. A salient point that's lost amongst the disregard for federal workers and the work they do is that they are, themselves, Americans, many of whom worked on the private side of the industry before finding an opportunity in the federal government, on the other side of whatever industry they came from.

We know how these policies affect those people, because we talk to those people everyday, and in many cases, we have been those people.

Spite Can Keep You Going

2025-04-02T00:00:00Z

What do you do?

I do administrative support at a national lab. I'm attached to a group of scientists, and help them navigate the paperwork. Right now, that falls into three areas: purchase card purchases, tracking accountable property, and general paperwork. Helping with paperwork when applying for an official passport, approval for attending conferences, stuff like that.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

Basically, I needed a job, and a friend knew about an opening at the lab, so I applied. At the time, I was waiting tables after being laid off from being a paralegal. Way back in the Bush administration, I applied several times for the Foreign Service, but never got past the personal interview. The things that can make you a good FSO (Foreign Service Officer) also slow down the background check. If I remember correctly, I think it's easier to get into Harvard.

What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?

We do important basic research, and, in particular, research that protects the country. In the past, we helped develop stuff like radar, and GPS, and stealth materials (I don't want to be too specific about what my specific group currently does, but most people would say it's darn useful). I help scientists by making sure they have what they need to do research. It's not sexy, but someone has to buy the screws and the oscilloscopes, and you can't do research without equipment and materials.

When it comes to the federal government, there's a lot of paperwork that has to be filled out for spending money. This makes DOGE exasperating. Wired reported that DOGE ordered purchase cards at GSA and USAID have their limits set to $1, with hopes of rolling that out across the government. That shuts down any purchases under $10,000.

As an example, normally, anything that costs under $10,000 is purchased with a purchase card. Like, everything. Journal fees, software, computers, hardware, metal stock, electronic parts — these are all orders that I now have on hold. We often build our own experimental equipment, and that gets paused if we can't get the parts. If you don't have the equipment, you can't run the experiment. This purchase card is not a credit card - it gets paid in full every month. It also has lots and lots of paperwork. Each order needs three approval signatures before I can order anything, and the purchase file ends up with a half-dozen documents when I'm done with it. What Musk says we need to implement in order to prevent fraud is already implemented.

What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?

We do basic research that's too risky for the private sector to handle, and when it pays off, it pays off big. Historically, the lab built the proof of concept satellite for GPS. We currently do some neat stuff in robotics and metamaterials, which I am vague about, because I don't understand it very well, more than anything else. The lab is also big, so, I don't even know what, say, the chemists do, beyond "chemistry".

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it's all going to impact your work and your mission?

It mostly pisses me off. I unfortunately now get the line from Red Dawn: "the hate keeps me warm". Last week, we had an all-hands meeting to discuss the firing of provisional hires. The head of research started to get emotional, which was like watching Mr. Spock cry.

Fortunately, the exemptions our administration pushed worked, and when the announcement came down, none of our probationaries were fired. I know people who qualify for retirement and have said they're staying through January 2029 just to spite the bastards. So, in general, there's a lot of anxiety, and a lot of anger for being yanked around. I was here at the end of the last Trump administration and the feelings are way, way more hostile to the guys in charge than I've heard before. Guys at the top of the executive branch, the lab leadership, clearly have our backs.

The freeze put some projects on hold as we wait for parts. There have been some workarounds, but I don't want to say what they are. We use purchase cards to make payments easy — Amazon doesn't take checks. Travel has also been frozen. That's caused us to cancel some conference appearances, and some lecture visits. Luckily, field experiments haven't been affected, yet.

Often, the reason why government seems so slow is because we have internal business rules that are written by Congress, and have the force of law. There's paperwork that I think is silly, but I have to do it, because it's a federal crime if I don't!

Going Down Swinging

2025-04-01T00:00:00Z

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

I ended up in the Army because I learned in high school that ROTC would pay for college. I'd done JROTC in high school — honestly, because I was accidentally enrolled in it for my elective, and a relative said they didn't think I was cut out for it. I had to prove 'em wrong. I ended up liking it, though I'm sure it was mostly a matter of it being a ready-made community, and that one of the instructors was fantastic — one of those cases where a person was in the perfect kind of job for them. The last person in my family to serve was a grandparent who volunteered in WWII. My parents were actually a bit weirded out when I decided to go after a ROTC scholarship. I'm from a blue state, and from a pretty liberal family - this isn't something people from my milieu really do.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

When I opted to be a cadet, it isn't as if I didn't take the military seriously as, oh, an institution or a career field - but I signed up for the folks already in the military, and for the community. I originally wanted to do SAR (Search and Rescue). I signed up the year of the Surge - they couldn't even get all their scholarship slots filled that year. People always find that bizarre, they expect one would've had to be the most HOOAH! Army person to decide it was the right career choice that year.

I hated being a cadet. I'm glad I did it, and I won't claim I got nothing out of it, or that it was a waste of time, but a lot of it was brass ring-type bullshit. It was a relief to get to the actual Army and realize, "Oh, okay, Cadetland is a different place compared to the real thing". I like my job, and I've generally liked my job in my career.

What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?

I've tried to get assignments that I think matter, and I've been pretty lucky on that front. I mean "matter" in the sense that — not that the specific role itself is vitally important, but that it's contributing toward a mission that is. So, for an example: I think European stability is vitally important, since we have hundreds of years of what it looks like when Europe is a shitshow. So, I've gravitated toward billets in Europe. Does this mean I am doing something for the American people? Probably for most Americans, only in the sense that America is almost certainly better off not having a war raging across another continent. I don't have illusions about it being like, "Oh, if I didn't do this, Americans would die!". But in my current job, I do very strongly believe it is important that this region doesn't collapse into war.

What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?

I admit, I'm tempted to be flip and say, "If shitlibs like me don't do these jobs, then some fascist shitheads will, and then we're all gonna learn what it'd be like to have an American Kadyrov". But I want to be more serious, when I think about whether to stay in or not — and I have thought about that some — I think, "Good lord, I'm not perfect, and I remain suspicious that maybe I'm just trying to justify myself, but how could I bag out now?" It wouldn't be the honorable thing to do, I'd be ceding the ground to terrible people, I've got to try to grit my teeth and keep on.

It's better if this region doesn't go to shit because it'd probably, as it has done before, drag bigger players in and make the world shittier for everyone. My subordinates' work helps keep Americans stationed here safer. There might not be a ton of them, but they are Americans and have families and people who would be crushed if they were harmed. My subordinates' work also helps keep other non-DoD Americans here safe. Maybe that's abstract for most people, but it matters.

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it's all going to impact your work and your mission?

At the moment, if I don't win my current fight to prevent my civilians from having their jobs cut, I straight up won't be able to do my mission. They're too critical to it — they provide the continuity which the military personnel don't. Military duty assignments across DoD are usually 3 years or less. Civilians get much more time in-place, and, if they're good, the command they're in will put in extensions for them until the sun explodes. In my previous role, there were civilians who'd been there for 12+ years. My civilians are like that. Chucking them out suddenly, I can't possibly replicate their body of knowledge, experience, in the space of a few months, and that doesn't even touch on the toll on them already — we've had since the inauguration a constant rollercoaster of, "You might be getting cut! Ok, no, maybe not, we'll think about it… ok but only if you demonstrate your worth. Oh, just kidding, you were gonna do that and you'd prepped what we demanded, but we already decided to stuff you."

They keep apologizing to me! Which pisses me off, they shouldn't feel like that, I'm just doing what I should as their boss, fighting it. We're not able to provide as much support as we did or should. My time has been eaten up mostly with trying to fight this. Of course, they're having trouble focusing while also having to take time to, for example, figure out what aspects of their work they should emphasize most during these "Does this really matter?" sessions from on high. My higher-ups aren't helping the situation — it's a shitty one, but I don't believe they couldn't handle this with more human decency. It makes me so angry. It's such an awful way to treat people, especially people who have been so dedicated over the years, and so willing to pour everything they can into it, because they truly want to ensure Americans here can operate safely.

I am going to stick in the military and I promise to fight tooth and nail to fulfill my duty, which is really to say, I won't follow illegal orders, and I will fight to do what is right, even if people above me are insisting I shouldn't. I'm still pissed that voters have put me in this position. I don't want to have to be honorable, I want to boringly do my job!

Woke Ops at HHS

2025-03-31T00:00:00Z

What did you do? You don't have to tell me your job title, but what was your job?

I worked at Health and Human Services / Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (HHS/CMS) in Operations. I'm not a policy wonk, I don't have an Master of Public Health (MPH) or a public works background, I have worked in tech most of my career, so, I don't write it or legislate, but I observe, track and understand policy and its effect, and I work on teams to help 'operationalize policy'.

Basically, I worked on the other side of bringing policy to life, in whatever way that means. For example: a new rule is released in Medicaid that says enrollees have a new requirement to fulfill for eligibility; I worked on the teams that build the tools, web portals, give the trainings, and educate the beneficiary (the American public) and roll out the systems that are required to capture that information and execute that policy and bring it to life. A small example, but there are many programs, systems, and tools that the American public uses to access resources to help them in their search for healthcare, and I help plan, track, and roll them out to that market.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

I worked as a federal contractor for a long time, from about 2010-2019. A lot of my work was with HHS. I moved to the private sector between 2015-2020 and fully left federal contracting by 2020. I liked the rigor of federal service compared to private sector — it does make things move a bit more slowly, but the discipline, planning, and checks and balances mean that fewer mistakes are made as rollouts are a bit more balanced. Contrast with my private sector tech experience, which was anything but.

I didn't have dreams of joining federal service, specifically, but I do have a sort of civic-oriented heart. I volunteer a lot, I co-lead an affinity group for kids to help teach about social justice and, as the years went by in the private sector, I felt more and more disoriented around the goals of revenue, rather than building a good product that is useful to the end user (or end beneficiary), so I started looking for federal jobs again starting around 2023, but becoming a full-time federal employee can take months or years — especially if you don't already have an in-track or come from a lot of public sector experience.

I applied to a ton of jobs here and there, but nothing too serious until I left my last job, and went all-in on applying for basically anything that looked like it fit my skills. I applied to agencies I have never heard of, and I grew up in the DC area and am very attuned to the federal space. With the help of a couple of folks I know in fedspace, and a couple who work at CMS, I learned about a hiring sprint at the end of 2024 and applied to a ton of roles, and was finally able to land in an Operations group that was looking for high technically-skilled folks to execute some website and other product rollouts. Which I felt was both a great way to not lose the skills I had sharpened over my career, and better apply them in a space where I felt the work mattered more.

What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?

We all deserve to have access to the resources, information, and tools to help plan for our futures. Health is wealth, and we live in a country with abundant resources, there is no person who shouldn't have access to — and the ability to — partake. Many people on the outside may not understand the utility of the work I do, or the importance of it, but it makes sure, in as many ways as possible, that we get that information and those tools into folks' hands, so they can make informed choices about their health. In this job, my hard work means someone can get access to what they need to survive.

What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?

The American public should know is that this culling/gutting of the 'probationary' workforce is also a farce. These are highly skilled, capable, seasoned folks who often have decades of experience and a ton of expertise rolling out large scale programs. I think that many folks imagine probationary employees were kids just out of college, and, yes, there were many of those, but they also had a lot of experience, and there were plenty of veterans. Even myself, I'm in my 40s and have a long job history.

This stuff isn't for the faint of heart, executing these goals at this level is insanely hard. But the mission and directive are clear; to diligently execute the programs that benefit the public, be good stewards of public funds, and exercise our duties, in good faith and service to the Constiution and the American people. This is the hardest work I've ever done, and I've worked in really complex environments. It takes a ton of experience and a willingness to learn to understand how government work is meant to be executed, government is not a for-profit organization, it's a service organization, and the American people are the end beneficiaries. Services are always loss-leaders in tech and that is part of what Elon Musk's dumb brain doesn't and will never understand — profit is not the way government works.

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it’s all going to impact the work and the mission?

To me, it's theatrics meant to disorient and distract folks. Also, a bit of sheer stupidity - this is par for the course in how these tech CEO admins operate, they all have the same playbook. Ultimately, it's meant to create a diversion to whatever the goal of those creating the chaos is… specifically when it comes to the work I was doing, and from changes that I was already seeing to existing program integrity rules, Trump, Elon or whoever want to privatize the unsubsidized health market and hand it back to their buddies and then 'Target new audiences', which means they will also try to find a way to privatize the entire bucket at some point. That is horrific, people will die. A privatized, unsubsidized market will end up becoming predatory, just like what happened with the mortgage industry, but at a time like this, when the economy is so fragile, and everything is on the chopping block for deregulation, this will cost many lives.

Do you know what you're going to do next? If reinstated, would you go back?

I'm taking it day by day, doing my thing, staying sane. I'm looking into picking up some bit of consulting within my network. All I know now is that our center is still undertaking ongoing suits, board appeals and all that, and we are on perpetual admin leave for now. If I were offered reinstatement, I wouldn't be so sure a RIF or some other insane action wouldn't seal the deal in the future. I've had an extensive career, and I've worked in the same sectors that Elon and Trump come from. To say this is a mindfuck is an understatement — it's abuse, and emotionally and psychologically taxing. Ultimately, as each day passes, I'm not sure my conscience will allow me to function in this kind of environment, and I know I wouldn't thrive working in this administration. I took a big gamble, leaving the private sector to go to Fed. While I don't regret that decision — I believe civic work is meaningful and vital — this admin won't get our society anywhere good.

Computer Science in the Stars

2025-03-27T00:00:00Z

What do you do? You don't have to tell me your job title, but what's your job?

I write flight software for NASA. Flight software is basically any software that runs onboard a spacecraft, so it includes things like direct interfaces with motors and sensors, coordinating communications with ground stations, managing spacecraft operations, keeping an eye out for fault conditions, and a lot more. Flight software is used on everything from satellites the size of a Rubix cube to the tennis court-sized James Webb Space Telescope, so it tends to be fairly custom for each mission depending on their unique needs. It's fairly different from typical Earth-based software because of the very different space environment it's run in. Once you leave the protection of Earth's magnetic field, there's tons and tons of radiation that screws with electronics, so the radiation-hardened hardware we run flight software on is pretty specialized and much more limited than your typical laptop hardware, while also having much higher stakes!

It's not like you can send tech support to a satellite if you accidentally brick it. So, a lot of my time is spent trying to come up with software solutions that are light, flexible, and as error-resistant as possible.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

I always liked space as a kid, but in the same way that lots of kids find space fascinating, there's such a wide universe out there that we only know a very tiny fraction about! I didn't really intend to go into the space field though, I studied computer science in college with no clear idea of where to go beyond that, but when I was looking for summer internships, someone forwarded me a link to apply for a NASA internship and I was just lucky enough to get hired and lucky enough that my manager at the time was an absolutely lovely person to work with.

The internship program I did was designed as a feeder program into the civil service; you do it in parallel with your degree and once you graduate, conversion was more or less guaranteed provided you met certain requirements. Sadly, due to the hiring freeze and preexisting issues with hiring caps, it's now much, much harder for current interns to get full time jobs at the agency after graduating. This is a shame, since it's hard enough to recruit talented software engineers who are willing to effectively halve their pay compared to what they could get in private industry.

What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?

To me, NASA is the epitome of what the US, with all its power and wealth, can achieve in service to humanity and to our collective knowledge. The origin of life on this planet is one of the great questions to investigate, and in learning more about our universe, we can get closer to approximating a complete answer.

But in more practical terms, there's so much that NASA does that's deeply relevant to our lives now. There's a ton of satellites that collect data on various aspects of weather (both Earth weather and space weather!), climate, land use, ocean health, and a ton of other metrics that help us understand both the human impact on the planet as well as the planet's impacts on humans.

Although there's certainly a large and active private space industry, these are the sorts of missions that industry doesn't tend to do without federal funding incentivizing them, there's just not a lot of money to be made here. Monitoring solar weather to see when coronal mass ejections from the sun might impact Earth is super important to keep our electrical grid from getting damaged, but no company is willing to front the millions of dollars that doing that would require.

I feel like this is the purpose of NASA and the government — to invest money in the public good rather than in simply generating profits. I'm just one person within the massive teams it takes to make space missions a success, but being able to contribute even a few lines of code to this work is an incredible feeling.

What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?

As politicized as it might be, climate change is very, very real, and NASA satellites are necessary for collecting data on how this planet is changing and how it will impact all of us. We work closely with NOAA to get weather data available to the public (for free!), so that we know when and where a hurricane will hit, or a blizzard, or a wildfire, or any of a number of extreme weather events that, without proper preparation and advance notice, could kill countless numbers of people.

NASA also monitors asteroids and recently demonstrated the capability to push an asteroid off its course, which could potentially prevent an impact like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. The solar system is a very hostile environment and we are, in many senses, ants clinging to a tiny rock hurtling through the universe. The Earth protects us in so many ways, but it's a fragile balance that we've disrupted, and there's a lot we need to know about both our planet and about the universe at large, if we want to continue to thrive on this blue and green marble.

Even if some of the astrophysics missions we do have less of an obvious benefit for the public, I think they provide a multitude of indirect benefits in cultivating American engineering and scientific talent, inspiring young people with the vastness of outer space, and in simply learning more about the universe and our place in it.

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it's all going to impact your work and your mission?

At the most basic level, all the chaos and uncertainty is just completely destroying morale, which doesn't lead to a particularly efficient workforce. People work at NASA mostly out of a deep appreciation and love for the work, most of us could get paid so much more in private industry. But low morale tends to kill the passion, and it's going to scare off the next generation of engineers and scientists from considering NASA as a place to work.

I'm worried about NASA's long-term success if it can't manage to retain or attract employees, and given the conflicts of interest with DOGE and SpaceX, that does almost seem to be the point. There's clearly an interest in furthering the exploration missions, like Artemis, thanks to their high political profile, but I'm worried that with shrinking budgets, that will come at a cost to all the other missions, especially ones focused on climate and Earth science. NASA has had funding problems for years at this point; I've worked on countless projects that have gotten major budget cuts or full on canceled, and I don't know how we're going to survive as a leader in space science if this trend only gets worse. People seem to have some hope that due to Musk's personal interest in space we might be able to escape the worst of this administration's cuts, but I'm somewhat skeptical.

I think we're in serious danger of worsening the long trend of privatizing the American space program and simply selling off NASA for parts. The US could lose all the best parts of our space research in favor of giving billionaires joy rides to space, and the decades of NASA's dominance and prestige could be completely lost. I'm definitely more cynical than a lot of my coworkers, but I just don't see how we come out of this without major institutional damage.

NASA's had problems that way precede this administration (the 2024 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has a lot to say about the future of the agency), it turns out there's only so much you can do with a budget that's less than a single percent of the total national budget. Yet, despite serious problems, we've had some major successes too, with the James Webb Space Telescope, the return of samples from the asteroid Bennu, the first Artemis test flight, and more. Lone geniuses didn't get us these successes, the hard work of many, many teams of people did, and if we give these people the funding and support needed to do their jobs, there's so much more we could do.

Answering the Call

2025-03-26T00:00:00Z

What do you do?

I’m a federal emergency manager.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

I joined the active army at age 17. Eventually transitioned into Army Reserves and civil service for the Reserves. While in the Reserves I sought higher education in emergency management, retired from the reserve military and left DoD civil service for the DHS role I currently hold. I have served this nation in some capacity since 1990.

During disasters we use FQS, Federal Qualification System. Under FQS we have Incident management (IM) roles and Incident Support (IS)roles. In my day job I help support states in our region prepare for disaster (think: training and exercises). When I’m on disasters, my roles for IM and IS are both in logistics - I am a qualified logistic supply chain manager and I am working towards becoming a qualified transportation lead. So many of the full time employees in the agency I work for have multiple hats.

What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?

This job means I get to help people. Period. It's satisfying to know that the teams I work with are doing their best to lift up and support communities impacted by disasters. When I was a little girl, my mother’s house burned to the ground — no one was hurt but everything was lost. The outpouring of help from neighbors and family has stayed with me my entire life, and I have always wanted to be able to help the next person in the same way my family was helped.

What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?

I do not believe that the majority of people in our nation have a solid understanding of what the agency I work for does. When I took the oath of office for this job I genuinely didn’t know the scope of work from this agency. I am in awe of how many people here have hands on experience and working knowledge of the varying departments - the flexibility of my colleagues to adapt under duress is commendable! All that to say Americans look for help when they have gone through something catastrophic, and the agency I work for are the first to answer that call when are needed.

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it's all going to impact your work and your mission?

Our work/mission is changing rapidly (daily). Just recently, an Executive Order - Achieving Efficiency Through State and Local Preparedness - was signed, and our workforce has to adjust focus to ensure we are complying with it. I think some change is good, to be clear, but I think the sheer volume that is changing seems to be driven by malice. I am not a “parasite”, none of my team deserves the anger directed towards them. In the past few weeks we’ve seen colleagues fired, then reinstated. We have seen all things related to diversity eliminated. We’ve been ostracized by the media and the president of the United States and we’ve persevered.

Down and Out at the FDIC

2025-03-25T00:00:00Z

What did you do? You don't have to tell me your job title, but what was your job?

I was working on resolution planning, which are plans that major financial firms have to give to regulators for dealing with stress events. A resolution plan presents a strategy for the firm to wind itself down during financial stress. I was one of several people brought on in the past year to help FDIC improve their processes on that, particularly if the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) would be in the situation of having to take the big firm over. My team focused on the 8 biggest firms, called Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIB). If the FDIC had to step in, we would have to determine a different strategy to what the firm itself proposed.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

A former boss of mine in the private sector worked for FDIC, and thought I would like it. I've worked on writing these plans for financial firms for over 10 years before I started there. Prior to working in resolution planning, I worked for a major investment bank, supporting traders of credit default swaps. I had a front row seat for the 2008 financial crisis. After that experience, I liked that I was part of a solution to problems with financial stability by working in resolution planning, and being at FDIC would be the pinnacle of that work.

You don't have to come from private sector, but last year FDIC made a point of bringing in people with that experience after the 2023 bank failures.

What did this work mean to you? Why was it important to you, personally?

My work was focused on bank capital. Think of it as a certain amount of equity a bank needs to stay open. Normally a bank is insolvent if liabilities rise above assets, but regulators are supposed step in long before that happens. I was working to improve that process of figuring out if and when the FDIC would step in, from a capital perspective, and what we would do after. I also worked on improving coordination with overseas regulators. It's all highly impactful stuff, far beyond anything I would experience working for a big bank, even as a senior executive.

What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?

In the aftermath of the 2023 failures, investigations were done by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the regulators themselves about what went wrong. A failure point was how understaffed the regulators were to deal with major bank failures, among other issues. My coworkers are very talented and dedicated people. They will figure out a way to get all this work done without us, it's just going to be harder without the subject matter experts that were just let go. All the distractions that keep getting foisted upon them from DOGE are not helping!

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it's all going to impact your work and your mission?

I have serious concerns about what cryptocurrency can do to financial stability, there's zero regulatory framework. We've been here before with financial firms jumping into credit derivatives, and that ended poorly. I fear a repeat as banks start jumping into crypto, especially if they are trading with their own money to juice profits. The only real "guardrail" was the FDIC keeping the banks out of it, and that's likely to change, more bag holders. Just because a big financial firm is getting involved doesn't mean that it understands the risks it is taking. To keep banks out of crypto, all FDIC really did was ask detailed questions about how banks would manage the risks and most banks decided it wasn't worth the hassle. At least, that was my read from the "smoking gun" that Coinbase have been whining about.

We don't get severance. I would love to work for them, or another banking regulator, but it's not clear if any will be hiring anytime soon. I also have restrictions on which banks I can work for, for up to a year, which greatly limits my career options.

I was repeatedly told, in the lead up to this, that I had nothing to worry about. My performance was great - good reviews and performance bonuses, in part because of how important my role was. None of that mattered. I had five weeks left on probation. I don't hold anything against my managers or division leadership, I know they all tried to save us. The conventional wisdom was that the workforce would be cut through retirement buyouts. One third of FDIC staff are retirement-eligible, or will be by 2027. FDIC also had a higher proportion of deferred resignations than other organizations, around 8%.

At least the job market for my field is good at the moment. Recruiters are, so far, accommodating despite my termination letter saying that I was deemed unfit for public service or whatever, I'm hoping to land something soon, before the bottom falls out of the job market.

Wired Into the Army of the Future

2025-03-24T00:00:00Z

What do you do? You don't have to tell me your job title, but what's your job?

I work for a center under Army Futures Command. We work on developing what the Army of the Future needs to look like, based on our best assessment of likely threats, the theaters we’d face them in, the capabilities we’d have to have to counter those capabilities we expect an adversary to have, etc., and then figuring out what research, development, and engineering need to be done to bring that concept into reality in the necessary time frame. My work is a small part of that whole thing, but is in kind of a nexus point trying to marry up the concept and the science to make sure they’re pointing in the same direction.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

I had always imagined myself as a teacher, but I taught for a year after college and it wasn’t for me. Then I pictured myself as a professor, and I entered a PhD program for a year, and it wasn’t for me. Some friends from college had gotten jobs working for the Army, and I was kind of adrift after leaving grad school, so I applied and, all these years later, here I am. It wasn’t a calling, it was an opportunity that presented itself, and I only really came to appreciate the service aspect of it gradually.

What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?

I am not a militaristic person, so I’ve kind of had to grapple with this question for myself over time. It seems cliche, if you know the army, but I have really come to think of it in terms of Soldiers. Helping to supply those people who have signed up to serve to have what they need to do to perform their mission with the greatest likelihood of coming home safely.

A lot of times the work is just the work — I go in and do it, and I’m not filled with a huge sense of duty and purpose. My previous job was much more nitty gritty, and it was easier to lose myself in details, and lose sight of the connection to the mission. My position now has a lot more direct connection to mission, to the hard trades that have to be made to put equipment in people’s hands who are putting themselves in harm’s way, and it feels much more important and immediate to get it right.

What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?

A lot of why it matters to me personally is, I think, why it should matter to Americans more generally; but also, I think there are some rising powers in the world that are much more malevolent than the US has been in the world, looking to project military strength, and countering them is a good and necessary thing.

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it's all going to impact your work and your mission?

The broad answer to this question flows from the last one. We seem to be abdicating our military role to counter some of those powers, and are, in fact, allying with them, or at least signaling that we’ll leave them alone. That’s awful, and it leaves me wondering what we’re doing this for anymore. In the much more narrow sense, all of this chaos has led to a massive drop in morale and productivity. Removing telework has meant much less work is getting done, because people are having to take leave to manage family situations, or they’re not logging on in the evening to think about a question they’d had during the day, etc.

The people I work with are smart and committed, and just the return to office alone has sapped probably 25% of their productivity. Another 25% has gone into endless meetings figuring out the impact of Executive Orders, drafting and revising bullet points to protect our jobs every week, etc. I have never seen anything even remotely like this in two decades as a federal worker. It is absolutely unprecedented for our leadership to be providing us mental health services to deal with the stress of a new incoming administration.

Disaster Response is Democracy

2025-03-20T00:00:00Z

What do you do? You don't have to tell me your job title, but what's your job?

I'm a social scientist at FEMA. I'm one of many people the agency employs to study how we do what we do — how do we measure our success, how do we ensure we're getting the outcomes Congress intended for the dollars we spend on everything to help people before, during, and after disasters. If DOGE were serious about efficiency and effectiveness, offices like mine are what we'd be talking about expanding rather than cutting.

However, like everyone else at FEMA, I also have a disaster role. When disasters reach a certain level of severity, my steady state work is paused and I deploy to assist survivors, most recently, during Hurricane Helene.

As a social scientist, we analyze the data the federal government collects during normal administration of programs to better understand how well programs are achieving their intended outcomes, and where needed, go out and collect additional data to supplement that. While some agencies, like USAID, HHS, and DOL have really robust, mature functions for this, DHS and FEMA are still pretty nascent and we're learning a lot as we go.

Most recently, in my disaster role, I worked to connect with survivors who weren't able to return to their homes and find them temporary, transitional housing. It can be really emotionally tough work, because you're working with people who often didn't have much to begin with and have lost what little they did have, in a sudden and awful way.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

I always knew I wanted to do work that mattered, and work that would help people. I come from a family of scientists and engineers (educational courtesy of the GI Bill), so I got pushed into STEM, but it wasn't quite the right fit. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do when I finished undergrad, and the economy was still in shambles from the 2008 financial crisis, so I joined AmeriCorps. I got to work in educational access and it was a formative experience. I saw that no matter how great the nonprofit I worked for was, there would never not be a need for nonprofits like them unless bigger things changed. Government seemed like the place where those bigger things could happen.

I went to grad school, on a public service scholarship, to do data driven decision-making and program evaluation, in the hopes of learning what works, for whom, and under what circumstances. With that knowledge, we can update how the government delivers those services so we can do more good for more people. Since then, I've worked in several different agencies trying to move forward policy that makes it easier to do this kind of rigorous study of government programs. I feel such an incredible responsibility to pay it forward for the opportunities I've had to go to school and build a good life, public service feels like the only thing that would rise to that duty.

What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?

This is the work that undergirds democracy as we know it. Jefferson and other visionaries of American democracy were students of the enlightenment. They believed that government could also work like a science. We take a falsifiable hypothesis and test it, and from that we can learn how to do better. I think that is the promise of the idealistic words in our founding documents. What good is having a government at all, if you aren't striving to do better? To be better? That's what drives me everyday.

FEMA has always been my dream job because I think disaster response is such an expression of democracy and community. Disasters don't discriminate in terms of who they can affect and it takes everyone coming together to recover. There's something so incredibly beautiful in the way people come together after the worst days of their lives, I can't imagine anything more human than saying, yes, and I want to help too.

What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?

I'll speak to FEMA broadly first, then Evaluation across the government.

It's hard to think of an area of life that FEMA doesn't touch. I am terrified of a nation where individuals and communities are left on their own to recover without the coordination, expertise, and infrastructure that FEMA provides. I personally don't think most states have the administrative capacity to absorb what FEMA does. Someone I deployed with told me about one state that decided to funnel all Individual Assistance through their state level emergency management agency for a disaster. It takes FEMA about 3 days to process payments to survivors bank accounts once they're approved; this disaster was taking upwards of months for survivors to get their money.

We'd also be worse off without the extensive preparedness and resilience efforts the agency implements to limit the devastation of disasters when they do occur. Ready.gov is an incredible resource for families and communities to be ready for most disasters Americans are likely to face. FEMA provides nearly a billion dollars every year to security measures for public transportation. The agency also helps fill in gaps in local budgets, so they can keep Emergency Managers on staff. We would be worse off without all of these things.

Losing evaluation & social science research offices like mine has already started across the federal government and we're losing institutional knowledge and access to research your tax dollars have already paid for. USAID was the gold standard for evaluation work and supported other agencies to stand up evaluation capacity. The Institute of Educational Sciences team ran the What Works Clearinghouse which aggregated the best research from around the world on evidence-based interventions to improve student outcomes. Those are just two examples, but who is going to do that when they're gone?

Cutting these offices means getting rid of the best, most rigorous way we have to actually learn about making government programs more effective. Most program staff don't have time to do literature reviews, much less digest what current developments in research are and how they apply to their programs. They don't have the capacity to run the kind of studies on their programs that would give them the insights they wish they had into implementation and results. It's cheating the American people out of getting the best services possible for their tax dollars and we should all be really mad that we're losing decades of research in mere weeks.

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it's all going to impact your work and your mission?

The nature of my work illustrates that I do agree government has issues in delivering services and I think we should fix them! But everything I've seen so far, I don't trust to be operating in good faith. It doesn't seem like throwing the baby out with the bathwater; this feels like setting the whole house on fire. I don't think I can understate the damage this is doing to both the Nation's ability to adequately prepare for & respond to disasters or our knowledge of how best to do so. FEMA doesn't even have a nominee for administrator, just a lower level political appointee who doesn't meet statutory requirements to even serve in the role (the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006 specifies experience requirements he doesn't meet).

Most of my work has been paused or cancelled. An agency-wide embargo on external engagement means no new data collection and no new participatory research with the people who are trying to keep us safe at state and local levels. Canceling study contracts means wasting money Congress specifically set aside for learning and we'll never get to findings that could help people. I'm not allowed to go to conferences to share my work or learn from other researchers this year. I haven't been RIF'd yet, but I've heard through the grapevine that my office probably isn't safe in the plans being submitted today. All of this loss in capacity and the chilling effect on federal research will take literal years to restore.

Personally, I'm furious. I've spent most of my career trying to build up evaluation capacity in the government and now all of that work is just gone. Trying to get good researchers into government in the future will be an extremely difficult sell. We are losing our ability to build a responsive, smart, and nimble government that can meet the challenges of today, much less those of tomorrow.

Abroad and in the Field

2025-03-19T00:00:00Z

What do you do?

In general terms, I'm Eligible Family Member (EFM)-employed at my post, under a Family Member Appointment (FMA) mechanism that allows for spouses to apply for jobs at the mission where their Foreign Service Officer (FSO) spouse is assigned. I've served in several FMA positions over more than a decade.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

I met my spouse on their first assignment, and it was a very difficult decision I had to make to give up my career and follow them around the world. I have been fortunate that my education and experience qualified me for meaningful jobs wherever we served. It's not always the case that trailing spouses get decent job opportunities. I've always felt honored to be able to contribute to the mission.

What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?

It's important because diplomacy is important, engaging with the rest of the world is important. The rest of the world look up to us, and, as diplomats, we feel an obligation to represent the US well. There are little things that go a long way, like small grants and alumni exchanges that don't show immediate impact, but 10-20 years down the road you can see the effect. You can provide a library or water to a school in a poor country for, like, $10,000. The impact is that all of the kids who went to that school remember that the Americans provided that for them. It's a win-win all around. I guess that's the answer to the first part of your question — it's being able to use our privilege as Americans to promote goodwill in the world, which benefits both USA and the world.

What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?

I think the reality is that there is evil in the world, and it's not that the US should be the policeman of the world, but retreating from the international order cedes that space to bad actors. We may want to pretend that we can do as we wish as a country, but you can already see how some of Trump's actions are disproving his belief that the world will fall in line with whatever the US wants. The foreign service is full of experienced diplomats whose job it is to provide that expertise and guidance back to the administration. We are in the field, in countries, reporting back on opportunities and risks, etc.

The point is that we can't retreat from the world. Even our Department of Defense (DoD) colleagues recognize they can't work without us. There's value in the DoD, State and USAID team working together, and the DoD budget is much much bigger than the latter two. A military-only presence is not enough or appropriate.

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it's all going to impact your work and your mission?

It's a reflection of the success of the United States Government's apparatus that people won't understand how they benefit from it until DOGE rips it apart. He's not saving money, he's cutting services that people didn't have to think about, how those things happen, and who does that work. If anything, I'm so angry and disappointed that Americans don't appreciate what they have. People who flee other countries for various reasons, economic or political, understand that, but I don't think Americans have really had to grapple with what living in a failed state or without state services looks like. It's utterly disappointing that we don't have an opposition party, and that government workers are left to fend for themselves.

We're apolitical and we take that very seriously, and we are constrained from doing more. We have to maintain neutrality for our missions, and provide some leadership for our local staff. With the hiring freeze, I don't know if FMA jobs will be reinstated. For some Foreign Service families, that will be devastating. It's difficult to figure out what's next. FSOs are waiting to see what cuts will be made to State and how. We have no idea what's coming. Not for ourselves, and not for the local staff that are looking to us for leadership.

Fighting for the Worker

2025-03-18T00:00:00Z

What do you do? You don't have to tell me your job title, but what's your job?

I'm a civil rights attorney. I help enforce employment discrimination laws. So when people are fired or harassed because of their race, religion, sex, or national origin, I try to help them. Of course, sex includes sexual orientation and gender identity.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

I applied straight out of law school. I actually found my application recently and it said, "I have no interest in the private sector, and I have no intention of pursuing a lucrative but unfulfilling job. Instead, I am seeking a position that both furthers a cause I believe in and requires my level of discipline and determination. At my agency, I can use the passion that drives me to serve the public by ensuring effective enforcement of the law."

That was in 2007. I actually worked in immigration enforcement for a few years in the Obama administration. It was a great time to be there. Then I found my way to employment discrimination and have been doing that for many years.

What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?

My work is everything to me. I'm proud of the specific work we do, helping people, but I'm proud to do it on behalf of my country. I admire my coworkers and many of the people around me who have been at my agency for decades producing fantastic work. My current job is my personal and professional dream. That sounds so cheesy! But it's true.

I've written hundreds of briefs and argued dozens of cases in federal court. I've won cases that improved the law for workers. As a manager now, I've helped newer and less experienced attorneys learn to do the same, and made important strides in the law.

What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?

Congress effectively gave us this job: fighting for people who are treated poorly at work. They envisioned that we we do that job so that people wouldn't have to bring a lawsuit every time they're treated unfairly. We make work fairer and safer, and we do it without charging a cent. In fact, we help employers, too, by giving them guidance on how to comply with the law. Our cases are all civil lawsuits. They involve discrimination in hiring, firing, and everything in between (failure to promote, mistreatment at work). We bring harassment cases based on sex, race, age, disability, etc. Often, they are some of the most egregious sexual harassment cases you can imagine.

Another big part of our caseload is disability discrimination, including failure to make reasonable accommodations. We also bring pregnancy discrimination cases and cases about failure to accommodate pregnant workers, as well as failure to accommodate people based on religion.

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it's all going to impact your work and your mission?

I really want people to know that the people I work with at the federal government are the hardest working, most talented, most dedicated group of people I've ever known. Many of them walked away from a lot of personal gain to serve the public, and it's heartbreaking to see them treated as if they are expendable at best, parasites at worst. We are working for the people and all we want to do is keep doing that.

Doing Less with Less

2025-03-17T00:00:00Z

What do you do?

I work in Department of Defense finance and accounting software systems.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

I tried to go directly into government when I left college. I moved right away to DC with a friend and worked in temporary jobs until I got into the NP. I’ve always been really interested in government work and foreign relations, as well as foreign assistance, and you've got to be in or near the civil service to do that kind of work.

I first got a job with a nonprofit supporting an international development project, then moved to a think tank. I did all of this while trying to get closer to a government job, where I could be more involved in policy or near my areas of interest, and I was able to find my current spot through luck, and got in. It's not the usual journey, nor is it even where I wanted to be when I started out, but I’ve learned a lot, and I’m proud of the work I’ve done.

It's corny, I know, but there’s always better paying jobs with easier restrictions in the private sector, so you have to have less mercenary reasons to go be a civil servant.

Why is this work important to you?

It’s pretty boring — but crucial — in meeting the goals, and facilitating the operations of the force. That's very generic, but I can't get into too many of the details. I get a standard sense of accomplishment out of it that anyone would of getting stuff across the line, but, overall, it feels good to be part of helping out with the mission.

Why is this work important to the people of the United States?

It’s important because it allows the DoD to function and to save taxpayer money by upgrading existing capabilities. The force can get what it needs faster, and more easily, with fewer hoops to jump through. This is really important if you want better performance, fewer hours devoted to chasing down items, and more elaborate processes. So, all of this saves money, saves time, saves headaches.

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it's all going to impact your work and your mission?

I mean you’re killing off a generation of seasoned talent. That’s not something you can replace. During the Biden administration, we mostly brought up State back to pre-Tillerson levels, but there was still a lot of knowledge lost, and those who stayed became more ensconced in influence, and the overall bureaucracy becomes less balanced.

Over the long term, we're going to spend more money on payouts and legal work, less work is going to get done, and we're going to deliver a less reliable result, for more money, with far less transparency and oversight. It’s going to be a worse result for Americans who want to know what we’re doing, and why. Additionally, all the fire drills, the degraded morale, the confusion over Executive Orders and other memos are all going to make employees less effective at actually doing their jobs.

Everyone in the space is used to doing more with less, but now we’re doing less with less, because of forced attrition and reviews that we have Inspector General reports on, along with internal and program audits. If there were massive waste, we’d see it, and we'd know it. Hell, you can read all the kinds of reports, on, say the FFG, and what was done incorrectly, but we know that because we have robust investigative and accountability offices. This is going to strip that and make the normal jobs harder.

Records, Kept

2025-03-13T00:00:00Z

What do you do?

I am a supervisor at a federal agency that manages federal records. If you name an agency, we likely have records from them. Most federal records are required by law to be held onto for a certain period of time, or, sometimes, permanently. Most agencies don’t have the capacity to hold them so we do it for them.

How did you enter the service?

It basically started because I needed a job and I thought it would lead me to what I really wanted to do, which was to become an archivist. The pay I started at was awful, and I was on my feet for seven hours a day. I would tell myself that I just needed to get my year in so I could find another job within the same agency, but doing something much different. Seven years later, and I’m still working at the same location but have worked my way up to my current position.

What should be important to Americans about the work you do?

We help people get the benefits they are entitled to. Whether it’s a veteran accessing their benefits for the first time, or someone who has used the Indian Health Service and needs their medical records. Records are essential to government functioning. Not only do they help people get what they are entitled to, but also helps keep the government in check. If records aren’t properly maintained, the government can just pass off complaints saying there’s nothing to back it up from their end. Paper trails keeps the government and the politicians honest.

The facility I work out is roughly the size of 16 football fields, broken up into rooms the size of a small warehouse. Each room has a central aisle with rows of 15 foot shelves on either side. Records are stored in boxes, and we have a system that lets us track specific boxes to their exact location on a shelf. Sometimes, we then have to use the originating agency’s filing system to find a specific record within the box.

There’s one exception to this, which are IRS tax records, where we don’t know the exact location of the record, but can easily find it by using a numbering system established by the IRS. On a daily basis, we receive requests for records. Those records need to be pulled and then are either shipped, faxed, or digitally scanned. Records that are returned to us need to be refiled. Records that are scheduled to be destroyed need to be pulled off the shelf and shipped out. New records coming in need to be assigned a space and shelved. It’s a lot of physically demanding work. Some records don’t get touched for decades, until they need to be destroyed. But the government is required by law to keep them for a certain amount of time.

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it's all going to impact your work and your mission?

Financially speaking, I don’t make nearly as much as my friends in the private sector. One of the reasons I have stayed with the government is the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. I also just do not see myself thriving in a corporate environment. In terms of mission, I truly believe that the current administration is trying to disrupt government functions to the point of collapse. I also think my agency is in the scope of the president, and the head of my agency and the senior level executives have already lost their jobs because of that.

Call your representatives daily. The fate of the government as we know it rests on their shoulders. The administration has already done a lot of damage that will take years to reverse. Don’t let democracy go quietly. If you know someone that works for the government check in on them and offer them your support.

Man in the Field

2025-03-12T00:00:00Z

What did you do?

My title was actually Range Technician. Field ecologist is a little more descriptive. But, essentially, I worked in rangeland ecosystems. I went out and collected field data on ecological processes, plant, wildlife, etc. I looked at grazing and the benefits or degradation that occurred. I've worked with ranchers and other stakeholders in various capacities. We supported the PhDs in these larger projects meant to benefit agricultural producers, land management agencies, and others. We published our findings in the hope that they can be shared with the public to improve how we get our food.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

I’m not a highly patriotic individual. However, I’m devoted to the plants and wildlife, who don’t have a voice in how we manage our lands. We’ve made so many mistakes in the past, and I wanted to play a part in making it right. I also just wanted some security and a living wage. Both of those are gone now.

What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?

This work is highly complex and requires a great deal of critical thinking, everyone had their own speciality or talent they brought. It was really cool to collaborate with all these great minds, we innovated, we could operate at a loss when private industry can't afford to. The science and technology we contributed to agriculture producers is so important, new techniques in grazing management can have so many cascading effects on the natural world. We developed strategies and technologies for producers, so that they can keep their farm, and ranch, and the overall ecological health was not degraded. Through our work, we were attempting to improve our food systems.

Rangeland is not just a biological ecosystem, its also socioeconomic. So many people throughout the world live and work on rangelands. Our products can help improve those situations. It's all so closely connected to people, not just the environment. We develop methods for measuring the ecological health on our public lands. We created virtual fencing, so we don't have to rely on physical fencing. We study long term ecological processes that inform agencies like BLM, USFS, and NPS.

I'm proud of the team we built. Myself and the other techs were all on probation. We were getting into such a great rhythm and planning everything, and running on all cylinders. None of this work happens immediately, we are talking about much larger spatial and temporal scales. None of this happens overnight. But I'm proud of the team we created. My supervisors and other researchers would remark that we had such a great team rolling together and the work we were doing was phenomenal. It was finally all falling into place.

What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?

It's a complex question to answer, because for a lot of it, we don't know yet! We don't know what these novel ecosystems will look like. Climate change is affecting everything we do. It's all important to the American people, whether they know or not. Many people don't know how important grazing is to other wildlife. Grassland birds have seen a population net loss of 750 million, and a lot of that is due to land conversion (farming), land development (housing), and overgrazing. If a rancher can't make a living, they're going to sell their land. That could be developed or broken out into cropland, and that's a bad thing. Our products assist the working producer to be more efficient but also be less impactful on their land. Once that land gets past a certain threshold, it's going to stay like that through our lifetime. Birds benefit from large intact rangeland, not little patches here and there. They need millions of acres of healthy grasslands. The more we fragment and sell off grazing lands, the more that impacts wildlife.

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it's all going to impact the work and the mission?

The researchers here have been really amazing. A lot of us have been lucky to find a part-time gig, but it's at lower pay, with no benefits, and only temporary. I kinda saw the signs. I started applying to jobs upon the first "fork in the road" email. I wasn't gonna take that bullshit offer, but I held out hope that we wouldn't get fired, too. I've lost jobs before, and felt I should get a head start. I've got another seasonal job lined up doing ecological monitoring for a non profit. But that only lasts until January. I'm not sure if my 45-year old body can handle it. I am more concerned about the long-term career aspects. The administration has been working on gutting so many environmental laws that there may be no use for anyone in natural resources. Maybe, I could have a career in consulting for mines and other extractive industries? Shit is dark.

The one thing I am struggling with: how do I go forward and work with Trump supporters, who probably make up the majority of ranchers? They're hurting themselves because of some grifter who makes up lies about who to "hate". I don't know if I want to be "civil" with the fuckers who made me unemployed.

But ultimately, I need to get over that. Birds don't fucking vote.

The Boy Scout

2025-03-11T00:00:00Z

What do you do?

I am a Foreign Service Officer (FSO), a.k.a., a US diplomat. FSOs are the diplomats and staff of US embassies abroad. I work for the State Department as a political officer, meaning I work directly with foreign governments and civil society to pursue US interests, as defined by Congress and the President. This can include delivering messages to the foreign government (what we call a démarche), transmitting messages back to the United States, etc. It also includes writing reports back to Washington about what's going on.

There are other kinds of FSOs, though, including those who take care of visas, those who help Americans abroad, those who follow and analyze economic issues, and those who work directly with the public, through educational programs and public diplomacy.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

From the time I was young, I wanted to do work that helped others, helped my community, or helped my country. I thought about being a prosecuting attorney, until I worked at a law firm, as a kind of internship. When I met an ambassador while in college, and he explained how he had supported human rights, economic development, and better international relations, I knew that was what I wanted. In my time here, I've done a lot of work to promote human rights, democracy, and better relations. I've also sought to get information to help policy makers make good decisions. Those goals — helping to create a freer, more democratic, and less violent world — have always driven me. There have been times when the work I had to do didn't align with that, but at least the overall mission did. I grew up a Boy Scout, and service to my country and my world means everything to me.

To join the Foreign Service, you take a standardized test. Some are job-related (geography, politics, email, management theory), some are writing-related, and, at one point, a "biographical questionnaire," which asks about your foreign experience, your job skills, etc. If you pass the exam, you go on to a section with some personal narratives. Next are oral exams, then security and medical clearances. Then you are on a list, and you have 18 months to hope you get called up. I applied several times to the Foreign Service, and it took several years for me to get in. In the meantime, I did a lot of jobs, mostly low level. I did a lot of temporary jobs and adjunct teaching.

There are those who get in easier, but overall, that's the process. I want to add, this career has many blessings, but some extreme drawbacks. I have been called to live in some very difficult places. Many of my tours have been places with poor medical care, poor schools (some have no schools), a lack of necessities, high crime, political violence, etc. I've lived under threat of bombing, serving my country as a civilian. It's not tea parties and soirees.

What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?

My goal in life is to make it better for others. I want to work for a more just and a safer world, which in turn, makes things better for the United States. Improving human rights, encouraging democratic reforms, and building friendships with other countries — this is truly fulfilling work, in a way that selling widgets just isn't, to me. I've tried to think of other options, and have considered what else I could do, but this is what I'm trained for, what I can best do. Also, it's what I'm good at. I have a knack for languages, I'm good at moving, and I'm good with people. I can't imagine another career.

What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?

Well, there is the quote from former Defense Secretary James Mattis: "If you don't fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately". We are working to keep governments on board with us, supporting our priorities, and trying to keep conflict down. We also maintain access to markets for American businesses. We're also out there supporting Americans in trouble. There are so many problems that are better solved by encouraging relationships and affection, rather than blunt force, and we are a large part of that soft approach. We're the velvet glove to Defense Department's iron fist. We are necessary to maintain the network of trade, travel, etc., for Americans, but if you want America to succeed in influencing the world, we need a robust foreign service.

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it's all going to impact your work and your mission?

On the overall mission — they are destroying American power. Our ability to influence the world has long rested on our webs of allies and friends. The current administration is blowing that up. USAID was essential for convincing people around the world that we cared about more than just geopolitics, and that we were a trustworthy friend. That's a much harder sell in this environment. It's a bonanza for anti-US messaging.

Personally? The betrayal of the ideals I was taught makes me literally sick to my stomach. I've had to call out one day due to gut pain. And watching my friends and neighbors at USAID get slandered and jerked around has been horrifying. And then there's the uncertainty for my own life — will they come after us?

There are good faith criticisms to be made about how government offices are run, about how long it takes government to both hire and fire people, the arcane rules on procurement that drive up costs and often lower quality. However, the functions of government are too important for a "move fast, break things" mentality. Most of the slowness is due to rules and regulations put in place to protect people, especially the American people. We follow the laws Congress put in place. We serve the American people via the elected officials. The idea we're out here just doing what we want — laws and elections be dawned — is ludicrous.

Sabrina | Washington, DC

2025-03-10T00:00:00Z

What did you do?

My job title was “Budget Analyst.” I worked at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the Office of Habitat Conservation. I made the money happen for a near-billion-dollar coastal wetland restoration program called CWPRPA, or the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act, that shores up South Louisiana.

CWPPRA is a complex beast of a program - the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Louisiana's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority work together with each of 5 federal agencies to plan and execute coastal wetland restoration.

In my role, I prepared legal interagency agreements and routed them for approval. I made the funds available in our financial system so that they could be spent, either at NOAA or by grant to fund CPRA. The program is older than I am and has a multitude of records to match, so I also spent a lot of time untangling and reorganizing complex data that stretch back to 1990.

I wanted to leave the program better than I found it.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

I've always been in public service - I started out working in state government in Louisiana, and when I moved to DC, I found a contract job with the Office of Response and Restoration at NOAA. I worked as a contractor for several years, and, eventually, one of my OHC colleagues recruited me into my most recent position. I never wanted to work in the private sector, because something just made my skin crawl at the idea of my labor enriching someone else. I think it is a really noble mission to serve the American people and it’s in keeping with a long tradition of public service in my family. Civil service is all I’ve ever known, and it makes the prospect of being ejected into the private sector that much scarier.

My dad’s dad was in the Navy, and then became a schoolteacher, along with my grandma. My dad was in the Air Force. My mom’s dad was a state senator, and my mom is a lifelong community volunteer. Many aunts and uncles served in the military, work for the federal government, or did both. One of my sisters is a teacher and the other works for a city transit agency. There was simply no way I was going to do anything other than give back!

We owe it to the vulnerable people whose lives are held together by levees, duct tape, and hope to do our best to restore the coastline to what it used to be.

It was everything! I could have done budget work anywhere, but chose to do budget work at an agency with a mission I could take pride in. I grew up on the Gulf Coast in Florida, and went to college on the Gulf Coast in Louisiana, and I've lived through hurricanes, and have loved many people in my life who were impacted by Katrina, Rita, and all the storms yankees haven't heard of. Without a strong coastline, there is no Louisiana, no New Orleans, no Mississippi River with a shipping industry the way we know it today.

What did this work mean to you? Why was it important to you, personally?

We owe it to the vulnerable people whose lives are held together by levees, duct tape, and hope to do our best to restore the coastline to what it used to be. A strong coastline protects them from hurricanes. It provides habitat for migratory birds. It allows the unnamed bayous that people know like the back of their hands to continue flourishing without the risk of saltwater intrusion.

A lot of people only see grandeur or majesty when they gaze upon a scenic vista off the side of the mountain, but I believe it takes a lot more patience and love and discernment to look out over a gray-green muddy swamp in the winter and see the beauty in it. It’s a one of a kind ecosystem that’s home to a one of a kind culture, and I was proud to every day try to help rehabilitate it little by little.

What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?

From a purely financial perspective, this program gives a crazy return on investment! Louisiana contributes $2.4 billion to the US seafood industry and 1 in every 70 jobs in Louisiana is in the seafood industry. You can't have healthy fisheries without a healthy coastline. And when we protect Louisiana’s coastline, that dampens the impact of hurricanes coming ashore, so they don’t visit as much destruction on people’s homes — or on the massive amount of petrochemical industry in South Louisiana.

With a strong coastline, when a storm comes, those people and industries won’t need as much money from FEMA to build back what was lost, and we don’t run the risk of a massive oil or chemical spill from a damaged industry plant contaminating the area. From an environmental perspective, you’re protecting a rare and unique habitat of coastal wetlands that’s home to all sorts of birds, fish, bugs, grasses, and so on that aren't found anywhere else. Wetlands are a massive carbon sink, so they’re critical to preserve if we care about slowing down climate change.

Finally, there’s the human perspective - small towns dot the entirety of the coast and those people deserve to live safe and protected lives, without worrying about whether the one road out of their town that runs along the levee will get washed away every time it rains. In this country we often say we're “by the people, for the people,” and if you ask me, that means EVERYONE who lives in this country, not just the ones who live in places that aren’t slowly sinking into the Gulf of Mexico.

So, what do you do now?

Nothing yet. I was locked out of my NOAA email account on Thursday night but didn't receive my termination letter until the following Monday. They couldn't even terminate me right - my termination letter says that my occupation was "Research Biologist." I'm applying for other financial jobs and thanking my lucky stars that I have a career that exists in both the public and private sectors.

LJ | Washington

2025-03-06T00:00:00Z

What do you do?

I’m fairly high up at HUD, still work there, and I’m absolutely terrified about what the planned staffing cuts mean for the literally millions of vulnerable people on rental assistance. I help manage some of HUD’s programs. This involves making sure funding is available, fixing problems when something doesn’t work right, and making/updating clear policy so program participants across the country know how it works and have a similar experience.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

I intended to be a social worker but stumbled into the housing field after college and worked for nonprofits at first. I started noticing things that weren’t working well - why were there always huge waiting lists for affordable housing? Why was it so hard to build more? I learned that the answer to these questions was public policy, and it sounds silly but it was a job I never knew existed. I wanted to make things better, so I went back to school for a Master’s in Public Policy, and joined federal service wanting to combine my practical experience in the field and what I’d learned in grad school to make the best use of the scarce resources we have.

What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?

I love that my work enables me to be creative, use data analysis to inform good policy, and that it makes a difference for people in need of affordable housing. It’s fulfilling for me, every day brings a new challenge.

What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?

People really rely on these programs so it’s important that they’re predictable and fair, and that’s what my work is meant to ensure. HUD in total provides rental assistance to around 5 million households nationwide, many of whom are seniors or others on fixed income who literally could not afford an apartment on their own. It means that I get to live in a country where people who can’t afford a market-rate apartment still have options to find a home they can be proud of. Resources might be scarce and waiting lists are long, but for the people who have stable housing they can afford, it makes a huge difference in every other aspect of their life and I’m so glad to be a small part of that.

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it's all going to impact your work and your mission?

I think above all I want people to know how hard my team works and how fragile things actually are. We’re working with software from the 90’s and it’s a lot of manual work, and there’s a lot of (necessary) oversight. If the proposed cuts at HUD happened, it wouldn’t be long before payments stopped coming and thousands of people were evicted. Almost all of us could go make more money in the private sector, but we stay because it’s important to keep people housed.

A | Pacific Northwest

2025-03-05T00:00:00Z

What do you do?

So briefly, if the IRS sends you a notice that you owe money, you can contest that in the Tax Court. I work for the office of attorneys that represents the government in that court.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

I was in private sector before, in an auto injury firm. I felt a little stuck in my old job, so I applied for this job to do something different. I also was drawn to the idea of public service. Both my husband and I considered the military, but we're medically ineligible. My family is full of teachers, which is something I had considered before covid.

What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?

I appreciate that our job is to give people a chance to tell the government they're wrong. The IRS messes up sometimes, and I appreciate that the ethos of the office is that our job is to be right, not to defend whatever the government is doing. We've absolutely gotten cases and said "Yep, the taxpayer is right and we need to tell the IRS to back off". My job is largely clerical, so for me the proud moments are things like organizing a very messy file room or dealing with backlogs. Important things to be sure! But not exciting. The kind of unsung stuff needed to keep an organization running.

What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?

The IRS is definitely a big faceless entity, and while they're extremely important, they can also be confusing and impersonal. So, having a whole couple departments specifically for people to say "Hey, the IRS is wrong", and be heard and worked with is really important. You don't have to go through some giant court proceeding with judges who are more used to criminal trials to contest your tax bill — there's a whole system that knows how to hear you out, and make sure the government is only taking as much of your money as it's allowed to.

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it's all going to impact your work and your mission?

I'm out of probation, and our office wasn't affected by the cuts this week. We don't know why. In general, people are expecting a proper RIF at some point, just because we can't go unaffected by the IRS cuts for too long, but we're not really sure what the future will look like. I don't know about across the country, but we lost about 10% of folks to the deferred retirement. Most of them were retirement-eligible, so thats a lot of good experience leaving all at once. We hired the majority of our staff in the last couple years. Those folks retiring represent a substantial amount of the experience and organizational knowledge of the office. Ultimately it means we'll be providing worse advice to the client, doing less well in court and losing cases we shouldn't, and having a hard time keeping our knowledge base.

I think a lot of government is a mystery to people, until they interact with it — I know I hadn't heard of some of the agencies being targeted before. Hopefully, this whole episode shows people just how many things the government does. I'm hearing from management that they have no idea how we're going to be able to backfill a lot of those roles. I'm optimistic, but even in an agency with no firings and no funding cuts, we're not going to be able to fix things for a long time. That's maybe the biggest takeaway for me right now. All that's happened for us is an uptick in retirements, and it's still going to take a while to recover. The places getting really gutted are going to have a long road ahead, no matter what.

These cuts are super anti-efficiency, and they cost us all money by making it easier to be a tax cheat, if you've got the resources. I think everyone knows the whole efficiency thing is horseshit, but the stuff with the IRS and sister offices really makes it clear what a lie that is. The perverse thing is that the complex stuff is the business and high earner taxes, so those will take longer to recover. Joe Schmo not filing his taxes is easy.

HW | West Coast

2025-03-04T00:00:00Z

What do you do?

I work in nuclear command and control at STRATCOM, NC2. We track missions, operations, and status of the US arsenal.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

I came from a military family. It goes back generations, so getting my GI Bill after serving was an expected path. It was just seen as a likely path, not really remarkable at the time. I remember when we told my grandfather, he just kind of grunted, and supposedly told my grandmother in private that he was proud. Civil service was a fluke. After college, I was contacted about a job by a former shipmate and applied on a whim. I had planned to go work in Silicon Valley. It came up at a time when I was looking around, but I also felt alone and looked forward to working with my former shipmates. I also missed having a mission and being a part of an organization I dearly love to this day. Military environments can be demanding but feel very special.

What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?

Working in a normal office for several years was depressing. Here, I'm part of something big and important. I feel tremendous pride in doing a job that most people don't know exists but, on a very real level, is a key to our national security. It's frustrating, and hard at times, and I'm the type of person who thrives in and environment of constantly being on your toes. Maybe it's the long-tail of PTSD, who knows? I've worked on mission planning and operations teams that have executed missions all over the world.

What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?

The core, largely unspoken truth about our national security is that our state adversaries know that we have tremendous military power and the experience and knowledge to bring it to bear. I sit in a room with a group of people with utterly irreplaceable skills and training to carry out our mission. Without that group of people, and the knowledge they have, American safety is compromised. It takes many years of training to get there, and it's something we all treat with deadly seriousness. The weapons are not a deterent without the people behind them.

What does all of this mean for you? Do you know what's next?

I worry. Partly for my job, but largely for the next generation taking the reins. We need that pipeline of motivated, sharp young people. People who used to look at government work as a viable path. Our pay and benefits have shrunk. Politicians vilify us as lazy and overpaid. We've lost so many just starting out. Government work as a stable place to build a career was about all we had to attract those people. Look at the crisis many states are having hiring good teachers. The work is important, but that can't be all there is. It's worth noting that the older Millenials who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and transitioned to government are a finite resource. They're now middle-aged and having to make hard choices about careers going forward. They were a little DoD baby boom in Federal work. The vast majority of the 789K DoD civilians are vets. We all speak DoD and come from a certain place professionally that's very hard for non-military folks to learn.

Jordan | Texas

2025-03-03T00:00:00Z

What did you do?

I worked in USAID's South and Central Asia office, supporting 4 countries over 3 years. Day-to-day, I was the go-between for our leaders at each US embassy and policy leaders in Washington. This meant everything from prepping leadership for meetings with heads of state to helping design new anti-corruption programs to serving as a surge expert on outbreak responses. I worked on four big things:

Sri Lanka's 2022 economic and food security crisis. USAID supported their entry into an IMF deal, surged fertilizer assistance to stave off a famine, and ultimately helped monitor free and fair elections.
Opening a new USAID office in Maldives: most people in Maldives don't benefit from the tourism sector, and the country has a large extremism/unemployment problem, plus the obvious climate change existential threat. We built really cool private sector partnerships to help all of the above.
New global health security programming in the Kyrgyz Republic: I flew out to serve as health office director there last summer during a staffing gap. This was during a major measles outbreak, and before anyone there was talking about avian influenza. We were about to launch new lines of effort against drug-resistant tuberculosis, border disease surveillance, and laboratory strengthening.
Most recently, I switched to Bangladesh to help support them as they built a new government from the ground up following their authoritarian leader fleeing the country last August. Immediate priorities were to keep their banking sector from collapsing, support anti-corruption reforms and domestic tax revenue collection, and help build the infrastructure for their first free and fair elections in decades this year.

How did you enter federal service?

I'm an infectious disease epidemiologist by training, working mostly in humanitarian contexts. Nearly every job I've had over my entire career, from parasitic disease eradication in Chad, to tracking the needs of people displaced by Boko Haram in Northeast Nigeria, has been funded in part by USAID or the CDC. I got pulled into USAID to work on COVID, when the Delta variant was killing hundreds of thousands of people in India. It took a year for my security clearance to come through, so I accidentally wound up working on broader issues. As a kid I was always really torn between careers in science and public policy, so was lucky to find a way to do both. I never left my home state growing up, so working in both globally was pretty beyond my imagination.

What was important to you about your work?

I was really proud of working to minimize hypocrisy in American foreign policy. That's an impossible goal, but I really felt the work I was doing was the legwork. Walking the walk on helping governments be responsive to the needs of their people was really important to me. That's a role only USAID could fill - no NGO operates on that scale. Also, the government-to-government level of operation was really important. I've been in meetings with heads of state where USAID was able to persuade them (along with our funding) to treat refugees in their countries humanely, or to hold local elections as scheduled. Not even Bill Gates can do that.

What should be important to Americans about the work you were doing?

It is really, really hard to explain to people outside the sector how much we do with so little funding. US foreign assistance, especially through HIV treatment, provides over half the national health budgets of some countries in Africa. I think the speed and scale at which people start dying globally is going to be really shocking. I'm especially worried about drug-resistant tuberculosis skyrocketing. And at some point it will come home. This certaintly isn't the most important impact, but I think Americans are going to be shocked at how travel is impacted by the shuttering of USAID alone. Anyone who dreams of going on safari, or backpacking in Asia, is going to wind up facing wild civic unrest and instability and, probably literally, people dying in the streets. For basically every global crisis that pops up over the next four years I'll be able to point to something that USAID funded specifically working to prevent it. That much I'm certain about.

What's next for you now?

Hah, well, two months ago my game plan was to spend these four years speedrunning a PhD. But with the simultaneous destruction of research funding & universities pausing admissions, that's already a non-starter. I'm employable with transferable skills, went to fancy schools, blah blah blah but the work I want to do will almost entirely cease to exist. There is basically no private sector infrastructure for this stuff. For now I've managed to cobble together some contract work and paid writing. A retail side gig I used to have for fun will hopefully take me back with enough hours to cover health insurance. And after that? No idea.

USAID has local staff in every country we work in. These people include every type of expert you can think of, incredibly well-connected, just the absolute best and brightest around the world. Some of them have spent 20, 30 years working for America. Losing them - betraying them - was my biggest nightmare before the election, and now it's happening.

MW | Pacific Ocean

2025-02-27T00:00:00Z

What do you do?

I am in a mission critical position that is directly involved in emergency and routine warship repair.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

In the aftermath of the 2008 crises, I worked at a private elementary school. Colleagues and I were let go when school leadership decided to hire their friends' kids. All of that "at-will" stuff horrified me, so I only sought government work from then on. I ended up in state government for a while, where I wasn't paid all that well, but I directly helped the unemployed and saw firsthand how work can provide dignity and meaning. One day I saw a posting for my current job. The pay was more than what I would have ever gotten at the state, and I knew I had the skills required to learn the job, so I applied. Turned out the position was in high demand, so I got a call back quickly.

What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?

I work near where a WWII aircraft carrier was repaired in 72 hours and returned to fight in the Pacific, and the departments I work with still achieve similar turnaround times. The workplace culture across all departments is deeply rooted in how hardworking the employees at this place have been since WWII, to an extent where, even today, the worst possible insult is to tell someone they are a shitty worker. My team is constantly working to prevent the taxpayer from being ripped off by private industry while also keeping our warships ready. We are also doing our best to fight the negative effects of having fewer industry vendors which we know are resulting in overpriced repairs.

Looking back on my career, I have found great purpose in fighting against unfairness, greed, and corruption in its many forms. I thought my primary focus in my current job would be to fight these things in terms of our interactions with the private sector, but my team will be impacted by illegal terminations of probationary workers, so I feel urgency in fighting for the dignity and meaning of their careers and livelihoods today. I am most honored to be involved in teaching these new employees and ensuring their success as the newest generation of federal workers. They are asking the right questions to excel in our service, and they deserve to be here because they are proving their worth on a daily basis.

What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?

Without us, warships requiring both emergency and routine repairs will not be repaired timely nor at a cost that is fair to the taxpayer. Without us, there will be no more wartime success stories. Loss of any members of my team will place America at risk of harm both in defense of ourselves and our allies.

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it's all going to impact your work and your mission?

For now, the chaos primarily makes me very angry on behalf of my newest employees, because I see how hard they work for the ordinary taxpayer, and for our national defense. Our day-to-day work hasn't yet changed. We have all the necessary processes in place to keep doing our work and maintaining compliance with regulations. More broadly, however, I read the chaos and dysfunction as attempting, most ineffectively, to convince my team that we are shitty workers. Little do they know that we have joined a long line of employees who consider these to be fighting words. At each turn of this nightmare, I will do everything in my ability to protect my team, protect the ordinary taxpayer, and outlast this joke of an administration.

W | Southeast US

2025-02-26T00:00:00Z

What do you do?

I’ve been working for the past 15-20 years on the inspection of safety and compliance of our nuclear industry. There are many regulations that exist to ensure that nuclear material is safely controlled and handled, and my job has been to ensure that the requirements which we’ve imposed to ensure the safety of people, the environment, and security have been followed. I also identify and follow up on cases where those requirements may not have been followed, and keep up on status information for those cases.

How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?

I got into this directly out of college. It was the time of the nuclear renaissance, before Fukushima occurred. They showed up at my college, and I kind of slid into it by accident. I got super lucky. My dad served in the Navy, so serving my country in some way appealed to me, but based on his description of his Navy service, I didn’t think I would be a good fit for defense. Also, I was applying to a bunch of different places, and they were the first ones to get back with a serious offer. I was kind of learning how to interview as I went to the various job interviews.

Also, I hate lines and no one was at their desk at the job fair.

What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?

I love that there’s a wide range of possible things to follow up on, and I like that I don’t have to be in front of a screen all of the time, even if you can’t escape it entirely. At some point, you have to read the 50-year history of why the requirements are what they are and write up your findings. I’ve always been impressed with the people I work with, and I like the sense that, in a small way, I am performing a needed function that makes people safer. I take pride in that last bit.

If you look at the very roots of our nuclear history, in a lot of ways we fucked around and found out with a lot of the choices we, as a country, made in the nuclear industry. I got to be part of the aftermath of that, trying to ensure the lessons learned made us safer. I looked at different aspects of upgrading safety systems, and I’m proud of the work I’ve done. Anytime I found an issue that had an actual safety impact, which was then resolved, it’s been something I am proud of.

Do you think all of this will change the public’s perception of your work?

With the public, I think the trust in general is still there (or at least hasn’t changed anyone’s previous position on nuclear). I tend to look at whether an event builds or loses trust. Fukushima, even though it happened in Japan, killed a lot of trust — no talk of a nuclear renaissance after that. The NNSA firing and rehiring makes the government look incompetent, and incompetence tends to get painted with a broad brush on the government as a whole. That obviously lowers trust. How much, I don’t know. Most of my stuff is local impact, and I haven’t seen the needle move yet in my area. No one’s coming to me asking me if we’re still safe yet. So, that’s good. But a lot of the public isn’t plugged into my field. It can be hard to gauge — until it’s not. Local people tend to be vocal when they have concerns, and it’s a different environment in the Southeast than in the North or the West.

All the probationary people they’ve fired so far (that I know) have been veterans of one defense service or another, and I can no longer recommend to people that they should work in government. I think we’re eating our seed. It also leads me to distrust who may be hired in the future, because, at some level, a Nazi approved that person. Not that anyone is hiring right now, anyway. These were people fired without regard to their background, merit, or input from local management. Does that sound like a place you’d like to work?

How does all of this impact you, personally?

All I have are contingencies at this point. If they can fire me to make number go up, then I will be fired. I’m going to stick it out as long as I can, because I have to believe this won’t last forever. I’ve had a lot of luck in my life no matter what happens. If the worst happens I’ll have to rely on the friends I’ve made along the way, like anyone does

Sometimes, people forget that, at its root, the government is people.

There’s a lot of other stuff, too, and that’s super important, but at some point, you’ve got to have people to do the needed work, and they have to hold to their oaths. Well, most of us have made oaths, anyway. With this new group they’ve got running around, who knows?

This bullshit they’re pulling is petty and condescending. But that’s on brand.

Jamie | Southeast US

2025-02-25T00:00:00Z

What do you do?

I'm a Department of Labor attorney. In my part of in the Department of Labor, we are basically civil prosecutors, or trial attorneys for any violations of regulations that the Department of Labor oversees. We have client agencies that do investigations and pass any cases that get contested to us. We then go and litigate the cases. Some of our client agencies include OSHA, MSHA, WHD, OWCP, BLS, and ERISA. Litigation includes things like civil discovery, depositions, subpoenaing witnesses, going to trial, and settling cases if possible.

Most of our work is before administrative Article II courts, though sometimes the work falls into Article III federal district court.

How did you find your way into civil service?

I knew I wanted to be do something public interest-related for a long time. I am from the South, and I always wanted to give back to the region, I wanted to try to make it better and get people what they are owed and deserve in a place that is mostly left behind, and exploited by capital or political leaders.

I went to law school thinking I might get directly into politics, but I got disillusioned pretty quickly. Since I knew I was going to have to be a lawyer, and most lawyers end up working for big corporate firms that do grunt work for big capital, I decided I wanted to either work for a public interest firm, or for the government, in the South if I could. Ultimately, that lead me to DOL.

What is important about this work to you, personally?

I am proud to do it because I think, in some way, I am helping to make working in America safer and more just. Winning a case, or settling on good terms for us, means that workers get money their bosses stole from them, it means companies that exploit child labor have to pay for it, and it means contractors who put employees in dangerous positions, or hurt them, or even kill them will have to pay. We can also help people recover lost retirement funds, or make sure they get worker’s compensation they are owed.

Criminal law often will simply not hold people to account for the abuses we deal with, which may be a failing of the system, but we get to at least push back on it, and rectify real dangers and injustices in American labor. So, I am very proud of that, it makes me feel good to know that I have one of the few jobs in law that helps the law work for people without resources. I can say that I have helped recover hundreds of thousands of dollars in stolen overtime and wages, which is what I would be proudest of.

What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?

It matters because without us, and this is especially true for our clients, there is nothing standing between a worker and their boss. When they withhold your paycheck, or injure you, or deny you what you have worked for, we are the people that can get it back. We make sure America is a safe and secure place to work, as much as we’re allowed to by federal law.

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it's all going to impact your work and your mission?

It has been absolutely awful. One thing that I think is missing in a lot of media coverage is how, especially for those of us not in Washington, none of DOGE’s actions or requirements are communicated to us or our supervisors. We often find out about things when an email arrives in our inboxes, or when we read about it on the news. Thus, the chain of command is unclear as to the legal effect or authority for things. The chaos is a massive security risk for case details or information, since we are often asked by anonymous unsigned emails to reply or provide information without prewarning.

My office has also spent weeks wondering if we will come in and suddenly be fired without warning due to the lack of communication. Multiple employees, good and productive employees, have been functionally terminated due to the return to office policy. I have never, ever, been more furious in my life at these people, who are ruining good things they do not understand without even pretending to learn about the necessary work we all do. I have had to delay buying a house, and possibly starting a family, because I simply do not know if my job will exist in 3 months.

The biggest effect will be increased workload for us all, as we were already a bit understaffed. Obviously, that will lead to decreased attention on each individual thing and will more corner-cutting. I expect that the way that gets dealt with is that we just end up taking fewer cases, prioritizing the worst abuses, meaning a lot of stuff will fall through the cracks or be settled at the client level on more favorable terms for the violators.

People should understand that this is not about efficiency or saving the government money. My department makes the government money through penalties, and returns money to people that earned it. This is a chaotic, vague process that is being done randomly and without guidance or forethought. The result of that is knocking over trees they do not even know exist, hurting good people who forewent much higher paying jobs because they wanted to help people and serve their country. I can tell you that just about everyone I work with is proud to work for the American public and earnestly believes that service means something. We’re not leeches, we want to work for the everyone.

The worst part is that when they get us, there will be more people being exploited by their bosses whose calls go unanswered and never see the paycheck that was stolen from them.

Nate Brought | Maryland

2025-02-24T00:00:00Z

First off, what would you like me to call you, and where are you located? We can use a pseudonym or initials, and region is fine, I don't need specific location.

Nate Brought, Maryland. I would prefer you use my full name. I want these bastards to know it was me.

What do you do?

I am the Director of the Executive Secretariat at the National Institutes of Health until COB Friday, February 28.

My office handles documents to be approved by the Director and Deputy Director, incoming and outgoing correspondence, coordinating drafting and clearance on all types of documents including Congressional reports, Congressional letters, committee assignments and charters, HR packages requiring front office approval, and about a hundred other different product lines. We also handle records management compliance for the director and deputy director, as well as managing their email inboxes, and sending all-staff messages.

How did you enter federal service?

It's probably easier to show you this.

Note: If you don't have a LinkedIn account, you can view Nate's letter here.

What was important to you about the work you were doing?

I viewed myself as having 2 primary roles:

Protecting the legacy and reputation of NIH, the NIH Director, and the NIH Deputy Director by ensuring that their records were managed in accordance with all regulations, and ensuring that everything they approved was consistent, legal, and done to the highest caliber.
Taking care of my employees in the office policies I set, my interactions with them, by representing their interests well to those above me, and through coaching, training, and mentoring.

Obviously, I believed in the mission of NIH and it was important to me, and serving those two roles was my primary way of serving the Agency mission.

What is important to Americans about the work you were doing?

Most immediately, if you wrote a letter to NIH, we were the ones who received it, made sure it got to the right place, made sure you got a thorough, complete, accurate, and legal response that has been coordinated with everyone necessary across the agency, and that it made its way back to you. In the bigger scheme of things, we are the grease on the gears of NIH. If things aren't moving efficiently through my team, NIH's ability to interact with anyone outside NIH would be severely limited, and many things simply wouldn't be able to get done. There are a lot of things that can't go out without the Director or the Deputy Director's signature, and those folks are too busy to keep track of a hundred different people sending them those things. But they knew me and they knew my emails were important. Also, a lot of times things get submitted for approval that are less-than-ready for publication, or are inconsistent with other documents. We are editing experts and we ensure that everything that goes out is in a consistent "NIH Voice." Even the director's ability to communicate inside of NIH would be severely degraded. We handle sending out his all staff messages. We handle a lot of his email. We make sure that he gets back to people if he forgets.

We also handle FOIA requests for DIR and DDIR records though, and we did a lot of work on the Republicans' wild goose chases. We knew they were bullshit, and we knew they were fruitless, and we knew they were going to try to use the results to hurt us, but my staff faithfully located, categorized, and provided every single responsive record every single time, even when MY records were requested.

Fortunately, I was not at NIH until August of 2023, so my predecessor dealt with a lot of communications during covid, and comforted my staff through the death and rape threats they received by phone and email on a daily basis throughout that period. The worst part is the right never stopped sending those threats, and now we're getting them from people on the other side, because they're upset about funding freezes and indirect costs issues.

On a personal note, my favorite workdays were hearing prep days. I've had to watch a LOT of congressional testimony over the years for work, and getting to participate in the mock hearings was always extremely fun. Apparently I'm pretty good at it, because after the last one I did a couple people asked about my acting experience. The key is to just be as one-sided and disingenuous as possible and you'll nail your impression of most anyone on the Hill.

What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it's all going to impact your work and your mission?

I think if Republicans in Congress don't act soon, this is an existential threat to the America that has existed since 1776 and we are damn near Trump realizing his dream of Putinizing America. I honestly, 100% believe if he's not removed from office soon, 2024 will be our last free and fair election.

But let's just assume for a second that things don't get that bad. The relationship between the people who do the work of the government and the government has been irreparably harmed, which will absolutely degrade the mission and is already leading to severe brain drain. They're, all of a sudden, putting out a bunch of job ads for critical skills, many of which they just fired people out of, and I guarantee you nobody is going for those spots unless they have no other choice. The government has turned its recruitment efforts away from "the best and the brightest" and towards the lowest bidder.

And degrading the NIH mission? That doesn't just harm the American people. That harms the entire world. The medical advances that NIH makes benefit people on every continent and in just about every country. Like, I imagine North Korea and a couple of other places aren't really up to the latest and greatest on the results of our research, but every other country benefits from the medical advances that we make. Millions of people will die unnecessarily in the coming decades because of the damage that we're doing to scientific research, and the way we are degrading our reputation by letting somebody like RFK Jr lead the department.

For me, the most serious concern, and the biggest reason I resigned, is the ways in that they're already refusing to comply with the courts. It's anathema to US ideals and the separation of powers, and it potentially leads us somewhere even worse. At NIH, it's most obvious through the FRN issue right now, but you can also just look at the statements they've made over the last few weeks.

These are not minor issues, or normal political squabbling. These are things that, if they happen or they're not stopped, will absolutely bring about the downfall of American democracy as we've always known it. People need to wake up to the fact that the fate of the country is literally at risk. People need to get out of the headspace that they can just tune out the news and none of this will matter or impact them. To borrow a phrase from Donald Trump, "you've got to fight like hell or you're not going to have a country anymore." The only two hopes of stopping this right now are Republicans in Congress doing what they should be doing and getting him out of there, and then all of us moving forward into a world where it's not Party-Line-Or-Nothing. Or, senior military leaders and a coup, which isn't really a road we want to go down either, and potentially leads somewhere much worse.

I suppose you could argue that some sort of "amicable divorce" with a mutual defense treaty between the red States and blue States might be possible, but they'd never allow that to happen. They're in the standard fascist playbook of expansionism right now, so there's no way they're going to give up control over any territory.

Anyhow. I could literally talk about this for 5 hours so I'll stop there.