My first job as a freshly-minted engineer was for one of the big defense companies, working on a major upgrade project for the Navy's carrier-based bomber.
When I worked on the Army staff in the Pentagon - it was a 2 year tour - I learned the Army was cancelling roughly 1 billion dollars' worth of programs every year. The GAO even issued a report on that while I was there. That is, AFTER a billion had been spent on R&D, on average, the Army would cancel a program. Every year. And that was when the Army's total budget for all such investments was $20B a year - so 5 percent. Every year. And that was just my eyeballs on that one part of the budget. There were a LOT of reasons why programs were cancelled, but it was never because they weren't needed or were failures. The primary reason was because something else came along that was a higher priority. I counseled program managers back then to "go faster, fail early and learn" rather than settle for the 10-year development timelines the defense contractors would advocate. They're STILL not doing that.
One SDI program I worked on used a streamlined management structure on the government side. When it "morphed," it became more traditional. My work output shifted substantially from real work to reporting, as in from 80/20 or even 90/10 to 50/50.
I spent 8 years working missile defense programs. When I first got to BMDO, we were lean and hard charging - risk taking, entrepreneurial and successful. Air Force Lt Gen Ron Kadish grew it into the Missile Defense Agency with many thousands more employees - ostensibly today a huge jobs program. The stories I could tell!
The never ending only increasing reckless spending and behavior will ultimately destroy the country. This administration is the first one in my lifetime that actually has the guts to look for waste and abuse and the guts to tackle it. Hopefully it’s not too late….
Before you cut staff, it would be prudent to make sure that you're cutting fat not muscle. The embarrassing episodes of having to rehire staff thanks to ill thought out DOGE cuts illustrates this.
The private sector cuts and rehires all the time. It’s a technic to get rid of dead lethargic wood. Especially when management changes or changes course. Company sells, CEO changes, work load decreases. If you’re not actually walked out the front door your walked to an interview that gives you a chance at retaining your job. You better have had 5 very important things you accomplished last week. 😁
Having spent 45 years working at several of America's top companies, I am all too familiar with layoffs but recall only one example of a rehire. Perhaps, your experience has been different but I suspect that most businesses put a little more thought into deciding who to let go than has DOGE.
Is there any evidence that the "restraint" you're advocating would work? Government size, inefficiency, waste, fraud, corruption, and incompetence only ever seems to get worse, and every attempt to slow growth, let alone actually cut, is met with howls of doom.
Beyond that, you and I aren't really privy to the depth of thought behind DOGE cuts, are we? Mostly, we have the aforementioned howls of outrage and assertions of certain doom. Yes, some mistakes have been corrected, but your alternative is, I believe, nirvana fallacy and a prescription for failure.
List slash and burn cut examples here so far. So far it’s a bunch squeaky wheels with bad attitudes complaining about being asked to do a simple task that people in private sector jobs do everyday.
DOGE is following the standard of every company in high tech industry I’m familiar with follows.
The company my husband works for now was sold twice and to retain his position he had to interview each time as if he was reapplying for his job. Now granted the fact that he has a reputation in the industry meant he wasn’t laid off first. Many people were but a large percentage of those were rehired within a few months both times the name on sign out front changed.
Seems likely that if one were to eliminate 20-50% of the existing 2.5 million, few citizens would even notice. You can be sure that at least 20% of these workers have effectively retired without telling anyone. When there is no risk of job loss it is human nature for many to become lazy and less responsible. Time to bring in the chain saw and prune out all the deadwood.
The gag, of course, is for the careerists to try and point the axe toward the popular, the productive, and the visible, in order to create bad will against the cuts.
That's Washington Monument Syndrome. Always close the national parks during crunches, not the useless bureaucracies.
I'm happy that Trump is telling Musk to be even more aggressive. The headwinds he faces are strong. And I've grown very rapidly tired of the people who are masquerading their hatred for Trump with supposedly "responsible" skepticism of cutting bloat.
On a related note, I learned this week why Zelensky was talking about little of the money appropriated for Ukraine actually getting there. It's because the funds went to defense contractors who then engaged in a building and hiring spree at our expense. Small wonder some in DC desperately want to keep the spigot flowing.
When I worked on the Army staff in the Pentagon - it was a 2 year tour - I learned the Army was cancelling roughly 1 billion dollars' worth of programs every year. The GAO even issued a report on that while I was there. That is, AFTER a billion had been spent on R&D, on average, the Army would cancel a program. Every year. And that was when the Army's total budget for all such investments was $20B a year - so 5 percent. Every year. And that was just my eyeballs on that one part of the budget. There were a LOT of reasons why programs were cancelled, but it was never because they weren't needed or were failures. The primary reason was because something else came along that was a higher priority. I counseled program managers back then to "go faster, fail early and learn" rather than settle for the 10-year development timelines the defense contractors would advocate. They're STILL not doing that.
One SDI program I worked on used a streamlined management structure on the government side. When it "morphed," it became more traditional. My work output shifted substantially from real work to reporting, as in from 80/20 or even 90/10 to 50/50.
I spent 8 years working missile defense programs. When I first got to BMDO, we were lean and hard charging - risk taking, entrepreneurial and successful. Air Force Lt Gen Ron Kadish grew it into the Missile Defense Agency with many thousands more employees - ostensibly today a huge jobs program. The stories I could tell!
The never ending only increasing reckless spending and behavior will ultimately destroy the country. This administration is the first one in my lifetime that actually has the guts to look for waste and abuse and the guts to tackle it. Hopefully it’s not too late….
Before you cut staff, it would be prudent to make sure that you're cutting fat not muscle. The embarrassing episodes of having to rehire staff thanks to ill thought out DOGE cuts illustrates this.
That's a great recipe for cutting nothing. No one will admit they or the people in their fiefs are "fat."
Besides, rehiring the erroneous cuts is actually a telltale that the cuts aren't blind.
The private sector cuts and rehires all the time. It’s a technic to get rid of dead lethargic wood. Especially when management changes or changes course. Company sells, CEO changes, work load decreases. If you’re not actually walked out the front door your walked to an interview that gives you a chance at retaining your job. You better have had 5 very important things you accomplished last week. 😁
Having spent 45 years working at several of America's top companies, I am all too familiar with layoffs but recall only one example of a rehire. Perhaps, your experience has been different but I suspect that most businesses put a little more thought into deciding who to let go than has DOGE.
Is there any evidence that the "restraint" you're advocating would work? Government size, inefficiency, waste, fraud, corruption, and incompetence only ever seems to get worse, and every attempt to slow growth, let alone actually cut, is met with howls of doom.
Beyond that, you and I aren't really privy to the depth of thought behind DOGE cuts, are we? Mostly, we have the aforementioned howls of outrage and assertions of certain doom. Yes, some mistakes have been corrected, but your alternative is, I believe, nirvana fallacy and a prescription for failure.
Bill Clinton somehow managed to do it without doing slash and burn cuts which had to be fixed. When we have repeated examples of sloppy cuts requit
List slash and burn cut examples here so far. So far it’s a bunch squeaky wheels with bad attitudes complaining about being asked to do a simple task that people in private sector jobs do everyday.
What did Bill Clinton do?
DOGE is following the standard of every company in high tech industry I’m familiar with follows.
The company my husband works for now was sold twice and to retain his position he had to interview each time as if he was reapplying for his job. Now granted the fact that he has a reputation in the industry meant he wasn’t laid off first. Many people were but a large percentage of those were rehired within a few months both times the name on sign out front changed.
Seems likely that if one were to eliminate 20-50% of the existing 2.5 million, few citizens would even notice. You can be sure that at least 20% of these workers have effectively retired without telling anyone. When there is no risk of job loss it is human nature for many to become lazy and less responsible. Time to bring in the chain saw and prune out all the deadwood.
The gag, of course, is for the careerists to try and point the axe toward the popular, the productive, and the visible, in order to create bad will against the cuts.
That's Washington Monument Syndrome. Always close the national parks during crunches, not the useless bureaucracies.
I'm happy that Trump is telling Musk to be even more aggressive. The headwinds he faces are strong. And I've grown very rapidly tired of the people who are masquerading their hatred for Trump with supposedly "responsible" skepticism of cutting bloat.
On a related note, I learned this week why Zelensky was talking about little of the money appropriated for Ukraine actually getting there. It's because the funds went to defense contractors who then engaged in a building and hiring spree at our expense. Small wonder some in DC desperately want to keep the spigot flowing.
Yeah. Open up a fire hose, a lot of "wet" goes where you don't want it to.