Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
On February 16 2025 02:15 Uldridge wrote: But hey, according to oBlade, this guy knows how the governmental agencies function due to him being having been and currently being the president. What a fucking clown.
The world is not ending because 50-300 probationary employees are or aren't getting fired by cabinet officials doing downsizing. Just like it didn't when Clinton trimmed the federal bureaucracy. You simply need to breathe.
Yes, and no subset of 50-300 probationary employees from those cuts, like for example the ones that you specifically linked and now have embarrassingly forgot about when immediately referenced, whether at the DOE or not, are the keystone of the federal bureaucracy holding together the "functionality" of the executive branch.
Pretty sure that which is arbitrarily hired can be arbitrarily fired.
Fearmongering over ATC is also not a historically sound one to invoke because we have a literal example of when someone did clear out ATC and the world carried on.
On February 16 2025 02:15 Uldridge wrote: But hey, according to oBlade, this guy knows how the governmental agencies function due to him being having been and currently being the president. What a fucking clown.
The world is not ending because 50-300 probationary employees are or aren't getting fired by cabinet officials doing downsizing. Just like it didn't when Clinton trimmed the federal bureaucracy. You simply need to breathe.
Pretty sure that which is arbitrarily hired can be arbitrarily fired. .
True enough, but apparently in this case its not the hiring of these people that is the problem, or the firing of them for that matter. Its the re-hiring them once you've fired them that is the problem cos now you have to track all those people down and make sure they turn up to their essential jobs on Monday.
We seem to have a divergent use of words here. Normally I take "probationary" to be a concept that is mutually exclusive with "essential." It'd be like saying an "essential intern." Do you think there is a nonzero class of nonessential government workers? (Do they exist at all?) In this case is it the fact of them being unfired by itself that's enough to prove they were essential...? Yet then we'd categorize them as essential, and also not fired, so.
On February 16 2025 17:37 oBlade wrote: We seem to have a divergent use of words here. Normally I take "probationary" to be a concept that is mutually exclusive with "essential." It'd be like saying an "essential intern." Do you think there is a nonzero class of nonessential government workers? (Do they exist at all?) In this case is it the fact of them being unfired by itself that's enough to prove they were essential...? Yet then we'd categorize them as essential, and also not fired, so.
I think you're being intentionally dense. For starters, we'll have to define essential. I'd consider myself non-residential at my work. If I quit tomorrow, short-term absolutely nothing would change. Long-term I'd need replacing, or the things I keep running would need to be deprecated and taken out of production, reducing efficiency of our system, but not really its overall functioning. Nevertheless, I am considered one of the more valuable employees. It is continuously brought to my attention in my evaluations, the "employee of the year nominations", etc. I suspect that most companies have a lot of people like me: non-essential personnel that make everything that is essential for that company cheaper, smoother and less stressful. If my company got rid of all of its people like me, we would cease to innovate, progress and would soon get outcompeted by companies that did, with the essential personnel barely able to keep the systems running, with high burnout rates, and definitely no bandwidth for improving upon the system.
But that still doesn't make me essential.
It doesn't make me "probationary" either. I have a fixed contract with a good wage. I recently applied for another job to see what the wage and benefits looked like for changing and found that it really wasn't worth it.
While this is the private sector, I have some experience with the public sector as well. Where I was there was a lot more bureaucracy than in my current job, but probably less than at another company I worked. There were also more essential employees in proportion to non-essential ones, if we consider "providing education" as the primary role that institution was supposed to fulfil as opposed to "making a profit" in the private sector. But there were still administrators, lab assistants, etc, which are non-essential to that task.
So, let's please start with defining essential employees a bit better. And then we can move on to the actual bit which you seem to be getting even more wrong, which is that Trump and DOGE, are being careful to keep the essential personnel. What about their behaviour as bulls in a china shop have given you the impression that they are trying to keep essential personnel, or even know who those essential employees are?
On February 16 2025 17:37 oBlade wrote: In this case is it the fact of them being unfired by itself that's enough to prove they were essential...?
This is the idea I'm going with, yeah. Otherwise it makes no sense. I suppose we could just go with that. Trump is doing random shit that makes no sense, or these guys were essential.
On February 16 2025 17:37 oBlade wrote: We seem to have a divergent use of words here. Normally I take "probationary" to be a concept that is mutually exclusive with "essential." It'd be like saying an "essential intern." Do you think there is a nonzero class of nonessential government workers? (Do they exist at all?) In this case is it the fact of them being unfired by itself that's enough to prove they were essential...? Yet then we'd categorize them as essential, and also not fired, so.
I think you're being intentionally dense. For starters, we'll have to define essential. I'd consider myself non-residential at my work. If I quit tomorrow, short-term absolutely nothing would change. Long-term I'd need replacing, or the things I keep running would need to be deprecated and taken out of production, reducing efficiency of our system, but not really its overall functioning. Nevertheless, I am considered one of the more valuable employees. It is continuously brought to my attention in my evaluations, the "employee of the year nominations", etc. I suspect that most companies have a lot of people like me: non-essential personnel that make everything that is essential for that company cheaper, smoother and less stressful. If my company got rid of all of its people like me, we would cease to innovate, progress and would soon get outcompeted by companies that did, with the essential personnel barely able to keep the systems running, with high burnout rates, and definitely no bandwidth for improving upon the system.
But that still doesn't make me essential.
It doesn't make me "probationary" either. I have a fixed contract with a good wage. I recently applied for another job to see what the wage and benefits looked like for changing and found that it really wasn't worth it.
While this is the private sector, I have some experience with the public sector as well. Where I was there was a lot more bureaucracy than in my current job, but probably less than at another company I worked. There were also more essential employees in proportion to non-essential ones, if we consider "providing education" as the primary role that institution was supposed to fulfil as opposed to "making a profit" in the private sector. But there were still administrators, lab assistants, etc, which are non-essential to that task.
So, let's please start with defining essential employees a bit better. And then we can move on to the actual bit which you seem to be getting even more wrong, which is that Trump and DOGE, are being careful to keep the essential personnel. What about their behaviour as bulls in a china shop have given you the impression that they are trying to keep essential personnel, or even know who those essential employees are?
Not too long ago, they tried to make the Norwegian government more efficient too. Trump and Musk are not wrong that there are a lot of people being paid to do useless tasks, like writing emails and reports to other barely useful employees.
The problem is that beurocrats have a LOT of power, and it is almost impossible to improve these systems.If you simply make budget cuts, you can be absolutely sure the most important tasks will go first. A known trick for these essential employees is to keep doing the same job as highly paid consultants. Congratulations, you tried to save money, and ended up spending even more.
In Denmark, they tried to run the tax collection system more efficiently, and the result was that the government lost billions of tax revenue, as there was noone to go after the cheaters.
Musk and Trump have put their hand into a hornets nest, and are bound to fail, one way or another.
On February 16 2025 19:10 Slydie wrote: In Denmark, they tried to run the tax collection system more efficiently, and the result was that the government lost billions of tax revenue, as there was noone to go after the cheaters.
That‘s why they are doing it. Denmark is the rolemodel for this case to keep the corporate corruption running more efficiently in the US.
Right now the US has people running the government who have mostly the intention of dismantling it to make something new in their image.
I read the village newspaper once a week I probably know what I‘m talking about.
On February 16 2025 02:15 Uldridge wrote: But hey, according to oBlade, this guy knows how the governmental agencies function due to him being having been and currently being the president. What a fucking clown.
The world is not ending because 50-300 probationary employees are or aren't getting fired by cabinet officials doing downsizing. Just like it didn't when Clinton trimmed the federal bureaucracy. You simply need to breathe.
Yes, and no subset of 50-300 probationary employees from those cuts, like for example the ones that you specifically linked and now have embarrassingly forgot about when immediately referenced, whether at the DOE or not, are the keystone of the federal bureaucracy holding together the "functionality" of the executive branch.
Pretty sure that which is arbitrarily hired can be arbitrarily fired.
Fearmongering over ATC is also not a historically sound one to invoke because we have a literal example of when someone did clear out ATC and the world carried on.
Just because you *can* fire someone doesn’t mean you *should*, and given that Trump instantly had to go back with his tail between his legs and admit he was wrong to fire them (by trying to re-hire them) demonstrates this point perfectly. Even Trump recognized that their importance wasn't just "fearmongering".
This also isn't the first time that you've projected onto other people that they should be "embarrassed", when you're the one who made a mistake.
On February 16 2025 17:37 oBlade wrote: We seem to have a divergent use of words here. Normally I take "probationary" to be a concept that is mutually exclusive with "essential." It'd be like saying an "essential intern." Do you think there is a nonzero class of nonessential government workers? (Do they exist at all?) In this case is it the fact of them being unfired by itself that's enough to prove they were essential...? Yet then we'd categorize them as essential, and also not fired, so.
I think you're being intentionally dense. For starters, we'll have to define essential. I'd consider myself non-residential at my work. If I quit tomorrow, short-term absolutely nothing would change. Long-term I'd need replacing, or the things I keep running would need to be deprecated and taken out of production, reducing efficiency of our system, but not really its overall functioning. Nevertheless, I am considered one of the more valuable employees. It is continuously brought to my attention in my evaluations, the "employee of the year nominations", etc. I suspect that most companies have a lot of people like me: non-essential personnel that make everything that is essential for that company cheaper, smoother and less stressful. If my company got rid of all of its people like me, we would cease to innovate, progress and would soon get outcompeted by companies that did, with the essential personnel barely able to keep the systems running, with high burnout rates, and definitely no bandwidth for improving upon the system.
But that still doesn't make me essential.
It doesn't make me "probationary" either. I have a fixed contract with a good wage. I recently applied for another job to see what the wage and benefits looked like for changing and found that it really wasn't worth it.
While this is the private sector, I have some experience with the public sector as well. Where I was there was a lot more bureaucracy than in my current job, but probably less than at another company I worked. There were also more essential employees in proportion to non-essential ones, if we consider "providing education" as the primary role that institution was supposed to fulfil as opposed to "making a profit" in the private sector. But there were still administrators, lab assistants, etc, which are non-essential to that task.
So, let's please start with defining essential employees a bit better. And then we can move on to the actual bit which you seem to be getting even more wrong, which is that Trump and DOGE, are being careful to keep the essential personnel. What about their behaviour as bulls in a china shop have given you the impression that they are trying to keep essential personnel, or even know who those essential employees are?
While "essential" is something of a judgment call, except in the case of covid restrictions, "probationary" is not a pejorative I made up that means not doing a good job. It's a statutory category of federal employees who are less than a year on the job and don't have the job protections that longer term employees have. I wouldn't necessarily put it past the government to be stupid enough to have workers who are "essential" still be arbitrarily fireable, but in normal world if they're so essential I wouldn't expect them to be probationary workers.
You can divide fired employees by total employees to see the size of the "dent" made. You can also divide the number of probationary employees over the number of total employees to see the maximum possible effect on the workforce by firing probationary employees. So if for example we're on the hill where the 5% of some department that has been there less than a year is essential, and the people who have been there 20 years achieving nothing are essential, and everybody's essential because even the non-essential people make the essential people better, this is a moot armchair discussion from logical theorycrafting that isn't rooted in any particular facts about the specific agencies or people or anything.
On February 16 2025 02:15 Uldridge wrote: But hey, according to oBlade, this guy knows how the governmental agencies function due to him being having been and currently being the president. What a fucking clown.
The world is not ending because 50-300 probationary employees are or aren't getting fired by cabinet officials doing downsizing. Just like it didn't when Clinton trimmed the federal bureaucracy. You simply need to breathe.
Yes, and no subset of 50-300 probationary employees from those cuts, like for example the ones that you specifically linked and now have embarrassingly forgot about when immediately referenced, whether at the DOE or not, are the keystone of the federal bureaucracy holding together the "functionality" of the executive branch.
Pretty sure that which is arbitrarily hired can be arbitrarily fired.
Fearmongering over ATC is also not a historically sound one to invoke because we have a literal example of when someone did clear out ATC and the world carried on.
Just because you *can* fire someone doesn’t mean you *should*, and given that Trump instantly had to go back with his tail between his legs and admit he was wrong to fire them (by trying to re-hire them) demonstrates this point perfectly. Even Trump recognized that their importance wasn't just "fearmongering".
Okay now you are somehow able to recognize that this isn't about an arbitrary and abstract tens of thousands of people, but these specific 50-300 people that you had posted about. Being able to fire someone doesn't mean you should? Duh. Nor does them being employed mean that they should be. You posted that they were fired by "officials." Do you have any evidence he went back with his tail between his legs to hire them, when you haven't shown he was even the one that fired them.
On February 16 2025 21:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: This also isn't the first time that you've projected onto other people that they should be "embarrassed", when you're the one who made a mistake.
On February 16 2025 17:37 oBlade wrote: We seem to have a divergent use of words here. Normally I take "probationary" to be a concept that is mutually exclusive with "essential." It'd be like saying an "essential intern." Do you think there is a nonzero class of nonessential government workers? (Do they exist at all?) In this case is it the fact of them being unfired by itself that's enough to prove they were essential...? Yet then we'd categorize them as essential, and also not fired, so.
I think you're being intentionally dense. For starters, we'll have to define essential. I'd consider myself non-residential at my work. If I quit tomorrow, short-term absolutely nothing would change. Long-term I'd need replacing, or the things I keep running would need to be deprecated and taken out of production, reducing efficiency of our system, but not really its overall functioning. Nevertheless, I am considered one of the more valuable employees. It is continuously brought to my attention in my evaluations, the "employee of the year nominations", etc. I suspect that most companies have a lot of people like me: non-essential personnel that make everything that is essential for that company cheaper, smoother and less stressful. If my company got rid of all of its people like me, we would cease to innovate, progress and would soon get outcompeted by companies that did, with the essential personnel barely able to keep the systems running, with high burnout rates, and definitely no bandwidth for improving upon the system.
But that still doesn't make me essential.
It doesn't make me "probationary" either. I have a fixed contract with a good wage. I recently applied for another job to see what the wage and benefits looked like for changing and found that it really wasn't worth it.
While this is the private sector, I have some experience with the public sector as well. Where I was there was a lot more bureaucracy than in my current job, but probably less than at another company I worked. There were also more essential employees in proportion to non-essential ones, if we consider "providing education" as the primary role that institution was supposed to fulfil as opposed to "making a profit" in the private sector. But there were still administrators, lab assistants, etc, which are non-essential to that task.
So, let's please start with defining essential employees a bit better. And then we can move on to the actual bit which you seem to be getting even more wrong, which is that Trump and DOGE, are being careful to keep the essential personnel. What about their behaviour as bulls in a china shop have given you the impression that they are trying to keep essential personnel, or even know who those essential employees are?
While "essential" is something of a judgment call, except in the case of covid restrictions, "probationary" is not a pejorative I made up that means not doing a good job. It's a statutory category of federal employees who are less than a year on the job and don't have the job protections that longer term employees have. I wouldn't necessarily put it past the government to be stupid enough to have workers who are "essential" still be arbitrarily fireable, but in normal world if they're so essential I wouldn't expect them to be probationary workers.
You can divide fired employees by total employees to see the size of the "dent" made. You can also divide the number of probationary employees over the number of total employees to see the maximum possible effect on the workforce by firing probationary employees. So if for example we're on the hill where the 5% of some department that has been there less than a year is essential, and the people who have been there 20 years achieving nothing are essential, and everybody's essential because even the non-essential people make the essential people better, this is a moot armchair discussion from logical theorycrafting that isn't rooted in any particular facts about the specific agencies or people or anything.
On February 16 2025 02:15 Uldridge wrote: But hey, according to oBlade, this guy knows how the governmental agencies function due to him being having been and currently being the president. What a fucking clown.
The world is not ending because 50-300 probationary employees are or aren't getting fired by cabinet officials doing downsizing. Just like it didn't when Clinton trimmed the federal bureaucracy. You simply need to breathe.
Yes, and no subset of 50-300 probationary employees from those cuts, like for example the ones that you specifically linked and now have embarrassingly forgot about when immediately referenced, whether at the DOE or not, are the keystone of the federal bureaucracy holding together the "functionality" of the executive branch.
Pretty sure that which is arbitrarily hired can be arbitrarily fired.
Fearmongering over ATC is also not a historically sound one to invoke because we have a literal example of when someone did clear out ATC and the world carried on.
Just because you *can* fire someone doesn’t mean you *should*, and given that Trump instantly had to go back with his tail between his legs and admit he was wrong to fire them (by trying to re-hire them) demonstrates this point perfectly. Even Trump recognized that their importance wasn't just "fearmongering".
Okay now you are somehow able to recognize that this isn't about an arbitrary and abstract tens of thousands of people, but these specific 50-300 people that you had posted about. Being able to fire someone doesn't mean you should? Duh. Nor does them being employed mean that they should be. You posted that they were fired by "officials." Do you have any evidence he went back with his tail between his legs to hire them, when you haven't shown he was even the one that fired them.
On February 16 2025 21:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: This also isn't the first time that you've projected onto other people that they should be "embarrassed", when you're the one who made a mistake.
On February 16 2025 17:37 oBlade wrote: We seem to have a divergent use of words here. Normally I take "probationary" to be a concept that is mutually exclusive with "essential." It'd be like saying an "essential intern." Do you think there is a nonzero class of nonessential government workers? (Do they exist at all?) In this case is it the fact of them being unfired by itself that's enough to prove they were essential...? Yet then we'd categorize them as essential, and also not fired, so.
I think you're being intentionally dense. For starters, we'll have to define essential. I'd consider myself non-residential at my work. If I quit tomorrow, short-term absolutely nothing would change. Long-term I'd need replacing, or the things I keep running would need to be deprecated and taken out of production, reducing efficiency of our system, but not really its overall functioning. Nevertheless, I am considered one of the more valuable employees. It is continuously brought to my attention in my evaluations, the "employee of the year nominations", etc. I suspect that most companies have a lot of people like me: non-essential personnel that make everything that is essential for that company cheaper, smoother and less stressful. If my company got rid of all of its people like me, we would cease to innovate, progress and would soon get outcompeted by companies that did, with the essential personnel barely able to keep the systems running, with high burnout rates, and definitely no bandwidth for improving upon the system.
But that still doesn't make me essential.
It doesn't make me "probationary" either. I have a fixed contract with a good wage. I recently applied for another job to see what the wage and benefits looked like for changing and found that it really wasn't worth it.
While this is the private sector, I have some experience with the public sector as well. Where I was there was a lot more bureaucracy than in my current job, but probably less than at another company I worked. There were also more essential employees in proportion to non-essential ones, if we consider "providing education" as the primary role that institution was supposed to fulfil as opposed to "making a profit" in the private sector. But there were still administrators, lab assistants, etc, which are non-essential to that task.
So, let's please start with defining essential employees a bit better. And then we can move on to the actual bit which you seem to be getting even more wrong, which is that Trump and DOGE, are being careful to keep the essential personnel. What about their behaviour as bulls in a china shop have given you the impression that they are trying to keep essential personnel, or even know who those essential employees are?
While "essential" is something of a judgment call, except in the case of covid restrictions, "probationary" is not a pejorative I made up that means not doing a good job. It's a statutory category of federal employees who are less than a year on the job and don't have the job protections that longer term employees have. I wouldn't necessarily put it past the government to be stupid enough to have workers who are "essential" still be arbitrarily fireable, but in normal world if they're so essential I wouldn't expect them to be probationary workers.
You can divide fired employees by total employees to see the size of the "dent" made. You can also divide the number of probationary employees over the number of total employees to see the maximum possible effect on the workforce by firing probationary employees. So if for example we're on the hill where the 5% of some department that has been there less than a year is essential, and the people who have been there 20 years achieving nothing are essential, and everybody's essential because even the non-essential people make the essential people better, this is a moot armchair discussion from logical theorycrafting that isn't rooted in any particular facts about the specific agencies or people or anything.
On February 16 2025 21:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
On February 16 2025 14:26 oBlade wrote:
On February 16 2025 07:29 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
On February 16 2025 07:04 oBlade wrote:
On February 16 2025 02:15 Uldridge wrote: But hey, according to oBlade, this guy knows how the governmental agencies function due to him being having been and currently being the president. What a fucking clown.
The world is not ending because 50-300 probationary employees are or aren't getting fired by cabinet officials doing downsizing. Just like it didn't when Clinton trimmed the federal bureaucracy. You simply need to breathe.
Yes, and no subset of 50-300 probationary employees from those cuts, like for example the ones that you specifically linked and now have embarrassingly forgot about when immediately referenced, whether at the DOE or not, are the keystone of the federal bureaucracy holding together the "functionality" of the executive branch.
Pretty sure that which is arbitrarily hired can be arbitrarily fired.
Fearmongering over ATC is also not a historically sound one to invoke because we have a literal example of when someone did clear out ATC and the world carried on.
Just because you *can* fire someone doesn’t mean you *should*, and given that Trump instantly had to go back with his tail between his legs and admit he was wrong to fire them (by trying to re-hire them) demonstrates this point perfectly. Even Trump recognized that their importance wasn't just "fearmongering".
Okay now you are somehow able to recognize that this isn't about an arbitrary and abstract tens of thousands of people, but these specific 50-300 people that you had posted about. Being able to fire someone doesn't mean you should? Duh. Nor does them being employed mean that they should be. You posted that they were fired by "officials." Do you have any evidence he went back with his tail between his legs to hire them, when you haven't shown he was even the one that fired them.
On February 16 2025 21:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: This also isn't the first time that you've projected onto other people that they should be "embarrassed", when you're the one who made a mistake.
On February 16 2025 17:37 oBlade wrote: We seem to have a divergent use of words here. Normally I take "probationary" to be a concept that is mutually exclusive with "essential." It'd be like saying an "essential intern." Do you think there is a nonzero class of nonessential government workers? (Do they exist at all?) In this case is it the fact of them being unfired by itself that's enough to prove they were essential...? Yet then we'd categorize them as essential, and also not fired, so.
I think you're being intentionally dense. For starters, we'll have to define essential. I'd consider myself non-residential at my work. If I quit tomorrow, short-term absolutely nothing would change. Long-term I'd need replacing, or the things I keep running would need to be deprecated and taken out of production, reducing efficiency of our system, but not really its overall functioning. Nevertheless, I am considered one of the more valuable employees. It is continuously brought to my attention in my evaluations, the "employee of the year nominations", etc. I suspect that most companies have a lot of people like me: non-essential personnel that make everything that is essential for that company cheaper, smoother and less stressful. If my company got rid of all of its people like me, we would cease to innovate, progress and would soon get outcompeted by companies that did, with the essential personnel barely able to keep the systems running, with high burnout rates, and definitely no bandwidth for improving upon the system.
But that still doesn't make me essential.
It doesn't make me "probationary" either. I have a fixed contract with a good wage. I recently applied for another job to see what the wage and benefits looked like for changing and found that it really wasn't worth it.
While this is the private sector, I have some experience with the public sector as well. Where I was there was a lot more bureaucracy than in my current job, but probably less than at another company I worked. There were also more essential employees in proportion to non-essential ones, if we consider "providing education" as the primary role that institution was supposed to fulfil as opposed to "making a profit" in the private sector. But there were still administrators, lab assistants, etc, which are non-essential to that task.
So, let's please start with defining essential employees a bit better. And then we can move on to the actual bit which you seem to be getting even more wrong, which is that Trump and DOGE, are being careful to keep the essential personnel. What about their behaviour as bulls in a china shop have given you the impression that they are trying to keep essential personnel, or even know who those essential employees are?
While "essential" is something of a judgment call, except in the case of covid restrictions, "probationary" is not a pejorative I made up that means not doing a good job. It's a statutory category of federal employees who are less than a year on the job and don't have the job protections that longer term employees have. I wouldn't necessarily put it past the government to be stupid enough to have workers who are "essential" still be arbitrarily fireable, but in normal world if they're so essential I wouldn't expect them to be probationary workers.
You can divide fired employees by total employees to see the size of the "dent" made. You can also divide the number of probationary employees over the number of total employees to see the maximum possible effect on the workforce by firing probationary employees. So if for example we're on the hill where the 5% of some department that has been there less than a year is essential, and the people who have been there 20 years achieving nothing are essential, and everybody's essential because even the non-essential people make the essential people better, this is a moot armchair discussion from logical theorycrafting that isn't rooted in any particular facts about the specific agencies or people or anything.
On February 16 2025 21:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
On February 16 2025 14:26 oBlade wrote:
On February 16 2025 07:29 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
On February 16 2025 07:04 oBlade wrote:
On February 16 2025 02:15 Uldridge wrote: But hey, according to oBlade, this guy knows how the governmental agencies function due to him being having been and currently being the president. What a fucking clown.
The world is not ending because 50-300 probationary employees are or aren't getting fired by cabinet officials doing downsizing. Just like it didn't when Clinton trimmed the federal bureaucracy. You simply need to breathe.
Yes, and no subset of 50-300 probationary employees from those cuts, like for example the ones that you specifically linked and now have embarrassingly forgot about when immediately referenced, whether at the DOE or not, are the keystone of the federal bureaucracy holding together the "functionality" of the executive branch.
Pretty sure that which is arbitrarily hired can be arbitrarily fired.
Fearmongering over ATC is also not a historically sound one to invoke because we have a literal example of when someone did clear out ATC and the world carried on.
Just because you *can* fire someone doesn’t mean you *should*, and given that Trump instantly had to go back with his tail between his legs and admit he was wrong to fire them (by trying to re-hire them) demonstrates this point perfectly. Even Trump recognized that their importance wasn't just "fearmongering".
Okay now you are somehow able to recognize that this isn't about an arbitrary and abstract tens of thousands of people, but these specific 50-300 people that you had posted about. Being able to fire someone doesn't mean you should? Duh. Nor does them being employed mean that they should be. You posted that they were fired by "officials." Do you have any evidence he went back with his tail between his legs to hire them, when you haven't shown he was even the one that fired them.
On February 16 2025 21:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: This also isn't the first time that you've projected onto other people that they should be "embarrassed", when you're the one who made a mistake.
On February 16 2025 17:37 oBlade wrote: We seem to have a divergent use of words here. Normally I take "probationary" to be a concept that is mutually exclusive with "essential." It'd be like saying an "essential intern." Do you think there is a nonzero class of nonessential government workers? (Do they exist at all?) In this case is it the fact of them being unfired by itself that's enough to prove they were essential...? Yet then we'd categorize them as essential, and also not fired, so.
I think you're being intentionally dense. For starters, we'll have to define essential. I'd consider myself non-residential at my work. If I quit tomorrow, short-term absolutely nothing would change. Long-term I'd need replacing, or the things I keep running would need to be deprecated and taken out of production, reducing efficiency of our system, but not really its overall functioning. Nevertheless, I am considered one of the more valuable employees. It is continuously brought to my attention in my evaluations, the "employee of the year nominations", etc. I suspect that most companies have a lot of people like me: non-essential personnel that make everything that is essential for that company cheaper, smoother and less stressful. If my company got rid of all of its people like me, we would cease to innovate, progress and would soon get outcompeted by companies that did, with the essential personnel barely able to keep the systems running, with high burnout rates, and definitely no bandwidth for improving upon the system.
But that still doesn't make me essential.
It doesn't make me "probationary" either. I have a fixed contract with a good wage. I recently applied for another job to see what the wage and benefits looked like for changing and found that it really wasn't worth it.
While this is the private sector, I have some experience with the public sector as well. Where I was there was a lot more bureaucracy than in my current job, but probably less than at another company I worked. There were also more essential employees in proportion to non-essential ones, if we consider "providing education" as the primary role that institution was supposed to fulfil as opposed to "making a profit" in the private sector. But there were still administrators, lab assistants, etc, which are non-essential to that task.
So, let's please start with defining essential employees a bit better. And then we can move on to the actual bit which you seem to be getting even more wrong, which is that Trump and DOGE, are being careful to keep the essential personnel. What about their behaviour as bulls in a china shop have given you the impression that they are trying to keep essential personnel, or even know who those essential employees are?
While "essential" is something of a judgment call, except in the case of covid restrictions, "probationary" is not a pejorative I made up that means not doing a good job. It's a statutory category of federal employees who are less than a year on the job and don't have the job protections that longer term employees have. I wouldn't necessarily put it past the government to be stupid enough to have workers who are "essential" still be arbitrarily fireable, but in normal world if they're so essential I wouldn't expect them to be probationary workers.
You can divide fired employees by total employees to see the size of the "dent" made. You can also divide the number of probationary employees over the number of total employees to see the maximum possible effect on the workforce by firing probationary employees. So if for example we're on the hill where the 5% of some department that has been there less than a year is essential, and the people who have been there 20 years achieving nothing are essential, and everybody's essential because even the non-essential people make the essential people better, this is a moot armchair discussion from logical theorycrafting that isn't rooted in any particular facts about the specific agencies or people or anything.
On February 16 2025 02:15 Uldridge wrote: But hey, according to oBlade, this guy knows how the governmental agencies function due to him being having been and currently being the president. What a fucking clown.
The world is not ending because 50-300 probationary employees are or aren't getting fired by cabinet officials doing downsizing. Just like it didn't when Clinton trimmed the federal bureaucracy. You simply need to breathe.
Yes, and no subset of 50-300 probationary employees from those cuts, like for example the ones that you specifically linked and now have embarrassingly forgot about when immediately referenced, whether at the DOE or not, are the keystone of the federal bureaucracy holding together the "functionality" of the executive branch.
Pretty sure that which is arbitrarily hired can be arbitrarily fired.
Fearmongering over ATC is also not a historically sound one to invoke because we have a literal example of when someone did clear out ATC and the world carried on.
Just because you *can* fire someone doesn’t mean you *should*, and given that Trump instantly had to go back with his tail between his legs and admit he was wrong to fire them (by trying to re-hire them) demonstrates this point perfectly. Even Trump recognized that their importance wasn't just "fearmongering".
Okay now you are somehow able to recognize that this isn't about an arbitrary and abstract tens of thousands of people, but these specific 50-300 people that you had posted about. Being able to fire someone doesn't mean you should? Duh. Nor does them being employed mean that they should be. You posted that they were fired by "officials." Do you have any evidence he went back with his tail between his legs to hire them, when you haven't shown he was even the one that fired them.
On February 16 2025 21:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: This also isn't the first time that you've projected onto other people that they should be "embarrassed", when you're the one who made a mistake.
What mistake?
This is why it's important for you to read the thread or Google the topic ahead of time. Trump realized these people were essential, which is why he had to immediately (and embarrassingly) rehire them. Trump now realizes their importance, which was already obvious to most of us here, but your obsession with blindly disagreeing with us has led you to make an assertion that even your orange idol realizes is wrong. These specific rehired workers are essential, whether you like it or not, regardless of your ability to fabricate a hypothetical other useless employee at another job that's irrelevant to this discussion.
On February 16 2025 17:37 oBlade wrote: We seem to have a divergent use of words here. Normally I take "probationary" to be a concept that is mutually exclusive with "essential." It'd be like saying an "essential intern." Do you think there is a nonzero class of nonessential government workers? (Do they exist at all?) In this case is it the fact of them being unfired by itself that's enough to prove they were essential...? Yet then we'd categorize them as essential, and also not fired, so.
I think you're being intentionally dense. For starters, we'll have to define essential. I'd consider myself non-residential at my work. If I quit tomorrow, short-term absolutely nothing would change. Long-term I'd need replacing, or the things I keep running would need to be deprecated and taken out of production, reducing efficiency of our system, but not really its overall functioning. Nevertheless, I am considered one of the more valuable employees. It is continuously brought to my attention in my evaluations, the "employee of the year nominations", etc. I suspect that most companies have a lot of people like me: non-essential personnel that make everything that is essential for that company cheaper, smoother and less stressful. If my company got rid of all of its people like me, we would cease to innovate, progress and would soon get outcompeted by companies that did, with the essential personnel barely able to keep the systems running, with high burnout rates, and definitely no bandwidth for improving upon the system.
But that still doesn't make me essential.
It doesn't make me "probationary" either. I have a fixed contract with a good wage. I recently applied for another job to see what the wage and benefits looked like for changing and found that it really wasn't worth it.
While this is the private sector, I have some experience with the public sector as well. Where I was there was a lot more bureaucracy than in my current job, but probably less than at another company I worked. There were also more essential employees in proportion to non-essential ones, if we consider "providing education" as the primary role that institution was supposed to fulfil as opposed to "making a profit" in the private sector. But there were still administrators, lab assistants, etc, which are non-essential to that task.
So, let's please start with defining essential employees a bit better. And then we can move on to the actual bit which you seem to be getting even more wrong, which is that Trump and DOGE, are being careful to keep the essential personnel. What about their behaviour as bulls in a china shop have given you the impression that they are trying to keep essential personnel, or even know who those essential employees are?
While "essential" is something of a judgment call, except in the case of covid restrictions, "probationary" is not a pejorative I made up that means not doing a good job. It's a statutory category of federal employees who are less than a year on the job and don't have the job protections that longer term employees have. I wouldn't necessarily put it past the government to be stupid enough to have workers who are "essential" still be arbitrarily fireable, but in normal world if they're so essential I wouldn't expect them to be probationary workers.
You can divide fired employees by total employees to see the size of the "dent" made. You can also divide the number of probationary employees over the number of total employees to see the maximum possible effect on the workforce by firing probationary employees. So if for example we're on the hill where the 5% of some department that has been there less than a year is essential, and the people who have been there 20 years achieving nothing are essential, and everybody's essential because even the non-essential people make the essential people better, this is a moot armchair discussion from logical theorycrafting that isn't rooted in any particular facts about the specific agencies or people or anything.
On February 16 2025 21:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
On February 16 2025 14:26 oBlade wrote:
On February 16 2025 07:29 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
On February 16 2025 07:04 oBlade wrote:
On February 16 2025 02:15 Uldridge wrote: But hey, according to oBlade, this guy knows how the governmental agencies function due to him being having been and currently being the president. What a fucking clown.
The world is not ending because 50-300 probationary employees are or aren't getting fired by cabinet officials doing downsizing. Just like it didn't when Clinton trimmed the federal bureaucracy. You simply need to breathe.
Yes, and no subset of 50-300 probationary employees from those cuts, like for example the ones that you specifically linked and now have embarrassingly forgot about when immediately referenced, whether at the DOE or not, are the keystone of the federal bureaucracy holding together the "functionality" of the executive branch.
Pretty sure that which is arbitrarily hired can be arbitrarily fired.
Fearmongering over ATC is also not a historically sound one to invoke because we have a literal example of when someone did clear out ATC and the world carried on.
Just because you *can* fire someone doesn’t mean you *should*, and given that Trump instantly had to go back with his tail between his legs and admit he was wrong to fire them (by trying to re-hire them) demonstrates this point perfectly. Even Trump recognized that their importance wasn't just "fearmongering".
Okay now you are somehow able to recognize that this isn't about an arbitrary and abstract tens of thousands of people, but these specific 50-300 people that you had posted about. Being able to fire someone doesn't mean you should? Duh. Nor does them being employed mean that they should be. You posted that they were fired by "officials." Do you have any evidence he went back with his tail between his legs to hire them, when you haven't shown he was even the one that fired them.
On February 16 2025 21:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: This also isn't the first time that you've projected onto other people that they should be "embarrassed", when you're the one who made a mistake.
What mistake?
This is why it's important for you to read the thread or Google the topic ahead of time. Trump realized these people were essential, which is why he had to immediately (and embarrassingly) rehire them. Trump now realizes their importance, which was already obvious to most of us here, but your obsession with blindly disagreeing with us has led you to make an assertion that even your orange idol realizes is wrong. These specific rehired workers are essential, whether you like it or not, regardless of your ability to fabricate a hypothetical other useless employee at another job that's irrelevant to this discussion.
Your links aren't that difficult to understand, which is why I'm scratching my head at you going "Trump Trump Trump Trump" when the DOE case was specifically shown as people under him dismissing people following his directives of trimming fat. You're presenting it as though he specifically directly singled out and then directly personally went and backtracked. That's what "had to go back with his tail between his legs" means. This will be in between the (shortly) next time you tell us he's not really running things and is just playing golf while he delegates to President Musk. When you read "Trump administration" or "Trump administration officials" do you know how to distinguish that from "Trump?"
Seems that this subject must only exist so we can show how much smarter you are than the president - and to the extent that them being rehired proves "essentialness," which we will have to agree to disagree on, it's again moot due to some of them being rehired so the sky won't fall, had it been going to. You need to move on and find more, and more convincing, examples of reckless firings of essential people among the tens of thousands because 50-300 out of them being ambiguously fired for a few days is not a serious proportion.
On February 16 2025 17:37 oBlade wrote: We seem to have a divergent use of words here. Normally I take "probationary" to be a concept that is mutually exclusive with "essential." It'd be like saying an "essential intern." Do you think there is a nonzero class of nonessential government workers? (Do they exist at all?) In this case is it the fact of them being unfired by itself that's enough to prove they were essential...? Yet then we'd categorize them as essential, and also not fired, so.
I think you're being intentionally dense. For starters, we'll have to define essential. I'd consider myself non-residential at my work. If I quit tomorrow, short-term absolutely nothing would change. Long-term I'd need replacing, or the things I keep running would need to be deprecated and taken out of production, reducing efficiency of our system, but not really its overall functioning. Nevertheless, I am considered one of the more valuable employees. It is continuously brought to my attention in my evaluations, the "employee of the year nominations", etc. I suspect that most companies have a lot of people like me: non-essential personnel that make everything that is essential for that company cheaper, smoother and less stressful. If my company got rid of all of its people like me, we would cease to innovate, progress and would soon get outcompeted by companies that did, with the essential personnel barely able to keep the systems running, with high burnout rates, and definitely no bandwidth for improving upon the system.
But that still doesn't make me essential.
It doesn't make me "probationary" either. I have a fixed contract with a good wage. I recently applied for another job to see what the wage and benefits looked like for changing and found that it really wasn't worth it.
While this is the private sector, I have some experience with the public sector as well. Where I was there was a lot more bureaucracy than in my current job, but probably less than at another company I worked. There were also more essential employees in proportion to non-essential ones, if we consider "providing education" as the primary role that institution was supposed to fulfil as opposed to "making a profit" in the private sector. But there were still administrators, lab assistants, etc, which are non-essential to that task.
So, let's please start with defining essential employees a bit better. And then we can move on to the actual bit which you seem to be getting even more wrong, which is that Trump and DOGE, are being careful to keep the essential personnel. What about their behaviour as bulls in a china shop have given you the impression that they are trying to keep essential personnel, or even know who those essential employees are?
While "essential" is something of a judgment call, except in the case of covid restrictions, "probationary" is not a pejorative I made up that means not doing a good job. It's a statutory category of federal employees who are less than a year on the job and don't have the job protections that longer term employees have. I wouldn't necessarily put it past the government to be stupid enough to have workers who are "essential" still be arbitrarily fireable, but in normal world if they're so essential I wouldn't expect them to be probationary workers.
You can divide fired employees by total employees to see the size of the "dent" made. You can also divide the number of probationary employees over the number of total employees to see the maximum possible effect on the workforce by firing probationary employees. So if for example we're on the hill where the 5% of some department that has been there less than a year is essential, and the people who have been there 20 years achieving nothing are essential, and everybody's essential because even the non-essential people make the essential people better, this is a moot armchair discussion from logical theorycrafting that isn't rooted in any particular facts about the specific agencies or people or anything.
On February 16 2025 21:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
On February 16 2025 14:26 oBlade wrote:
On February 16 2025 07:29 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
On February 16 2025 07:04 oBlade wrote:
On February 16 2025 02:15 Uldridge wrote: But hey, according to oBlade, this guy knows how the governmental agencies function due to him being having been and currently being the president. What a fucking clown.
The world is not ending because 50-300 probationary employees are or aren't getting fired by cabinet officials doing downsizing. Just like it didn't when Clinton trimmed the federal bureaucracy. You simply need to breathe.
Yes, and no subset of 50-300 probationary employees from those cuts, like for example the ones that you specifically linked and now have embarrassingly forgot about when immediately referenced, whether at the DOE or not, are the keystone of the federal bureaucracy holding together the "functionality" of the executive branch.
Pretty sure that which is arbitrarily hired can be arbitrarily fired.
Fearmongering over ATC is also not a historically sound one to invoke because we have a literal example of when someone did clear out ATC and the world carried on.
Just because you *can* fire someone doesn’t mean you *should*, and given that Trump instantly had to go back with his tail between his legs and admit he was wrong to fire them (by trying to re-hire them) demonstrates this point perfectly. Even Trump recognized that their importance wasn't just "fearmongering".
Okay now you are somehow able to recognize that this isn't about an arbitrary and abstract tens of thousands of people, but these specific 50-300 people that you had posted about. Being able to fire someone doesn't mean you should? Duh. Nor does them being employed mean that they should be. You posted that they were fired by "officials." Do you have any evidence he went back with his tail between his legs to hire them, when you haven't shown he was even the one that fired them.
On February 16 2025 21:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: This also isn't the first time that you've projected onto other people that they should be "embarrassed", when you're the one who made a mistake.
What mistake?
This is why it's important for you to read the thread or Google the topic ahead of time. Trump realized these people were essential, which is why he had to immediately (and embarrassingly) rehire them. Trump now realizes their importance, which was already obvious to most of us here, but your obsession with blindly disagreeing with us has led you to make an assertion that even your orange idol realizes is wrong. These specific rehired workers are essential, whether you like it or not, regardless of your ability to fabricate a hypothetical other useless employee at another job that's irrelevant to this discussion.
Your links aren't that difficult to understand, which is why I'm scratching my head at you going "Trump Trump Trump Trump" when the DOE case was specifically shown as people under him dismissing people following his directives of trimming fat. You're presenting it as though he specifically directly singled out and then directly personally went and backtracked. That's what "had to go back with his tail between his legs" means. This will be in between the (shortly) next time you tell us he's not really running things and is just playing golf while he delegates to President Musk. When you read "Trump administration" or "Trump administration officials" do you know how to distinguish that from "Trump?"
Seems that this subject must only exist so we can show how much smarter you are than the president - and to the extent that them being rehired proves "essentialness," which we will have to agree to disagree on, it's again moot due to some of them being rehired so the sky won't fall, had it been going to. You need to move on and find more, and more convincing, examples of reckless firings of essential people among the tens of thousands because 50-300 out of them being ambiguously fired for a few days is not a serious proportion.
If people following Trump's instructions don't count as Trump doing something. Then, Trump has literally done nothing, because presidents don't go out and actually do things themselves.
On February 16 2025 17:37 oBlade wrote: We seem to have a divergent use of words here. Normally I take "probationary" to be a concept that is mutually exclusive with "essential." It'd be like saying an "essential intern." Do you think there is a nonzero class of nonessential government workers? (Do they exist at all?) In this case is it the fact of them being unfired by itself that's enough to prove they were essential...? Yet then we'd categorize them as essential, and also not fired, so.
I think you're being intentionally dense. For starters, we'll have to define essential. I'd consider myself non-residential at my work. If I quit tomorrow, short-term absolutely nothing would change. Long-term I'd need replacing, or the things I keep running would need to be deprecated and taken out of production, reducing efficiency of our system, but not really its overall functioning. Nevertheless, I am considered one of the more valuable employees. It is continuously brought to my attention in my evaluations, the "employee of the year nominations", etc. I suspect that most companies have a lot of people like me: non-essential personnel that make everything that is essential for that company cheaper, smoother and less stressful. If my company got rid of all of its people like me, we would cease to innovate, progress and would soon get outcompeted by companies that did, with the essential personnel barely able to keep the systems running, with high burnout rates, and definitely no bandwidth for improving upon the system.
But that still doesn't make me essential.
It doesn't make me "probationary" either. I have a fixed contract with a good wage. I recently applied for another job to see what the wage and benefits looked like for changing and found that it really wasn't worth it.
While this is the private sector, I have some experience with the public sector as well. Where I was there was a lot more bureaucracy than in my current job, but probably less than at another company I worked. There were also more essential employees in proportion to non-essential ones, if we consider "providing education" as the primary role that institution was supposed to fulfil as opposed to "making a profit" in the private sector. But there were still administrators, lab assistants, etc, which are non-essential to that task.
So, let's please start with defining essential employees a bit better. And then we can move on to the actual bit which you seem to be getting even more wrong, which is that Trump and DOGE, are being careful to keep the essential personnel. What about their behaviour as bulls in a china shop have given you the impression that they are trying to keep essential personnel, or even know who those essential employees are?
While "essential" is something of a judgment call, except in the case of covid restrictions, "probationary" is not a pejorative I made up that means not doing a good job. It's a statutory category of federal employees who are less than a year on the job and don't have the job protections that longer term employees have. I wouldn't necessarily put it past the government to be stupid enough to have workers who are "essential" still be arbitrarily fireable, but in normal world if they're so essential I wouldn't expect them to be probationary workers.
You can divide fired employees by total employees to see the size of the "dent" made. You can also divide the number of probationary employees over the number of total employees to see the maximum possible effect on the workforce by firing probationary employees. So if for example we're on the hill where the 5% of some department that has been there less than a year is essential, and the people who have been there 20 years achieving nothing are essential, and everybody's essential because even the non-essential people make the essential people better, this is a moot armchair discussion from logical theorycrafting that isn't rooted in any particular facts about the specific agencies or people or anything.
On February 16 2025 21:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
On February 16 2025 14:26 oBlade wrote:
On February 16 2025 07:29 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
On February 16 2025 07:04 oBlade wrote:
On February 16 2025 02:15 Uldridge wrote: But hey, according to oBlade, this guy knows how the governmental agencies function due to him being having been and currently being the president. What a fucking clown.
The world is not ending because 50-300 probationary employees are or aren't getting fired by cabinet officials doing downsizing. Just like it didn't when Clinton trimmed the federal bureaucracy. You simply need to breathe.
Yes, and no subset of 50-300 probationary employees from those cuts, like for example the ones that you specifically linked and now have embarrassingly forgot about when immediately referenced, whether at the DOE or not, are the keystone of the federal bureaucracy holding together the "functionality" of the executive branch.
Pretty sure that which is arbitrarily hired can be arbitrarily fired.
Fearmongering over ATC is also not a historically sound one to invoke because we have a literal example of when someone did clear out ATC and the world carried on.
Just because you *can* fire someone doesn’t mean you *should*, and given that Trump instantly had to go back with his tail between his legs and admit he was wrong to fire them (by trying to re-hire them) demonstrates this point perfectly. Even Trump recognized that their importance wasn't just "fearmongering".
Okay now you are somehow able to recognize that this isn't about an arbitrary and abstract tens of thousands of people, but these specific 50-300 people that you had posted about. Being able to fire someone doesn't mean you should? Duh. Nor does them being employed mean that they should be. You posted that they were fired by "officials." Do you have any evidence he went back with his tail between his legs to hire them, when you haven't shown he was even the one that fired them.
On February 16 2025 21:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: This also isn't the first time that you've projected onto other people that they should be "embarrassed", when you're the one who made a mistake.
What mistake?
This is why it's important for you to read the thread or Google the topic ahead of time. Trump realized these people were essential, which is why he had to immediately (and embarrassingly) rehire them. Trump now realizes their importance, which was already obvious to most of us here, but your obsession with blindly disagreeing with us has led you to make an assertion that even your orange idol realizes is wrong. These specific rehired workers are essential, whether you like it or not, regardless of your ability to fabricate a hypothetical other useless employee at another job that's irrelevant to this discussion.
Your links aren't that difficult to understand, which is why I'm scratching my head at you going "Trump Trump Trump Trump" when the DOE case was specifically shown as people under him dismissing people following his directives of trimming fat. You're presenting it as though he specifically directly singled out and then directly personally went and backtracked. That's what "had to go back with his tail between his legs" means. This will be in between the (shortly) next time you tell us he's not really running things and is just playing golf while he delegates to President Musk. When you read "Trump administration" or "Trump administration officials" do you know how to distinguish that from "Trump?"
Seems that this subject must only exist so we can show how much smarter you are than the president - and to the extent that them being rehired proves "essentialness," which we will have to agree to disagree on, it's again moot due to some of them being rehired so the sky won't fall, had it been going to. You need to move on and find more, and more convincing, examples of reckless firings of essential people among the tens of thousands because 50-300 out of them being ambiguously fired for a few days is not a serious proportion.
If people following Trump's instructions don't count as Trump doing something. Then, Trump has literally done nothing, because presidents don't go out and actually do things themselves.
Exactly. To quote President Harry Truman: "The buck stops here."
I cannot believe Oblade tried to play the mob boss defense on this one. Oblade seriously it sure seems like you agree with all of this stuff. Own it. Dont try to make excuses.
EPT
