Trump and Musk are promoting a worthy goal to save federal money using one laudable means of downsizing and reorganizing government. But many of the processes they are using are absolute bullshit intended for a show of quick results.
First understand that there is a difference between employees and personnel positions. Employees are the people who are hired to work in positions. Positions exist on paper to identify the personnel needs of an organization. Qualifications, job description and salary are key defining position elements. Position salaries are used to develop budgets but whether that budget is actually expended depends on if the position is actually filled. If you budget X dollars because you expect a position to be filled, but you do not fill that position, you have saved X dollars. But what is the value of such savings if you needed the position filled? I can budget X dollars for groceries and if I don't buy groceries I saved X dollars. Is that realistic?
Now understand the two common categories of employees - probationary and career. The difference between the two is time in the personnel position they occupy. Most individuals hired to fill a position start in probationary status to ensure competency. This applies to all new federal employees and many simply moving from one federal job to another. At the end of their probationary period, supervision must decide whether to keep or fire. If the decision is to keep, their status changes from probationary to career. The entire reason for probationary status is that government regulations make it much easier to fire when in such status so it behooves a supervisor to fire a substandard employee while only probationary to avoid the complications of firing after they gain career status.
Whether a personnel position is filled by a probationary or career employee makes absolutely no difference as to the importance, even criticality, of that position. Positions may have existed for decades and been filled by a rotating cast of hires who start as probationary, gain experience, move on to career status, continue to gain experience - all the while performing a critical function. Eventually the incumbent employee moves on (retires, fired, quits or another position) and the cycle starts again with a new hire. To avoid excess employee numbers, many of these positions are one-deep meaning that if the position is not filled, no one does the work. Typically when a one-deep position incumbent is known to be leaving, management will hire a replacement early to allow overlap and turnover. But if the incumbent is fired, there is no such overlap.
The federal government downsizes and reorganizes functions frequently. The process to manage this is called a Reduction In Force (RIF) and federal guidelines provide extensive rules and procedures for RIF management. When a RIF occurs, personnel positions are the first consideration - not individual employees. What is the new personnel position structure? Will there be more positions, less, changes in types or grades, etc.? It is only after a new personnel position structure is determined are existing employees considered as to how they will fit into the new structure. The basic question most people have - if there are less positions, who stays and who goes? Decisions are made based on many factors to include tenure, past performance, veterans' preference, etc. Those employees who don't immediately fit into the new structure may be offered other positions for which they qualify to include bumping out other employees with less tenure. Employees are also offered preference for positions in other federal agencies that may be open. Employees may be offered monetary buyouts or early retirement. When it all shakes out, probationary employees tend to be disproportionately effected due to lack of tenure and experience. The entire RIF process is very deliberate to ensure the newly structured organization is best organized and manned to continue its function as efficiently as possible.
What Trump is doing is the exact opposite of a deliberate process. When almost all probationary employees were fired, it was because they were probationary and not because the positions they filled were determined as not needed. Many of those probationary employees could have been filling critical personnel positions, perhaps more critical than other positions filled by career employees. But firing probationary employees is easy and makes for quick boasts of savings. Firing career employees is harder because of civil employment protections. Where is the efficiency? Months or years down the line, when government functions crumble due to these actions, will the government simply ramp up to hire a new influx of inexperienced workers? Savings can be claimed for the time the positions were vacant, but the nation deteriorated. To go back to an analogy used earlier, savings can be claimed when I didn't buy groceries but my health deteriorated when I wasn't eating.
But maybe the real issue is that Trump and Musk only see dollars and anything that saves dollars is good because they are too far distant from the effects of those saved dollars.
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