DOGE staff admits government was actually well run and not that inefficient

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This guy’s professional career background is … Pinterest and a small e-commerce platform. It’s almost as if his paltry experience in a narrow area had nothing to do with a 500,000 employee large health and social services system like the VA! At least he is the teeny tiniest bit self-aware enough to sort of discern that.

DOGE was touted as being recruited from top silicon valley tech firms, but now you say "meh"

That said, Pinterest does $2.6 billion in annual revenue in the tech sector and has a user base of 482 million. How about your company? Name your tech firm and how much better they are than Pinterest.

I think you misunderstood my comment. I don’t think the experience of any DOGE personnel maps to the federal government except maybe in narrow areas like IT systems and possibly public-facing websites providing government services like Social Security. Ironically IT systems were the one area DOGE could actually help with but they obviously had no interest in helping.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After years of right wing smears and attacks on federal government "the bloated bureaucracy" and "the administrative state" and demonization and slander of federal employees "lazy unelected bureaucrats collecting cushy paychecks" and all that - the Silicon Valley DOGE folks are getting a reality check.

“Upon arriving at the massive department that currently employs nearly 500,000 people, Lavignia was met not with bored bureaucrats lazily collecting cushy government paychecks, but with mission-driven workers who "love their jobs."

"In a sense, that makes the DOGE agenda a little bit more complicated, because if half the government took [the agency's buyout offers], then we wouldn’t have to do much more," the tech founder said. "We’d just basically use software to plug holes. But that’s not what’s happening."

Unsurprisingly, Lavignia found that things work a lot differently in the halls of government agencies than they do in Silicon Valley. "I would say the culture shock is mostly a lot of meetings, not a lot of decisions," he remarked. "But honestly, it’s kind of fine — because the government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest. I was hoping for more easy wins."

https://futurism.com/doge-operative-surprise

The majority of federal employees are there because they care about the mission and care about their country. A much larger percentage of federal employees are military veterans than you will find in the private sector. Is there the occasional instance of a federal employee who is lazy, abusing the system, wasteful? Yes. But they are rare and they are usually dealt with and gotten rid of, and meanwhile there are also plenty of lazy, wasteful employees also in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the private sector. But what is far rarer in the private sector is that genuine care about the agency mission. I'm glad this DOGE staffer admitted reality. This administration and the Republicans as a whole need to embrace a lot more honesty and integrity like that, rather than fabricating one divisive strawman after another, rather than attacking valuable and important institutions and agencies.

You are kind of playing into the stereotype. The quoted language you highlighted from the DOGE staffer does not match your thread title.

As an aside, I actually think it is a major problem that civilian government bureaucrats love their job and are mission driven. Civil servants should be dispassionate professionals. That’s why they are supposed to be insulated from the political process. They should exert their authority without passion or prejudice. Much harder to do when your self-actualization and/or moral meaning are tied up together with the job.

I think a really good reform to the civilian government workforce would be to put in time limits for service. Something like a maximum of twenty years of service or something like that.

you’re deluded. Nobody anywhere (in or out of government) thinks it’s better to have employees MORE disengaged from the organization. This is like labor management 101.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After years of right wing smears and attacks on federal government "the bloated bureaucracy" and "the administrative state" and demonization and slander of federal employees "lazy unelected bureaucrats collecting cushy paychecks" and all that - the Silicon Valley DOGE folks are getting a reality check.

“Upon arriving at the massive department that currently employs nearly 500,000 people, Lavignia was met not with bored bureaucrats lazily collecting cushy government paychecks, but with mission-driven workers who "love their jobs."

"In a sense, that makes the DOGE agenda a little bit more complicated, because if half the government took [the agency's buyout offers], then we wouldn’t have to do much more," the tech founder said. "We’d just basically use software to plug holes. But that’s not what’s happening."

Unsurprisingly, Lavignia found that things work a lot differently in the halls of government agencies than they do in Silicon Valley. "I would say the culture shock is mostly a lot of meetings, not a lot of decisions," he remarked. "But honestly, it’s kind of fine — because the government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest. I was hoping for more easy wins."

https://futurism.com/doge-operative-surprise

The majority of federal employees are there because they care about the mission and care about their country. A much larger percentage of federal employees are military veterans than you will find in the private sector. Is there the occasional instance of a federal employee who is lazy, abusing the system, wasteful? Yes. But they are rare and they are usually dealt with and gotten rid of, and meanwhile there are also plenty of lazy, wasteful employees also in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the private sector. But what is far rarer in the private sector is that genuine care about the agency mission. I'm glad this DOGE staffer admitted reality. This administration and the Republicans as a whole need to embrace a lot more honesty and integrity like that, rather than fabricating one divisive strawman after another, rather than attacking valuable and important institutions and agencies.

You are kind of playing into the stereotype. The quoted language you highlighted from the DOGE staffer does not match your thread title.

As an aside, I actually think it is a major problem that civilian government bureaucrats love their job and are mission driven. Civil servants should be dispassionate professionals. That’s why they are supposed to be insulated from the political process. They should exert their authority without passion or prejudice. Much harder to do when your self-actualization and/or moral meaning are tied up together with the job.

I think a really good reform to the civilian government workforce would be to put in time limits for service. Something like a maximum of twenty years of service or something like that.

I'm guessing you are a mormon, and are confusing "mission" with "missionary". The "mission" is government speak for getting their assigned job done. Surely you are in favor of them doing their work. I understand that missionarys proselytize, but that meaning of the word is very different from how it is used among bureaucrats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After years of right wing smears and attacks on federal government "the bloated bureaucracy" and "the administrative state" and demonization and slander of federal employees "lazy unelected bureaucrats collecting cushy paychecks" and all that - the Silicon Valley DOGE folks are getting a reality check.

“Upon arriving at the massive department that currently employs nearly 500,000 people, Lavignia was met not with bored bureaucrats lazily collecting cushy government paychecks, but with mission-driven workers who "love their jobs."

"In a sense, that makes the DOGE agenda a little bit more complicated, because if half the government took [the agency's buyout offers], then we wouldn’t have to do much more," the tech founder said. "We’d just basically use software to plug holes. But that’s not what’s happening."

Unsurprisingly, Lavignia found that things work a lot differently in the halls of government agencies than they do in Silicon Valley. "I would say the culture shock is mostly a lot of meetings, not a lot of decisions," he remarked. "But honestly, it’s kind of fine — because the government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest. I was hoping for more easy wins."

https://futurism.com/doge-operative-surprise

The majority of federal employees are there because they care about the mission and care about their country. A much larger percentage of federal employees are military veterans than you will find in the private sector. Is there the occasional instance of a federal employee who is lazy, abusing the system, wasteful? Yes. But they are rare and they are usually dealt with and gotten rid of, and meanwhile there are also plenty of lazy, wasteful employees also in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the private sector. But what is far rarer in the private sector is that genuine care about the agency mission. I'm glad this DOGE staffer admitted reality. This administration and the Republicans as a whole need to embrace a lot more honesty and integrity like that, rather than fabricating one divisive strawman after another, rather than attacking valuable and important institutions and agencies.

You are kind of playing into the stereotype. The quoted language you highlighted from the DOGE staffer does not match your thread title.

As an aside, I actually think it is a major problem that civilian government bureaucrats love their job and are mission driven. Civil servants should be dispassionate professionals. That’s why they are supposed to be insulated from the political process. They should exert their authority without passion or prejudice. Much harder to do when your self-actualization and/or moral meaning are tied up together with the job.

I think a really good reform to the civilian government workforce would be to put in time limits for service. Something like a maximum of twenty years of service or something like that.

Obviously, if you put in a time limit, you’d have to increase salaries as the trade off for job security. Plus you would lose your top performers with the most knowledge and skills.

Sure on pay. You would lose top performers. But you would gain new ideas and fresh perspectives with more turnover.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DOGE existed for only two reasons:

1) For Elon to seek revenge on every agency that ever told him no or tried to regulate him

and

2) For Elon to get as many contracts and as much government money as he could

It saved nothing and will cost a lot. Every republican is responsible because none of them had the courage to stand up to Trump. Losers. Traitors.

3) to hack into the system and steal information!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After years of right wing smears and attacks on federal government "the bloated bureaucracy" and "the administrative state" and demonization and slander of federal employees "lazy unelected bureaucrats collecting cushy paychecks" and all that - the Silicon Valley DOGE folks are getting a reality check.

“Upon arriving at the massive department that currently employs nearly 500,000 people, Lavignia was met not with bored bureaucrats lazily collecting cushy government paychecks, but with mission-driven workers who "love their jobs."

"In a sense, that makes the DOGE agenda a little bit more complicated, because if half the government took [the agency's buyout offers], then we wouldn’t have to do much more," the tech founder said. "We’d just basically use software to plug holes. But that’s not what’s happening."

Unsurprisingly, Lavignia found that things work a lot differently in the halls of government agencies than they do in Silicon Valley. "I would say the culture shock is mostly a lot of meetings, not a lot of decisions," he remarked. "But honestly, it’s kind of fine — because the government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest. I was hoping for more easy wins."

https://futurism.com/doge-operative-surprise

The majority of federal employees are there because they care about the mission and care about their country. A much larger percentage of federal employees are military veterans than you will find in the private sector. Is there the occasional instance of a federal employee who is lazy, abusing the system, wasteful? Yes. But they are rare and they are usually dealt with and gotten rid of, and meanwhile there are also plenty of lazy, wasteful employees also in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the private sector. But what is far rarer in the private sector is that genuine care about the agency mission. I'm glad this DOGE staffer admitted reality. This administration and the Republicans as a whole need to embrace a lot more honesty and integrity like that, rather than fabricating one divisive strawman after another, rather than attacking valuable and important institutions and agencies.

You are kind of playing into the stereotype. The quoted language you highlighted from the DOGE staffer does not match your thread title.

As an aside, I actually think it is a major problem that civilian government bureaucrats love their job and are mission driven. Civil servants should be dispassionate professionals. That’s why they are supposed to be insulated from the political process. They should exert their authority without passion or prejudice. Much harder to do when your self-actualization and/or moral meaning are tied up together with the job.

I think a really good reform to the civilian government workforce would be to put in time limits for service. Something like a maximum of twenty years of service or something like that.

You’re saying it’s a problem if someone loves their job and wants to do it well? It’s a big leap to assume that means they’re seeking self actualisation or moral meaning through their job. Really??? I know people who love their jobs but they’re not going to lay their lives down for them.

No, I’m saying it is a problem if civilian bureaucrats who are supposed to be insulated from the political process are passionate and mission driven. I don’t believe they can separate their personal biases from the professional demands of the job.

I’ve dealt with enough of them directly at the highest levels of their agencies to reach my own conclusions. And while the agencies I interface with are slightly lower profile, there are enough high profile examples to bear this out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After years of right wing smears and attacks on federal government "the bloated bureaucracy" and "the administrative state" and demonization and slander of federal employees "lazy unelected bureaucrats collecting cushy paychecks" and all that - the Silicon Valley DOGE folks are getting a reality check.

“Upon arriving at the massive department that currently employs nearly 500,000 people, Lavignia was met not with bored bureaucrats lazily collecting cushy government paychecks, but with mission-driven workers who "love their jobs."

"In a sense, that makes the DOGE agenda a little bit more complicated, because if half the government took [the agency's buyout offers], then we wouldn’t have to do much more," the tech founder said. "We’d just basically use software to plug holes. But that’s not what’s happening."

Unsurprisingly, Lavignia found that things work a lot differently in the halls of government agencies than they do in Silicon Valley. "I would say the culture shock is mostly a lot of meetings, not a lot of decisions," he remarked. "But honestly, it’s kind of fine — because the government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest. I was hoping for more easy wins."

https://futurism.com/doge-operative-surprise

The majority of federal employees are there because they care about the mission and care about their country. A much larger percentage of federal employees are military veterans than you will find in the private sector. Is there the occasional instance of a federal employee who is lazy, abusing the system, wasteful? Yes. But they are rare and they are usually dealt with and gotten rid of, and meanwhile there are also plenty of lazy, wasteful employees also in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the private sector. But what is far rarer in the private sector is that genuine care about the agency mission. I'm glad this DOGE staffer admitted reality. This administration and the Republicans as a whole need to embrace a lot more honesty and integrity like that, rather than fabricating one divisive strawman after another, rather than attacking valuable and important institutions and agencies.

You are kind of playing into the stereotype. The quoted language you highlighted from the DOGE staffer does not match your thread title.

As an aside, I actually think it is a major problem that civilian government bureaucrats love their job and are mission driven. Civil servants should be dispassionate professionals. That’s why they are supposed to be insulated from the political process. They should exert their authority without passion or prejudice. Much harder to do when your self-actualization and/or moral meaning are tied up together with the job.

I think a really good reform to the civilian government workforce would be to put in time limits for service. Something like a maximum of twenty years of service or something like that.

You’re saying it’s a problem if someone loves their job and wants to do it well? It’s a big leap to assume that means they’re seeking self actualisation or moral meaning through their job. Really??? I know people who love their jobs but they’re not going to lay their lives down for them.

This jackass (the PP you are quoting, not you) is accusing them of partisanship. He/she is too blinded by RWNJ propaganda to admit to him/herself that doing the job well in government means NOT being partisan but rather MISSION driven. Government workers are used to changes in administration and shifts that come with that while you still do the job you are given to serve the American people.

But RWNJ jerks are only motivated by irrational partisan hatred, so they cannot conceive of being a decent, hardworking, mission-driven person.

I guess partisanship is a short hand for what I’m saying. But I’m meaning something slightly different. I don’t think it is necessarily bad faith partisanship.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After years of right wing smears and attacks on federal government "the bloated bureaucracy" and "the administrative state" and demonization and slander of federal employees "lazy unelected bureaucrats collecting cushy paychecks" and all that - the Silicon Valley DOGE folks are getting a reality check.

“Upon arriving at the massive department that currently employs nearly 500,000 people, Lavignia was met not with bored bureaucrats lazily collecting cushy government paychecks, but with mission-driven workers who "love their jobs."

"In a sense, that makes the DOGE agenda a little bit more complicated, because if half the government took [the agency's buyout offers], then we wouldn’t have to do much more," the tech founder said. "We’d just basically use software to plug holes. But that’s not what’s happening."

Unsurprisingly, Lavignia found that things work a lot differently in the halls of government agencies than they do in Silicon Valley. "I would say the culture shock is mostly a lot of meetings, not a lot of decisions," he remarked. "But honestly, it’s kind of fine — because the government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest. I was hoping for more easy wins."

https://futurism.com/doge-operative-surprise

The majority of federal employees are there because they care about the mission and care about their country. A much larger percentage of federal employees are military veterans than you will find in the private sector. Is there the occasional instance of a federal employee who is lazy, abusing the system, wasteful? Yes. But they are rare and they are usually dealt with and gotten rid of, and meanwhile there are also plenty of lazy, wasteful employees also in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the private sector. But what is far rarer in the private sector is that genuine care about the agency mission. I'm glad this DOGE staffer admitted reality. This administration and the Republicans as a whole need to embrace a lot more honesty and integrity like that, rather than fabricating one divisive strawman after another, rather than attacking valuable and important institutions and agencies.

You are kind of playing into the stereotype. The quoted language you highlighted from the DOGE staffer does not match your thread title.

As an aside, I actually think it is a major problem that civilian government bureaucrats love their job and are mission driven. Civil servants should be dispassionate professionals. That’s why they are supposed to be insulated from the political process. They should exert their authority without passion or prejudice. Much harder to do when your self-actualization and/or moral meaning are tied up together with the job.

I think a really good reform to the civilian government workforce would be to put in time limits for service. Something like a maximum of twenty years of service or something like that.

You’re saying it’s a problem if someone loves their job and wants to do it well? It’s a big leap to assume that means they’re seeking self actualisation or moral meaning through their job. Really??? I know people who love their jobs but they’re not going to lay their lives down for them.

No, I’m saying it is a problem if civilian bureaucrats who are supposed to be insulated from the political process are passionate and mission driven. I don’t believe they can separate their personal biases from the professional demands of the job.

I’ve dealt with enough of them directly at the highest levels of their agencies to reach my own conclusions. And while the agencies I interface with are slightly lower profile, there are enough high profile examples to bear this out.

There is no reason to equate being passionate and mission-driven with partisan or impartial whatsoever. You can refer to nebulous examples you have encountered but that still does not support you broad baseless conclusion. It is wild to suggest passionate mission-driven feds are a “problem” or that institutional knowledge is bad. You can have institutional knowledge AND fresh ideas from newer employees - those are not mutually exclusive.

To the contrary I’d say dispassionate, dissociated cogs that rotate sounds like a terrible way to run a government that is dynamic, responsive, or productive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After years of right wing smears and attacks on federal government "the bloated bureaucracy" and "the administrative state" and demonization and slander of federal employees "lazy unelected bureaucrats collecting cushy paychecks" and all that - the Silicon Valley DOGE folks are getting a reality check.

“Upon arriving at the massive department that currently employs nearly 500,000 people, Lavignia was met not with bored bureaucrats lazily collecting cushy government paychecks, but with mission-driven workers who "love their jobs."

"In a sense, that makes the DOGE agenda a little bit more complicated, because if half the government took [the agency's buyout offers], then we wouldn’t have to do much more," the tech founder said. "We’d just basically use software to plug holes. But that’s not what’s happening."

Unsurprisingly, Lavignia found that things work a lot differently in the halls of government agencies than they do in Silicon Valley. "I would say the culture shock is mostly a lot of meetings, not a lot of decisions," he remarked. "But honestly, it’s kind of fine — because the government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest. I was hoping for more easy wins."

https://futurism.com/doge-operative-surprise

The majority of federal employees are there because they care about the mission and care about their country. A much larger percentage of federal employees are military veterans than you will find in the private sector. Is there the occasional instance of a federal employee who is lazy, abusing the system, wasteful? Yes. But they are rare and they are usually dealt with and gotten rid of, and meanwhile there are also plenty of lazy, wasteful employees also in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the private sector. But what is far rarer in the private sector is that genuine care about the agency mission. I'm glad this DOGE staffer admitted reality. This administration and the Republicans as a whole need to embrace a lot more honesty and integrity like that, rather than fabricating one divisive strawman after another, rather than attacking valuable and important institutions and agencies.

You are kind of playing into the stereotype. The quoted language you highlighted from the DOGE staffer does not match your thread title.

As an aside, I actually think it is a major problem that civilian government bureaucrats love their job and are mission driven. Civil servants should be dispassionate professionals. That’s why they are supposed to be insulated from the political process. They should exert their authority without passion or prejudice. Much harder to do when your self-actualization and/or moral meaning are tied up together with the job.

I think a really good reform to the civilian government workforce would be to put in time limits for service. Something like a maximum of twenty years of service or something like that.

you’re deluded. Nobody anywhere (in or out of government) thinks it’s better to have employees MORE disengaged from the organization. This is like labor management 101.

I did not say “disengaged”. Reading properly is like life 101. I said they need to be dispassionate professionals. And there are a lot of jobs which require that.

For example, because of the awesome power they wield, we expect lawyers, but prosecutors and judges in particular, to do their jobs without passion or prejudice. A lot of our LEOs meet that standard, but when they don’t they end up on the news. High mortality areas of medicine require dispassionate professionalism or you will end up leaving the practice. Mental health professionals in particular are required to be dispassionate professionals.

There have been simply been way too many egregious examples in the Trump era for me to believe that we do not have a serious problem within the civilian workforce. Reform would be healthy for everybody.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After years of right wing smears and attacks on federal government "the bloated bureaucracy" and "the administrative state" and demonization and slander of federal employees "lazy unelected bureaucrats collecting cushy paychecks" and all that - the Silicon Valley DOGE folks are getting a reality check.

“Upon arriving at the massive department that currently employs nearly 500,000 people, Lavignia was met not with bored bureaucrats lazily collecting cushy government paychecks, but with mission-driven workers who "love their jobs."

"In a sense, that makes the DOGE agenda a little bit more complicated, because if half the government took [the agency's buyout offers], then we wouldn’t have to do much more," the tech founder said. "We’d just basically use software to plug holes. But that’s not what’s happening."

Unsurprisingly, Lavignia found that things work a lot differently in the halls of government agencies than they do in Silicon Valley. "I would say the culture shock is mostly a lot of meetings, not a lot of decisions," he remarked. "But honestly, it’s kind of fine — because the government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest. I was hoping for more easy wins."

https://futurism.com/doge-operative-surprise

The majority of federal employees are there because they care about the mission and care about their country. A much larger percentage of federal employees are military veterans than you will find in the private sector. Is there the occasional instance of a federal employee who is lazy, abusing the system, wasteful? Yes. But they are rare and they are usually dealt with and gotten rid of, and meanwhile there are also plenty of lazy, wasteful employees also in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the private sector. But what is far rarer in the private sector is that genuine care about the agency mission. I'm glad this DOGE staffer admitted reality. This administration and the Republicans as a whole need to embrace a lot more honesty and integrity like that, rather than fabricating one divisive strawman after another, rather than attacking valuable and important institutions and agencies.

You are kind of playing into the stereotype. The quoted language you highlighted from the DOGE staffer does not match your thread title.

As an aside, I actually think it is a major problem that civilian government bureaucrats love their job and are mission driven. Civil servants should be dispassionate professionals. That’s why they are supposed to be insulated from the political process. They should exert their authority without passion or prejudice. Much harder to do when your self-actualization and/or moral meaning are tied up together with the job.

I think a really good reform to the civilian government workforce would be to put in time limits for service. Something like a maximum of twenty years of service or something like that.

You’re saying it’s a problem if someone loves their job and wants to do it well? It’s a big leap to assume that means they’re seeking self actualisation or moral meaning through their job. Really??? I know people who love their jobs but they’re not going to lay their lives down for them.

No, I’m saying it is a problem if civilian bureaucrats who are supposed to be insulated from the political process are passionate and mission driven. I don’t believe they can separate their personal biases from the professional demands of the job.

I’ve dealt with enough of them directly at the highest levels of their agencies to reach my own conclusions. And while the agencies I interface with are slightly lower profile, there are enough high profile examples to bear this out.

There is no reason to equate being passionate and mission-driven with partisan or impartial whatsoever. You can refer to nebulous examples you have encountered but that still does not support you broad baseless conclusion. It is wild to suggest passionate mission-driven feds are a “problem” or that institutional knowledge is bad. You can have institutional knowledge AND fresh ideas from newer employees - those are not mutually exclusive.

To the contrary I’d say dispassionate, dissociated cogs that rotate sounds like a terrible way to run a government that is dynamic, responsive, or productive.

An FBI lawyer falsified evidence in order to secure a FISA court warrant on a target.

FBI agents were texting each other that they would not allow a major political candidate to become president. What the hell does that even mean?

An FBI Director(!!!!) was leaking to the press.

Bureaucrats who disagreed with Trump’s Covid response openly admitting to delaying and failing to implement Trump’s directives.

SDNY AUSAs are very publicly resigning implying ethical improprieties over what amounts to policy disagreements when the AG is engaging in clearly permissible behavior that was eventually permitted by the Court (with modification).


Do you need more examples of a serious f-ing problem that we have right now?

[Anonymous]

“An orchestra of chimpanzees trying to perform Wagner”.
I never thought I’d agree with Curtis Yarvin about anything but his description of DOGE is spot-on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After years of right wing smears and attacks on federal government "the bloated bureaucracy" and "the administrative state" and demonization and slander of federal employees "lazy unelected bureaucrats collecting cushy paychecks" and all that - the Silicon Valley DOGE folks are getting a reality check.

“Upon arriving at the massive department that currently employs nearly 500,000 people, Lavignia was met not with bored bureaucrats lazily collecting cushy government paychecks, but with mission-driven workers who "love their jobs."

"In a sense, that makes the DOGE agenda a little bit more complicated, because if half the government took [the agency's buyout offers], then we wouldn’t have to do much more," the tech founder said. "We’d just basically use software to plug holes. But that’s not what’s happening."

Unsurprisingly, Lavignia found that things work a lot differently in the halls of government agencies than they do in Silicon Valley. "I would say the culture shock is mostly a lot of meetings, not a lot of decisions," he remarked. "But honestly, it’s kind of fine — because the government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest. I was hoping for more easy wins."

https://futurism.com/doge-operative-surprise

The majority of federal employees are there because they care about the mission and care about their country. A much larger percentage of federal employees are military veterans than you will find in the private sector. Is there the occasional instance of a federal employee who is lazy, abusing the system, wasteful? Yes. But they are rare and they are usually dealt with and gotten rid of, and meanwhile there are also plenty of lazy, wasteful employees also in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the private sector. But what is far rarer in the private sector is that genuine care about the agency mission. I'm glad this DOGE staffer admitted reality. This administration and the Republicans as a whole need to embrace a lot more honesty and integrity like that, rather than fabricating one divisive strawman after another, rather than attacking valuable and important institutions and agencies.

You are kind of playing into the stereotype. The quoted language you highlighted from the DOGE staffer does not match your thread title.

As an aside, I actually think it is a major problem that civilian government bureaucrats love their job and are mission driven. Civil servants should be dispassionate professionals. That’s why they are supposed to be insulated from the political process. They should exert their authority without passion or prejudice. Much harder to do when your self-actualization and/or moral meaning are tied up together with the job.

I think a really good reform to the civilian government workforce would be to put in time limits for service. Something like a maximum of twenty years of service or something like that.

You’re saying it’s a problem if someone loves their job and wants to do it well? It’s a big leap to assume that means they’re seeking self actualisation or moral meaning through their job. Really??? I know people who love their jobs but they’re not going to lay their lives down for them.

No, I’m saying it is a problem if civilian bureaucrats who are supposed to be insulated from the political process are passionate and mission driven. I don’t believe they can separate their personal biases from the professional demands of the job.

I’ve dealt with enough of them directly at the highest levels of their agencies to reach my own conclusions. And while the agencies I interface with are slightly lower profile, there are enough high profile examples to bear this out.

There is no reason to equate being passionate and mission-driven with partisan or impartial whatsoever. You can refer to nebulous examples you have encountered but that still does not support you broad baseless conclusion. It is wild to suggest passionate mission-driven feds are a “problem” or that institutional knowledge is bad. You can have institutional knowledge AND fresh ideas from newer employees - those are not mutually exclusive.

To the contrary I’d say dispassionate, dissociated cogs that rotate sounds like a terrible way to run a government that is dynamic, responsive, or productive.

An FBI lawyer falsified evidence in order to secure a FISA court warrant on a target.

FBI agents were texting each other that they would not allow a major political candidate to become president. What the hell does that even mean?

An FBI Director(!!!!) was leaking to the press.

Bureaucrats who disagreed with Trump’s Covid response openly admitting to delaying and failing to implement Trump’s directives.

SDNY AUSAs are very publicly resigning implying ethical improprieties over what amounts to policy disagreements when the AG is engaging in clearly permissible behavior that was eventually permitted by the Court (with modification).


Do you need more examples of a serious f-ing problem that we have right now?

OK so someone actually falsifying records is not someone being “passionate and mission driven”. That would be illegal. You do not have examples of being passionate and mission driven but rather being partisan to unethical to illegal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After years of right wing smears and attacks on federal government "the bloated bureaucracy" and "the administrative state" and demonization and slander of federal employees "lazy unelected bureaucrats collecting cushy paychecks" and all that - the Silicon Valley DOGE folks are getting a reality check.

“Upon arriving at the massive department that currently employs nearly 500,000 people, Lavignia was met not with bored bureaucrats lazily collecting cushy government paychecks, but with mission-driven workers who "love their jobs."

"In a sense, that makes the DOGE agenda a little bit more complicated, because if half the government took [the agency's buyout offers], then we wouldn’t have to do much more," the tech founder said. "We’d just basically use software to plug holes. But that’s not what’s happening."

Unsurprisingly, Lavignia found that things work a lot differently in the halls of government agencies than they do in Silicon Valley. "I would say the culture shock is mostly a lot of meetings, not a lot of decisions," he remarked. "But honestly, it’s kind of fine — because the government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest. I was hoping for more easy wins."

https://futurism.com/doge-operative-surprise

The majority of federal employees are there because they care about the mission and care about their country. A much larger percentage of federal employees are military veterans than you will find in the private sector. Is there the occasional instance of a federal employee who is lazy, abusing the system, wasteful? Yes. But they are rare and they are usually dealt with and gotten rid of, and meanwhile there are also plenty of lazy, wasteful employees also in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the private sector. But what is far rarer in the private sector is that genuine care about the agency mission. I'm glad this DOGE staffer admitted reality. This administration and the Republicans as a whole need to embrace a lot more honesty and integrity like that, rather than fabricating one divisive strawman after another, rather than attacking valuable and important institutions and agencies.

You are kind of playing into the stereotype. The quoted language you highlighted from the DOGE staffer does not match your thread title.

As an aside, I actually think it is a major problem that civilian government bureaucrats love their job and are mission driven. Civil servants should be dispassionate professionals. That’s why they are supposed to be insulated from the political process. They should exert their authority without passion or prejudice. Much harder to do when your self-actualization and/or moral meaning are tied up together with the job.

I think a really good reform to the civilian government workforce would be to put in time limits for service. Something like a maximum of twenty years of service or something like that.

You’re saying it’s a problem if someone loves their job and wants to do it well? It’s a big leap to assume that means they’re seeking self actualisation or moral meaning through their job. Really??? I know people who love their jobs but they’re not going to lay their lives down for them.

No, I’m saying it is a problem if civilian bureaucrats who are supposed to be insulated from the political process are passionate and mission driven. I don’t believe they can separate their personal biases from the professional demands of the job.

I’ve dealt with enough of them directly at the highest levels of their agencies to reach my own conclusions. And while the agencies I interface with are slightly lower profile, there are enough high profile examples to bear this out.

There is no reason to equate being passionate and mission-driven with partisan or impartial whatsoever. You can refer to nebulous examples you have encountered but that still does not support you broad baseless conclusion. It is wild to suggest passionate mission-driven feds are a “problem” or that institutional knowledge is bad. You can have institutional knowledge AND fresh ideas from newer employees - those are not mutually exclusive.

To the contrary I’d say dispassionate, dissociated cogs that rotate sounds like a terrible way to run a government that is dynamic, responsive, or productive.

An FBI lawyer falsified evidence in order to secure a FISA court warrant on a target.

FBI agents were texting each other that they would not allow a major political candidate to become president. What the hell does that even mean?

An FBI Director(!!!!) was leaking to the press.

Bureaucrats who disagreed with Trump’s Covid response openly admitting to delaying and failing to implement Trump’s directives.

SDNY AUSAs are very publicly resigning implying ethical improprieties over what amounts to policy disagreements when the AG is engaging in clearly permissible behavior that was eventually permitted by the Court (with modification).


Do you need more examples of a serious f-ing problem that we have right now?

Are you talking about the guy who left off one sentence about something that happened years ago?

As for keeping someone from the presidency, that should have been done by the RNC. They fell down on the job. A lawless president benefits no one. No one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After years of right wing smears and attacks on federal government "the bloated bureaucracy" and "the administrative state" and demonization and slander of federal employees "lazy unelected bureaucrats collecting cushy paychecks" and all that - the Silicon Valley DOGE folks are getting a reality check.

“Upon arriving at the massive department that currently employs nearly 500,000 people, Lavignia was met not with bored bureaucrats lazily collecting cushy government paychecks, but with mission-driven workers who "love their jobs."

"In a sense, that makes the DOGE agenda a little bit more complicated, because if half the government took [the agency's buyout offers], then we wouldn’t have to do much more," the tech founder said. "We’d just basically use software to plug holes. But that’s not what’s happening."

Unsurprisingly, Lavignia found that things work a lot differently in the halls of government agencies than they do in Silicon Valley. "I would say the culture shock is mostly a lot of meetings, not a lot of decisions," he remarked. "But honestly, it’s kind of fine — because the government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest. I was hoping for more easy wins."

https://futurism.com/doge-operative-surprise

The majority of federal employees are there because they care about the mission and care about their country. A much larger percentage of federal employees are military veterans than you will find in the private sector. Is there the occasional instance of a federal employee who is lazy, abusing the system, wasteful? Yes. But they are rare and they are usually dealt with and gotten rid of, and meanwhile there are also plenty of lazy, wasteful employees also in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the private sector. But what is far rarer in the private sector is that genuine care about the agency mission. I'm glad this DOGE staffer admitted reality. This administration and the Republicans as a whole need to embrace a lot more honesty and integrity like that, rather than fabricating one divisive strawman after another, rather than attacking valuable and important institutions and agencies.

You are kind of playing into the stereotype. The quoted language you highlighted from the DOGE staffer does not match your thread title.

As an aside, I actually think it is a major problem that civilian government bureaucrats love their job and are mission driven. Civil servants should be dispassionate professionals. That’s why they are supposed to be insulated from the political process. They should exert their authority without passion or prejudice. Much harder to do when your self-actualization and/or moral meaning are tied up together with the job.

I think a really good reform to the civilian government workforce would be to put in time limits for service. Something like a maximum of twenty years of service or something like that.

You’re saying it’s a problem if someone loves their job and wants to do it well? It’s a big leap to assume that means they’re seeking self actualisation or moral meaning through their job. Really??? I know people who love their jobs but they’re not going to lay their lives down for them.

No, I’m saying it is a problem if civilian bureaucrats who are supposed to be insulated from the political process are passionate and mission driven. I don’t believe they can separate their personal biases from the professional demands of the job.

I’ve dealt with enough of them directly at the highest levels of their agencies to reach my own conclusions. And while the agencies I interface with are slightly lower profile, there are enough high profile examples to bear this out.

I have no idea what you mean. If you mean that people are “passionate” about enforcing the law that Congress promulgated, that’s the whole point of being a civil servant. I get you’re mad that you were not able to extract whatever benefit you believe you were due as easily as you thought you should.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After years of right wing smears and attacks on federal government "the bloated bureaucracy" and "the administrative state" and demonization and slander of federal employees "lazy unelected bureaucrats collecting cushy paychecks" and all that - the Silicon Valley DOGE folks are getting a reality check.

“Upon arriving at the massive department that currently employs nearly 500,000 people, Lavignia was met not with bored bureaucrats lazily collecting cushy government paychecks, but with mission-driven workers who "love their jobs."

"In a sense, that makes the DOGE agenda a little bit more complicated, because if half the government took [the agency's buyout offers], then we wouldn’t have to do much more," the tech founder said. "We’d just basically use software to plug holes. But that’s not what’s happening."

Unsurprisingly, Lavignia found that things work a lot differently in the halls of government agencies than they do in Silicon Valley. "I would say the culture shock is mostly a lot of meetings, not a lot of decisions," he remarked. "But honestly, it’s kind of fine — because the government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest. I was hoping for more easy wins."

https://futurism.com/doge-operative-surprise

The majority of federal employees are there because they care about the mission and care about their country. A much larger percentage of federal employees are military veterans than you will find in the private sector. Is there the occasional instance of a federal employee who is lazy, abusing the system, wasteful? Yes. But they are rare and they are usually dealt with and gotten rid of, and meanwhile there are also plenty of lazy, wasteful employees also in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the private sector. But what is far rarer in the private sector is that genuine care about the agency mission. I'm glad this DOGE staffer admitted reality. This administration and the Republicans as a whole need to embrace a lot more honesty and integrity like that, rather than fabricating one divisive strawman after another, rather than attacking valuable and important institutions and agencies.

You are kind of playing into the stereotype. The quoted language you highlighted from the DOGE staffer does not match your thread title.

As an aside, I actually think it is a major problem that civilian government bureaucrats love their job and are mission driven. Civil servants should be dispassionate professionals. That’s why they are supposed to be insulated from the political process. They should exert their authority without passion or prejudice. Much harder to do when your self-actualization and/or moral meaning are tied up together with the job.

I think a really good reform to the civilian government workforce would be to put in time limits for service. Something like a maximum of twenty years of service or something like that.

you’re deluded. Nobody anywhere (in or out of government) thinks it’s better to have employees MORE disengaged from the organization. This is like labor management 101.

I did not say “disengaged”. Reading properly is like life 101. I said they need to be dispassionate professionals. And there are a lot of jobs which require that.

For example, because of the awesome power they wield, we expect lawyers, but prosecutors and judges in particular, to do their jobs without passion or prejudice. A lot of our LEOs meet that standard, but when they don’t they end up on the news. High mortality areas of medicine require dispassionate professionalism or you will end up leaving the practice. Mental health professionals in particular are required to be dispassionate professionals.

There have been simply been way too many egregious examples in the Trump era for me to believe that we do not have a serious problem within the civilian workforce. Reform would be healthy for everybody.

You’re aware that the federal work force has doctors, scientists, mental health professionals right? I have no idea what you are talking about. Apparently you are mad that you or your client actually had to follow the law and regulations.