DOGE at DoD

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:were any dod probationary employees fired today?

Yes. 2 in my office. Civilians. Not at the Pentagon. One a vet but too highly ranked to qualify for vet protection.

If you retired from the military, you do not get a vet protection. Only disabled 40% or more vets do for RIF. I was told DoD firings to begin as soon as Friday evening. Probationary employee lists were due to DOGE either yesterday or by the end of day today, but services can apply for exemptions. Nuclear propulsion engineers are hard to find.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:were any dod probationary employees fired today?

Yes. 2 in my office. Civilians. Not at the Pentagon. One a vet but too highly ranked to qualify for vet protection.

If you retired from the military, you do not get a vet protection. Only disabled 40% or more vets do for RIF. I was told DoD firings to begin as soon as Friday evening. Probationary employee lists were due to DOGE either yesterday or by the end of day today, but services can apply for exemptions. Nuclear propulsion engineers are hard to find.

Firing the probationary employees is not a RIF.

[Anonymous]

Wonder if DOGE will cut Musk’s billions of dollars in contracts…

[Anonymous]

Cutting 8% of the Pentagon's budget? Wow, let's see how many civilian positions will be eliminated.

I have to admit, as much as I don’t like the way Doge has handled things over the past few weeks, I would give them credit if they actually cut the Pentagon’s budget. That takes a ton of courage

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Word is they're going to cut promotional activities. Bands, parades, outreach to schools airshows. Which is funny because rhe MAGA types love those things. And it will definitely hurt recruiting.

Yeah, remember the flyovers Trump had on July 4 last time he was in office?

The bands are military people, though (not civilians, I think).

They are mostly enlisted and get very low pay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DS recently graduated with a MS degree from CMU, undergrad from MIT, is scheduled to start as a Fed for the DoD on February 24th. He received an email last night that it will not happen. He turned down offers from Apple, Amazon, and an IB company to work for the DoD. This is a loss for the defense department.

He should reach out quietly to his government contact - not HR but the hiring manager - and see if they are able to hire him through a “body shop” contractor for now, then convert him to government later. This is quietly happening in some parts of DoD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any insight on:
* DOD Contractors?
* FFRDCs (APL, MITRE, IDA, CNA etc)
Thank you.

It varies widely. Many pending DoD contracts appear to be frozen for the moment, which impacts all of the above. Some contracts, particularly for purchases for airplanes or ships or vehicles, seem unaffected by any of this. New task orders on existing contract vehicles do not seem frozen, but the CR means the government side is unsure how much budget they really have this year. Some body shop contractors have been told to hire specific recently laid off probationary gov’t employees with critical skills (e.g., nuclear engineering for subs and carriers) for full time work at the government site. Otherwise, all of the above seem to have either slowed or frozen hiring until it is more clear whether they will have funding for the associated work. Usually, the open billet is being kept, but it just is not being filled at this time.

My bet is there will be an increased reliance on body shop contractors to work FT at the government site for the near-term — 6 to 24 months. The contractors generally cost visibly more per hour than the fully burdened cost of the same salary civil service person, so it actually is raising costs and spending, rather than saving any money. However, the work still needs to get done somehow.

The potential for cost savings in DoD mostly lies in NOT buying equipment that does not work well, but that Congress keeps insisting the services buy. The big defense contractors spread jobs around the various states to benefit their profits. Famously, Lockheed has managed to spread the C-130 manufacturing work across all 50 states, making it hard politically for Congress to stop buying more C-130s. They are not unusual in doing this. The civil service staff layoffs are good as political marketing and as sound bites, but they cannot move the needle much on DoD budget/spending because the people are not the big costs in DoD. Each of the uniformed services has at least one large equipment acquisition that the service does not want or need, but that Congress insists upon buying.

After the new DNI invites DOGE over there, I fully expect similar layoffs and chaos will ensue in that part of government.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Firing the probationary employees is not a RIF.

No, but it’s a required first step before agencies are allowed to begin a RIF.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Firing the probationary employees is not a RIF.

No, but it’s a required first step before agencies are allowed to begin a RIF.

The vets rules for RIFs do not apply to probationary firings. So if they wanted to exempt all vets from probationary firings, they could.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any insight on:
* DOD Contractors?
* FFRDCs (APL, MITRE, IDA, CNA etc)
Thank you.

It varies widely. Many pending DoD contracts appear to be frozen for the moment, which impacts all of the above. Some contracts, particularly for purchases for airplanes or ships or vehicles, seem unaffected by any of this. New task orders on existing contract vehicles do not seem frozen, but the CR means the government side is unsure how much budget they really have this year. Some body shop contractors have been told to hire specific recently laid off probationary gov’t employees with critical skills (e.g., nuclear engineering for subs and carriers) for full time work at the government site. Otherwise, all of the above seem to have either slowed or frozen hiring until it is more clear whether they will have funding for the associated work. Usually, the open billet is being kept, but it just is not being filled at this time.

My bet is there will be an increased reliance on body shop contractors to work FT at the government site for the near-term — 6 to 24 months. The contractors generally cost visibly more per hour than the fully burdened cost of the same salary civil service person, so it actually is raising costs and spending, rather than saving any money. However, the work still needs to get done somehow.

The potential for cost savings in DoD mostly lies in NOT buying equipment that does not work well, but that Congress keeps insisting the services buy. The big defense contractors spread jobs around the various states to benefit their profits. Famously, Lockheed has managed to spread the C-130 manufacturing work across all 50 states, making it hard politically for Congress to stop buying more C-130s. They are not unusual in doing this. The civil service staff layoffs are good as political marketing and as sound bites, but they cannot move the needle much on DoD budget/spending because the people are not the big costs in DoD. Each of the uniformed services has at least one large equipment acquisition that the service does not want or need, but that Congress insists upon buying.

After the new DNI invites DOGE over there, I fully expect similar layoffs and chaos will ensue in that part of government.

This is a great summary of the back-and-forth entanglements between the federal government and contractors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS recently graduated with a MS degree from CMU, undergrad from MIT, is scheduled to start as a Fed for the DoD on February 24th. He received an email last night that it will not happen. He turned down offers from Apple, Amazon, and an IB company to work for the DoD. This is a loss for the defense department.

He should reach out quietly to his government contact - not HR but the hiring manager - and see if they are able to hire him through a “body shop” contractor for now, then convert him to government later. This is quietly happening in some parts of DoD.

It's happening quietly for a reason. At least one EO forbids backfilling and trying to skirt the order by using contracts to fill FTE's that quit or are fired.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any insight on:
* DOD Contractors?
* FFRDCs (APL, MITRE, IDA, CNA etc)
Thank you.

It varies widely. Many pending DoD contracts appear to be frozen for the moment, which impacts all of the above. Some contracts, particularly for purchases for airplanes or ships or vehicles, seem unaffected by any of this. New task orders on existing contract vehicles do not seem frozen, but the CR means the government side is unsure how much budget they really have this year. Some body shop contractors have been told to hire specific recently laid off probationary gov’t employees with critical skills (e.g., nuclear engineering for subs and carriers) for full time work at the government site. Otherwise, all of the above seem to have either slowed or frozen hiring until it is more clear whether they will have funding for the associated work. Usually, the open billet is being kept, but it just is not being filled at this time.

My bet is there will be an increased reliance on body shop contractors to work FT at the government site for the near-term — 6 to 24 months. The contractors generally cost visibly more per hour than the fully burdened cost of the same salary civil service person, so it actually is raising costs and spending, rather than saving any money. However, the work still needs to get done somehow.

The potential for cost savings in DoD mostly lies in NOT buying equipment that does not work well, but that Congress keeps insisting the services buy. The big defense contractors spread jobs around the various states to benefit their profits. Famously, Lockheed has managed to spread the C-130 manufacturing work across all 50 states, making it hard politically for Congress to stop buying more C-130s. They are not unusual in doing this. The civil service staff layoffs are good as political marketing and as sound bites, but they cannot move the needle much on DoD budget/spending because the people are not the big costs in DoD. Each of the uniformed services has at least one large equipment acquisition that the service does not want or need, but that Congress insists upon buying.

After the new DNI invites DOGE over there, I fully expect similar layoffs and chaos will ensue in that part of government.

This. It's the biggest grift on the books. DOD needs a really good overhaul, but it ain't civil service employees.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Word is they're going to cut promotional activities. Bands, parades, outreach to schools airshows. Which is funny because rhe MAGA types love those things. And it will definitely hurt recruiting.

Yeah, remember the flyovers Trump had on July 4 last time he was in office?

The bands are military people, though (not civilians, I think).

All those things are done by officers.

Military band is not officers. The conductor is an officer, but not the band members themselves.

but how much would they actually save by cutting army band etc.? or what kind of fraud waste abuse would there be? we're talking about bunch of musicians - artists basically, the least 'swamp-istique' part of the swamp...

Is that on the table? I thought they were just cutting civilians.

[Anonymous]

New ROTC scholarships (beginning fall 2025) are frozen at the moment. No one knows what will happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Word is they're going to cut promotional activities. Bands, parades, outreach to schools airshows. Which is funny because rhe MAGA types love those things. And it will definitely hurt recruiting.

Yeah, remember the flyovers Trump had on July 4 last time he was in office?



The bands are military people, though (not civilians, I think).

All those things are done by officers.

Military band is not officers. The conductor is an officer, but not the band members themselves.

but how much would they actually save by cutting army band etc.? or what kind of fraud waste abuse would there be? we're talking about bunch of musicians - artists basically, the least 'swamp-istique' part of the swamp...

Is that on the table? I thought they were just cutting civilians.

I was also wondering if they would cut some sports at the military academies as well, end of day, it does not bring in revenue, outside of football perhaps