Anonymous
Post 02/24/2025 19:46     Subject: Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)
Anonymous wrote:Anyone hearing anything at all regarding Board RTO? The email guidance last week seemed pretty stern that no exemptions would be given. I'm just wondering how they could be planning to navigate this since the Board literally has employees coast to coast.


I think any RTO guidance has to hold until after this week since Leon posted that any remote worker not returning to an office this week will be placed on admin leave.
Anonymous
Post 02/24/2025 19:39     Subject: Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)
Anyone hearing anything at all regarding Board RTO? The email guidance last week seemed pretty stern that no exemptions would be given. I'm just wondering how they could be planning to navigate this since the Board literally has employees coast to coast.
Anonymous
Post 02/24/2025 19:25     Subject: Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)
Anonymous wrote:Apparently the underlying purpose of the 5 bullet points bs is to feed it to AI to figure out who is mission critical: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/federal-workers-agencies-push-back-elon-musks-email-ultimatum-rcna193439

I guess if you haven’t done yours yet, emphasize how important our work is for the mission? This is so stupid.


I seriously doubt the AI will find any of the responses mission critical. Hope those of you who responded are dues paying BUE or have a complaint ready to send to OSC cause you're getting summarily fired.
Anonymous
Post 02/24/2025 17:52     Subject: Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)
Anonymous wrote:Apparently the underlying purpose of the 5 bullet points bs is to feed it to AI to figure out who is mission critical: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/federal-workers-agencies-push-back-elon-musks-email-ultimatum-rcna193439

I guess if you haven’t done yours yet, emphasize how important our work is for the mission? This is so stupid.


Called it
Anonymous
Post 02/24/2025 16:49     Subject: Re:Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)
Local 17 president just sent an email to ignore the 5 things email
Anonymous
Post 02/24/2025 16:33     Subject: Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)
Apparently the underlying purpose of the 5 bullet points bs is to feed it to AI to figure out who is mission critical: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/federal-workers-agencies-push-back-elon-musks-email-ultimatum-rcna193439

I guess if you haven’t done yours yet, emphasize how important our work is for the mission? This is so stupid.
Anonymous
Post 02/24/2025 16:17     Subject: Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)
Anonymous wrote:Are you all still waiting on guidance? That's crazy. Personally I would wait until 10 pm before responding. If you see the guy's numerous posts on X, he seems to be having a major crisis or meltdown and is not the type you want to have looking at your response. Even if you write out specific details about being the top producer, your bullets can be used to determine you should be fired or your job is pointless.

Of course, you should respond if told to do so by your agency but even DHS decided not to respond.


No, I’m not going to reply outside of duty hours. Just another basis to condemn us. I hope I was able to strike the appropriate balance of vague details.
Anonymous
Post 02/24/2025 14:21     Subject: Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)
Anonymous wrote:Off topic: I think it is time to turn the tables. DOGE needs to focus on all the taxpayer money that is wasted by CONGRESS and their staff. I say, start commenting about that online, at town halls, in public.


Or complain about money that is wasted on DOGE shenanigans. I spent 20-25 minutes of duty time on the "Tell us what you did" email nonsense. Multiply that over millions of federal employees and you have millions and millions of wasted taxpayer dollars.
Anonymous
Post 02/24/2025 12:55     Subject: Re:Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Had a meeting with my VLJ, and he said to avoid using numbers “I did X number of decisions” and basically use the job description from USAjobs FWIW


In contrast, my VLJ said to include specifics. 🙃


That's horrible advice from your VLJ. DOGE is trying to create metrics from the information they're getting from us. If we keep it vague then they'll have a harder time of doing so.


Even DOGE knows that BVA employees need to submit at least three decisions a week. In fact, just the other day, Elon told his employees at Tesla, X, and SpaceX, that if they don’t behave, he will deport them to BVA.
Anonymous
Post 02/24/2025 12:53     Subject: Re:Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Had a meeting with my VLJ, and he said to avoid using numbers “I did X number of decisions” and basically use the job description from USAjobs FWIW


In contrast, my VLJ said to include specifics. 🙃


That's horrible advice from your VLJ. DOGE is trying to create metrics from the information they're getting from us. If we keep it vague then they'll have a harder time of doing so.


Agree. You have to know that this is all being run through an AI system. No human is capable of reviewing millions of emails.
Anonymous
Post 02/24/2025 12:45     Subject: Re:Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Had a meeting with my VLJ, and he said to avoid using numbers “I did X number of decisions” and basically use the job description from USAjobs FWIW


In contrast, my VLJ said to include specifics. 🙃


That's horrible advice from your VLJ. DOGE is trying to create metrics from the information they're getting from us. If we keep it vague then they'll have a harder time of doing so.
Anonymous
Post 02/24/2025 12:07     Subject: Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)
Are you all still waiting on guidance? That's crazy. Personally I would wait until 10 pm before responding. If you see the guy's numerous posts on X, he seems to be having a major crisis or meltdown and is not the type you want to have looking at your response. Even if you write out specific details about being the top producer, your bullets can be used to determine you should be fired or your job is pointless.

Of course, you should respond if told to do so by your agency but even DHS decided not to respond.
Anonymous
Post 02/24/2025 12:01     Subject: Re:Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)
Anonymous wrote:Had a meeting with my VLJ, and he said to avoid using numbers “I did X number of decisions” and basically use the job description from USAjobs FWIW


In contrast, my VLJ said to include specifics. 🙃
Anonymous
Post 02/24/2025 11:12     Subject: Re:Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)
Had a meeting with my VLJ, and he said to avoid using numbers “I did X number of decisions” and basically use the job description from USAjobs FWIW
Anonymous
Post 02/24/2025 10:53     Subject: Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I plan on complying but won’t give them any specific variables, metrics or details. I don’t want them knowing how many cases or issues I processed or how big the respective files were.


My husband works for another agency and was told by his agency to respond, before the department gave a directive that they should not. In that interim, some did respond and they used some suggested non-descriptive language essentially mirroring their job descriptions, so it was not to include any secure or protected information given the nature of their work. Perhaps we could do the same.


In my mind, the more vague and uniform the responses, the better. Wouldn't be a horrible idea to correspond with VLJ and teammates to make sure that there's consistency before submitting a reply.