The federal workforce is being transitioned into a merit-based survival model that mirrors high-pressure corporate environments (like GE or Amazon) but without the massive equity upside that usually compensates for that stress.

If you have options GET OUT.

Anonymous wrote:Commerce instituted a 30% limit (10% for the top rating, 20% for the second level) for FY25 ratings. It's blatantly illegal, but laws and regulations don't matter under Trump.

All the tech companies are bringing back stack ranking, and then cut the bottom 10%. I assume that is the same dynamic they are trying to replicate, only without the generous tech pay to make it worthwhile.

People stop taking risks, its a zero-sum game so people stop collaborating, sabotaging and information hoarding, and of course hire to fire. It almost killed Microsoft in its Lost Decade -- but it keeps coming back as a quick fix to budget or performance problems.

Commerce instituted a 30% limit (10% for the top rating, 20% for the second level) for FY25 ratings. It's blatantly illegal, but laws and regulations don't matter under Trump.

The whole grading on a curve thing is ridiculous for really high level competitive jobs. You don't select for the best of the best and then arbitrarily rate some of them down because "well you can't all be outstanding". This is happening to a small office in my agency incredibly sought after position, they only take very experienced people with the highest past performances. And then they told them they had to rate some of them 3s, despite no difference in work, despite everyone exceeding goals.

It's nonsense.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The point of all this is to shrink the workforce. If you don’t like it, quit.

+1. I quit right after the furlough ended because I had enough, and it was the best decision I made all year.

What are you doing for money?

I’m living off my savings while I make a career change. I’ve saved a lot so I’m good for quite a while, and now that I’m no longer wasting time working for an administration I don’t support, I get to focus on my career change and move faster.

Anonymous wrote:These rating distributions are really skewed. Does anyone believe 2 out of 3 SES's really fall in the top 80% of performance for all SES's?

You aren’t making sense.
Do you mean above the 80th percentile? Because ratings were not about comparing one person to another, they were about how well a person was doing their job.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this is the memo folks are talking about:
https://www.opm.gov/news/secrets-of-opm/not-managing-performance/

That’s not a memo. It’s the OPM director’s blog.

My agency is paying awards for FY25 per usual. FY26 may be a different story but we don’t know that yet.

It's saying those with a 3 should still get awards, just less than 4s and 5s. That seems reasonable.

It is also saying that very few people should get 4s and 5s, and that the large majority of the money goes to those people. So very little left over for the 3s, many of whom are high performers but not allowed to be given 5s for arbitrary reasons

These rating distributions are really skewed. Does anyone believe 2 out of 3 SES's really fall in the top 80% of performance for all SES's?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this is the memo folks are talking about:
https://www.opm.gov/news/secrets-of-opm/not-managing-performance/

That’s not a memo. It’s the OPM director’s blog.

My agency is paying awards for FY25 per usual. FY26 may be a different story but we don’t know that yet.

It's saying those with a 3 should still get awards, just less than 4s and 5s. That seems reasonable.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The point of all this is to shrink the workforce. If you don’t like it, quit.

+1. I quit right after the furlough ended because I had enough, and it was the best decision I made all year.

What are you doing for money?

Anonymous wrote:The point of all this is to shrink the workforce. If you don’t like it, quit.

Well it’s a way to get rid of the best employees that have other options elsewhere.

Our agency actually wants to hire more specialized people but they won’t stop with this nonsense.

Op, why would you reference the memo and then not include any context of what the memo says?

Anonymous wrote:I think this is the memo folks are talking about:
https://www.opm.gov/news/secrets-of-opm/not-managing-performance/

That’s not a memo. It’s the OPM director’s blog.

My agency is paying awards for FY25 per usual. FY26 may be a different story but we don’t know that yet.

Anonymous wrote:The point of all this is to shrink the workforce. If you don’t like it, quit.

+1. I quit right after the furlough ended because I had enough, and it was the best decision I made all year.

The point of all this is to shrink the workforce. If you don’t like it, quit.