Thursday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Elon prepares to doxx all Feds:" and was posted in the "Jobs and Careers" forum. The title refers to one of the undertakings of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Shadow President Elon Musk. Part of the doge.gov website is devoted to the government workforce and, while currently in development, will eventually have an easily navigable method to display information about federal employees. As users drill down through an organization chart, the average salary, age, and length of service of employees is displayed. I will note that I could find no mention of the Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE does not appear to exist as part of the federal workforce. Beyond that, a few points of clarification. This does not appear to be "doxxing" as the original poster would have it. Doxxing normally involves the disclosure of personally identifying information. In this case, home addresses, phone numbers, or other such information is not included. At the moment, names are not even listed. To be clear, the names and salaries of federal employees are already public information. Therefore, as things stand, this is not really a matter of inappropriate information disclosure. Most of those responding understand that this is the case. As such, their objections focus more on the presentation of the data which they believe is designed to create anger and hostility towards federal employees. For instance, the salaries of Washington, D.C.-based staff may appear high to those in less expensive parts of the country, but need to be understood in the context of the high cost of living of this area. Several posters, in fact, argue that the data actually shows that government employees are generally not overpaid and, given the high education levels of many of them, Musk's website actually demonstrates that the government is getting good value for its money. The discussion soon turned to other DOGE-related topics, with the usual pack of Muskovites joining in to praise Musk's actions. I'll take this opportunity for one of my own rants. DOGE is illegal from top to bottom. If anyone bothers to read the executive order that created DOGE, it has nothing to do with 90% of Musk's actions. Musk himself is out of compliance as a government employee. But, for me, the doge.gov website really takes the cake. For several years, I was a federal government contracter involved in information technology. Had I been involved in anything like this website, I would have been summarily fired. The website does not adhere to any government standards. It uses non-governmental infrastructure that does not meet government requirements for security. No surprise that the site was hacked overnight. In fact, while I write this, there are still defaced pages on doge.gov. The DOGE boy geniuses so far have mixed up Gaza, Palestine with Gaza, Mozambique, confused Thomson Reuters with the Reuters news service, and had their website pwned. It would be nice if this was the worst of the damage that is being done, but unfortunately, it barely scratches the surface.

Next was another thread posted in the "Jobs and Careers" forum. This one was titled, "Probationaries getting fired today". The title of the thread refers to federal employees who are on probationary status. New federal employees must serve a period of probation during which they can be fired much more easily than other federal employees. This period normally lasts one year, though two years is common for some positions and even longer periods exist in some cases. I should stress that "probation" in no way, shape, or form, reflects an employee's performance. Shadow President Elon Musk has apparently targeted employees who are in their probationary period for firing as part of his effort to reduce the size of the federal workforce. According to the original poster, and supported by reporting in the Washington Post, notices that employees on probation were being fired began going out yesterday. There is some dispute about exactly how these losses of work should be classified. Some say the employees are being fired, others argue that they are layoffs. I don't know the technical designation and will use the terms interchangeably for now. However, there are important differences between the two relative to such things as unemployment eligibility. According to posters in the thread, this round of workforce reduction could include as many as 200,000 people and would constitute the largest layoff in U.S. history. Many posters question the legality of this action. In theory, it should be allowable, but I would not be willing to bet that Musk and the DOGE crew have followed the rules completely. Beyond that, there are considerable questions about the wisdom of the effort. An entire generation of new hires is being wiped out. From where will the new blood come? This is like a sports team eliminating its bench. There is little hope that it would have a future. As with most of Musk's moves, it is completely indiscriminate with good employees being thrown out with the bad. As one poster put it, "I will lose my best worker!" One post describes a very sad situation involving a doctor who had been let go from the Veterans Administration. A graduate of Yale University and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the doctor had chosen to work for the VA instead of more lucrative private employment because, as an immigrant from Vietnam, he wanted to give back to the United States. American veterans would have benefited from his service. Now their wait for care will likely grow longer. It is important to understand that it is not only new employees who are on probationary status. Those who have recently changed positions or received a promotion are also on probation. Therefore, Musk is removing many of those whose performance allowed them to be promoted. As such, he has targeted some of the best performing employees. 

Yesterday's next most active thread was titled, "So ECNL announcements are leaking out" and posted in the "Soccer" forum. The original poster says that "PDA in NJ had to move one of its badges from its main site to a different location and it is freaking people out." I'll just be frank and say that I have no idea what this means. What I can say is that ECNL is a nationwide youth soccer league. PDA stands for Players Development Academy and is a youth soccer club located in New Jersey. I don't know what a "badge" is as it relates to youth soccer, but I think it refers to a team. Apparently, PDA moved one of its teams to a new site which is too far away for many current players and, therefore, they are upset. What I think the title of this thread means is that announcements about which teams will play in which league and at which locations are being revealed, both formally and informally. But, I could be wrong. Also, just to be clear, not only do I not know about a lot of this stuff, with all that is going on in the world today, I don't really want to devote too many brain cells to it. Part of what I think is going on, and again I might be wrong, is that while ECNL is a national league, many of these clubs are also associated with ENRL, which is a regional league. Leagues can only have so many teams and it appears that clubs are now announcing which club teams (there are multiple teams per club) will be in which league and where they will be based. In the case of PDA, at least one team has changed locations. As posters explain, this will essentially lead to the creation of a new team as some of the original players find the location too distant and switch to a team with a better location and players from other teams for whom the new location is convenient join the PDA team. At any rate, this thread is full of discussion of various soccer leagues and the advantages of one over the other. I guess I should also mention that this seems to involve only girls' soccer. The structure of youth soccer is very complicated and has become even more complicated recently. Not long ago, I wrote about the merger of Girls Academy with Major League Soccer Next. This combination completes with ECNL for national-level soccer talent. The decisions being announced now will impact not only where a team will physically practice and play games, but against whom it will compete and the opportunities for players for future advancement. I imagine that this thread will remain active for the foreseeable future as new information about other clubs, especially those local to the area, is revealed.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. Titled, "Are these schools reasonable with DS's stats?", the original poster outlines her son's grade point average, college admissions test score, and other data related to college applications. She then listed a number of universities, all public (with one exception) and mostly either state flagships or strong technical universities, and asked whether they were reasonable targets for her son who wants to major in computer science or engineering. My first thought when reading this post was, "the College Admissions Fantasy League players are going to have a field day with this thread" and my second thought was "they are not going to think this kid has a chance at any of these schools." Indeed, the first response was "Not a single one is likely." That was generally the feeling of most who responded. Several posters suggested that the student was aiming too high and should focus on a tier down. I am no expert, of course, but I've read thousands of posts about college applications. My instinct is that students with better stats than the original poster's child will be rejected by these schools and students with worse stats will be accepted. College admissions remains something that is very much the luck of the draw. So my response to the original poster would not be as unequivocal as most of these. Some schools can certainly be ruled out. As one poster pointed out, the out-of-state acceptance rate at the "University of Washington for computer science is 2%." But a few on the list are worth taking a flyer on. Once it was clear the consensus was that the original poster should start over with a new list, posters began making suggestions. While there were a few rude replies in this thread, generally the responses were helpful and substantive. One poster even apologized for the tone of her first post, a rare event on DCUM. I liked the advice that one poster offered, saying "My advice: focus less on getting in and focus more on finding a place where he'll succeed." I would not blame the original poster for being a bit upset by the near-universal opinion that her list was overly optimistic, but I hope that she is pleased with the overall advice. It might have been a hard message to hear, but the end result included many good suggestions.