Disproportionate layoff of new employees will achieve what Boeing did in the 1970s when times were tight - leave a gap in breadth of experience that haunted it for many years.
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Since you know so much about it, explain to us the unknowing how indiscriminately slashing the workforce improves things. Exactly what are those “better updated systems” no one has ever heard about? How is mass firings going to be awesome?
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When they are gone, who runs the tool crib? And why do you look down on them?
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Well, I did specify “responsible” 
But, these actually aren’t layoffs. The employees were terminated.
I agree with your general premise, but sometimes the only reason very large industries have mass layoffs is simply for the bottom line. They, too, sometimes have a greedy CEO directing indiscriminate terminations.
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This is what private equity outfits do. Indiscriminately fire people without knowing the business or what people do, to make it look like they’re “streamlining” the company and saving money. They don’t care about the long-term loss of expertise and succession pipeline. For now, it’s high fives and bonuses for those doing the destruction. They will have moved on to their next disaster when everything fails.
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Like the firings going on across federal agencies, this is a fact-free environment. How many FAA personnel were just fired? What positions? And why?
My guess is that many people on this forum have either worked in government or for companies that interface with government. They know full well how convoluted government funding is, and how little incentive there is, system wide, to cut spending. Additionally, when the average tax payer thinks of cutting federal spending, he generally thinks of cutting waste/fraud/abuse. When the government reduces spending, it cuts people and programs; two very different things. The country is in serious debt and the current path is not sustainable. A related article in my local paper along with the cuts at FAA was Southwest Airlines cutting 15% of corporate jobs…crickets.
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“My guess is that the few hundred gone were more current on the DEI and Drag Queen show duties than actually controlling aircraft.”
This is an important statement to always use checklists and leave the guessing to the uneducated.
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Consider this example from the Oklahoman, "The termination email came from a Microsoft email address, not a .gov address, she said. Like other termination notices in agencies across the federal government, the letter cited employee performance as a reason for the termination, despite the fact that she’s had glowing reviews.
In an interview, she told The Oklahoman she worked in an office focused on supporting the U.S. airspace for both civilian traffic and national defense at the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center in OKC. She’d been working there for nearly a decade as a private contractor.
Nearly a year ago, she was hired for a government job in the same office. She was weeks away from shedding her temporary “probationary” classification and becoming a full-fledged federal employee."
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It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if whoever was in charge of these firings through “DOGE” saw “probationary” and thought it was a synonym for “PIP” (Performance Improvement Plan).
What seems clear is that all of these firings are being done by people with no actual government or government contractor experience, nor knowledge of what these positions actually are for. In other words, typical mindless private equity-style actions.
Who isn’t for cutting out fraud/waste/abuse and low-performers (other than those who fall under those categories), but mindless cuts are not the solution. It’s not a question of “if” but “when” these cuts will come back to bite us all (just as virtually every company that gets bought by private equity eventually meets its demise).
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I don’t, the most experienced person should get the job. When tool crib person gains experience they too should have a shot but only after.
As a former regional manager of a department for a Fortune 500 company (now retired), I can tell you that there is no good way to downsize a company without some pain. Having gone through several RIF’s where orders came down to reduce X% of your staff, it is something to be done with careful analysis of who to let go that will accomplish the corporate goal with the least damage. However, I can tell you that the way Trump and Musk are doing it will not solve any problems. Cutting all “probationary” employees first will not make for a more efficient workforce, especially when recently promoted people (who are often the better employees) get cut because of a quirk in the civil service advancement rules. What President Trump is doing is looking for a quick and easy way to make good on a campaign promise, rather than make a rational and well planned process to improve government. As Rationality Keith pointed out with Boeing, the result will be a gap in knowledge and ability to function effectively in the future that will only hurt the country. Like most of you, I find the current state of the government, and the FAA in particular, to be frustrating and in dire need of fixing. But this isn’t fixing the problem. This is just his Celebrity Apprentice “You’re Fired” stunt carried out in real life to please his supporters. I want to see real change in the FAA, not just some quick fix that won’t help.
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How about we inform the employees of the adverse effects of a shot than mandate it be necessary for employment. Thereby getting rid off all employees that can read and use a few neurons to make a decision. And just like that we have DEI hires all over again.
I think the number you are quoting refers to people that were represented by PASS. PASS represents about 25% of the employees that work for the FAA. Several hundred more were fired from positions that are not represented by PASS.
While I can’t speak for AJ, I can say that I am the guy who has to build his life around this nonsense.
Depending on particulars, I pay around $45k-$50k each year in taxes. New roof this year or wait till next? Vacation or staycation this year? $500 to the local food bank or are car registrations due this year? What’s that dear? Another $100 for your classroom for school supplies?
While I have no delusions that my taxes will go down one cent when this is over, I do hope that more of my taxes will go towards my local food bank. My local Fire Department. My local School system, instead of funding ISIS or Al-Qaeda.
Is the best way to do this by starting with firing people? Nope. But, this administration doesn’t have the time to do this the best way. Decades have shown that we can’t sit down and have a logical conversation of how to cut spending. You’re naive or lying if you say we can.
It’s not that they aren’t doing this the best way; they are doing it in the worst possible way. Just like a private equity firm coming in and indescriminantly firing people, there might be temporary short-term savings, but in the long run you lose all the truly talented people, productivity goes down, and everyone suffers the consequences. Except by then, the private investors have left with everyone’s money.
The reason “we can’t sit down and have a logical conversation on how to cut spending” is because the voters keep electing the same bozos who are more concerned about making a show than in getting any actual work done. But it is possible to have this conversation. We did this once during the 90s and had a balanced budget with a surplus.
Short-cuts only make things worse in the long run.
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If you’re paying that much in income taxes, then you’re taking in at least $150000 a year and netting 100000 after. That’s a net of 8500 a month give or take. And I used a state with the highest tax basis.
I don’t think you’re anywhere near not making ends meet, unless you’re living wildly outside your means.
Meanwhile, the fired probationary employees are actually suffering and have actual, real problems to face.
All this to pay for tax cuts for the top 1% while, as you admit, you get nothing in return.
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For all those cheering burning of the government employees because somehow they are the perpetrators of waste and fraud seem to not want to look at some of the biggest areas of waste and frauds and it is done in plain site.
Lets start with NASA; not specifically NASA personnel who are also being hit with this insane slash and burn nonsense with no regard as to the talent that is leaving the agency, no, I’m talking about the cost plus contracts aerospace manufacturers had with NASA till Boeing’s Starliner and what a surprise, Boeing is eating Billions and may just drop the project. the billions bilked out on projects that were mostly a jobs program for Senators, doing nothing to really benefit NASA’s space program. People like to point to SpaceX as the “way it should be done” without remembering NASA pretty much saved that company by injecting cash just before the company failed.
Okay, want more waste and fraud? Let’s look at the MIC (Military Industrial Complex for those not use to letters). I think it was a republican (sadly almost extinct) that said:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
From weapons to airplanes the US has been sucked into debt by companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and weapons manufacturers and there is a valid argument that these companies help tip us into conflicts to keep sales up. I have no issue with a strong defense for this country, but when military leaders agree, “we don’t need this program”, but Senators and a President vote into a bill anyway, where does the real waste and fraud start?
Fun fact, According to research, for every dollar invested in Head Start, there is a return on investment ranging from $7 to $9, meaning the program generates a significant positive impact on society far exceeding the initial cost.
So sure, kill that program because it actually generates long term revenue. Continuing on that vain, SNAP food programs also have a greater return, Medicaid lowers overall health costs by removing uninsured from emergency rooms. Overall, social spending improves the lives of all American’s, but sure, kill them and replace them with nothing.
While y’all are cheering the unemployment of 10s of thousands of federal workers, workers that many do vital work for this country, ask yourself, where are they going to get jobs? Companies are laying off workers so the job market is getting tight, costs are rising and it actually costs more to deal with homeless people then figuring how to have stable society. Will y’all be cheering when unemployment hits 20%, inflation is climbing above 10%, manufacturing is down because people can’t afford much past subsistence, because that is the direction this country is heading by the current actions.
You want to savings? Instead of getting rid of people, which is a few percent of the overall budge, how about looking at government contracts, like a 400 million dollar Tesla CyberCrap truck deal with the military. A truck that bricks backing up. You want real savings, cancel the next aircraft carrier (we got like 11) since China can just blow it up from far away, that a lot of billions.
there are some sad people that cheer for the misery of others that have done nothing to them but do their job.
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The question isn’t whether I’m making ends meet, but whether the government is making ends meet with the $45,000–$50,000 I send them every year. If I am managing to make ends meet, it’s thanks to budgeting, planning, and not living extravagantly beyond my means. You seem to propose that I’m doing well for myself, but in the same breath propose that even though the government is living beyond its means, it’s doing well for itself.
Yes. They have real problems to face. So too does our local fire department. Our local schools. Our community members that visit the local soup kitchen. They have been facing problems for decades, generations.
So, instead of a few million every week we send to ISIS, let’s send a few million to the local soup kitchen. Instead of $50 million dollars worth of condoms to Mozambique, how about a few million to fully outfit our local fire department or, finally get the heat fixed in our local elementary school.
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