[n0rdy]

I've always found this approach of reducing the number of employees unwise from the company perspective (but pretty good for the employees, though).

While the unsatisfied employees are the target, my observations indicate that a high percentage of active and skilled people are willing to take this offer, as they are sure that they will find a new place within a reasonable time, so it's basically, free money. And those are the people that the company should try to keep as much as it could. While the "give me a task with the perfect description, and I will do it" folks will stay until they are kicked out, as, usually, they are not up to taking the initiative.

That's why I saw how the companies that were changing the rules in the process: "well, it's an offer, but your manager needs to approve that first", and other tricks to be able to reject it for the top performers. Needless to say, it leads to the bad moral.

However, the companies I'm mentioning had way fewer employees than the federal workforce, so the chances are that with that size it's impossible to do it the "right" way.

[feoren]

> unwise from the company perspective

The goal is to destroy most of these federal agencies, so doing things that are "unwise" for the future of those agencies is exactly the point.

[n0rdy]

Yes, indeed, in this particular case it is exactly as you said. However, I've seen this in the tech industry, that's a surprising bit for me

[neonarray]

Yes, but I believe this is the intent. It's not a matter of it being good for the business when the CEO of said business intentionally wants it to fail.

[orasis]

On a larger level, if the active & skilled people are taking the deal, doesn’t it mean they’re likely moving on to something that is a better fit and thus good for society anyway?

[acuozzo]

> they’re likely moving on to something that is... good for society anyway

Like supporting advertising and/or furthering the financialization of our economy?

[Xelynega]

Don't you know, money is a perfect proxy for "goodness".

If it makes money that means it must be "good", right?

[bangaladore]

Part of two groups will leave, the actual skilled, hardworking people who know they can get another job. And the people who are retiring anyways.

Part of me thinks that just ends up with a higher percentage of worse workers.

Obviously many hard working people will stay, but you'd be pretty certain the people will little skill and value, ironically, are going to be the highest percentage that stay as they know its not going to be easy to get another job.

[vaccineai]

Good, we want the competent and skilled people within government to go to private enterprise in big numbers, so they can amplify their skills and effect in private enterprise. Then we can reduce the number of government agencies, because they are always less effective than private enterprises.

The problem is when we have the lazy and incompetent bureaucrats sticking around, and us the taxpayers are paying for their pension while getting back very little in return.

Honestly, I'm not sure what all the screaming and crying on hacker news is about; hackers are all about creating efficiency with unorthodox insights and skills. pretty sure no hackers have said "why yes, I've love to pay more in taxes for the bureaucrats to retire in style after doing very little"

[heylook]

> because they are always less effective than private enterprises.

I think this is one of those ideas that has been spouted for so long that we don't really stop to think about whether it is true. Private and public entities (and employees) certainly have different incentives, but they also have different mandates, and I've certainly known plenty of inefficient private enterprises and efficient public ones. Do you have any way of verifying or proving this idea that you can share?

[rstuart4133]

> I think this is one of those ideas that has been spouted for so long that we don't really stop to think about whether it is true.

A lot of people with considerable expertise in the area have looked into whether it's true. They almost always come to the same conclusion: overall it's a wash.

If you look closer some industries (like say your corner coffee shop in a big city) are clearly better off private, and others like roads and fire fighting don't work when privately held.

In general a competitive market will out-do public owned, free markets that aren't competitive are worse than public owned.

But there are always exceptions. A fine example is the health system. I don't know why, but as the US demonstrates even with a competitive health market public ownership outperforms a purely private system by a fairly large margin.