[scintill76]

TFA: “After thousands of government layoffs, the Office of Personnel Management on Saturday directed federal workers to email a list of roughly five accomplishments”

(Edit: I accidentally pulled this from a different article not about 18F, https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/02/24/musk-doge-fe... . I believe my broader point still true, but I'll elaborate more below.)

This email came AFTER thousands of layoffs!

You have implied every laid-off employee was given a chance to reply to the email and didn’t, which is contrary to TFA.

[dcow]

I don’t think you’re interpreting the article’s wording correctly.

[scintill76]

Well, why don’t you write your interpretation, and explain how that quote from TFA means that the email came before any layoffs.

[dcow]

18F was let go yesterday morning, 1 March.

2nd “what did you do” email came Friday, 28, Feb.

1st “what did you do” email came Saturday 22 Feb.

[scintill76]

I was incorrect, and you are right about the order of events in this case, although I don't believe TFA says these 18F employees didn't reply to the email. I noted in an edit that I accidentally pulled a quote from a different article. I believe the gist of what I and others are saying here is still true.

Some other points:

* The second email came "late Friday" and the layoffs happened hours later at 1 am on Saturday, so it's not reasonable to count the second email as a warning or genuine attempt to find the "good" employees. I'm guessing it was just blasted out and happened to land in their inboxes before the firing notice did.

* Based on https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/01/general-services-ad... it appears the entire 18F unit was cut, so this doesn't seem targeted or predicated on email responses. Also, I'm not a leader, but if 100% of my organization didn't comply with an order, cutting them all is probably a much less effective decision than trying to meet them half-way. I guess if they've truly been doing nothing for years, there would be no loss, but that seems unlikely to be true in most cases including 18F's.

* Your initial comment appeared to be speaking generally on DOGE cuts, so it is fair for us to be responding accordingly. 18F seems to have been pretty small, but part of the reason this story is interesting is everything else DOGE is doing. As we've said, plenty of cuts happened before and independent of any email. Personally I'm doubtful that responding does much, but I'd be interested in any reporting on employee's experiences or what DOGE is saying about responses and how it affects their decisions.

Like I said above, I don't think TFA mentioned 18F's responses and there's not really a good reason to assume that the layoffs were due to no response.