[sanskritical]

In my experience legitimately talented people are staying, and the guy whose impressive education credentials seem to train him mostly how to write very wordy excuses for his shortage of actual work product is going back home. Maybe you have a different experience, but my experience is something that seems to be echoed among a lot of people in my social circle.

My experience is that people with talent are both driven and valued. Someone who might disagree with the current administration politically but is doing exactly what they want to do with their life in a role that generates measurable utility for the taxpayer is not packing up and leaving, nor losing their job. But many pieces of gristle are getting trimmed off the American government.

[sdenton4]

This doesn't match my experience at all.

Mid last year I helped run a workshop on AI explicitly for laid off federal science workers. The people involved were clearly extremely intelligent and knowledgeable, passionate about their research areas, and harboring an immense amount of institutional knowledge. They showed great curiosity and adaptability in the workshop. It was obvious that they were a set of very bad fires.

[Braxton1980]

How can your limited experience make any claims about the government workforce as a whole.

It requires a decent amount of time to understand if someone is talented and that talent is being used to better their job.

>but is doing exactly what they want to do with their life in a role that generates measurable utility for the taxpayer is not packing up and leaving

How would you know? Some people have very strong convictions and as another comment stated if a person is talented it increases the chances they could find another job similar to their desired work

[nialv7]

what you are saying is idiotic. people who are in demand can find work anywhere, they are the kind of people who will leave as soon as they feel their work environment has become even remotely uncomfortable. people who stay are more likely to be those who can't find job elsewhere.

[sanskritical]

I think people who will leave as soon as they feel their work environment has become even remotely uncomfortable are likely sitting in a comfortable sinecure, and it isn't the role of the taxpayer to provide sinecures for people with doctoral degrees.

Government workers are meant to serve the government, and the government of the United States is By the People. The People voted for the administration and if someone can't work for the company because you dislike the guy running it, well, it sounds infantile to me. Someone so fragile as to not tolerate political disagreement and reasonable scrutiny and auditing should not be receiving a salary from public funds.

[toyg]

Your guy has armed goons with "absolute immunity" literally executing people in the streets, after threatening to invade neighbours and allies, appointing shockingly-unqualified loyalists at the very top of national institutions, and generally gutting the rule of law. It's a bit past "tolerating political disagreement", man.

[giardini]

Well, that went south quickly!

Glad to hear a British viewpoint now and then, but of course any problems stateside will be handled and voted on by Americans rather than Brits. Unless possibly you have dual citizenship (Brit & USA) perhaps?

FWIW Britain has plenty of history of what you term

"armed goons with "absolute immunity" literally executing people in the streets, after threatening to invade neighbours and allies, appointing shockingly-unqualified loyalists at the very top of national institutions, and generally gutting the rule of law."

You Brits almost have a monopoly on tyranny of various forms, having gone through most of them in bloody civil wars yourself. Hardly a model to follow, n'est-ce pa?

[toyg]

> but of course any problems stateside will be handled and voted on by Americans rather than Brits

Sure. That doesn't mean that an external viewpoint is any less valid. It's like saying "of course any problems in Teheran will be handled by Iranians" or "any problems in Venezuela will be handled by Venezuelans", when someone points out the issues in those regimes. You also assume you will get another meaningful vote, something that does not seem so assured when the supposed head of internal law enforcement starts asking for lists of voters.

The world is watching you, and it sees something really sinister happening. I would suggest to be humble and take stock - when innocent lives are lost to political fevers, you are in a very dark place, and whoever led you there should be suspected.

For the record, although I do live in England, I'm actually Italian; my great-grandfather lived under fascism, and I grew up in places deeply scarred by those times - as well as from the Cold War. That doesn't mean I'm innocent, just that I know a thing or two about what a regime looks like.

[giardini]

toyg says "Sure. That doesn't mean that an external viewpoint is any less valid."

Sure, but it is unwelcome and likely invalid.

toyg says "The world is watching you, and it sees something really sinister happening...innocent lives....you are in a very dark place..."

Woooo! I'm scared now!8-0

1. The world is always watching us! Y'all should take a break sometime. The world is big and there are lots of other things to see. Too much watching Minneapolis, right now one of the iceholes of the world, indicates poor judgement regarding one's use of time (indeed most anytime, unless you live there, which is another problem).

2. I count one possibly innocent life lost so far. That's very good given the circumstances. Renee Nicole Good drove an SUV toward an LEO officer on an icy road, possible attempted manslaughter. Alex Pretti OTOH was probably only foolish and I do believe it likely ICE will be charged with crimes associated with his death.

[BigTTYGothGF]

I'm a phd who used to be in civil service.

What you write here is certainly the goal, and I had a lot of colleagues who agreed with you. I thought it was bogus then, and I think it's bogus now.

Also people quit jobs all the time because of the boss. Usually it's the direct one, but not always, and as above, so below.

> reasonable scrutiny and auditing

It's been well over a decade since I left, and I'm sure it's gotten worse for those who stayed, but: lol. lmao.

[notahacker]

Yes, I'm sure it's "infantile" for people at the NIH to resign because they believe their work is being censored for conflict with the administration's preferred pseudoscience.

Could you sound any more like a Lysenko propagandist in the USSR if you tried?

[_DeadFred_]

This position is idiotic, more detrimental to the United States than the government over employing people, and frankly un-American according to how we understood what serves America best pre-Trump.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service_reform_in_the_Un...