> I thought the buyout offer went along with the cancellation of remote work.

Your sentiment is a result of their incredibly vague first attempt at messaging.

The offer was (or ended up being) a full buyout offer. The “offer” is probably genuine, but it’s not a clean offer, as many edge cases are unclear (e.g., can they terminate you if they accept the offer… currently there is nothing stopping them from doing that, how can someone of retirement age accept the offer and then retire, etc.).

Iirc, ATCs can accept the buy out if they so chose. I’m guessing most won’t, as the ATC deal is good to stick with until you retire.

Edit: Per the article, the status of the offer is unclear. It wasn’t cleared with the union before the letter was released, and it hasn’t been officially rescinded either (despite comments that it has from DoT).

Sorry to be unclear, I didn’t mean that only people transitioning from remote to in person can take the buyout. I meant that that is what the deal seemed to be targeting based on the timing, like a release valve for people who would be angry about switching back to in person.

> I meant that that is what the deal seemed to be targeting based on the timing, like a release valve for people who would be angry about switching back to in person.

That’s a reasonable take.

I don’t think anyone involved is actually on the same page about targeting or intent. It’s a complete shit show.

I have many fed gov friends, and I’m getting some incredible insider takes.

Interestingly, I think that the idea of reducing the federal work force size has a lot of supporters from both sides of the aisle, but this implementation has been haphazard (at best).

A “good” implementation would remove a lot of “build headcount” positions while also adding/filling positions that are still lacking. ATCs and contracting (to name two) fall under the latter.

> but this implementation has been haphazard (at best).

Also, this doesn't save us any money at all. Congress allocates money and in many cases specifies employment levels. But like the OMB memo says -- taxpayers still have to spend the money for these employees whether they do any work or not.

The reason they are doing this haphazard mess is that their positions are not popular and therefore cannot pass in Congress.

> Also, this doesn't save us any money at all. Congress allocates money and in many cases specifies employment levels.

Hmmm… this is short-term correct (at a minimum), but may not be correct long term. Time will tell.

Yes, the money for current jobs has been allocated/budgeted for the fiscal year, and the folks who resign will actually be paid for not working until the end of the fiscal year.

This is standard buyout stuff, and the government does this every year on a smaller scale, usually targeting high-paid, low productivity employees who are eligible to retire.

That said, what happens next fiscal year? The speculation is that the default will be that the positions vacated will basically be lost — as in, the slot/allocation will no longer exist and will not get funded. I imagine exceptions will exist, but this will create a noticeable reduction in the federal workforce if it ends up this way.

Said another way, paying 8 months for no work is cheaper than paying for 5-10 years of unneeded/inefficient work (at least that’s the theory).

> The reason they are doing this haphazard mess is that their positions are not popular and therefore cannot pass in Congress.

As I mentioned above, I think there is broad support on both sides for cutting and/or right-sizing the federal workforce.

Anyone who has worked in or with the federal government knows about instances of gratuitous headcount growth and substantial underemployment in some areas. There exist grifters who maybe put in 10 hours a week on average of very mediocre work for a salary that they absolutely could not earn outside of the government.

These same people also know about areas of the government that are grossly understaffed, seemingly in perpetuity (ATCs, contracting, etc.) and/or extremely underpaid (e.g., anything in tech).

I think it would be trivially easy to get broad support in Congress to implement changes that fix these problems, but that fix doesn’t start with a hastily written “fork you” all-hands e-mail.

All that said, all of this gratuitous motion is basically a drop in the bucket compared to modest and reasonable changes that could be made in social security, Medicare/medicaid, and/or defense spending.

You are correct that done deliberately, this could show the lack of need for some roles. But as it is structured, it is designed to get the best folks to leave, and from unpredictable parts of the org and thus is unlikely to show that result.

I think both sides are aligned in the desire to reduce the size of government. (Which has been steadily declining relative to the size of the population/economy for something like 4 decades.)

However, the administration is not pushing for right-sizing the workforce. They are proposing deeply unpopular cuts to things Americans actually value, without any debate or discussion of tradeoffs.

> But as it is structured, it is designed to get the best folks to leave, and from unpredictable parts of the org and thus is unlikely to show that result.

I believe that this is largely how this round will turn out. The numbers look very low so far (20k?).

> the administration is not pushing for right-sizing the workforce. They are proposing deeply unpopular cuts to things Americans actually value, without any debate or discussion of tradeoffs.

Just to be clear, I agree with all of this.

As I mentioned above, this is an absolute shit show. If chaos ensues, I think that will be seen as a success by those making the top-level decisions.

Our system of checks and balances is completely broken right now, and the limits are being tested by a group of folks who have no concept of noblesse oblige.

The results will be interesting.

> The numbers look very low so far (20k?).

I saw that, and it immediately made me realize that it's sort of not a useful number without context. Are those 20k spread roughly evenly across the government, or are there places where everyone quit? I am sure there are parts of government that will cease to function if the wrong 500 people suddenly quit.

> I am sure there are parts of government that will cease to function if the wrong 500 people suddenly quit.

As I mentioned before, I think the folks doing this would be fine with a “cease to function” outcome.

Next steps would be to blame it on the democrats, and then probably privatize it for a song to one of their cronies.

The other set of people who might take the deal are people who are concerned that the new administration will consider them "DEI hires"[1] and fire them later in the year. This is not an unreasonable fear given that the administration has already blamed the DC crash on "DEI" and pledged to root out "DEI" everywhere.

If you expect to be fired ~ in the fall, it is not unreasonable to be interested in the offer to keep getting paid from your federal job while you look for alternate employment.

1 - I am not going to get into who fits this category. The point is which employees might think they fit into this category.

Wait, why can't ATC work remotely? Serious question. They're looking at data on a screen and communicating via radio. Would the latency of any radio-digital relay be too high? Sure it's feeling like one step closer to Ender's game. But it could be possible in theory?

I'm an Air Traffic Controlling working at a "Center" (ARTCC). It's not the latency - it's that we have backups for the backups. I wish my house had the same level of redundancy my workplace does.

Edit: except for the asbestos. I'm glad my house doesn't have that.

Hint: why do they work in a tower?

A lot of them don't. They work in nondescript windowless buildings controlling all the airspace that isn't right above an airport.

There have also been trials done with "virtual towers" at smaller airports, using a bunch of cameras and with controllers remotely monitoring them and communicating.

And as far as I can tell, representations are still projected on a 2D screen. Air traffic using 3d projections might lower the technical bar for controllers? VR + AI seems inevitable.