Also, all employees are just cogs in the machine. You can totally lay off that grizzled senior dev and hire a kid fresh out of college, what’s the difference? It’s not like there was any institutional logic locked up in the senior’s head right?

/s if it wasn’t painfully obvious.

Not to mention the externality of having extra people floating around who know intimate details of the nations nuclear weapons secrets, who you have now pissed off.

I'm sure anyone who has been entrusted with such a position is fairly responsible, but it still seems like a bad idea.

Plus our adversaries would know we're hiring, and this bunch doesn't seem to care so much about proper vetting.

A grudge?

They've just been put into a strong negotiating position, because now both parties acknowledge that these are key employees.

I would never go back under a boss who thinks even for a second that I’m easily replaceable. It would immediately indicate to me, that I can’t trust in my boss at all. Nobody really can work effectively without trust. That’s the base of our whole society.

If you're not easily replaceable then the company has failed on some level.

This is why I think current org structures, and incentives, don't map properly to SWE and fuels this employment theater of "trust me I'm not a cog" => "trust me you are".

Don't know what an ideal arrangement would be, maybe SaaS is closer. Even then, still have to convince some 'cogs' to build your SaaS corp while you recoup 90% margins off their labor which is a fast path to class consciousness and we're back at square one!

Yes good, and now because their value is appreciated they can be paid what they will be paid in the private sector, perhaps ~180k/y instead of 60k/y. So if you fire 2/3 of the workforce and pay those that remain what they are "worth", you have saved exactly what ?

In your hypothetical scenario, it would be a no brainer to proceed.

Your key workers are now paid at market rate, and those who were unnecessary will find other jobs.

Sorry, they are servants of the public.

Maybe they ought not have been fired, but their feelings are 2nd place when their salary is funded predicated on men with guns forcing people to pay up. Maybe my feelings are hurt and I hold a grudge for being forced to pay their paycheck rather than spend that money on my family, but I'm nearly certain most of them don't care nor does much of HN.

They are humans first, public servants second. We are in the business of governing and employing humans. A wise government would acknowledge this truth.

Emotions are the motivator for everything, the question is, which emotion is getting the better of the human today? The better angel of their nature, or the other, darker one, that ineptitude stoked into relevance?

Everyone has a breaking point, for them, it’s losing a livelihood, for you, sadly, it’s the garnishing of your wage for the collective good.

I take it you’d also be fine paying 100% of the cost of the roads you use to buy food for your family? Men with guns take money from my family to pay for your roads after all.

Absolutely privatize them all. The roads for miles around my house are private easement (no tax) that are publicly accessible and it works beautifully. I built my own roads to access my land and it's great, my property taxes are near 0.

These firings will have no impact on your taxes. Instead of people having a job, the money will just get given to oligarchs and you’ll pay largely the same taxes but have moderately less government services. Socialism is needed to some degree for society to function. Capitalism alone is an awful system.

So, basically, left wing conspiracy theories?

In reality, whether taxes fall or not likely depends on whether the savings are returned in the form of income tax cuts, or whether the savings are used to repay the massive debt that has accumulated from decades of deficits. Both outcomes are good in the long run.

I hope you’re right, but I suspect you’ll be wrong. I think Obama was the last president to shrink the national debt. Clinton did before that.

False dichotomy. They will likely be used to continue tax cuts for the wealthiest (and corporations? I don't remember), which are set to expire. That is neither scenario that you envisioned.

Whom does income tax cuts help? Median US salary is 62k. That person pays ~12k in income taxes. Conservatives are going to ‘save’ that person 1k on their taxes or some other paltry sum and then cancel a bunch of services, fire a few hundred thousand workers, and raise tariffs to make the actual cost go up on everything that person buys.

Prediction: when Trump leaves office, the federal workforce, budget, and debt will all be higher than they were at the start of his second term.

come on, that was easy. for a challenge, predict how much each will go up.