What did you get done last week? Elon wants to know...

[Jolly]

[Doctor Phibes]

I don’t know about you chaps, but I wouldn’t want to work for that asshole

[Copper]

That sounds like a great employer to me.

Slackers always made me crazy - get 'em out of here.

[Doctor Phibes]

@Copper said in What did you get done last week? Elon wants to know...:

That sounds like a great employer to me.

Slackers always made me crazy - get 'em out of here.

Yeah, because they'll be too stupid and lazy to make shit up, and as is well known, constant management interference and perceived lack of trust is a guaranteed way to make morale go through the roof amongst the people who are trying to do a good job.

[Jolly]

Gotta think like Elon and consider what his mission is, and best how to accomplish it.

1. Elon is a dataset guy. Stacks and stack of data.
2. Look for commonalities in job duties.
3. Look for commonalities in job duties interagency and outside of the agency.
4. Check for veracity of responses while I'm at it. The funboys go to the head of the cut line.
5. What can I combine? What can I cut? How can I use my database to wring the most I can out of X number of employees with similar job skills?

Am I warm?

[Axtremus]

Many "business leaders" claim to be data-driven, and Musk would not be alone there.

Yet many of them are not very careful with data, many would be the first among their respective management teams to ignore data that do not suite them.

On the "not careful with the data" front, there is an example right now: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/22/doge-savings-found-list-analysis/ . That's some journalists going my through DOGE's publicly claimed "savings" line-by-line and found that many line items save $0 and many line items are overinflated.

[Doctor Phibes]

@Jolly said in What did you get done last week? Elon wants to know...:

Gotta think like Elon and consider what his mission is, and best how to accomplish it.

1. Elon is a dataset guy. Stacks and stack of data.
2. Look for commonalities in job duties.
3. Look for commonalities in job duties interagency and outside of the agency.
4. Check for veracity of responses while I'm at it. The funboys go to the head of the cut line.
5. What can I combine? What can I cut? How can I use my database to wring the most I can out of X number of employees with similar job skills?

Am I warm?

If I worked in government, what would concern me is how rushed this seems to be. They're interested in making a lot of changes very quickly, and they really haven't had anywhere near enough time to examine what's going on and really get to understand the culture, which is likely to be quite different from companies they've worked in or with previously.

[Mik]

There are different ways of thinking about this. In such a large endeavor, meticulousness can lead to analysis paralysis, and government is much given to that.

I'm not sure it would be possible to get a great grasp on understanding the culture of federal employees, certainly not within the timeframe of one four-year term. I do think though that it might be better to just an across the board 5% cut this year, fix what's broken, another 5% next year and so on.

A lot of times when large cuts come some things do not continue getting done. very often they are things that don't really need to get done. That's not to say all will be peaches and cream, but here is no way we're going to get spending down painlessly.

[Klaus]

There is nothing inherently wrong with being a federal employee. There are slackers among them but also hard and diligent workers. It's not a good idea to communicate the message that all of them are worthless scum. That's not a way to motivate your employees to give their best.

[NobodySock]

@Jolly said in What did you get done last week? Elon wants to know...:

Gotta think like Elon and consider what his mission is, and best how to accomplish it.

1. Elon is a dataset guy. Stacks and stack of data.
2. Look for commonalities in job duties.
3. Look for commonalities in job duties interagency and outside of the agency.
4. Check for veracity of responses while I'm at it. The funboys go to the head of the cut line.
5. What can I combine? What can I cut? How can I use my database to wring the most I can out of X number of employees with similar job skills?

Am I warm?

6. What impact of human livelihood will these cuts bring to the hundreds of thousands of families? "naw, scratch that one, we only need 5 considerations, it's a good number in the world of base 10."

[Jolly]

@NobodySock said in What did you get done last week? Elon wants to know...:

@Jolly said in What did you get done last week? Elon wants to know...:

Gotta think like Elon and consider what his mission is, and best how to accomplish it.

1. Elon is a dataset guy. Stacks and stack of data.
2. Look for commonalities in job duties.
3. Look for commonalities in job duties interagency and outside of the agency.
4. Check for veracity of responses while I'm at it. The funboys go to the head of the cut line.
5. What can I combine? What can I cut? How can I use my database to wring the most I can out of X number of employees with similar job skills?

Am I warm?

6. What impact of human livelihood will these cuts bring to the hundreds of thousands of families? "naw, scratch that one, we only need 5 considerations, it's a good number in the world of base 10."

I said at the beginning of this, there will be blood. DOGE is going to make mistakes, like the nuclear stockpile guys in Texas. That was rectified in a day or two. There are other mistakes that may take a few weeks to get guys back, as problems surface. And there are going to be cases where a good many people working in an agency may become contract (think VA). There is no way to do this without hurting some individuals. I didn't work for the Feds, but I worked for state government and our division went through a cut of 6000 people. The guys that took it in the neck were the guys without highly valued skill sets, that had good-paying jobs in positions not as valued in the private sector...Think a ward clerk or a warehouse person that had been on the job 15 years, working through the step increases and maybe a promotion or two...Not enough time to retire and when they searched for a job in the private sector, they were competing with a lot of other people with the same skill sets. And they were competing for jobs that paid 2/3's of what they were making. The guys that did just fine were doctors, nurses, IT guys, plumbers, electricians, therapists, etc.

Maybe there's a lesson there.

Heard a guy recently on the radio talking about cutting - he was a hired gun brought in to cut the fat in companies - and he said that when you cut, you cut too much. He likened it to roasting a chicken over an open fire for the first time. The chicken might be cooked, but it's still dripping a little grease. Invariably, you cook the chicken just a little too long, trying to get all the grease out, leaving you with a chicken that's just a little bit tough. Not burned, still edible, but not optimum. Then comes the second hard part, trying to figure out just how much juice needs to go back in the chicken (not that you would do that actually cooking a chicken, but you get the point).

He said another interesting phenomenon occurs. As a company's staff is cut, the remaining staff is like multiple little blobs of mercury. First one, then the next, then the next starts to coalesce into one single entity. The same thing happens in companies...As the remaining staff coalesce into a single shared purpose, productivity and accountability rise. Many times, the company is more efficient and productive after the cuts.

[Mik]

Been through it several times. American business is a pendulum just like politics. First we can’t afford all these employees with benefits, cut them and use contractors. Then it’s the contractors are too expensive, hire employees!

What needs to get done still gets done, although it may be initially more stressful. They will keep or hire back what is really needed.

[LuFins Dad]

I don’t get the problem, here. My self reporting standards are a lot higher than listing 5 things that I did this week, as are the requirements to my staff.

[Mik]

I might add that I may well be one who loses my gig due to the cuts. I still support it.

[LuFins Dad]

@Mik said in What did you get done last week? Elon wants to know...:

I might add that I may well be one who loses my gig due to the cuts. I still support it.

I’ll add that Federal Employees are a significant part of my customers. I’m all for it, too, and appreciate it being done in a timely manner.

[Jolly]

@Mik said in What did you get done last week? Elon wants to know...:

I might add that I may well be one who loses my gig due to the cuts. I still support it.

You're a legacy guy. With a unique set of skills.

Speaking of...I have a friend who just turned 80. Heckuva guy, did pararescue in Vietnam. After his hitch, he went to work for Ma Bell. Worked his way up to where installed the phone systems in large businesses, such as hospitals, etc.

When he retired, he had so many people call him to work on those legacy systems, he formed his own 1 horse company (hiring some other guys as needed). He just finally gave it up...shucks, he's 80.

He still has people beating his door down to work on those old systems...

[Horace]

Kash tells his people to ignore that email:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/kash-patel-tells-fbi-staff-to-ignore-elon-musks-demand-report/ar-AA1zBXuf?ocid=BingNewsSerp

[Doctor Phibes]

@Horace said in What did you get done last week? Elon wants to know...:

Kash tells his people to ignore that email:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/kash-patel-tells-fbi-staff-to-ignore-elon-musks-demand-report/ar-AA1zBXuf?ocid=BingNewsSerp

Oh this could be fun to watch.

[Jolly]

@Doctor-Phibes said in What did you get done last week? Elon wants to know...:

@Horace said in What did you get done last week? Elon wants to know...:

Kash tells his people to ignore that email:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/kash-patel-tells-fbi-staff-to-ignore-elon-musks-demand-report/ar-AA1zBXuf?ocid=BingNewsSerp

Oh this could be fun to watch.

Two alpha dawgs, fer shur.

[Horace]

Now the heads of all the other branches are going to be shamed into protecting their people too.