What did you get done last week? Elon wants to know...
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Tulsi Gabbard, the director of the office of national intelligence, ordered all intelligence community officers not to respond, in a message reviewed by The New York Times.
“Given the inherently sensitive and classified nature of our work, I.C. employees should not respond to the OPM email,” Ms. Gabbard wrote.
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DoD:
Employees at the Defense Department were also told to not comply with the email.
“The Department of Defense is responsible for reviewing the performance of its personnel and it will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures,” Darin S. Selnick, the acting Pentagon official in charge of personnel, said in a statement.
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They all have their own internal rules of employee performance review, which is the reasoning being stated by the leaders of the organizations that are pushing back. The request already specifies that no sensitive information should be provided by the employees.
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In any decently run company, managers will know what their employees are doing without having them send emails justifying their existence.
If the manager doesn't know, then he's the one who should be justifying his existence.
I was only joking
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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.
@Mik said in What did you get done last week? Elon wants to know...:
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.
Yeah there is a middle ground to this. I've said this elsewhere. The "move fast and break things" works in iterative software development and makes for good headlines with those outside the government who think most federal workers are just wastes of space... but there is a smarter way to do this that avoids analysis paralysis but also avoids the "oops we just lost the talented folks who help prevent the hacking of our grid, or the people who are watching over our nuke stockpile, or the people helping veterans use their health and education benefits".
You are right, IMO that it's better to force cuts (I've said this before even Trump)... let agency leaders (like private industry) find where the fat is and cut it. But the RTO, early retirement 8-months of pay, and "oops we need to re-hire you because you didn't reply to Elon's email), is doing nothing but costing the taxpayer more, in net.
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In any decently run company, managers will know what their employees are doing without having them send emails justifying their existence.
If the manager doesn't know, then he's the one who should be justifying his existence.
@Doctor-Phibes said in What did you get done last week? Elon wants to know...:
In any decently run company, managers will know what their employees are doing without having them send emails justifying their existence.
If the manager doesn't know, then he's the one who should be justifying his existence.
LOL ain't that the truth
And federal agencies generally know too, but are often not allowed to reduce staff or fire people. One good thing Trump did in his first term was remove some of the red tape needed to fire a bad employee. I think that was Schedule F, but not sure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schedule_F_appointment
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Trump weighs in to clear up any confusion.
President Trump said on Monday that Mr. Musk’s email demanding that federal workers justify their jobs was “ingenious” and “great” and repeated Mr. Musk’s written warning: “If you don’t answer, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired.”
Only non-witches get due process.
- Cotton Mather, Salem Massachusetts, 1692
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Trump weighs in to clear up any confusion.
President Trump said on Monday that Mr. Musk’s email demanding that federal workers justify their jobs was “ingenious” and “great” and repeated Mr. Musk’s written warning: “If you don’t answer, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired.”
@jon-nyc said in What did you get done last week? Elon wants to know...:
Trump weighs in to clear up any confusion.
President Trump said on Monday that Mr. Musk’s email demanding that federal workers justify their jobs was “ingenious” and “great” and repeated Mr. Musk’s written warning: “If you don’t answer, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired.”
I wonder if Trump got an email
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@jon-nyc said in What did you get done last week? Elon wants to know...:
Trump weighs in to clear up any confusion.
President Trump said on Monday that Mr. Musk’s email demanding that federal workers justify their jobs was “ingenious” and “great” and repeated Mr. Musk’s written warning: “If you don’t answer, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired.”
I wonder if Trump got an email
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Trump weighs in to clear up any confusion.
President Trump said on Monday that Mr. Musk’s email demanding that federal workers justify their jobs was “ingenious” and “great” and repeated Mr. Musk’s written warning: “If you don’t answer, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired.”
@jon-nyc said in What did you get done last week? Elon wants to know...:
Trump weighs in to clear up any confusion.
President Trump said on Monday that Mr. Musk’s email demanding that federal workers justify their jobs was “ingenious” and “great” and repeated Mr. Musk’s written warning: “If you don’t answer, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired.”
Much clearer.
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My question is: Since there are quite a few government workers, is DOGE going to hire people to read these emails?
Let's say there is 1,000,000 federal workers. 100 people read their emails. They can read one every 2 minutes. 30/hr. 240/day.
To go through just one week emails would be 42 days. And now they are 6 weeks behind. LOL
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/02/24/musk-email-government-confusion/
Trump administration tells agencies they can ignore Musk order on email reply
The Office of Personnel Management told HR officials that employees wouldn’t be let go for not replying to an email asking what they did last week.
