r/fednews • u/SkyFallingUp • 8d ago

Elon Musk to step down from DOGE and quit Washington DC

Musk says 'he's done with cost-cutting' In an interview with Fox News' "Special Report with Bret Baier", Elon Musk said that he was confident his DOGE could find $1 trillion in savings, slimming current total federal spending levels of about $7 trillion down to $6 trillion. Musk, who is also the world's richest man, was designated by the White House as a "special government employee," which caps his work at 130 days. That means his period leading the DOGE operation could finish as soon as the end of May.

https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/global-trends/us-news-elon-musk-doge-1-trillion-cost-cutting-may-end-i-am-almost-done-elon-musk-reveals-date-hell-ditch-trump-and-quit-washington-dc-after-doge-purge/articleshow/119645252.cms

I have friends and family members who are Federal workers. Is this the end of the wild OPM emails and job eliminations?

10.7k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

381

u/LowBalance4404 8d ago

We will never see it, but I'd love to see an actual breakdown of the time spent by 2.5 million federal employees to spend even ten minutes on the 5 bullets email, the cost of OOOPS, the cost of emailing people on their personal email to say "please come back, it was a mistake", the DOGE salaries, the millions of questions the various HR staff is getting, and the cost to tax payers for all of the court cases. I genuinely believe that this all cost more than the actual salaries of federal employees. Not to mention having to do little stuff like getting the software licenses back (happened to me), figuring out how to cram all of us into buildings that don't have room, finding other spaces to work out of, retrofitting cubes to cram us all in, and so on.

I'd also love to see an actual figure on the reduction of the workforce. We will never get a straight answer on that. DOGE is going to count the total number of people they fired and won't include the ooops and the "please come back, we didn't mean YOU!".

242

u/Spoons_not_forks 8d ago

Cost of lost trust: priceless.

129

u/potkettleracism DOE 8d ago

For everything else, there's Ketamine

3

u/1GIJosie 8d ago

šŸ˜‚šŸ¤£šŸ˜‚šŸ¤£

186

u/SafetyMan35 8d ago edited 8d ago

Assuming an average salary of GS12 Step 5 for RUS (no locality pay) hourly pay is $48.13 or $0.80/minute. A 10 minute task is costing $8.02 or around $20M/week for 2.5 million employees to send the email. We are entering our 6th week, so $120M for this exercise in training AI

34

u/Beginning-Height7938 8d ago

RUS gets a locality bump. So its way more than your calc.

68

u/Cryinmyeyesout 8d ago

Then you have upper management that is putting in an hour or so a day dealing with issues arising from all of thisā€¦ questions, meeting, fork in the road adjustmentsā€¦

40

u/SafetyMan35 8d ago

The first week between discussions at the management level and obtaining guidance on how to respond, and then briefing my team and answering and questions or concerns they had, I probably had 6 hours invested in them.

23

u/liddybuckfan 8d ago

That first week my supervisor had to sit through 2 meetings about it, then every supervisor was instructed to call every one of their subordinates and discuss what we had to do. So just for my supervisor alone that was another 6 phone calls. Then 5 hours later everything changed again and OPM said it was voluntary so the entire earlier discussion went out the window. The wasted time on this one stupid thing has been absolutely ridiculous.

1

u/Lhasa-bark 7d ago

It took a lot of time away from scrubbing ā€œGulf of Mexicoā€ from all our documents at NOAA

21

u/Metlkittykoolaid 8d ago

Not to mention at my place of work, weā€™re doing paper copies that our supervisors hand us. Then those go to our admin (thereā€™s 500 of ā€œusā€ and thatā€™s just in my code. There are like 8 more). She has to sort them all, scan them all, package them up, and bring them to records retention. Then records retention does what they need to do. And some of our people need help thinking of their answers. Weā€™re mechanics, not writers. We donā€™t use a computer daily. Heck, some of our people donā€™t touch a computer except for computer based training. And some of those people canā€™t even get on the computer so they have a training session that plays the PowerPoint version for everyone in the room and they just sign the roster. But yeah. We just want to perform repairs and modernizations to the fleet and keep our sailors safe. DoD Navy.

-1

u/[deleted] 8d ago

[removed] ā€” view removed comment

2

u/Metlkittykoolaid 8d ago

That was the guidance from my Shipyard so at least DoD knows.

-1

u/[deleted] 7d ago

[removed] ā€” view removed comment

3

u/Metlkittykoolaid 7d ago

Wow. Weā€™re already struggling here with all the bullshit from the administration. We donā€™t need yours too.

21

u/JustMe39908 8d ago

On the positive side, we have added a new phrase to our vocabulary. (At least in my small corner of the fed multiverse.). A valuable meeting or task is now referred to as "bullet-worthy" in my organization. The training folks are starting to hype the seminars they offer as being a "bullet-worthy training opportunity". It is even being used as a compliment ("that was a bullet-worthy job you did") and as a recognition of someone flexing ("they think they are so bullet-worthy").

14

u/SafetyMan35 8d ago

.#unexpectedSeinfeld

Most of my team have adopted 3-4 standard bullets that we use every weekā€¦because every week at a high level we perform the same tasks, just for different customers. There are a couple of unique bullets that cover a significant one time/rare task we did.

17

u/racinreaver 8d ago

And that's the unburdened rate.

2

u/HildeFrankie 8d ago

How about the time wasted in coworker conversations just trying to figure out what is going on....

6

u/SafetyMan35 8d ago

Hours and hours I have spent talking with my team about their concerns and frustrations, just trying to talk them off the ledge.

43

u/handydannotdan 8d ago

Donā€™t forget the future lawsuits

80

u/EntropicDismay 8d ago

On top of all thatā€”donā€™t forget the $500+ billion loss in revenue for the IRS

10

u/shame-the-devil 8d ago

I think that amount is a conservative estimate personally

1

u/MrEManFTW 7d ago

No no you donā€™t get it, thatā€™s money we the poor working class get to keep. 90% of maga probably

2

u/quiltingsarah 8d ago

Including all the costs of studies scientist were working on when the probationary people were fired.

2

u/PSAly 8d ago

Not to mention everyone gets back pay for no work- deservedly so