11
votes
Thanks to US Department of Government Efficiency, Gumroad’s founder had a second job with the Department of Veterans Affairs
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- Authors
- Ernie Smith
- Published
- May 8 2025
- Word count
- 2085 words
From the article:
As a result of this interview, he lost the position he had at the VA. Here is his account of the experience.
He comes across as idealistic, naive, and careless. I guess some people don't think too hard about what it would really mean to lay so many people off?
As a gov employee -- a new one still; <1yr under my belt -- I've noticed this weird dichotomy that exists within government employees. In many ways, we feds have front row seats to the waste that the average American harps about. The average American doesn't even know how ridiculous it gets. I heard a 5min conversation today about buying a couple storage servers. The cost was $151,000 for two servers. My coworker was told to go ahead and put the purchase request in. And these were supposed to be temporary; a stop-gap of sorts. $151k for a stop-gap measure? Holy shit! Luckily our higher supervisor was like, "Hold on, pump the brakes."
When it comes to personnel, obviously none of us want to lose our own jobs. Or very, very few anyway; I've heard stories of weird MAGAs who are like "I hope I get RIF'd! It's all a waste!" OK, bud. You can just quit your job whenever; you didn't have to work for the government for 30yrs, aiming for the pension, if it's so bad.
But we do see that waste in personnel, too. I'm a GS, but my team has like twelve contractors. Out of those twelve contractors, I feel like only five of them are worthwhile. There's one group of four...I have no clue what those four do. And know one else seems to either. No one goes to them for anything; we all go to one other contractor on their team for help. There are another two, who I like a lot, they're cool, but I don't think we need to be paying their contracting company $200k for each of them just to apply some patches once a month. They were probably a lot more helpful when the team and infrastructure was being built 2-3yrs ago, but why we still have them now? *shrug*
And it's not just contractors. I see it with other GSs, too. One of my coworkers. Nice guy. I don't know what he actually does day-to-day. I know what he's supposed to be responsible for. I don't see him actually doing anything actively most of the time. My other GS coworker and I actually do shit; people go to us for things (people go to her A LOT because she gets shit done). No one goes to him. Because it's either not gonna get done or he's just doesn't understand. I've asked him technical questions about stuff that's supposed to be in his wheelhouse, but he has no clue what I'm talking about. Or what he's talking about, for that matter. Yet he's the longest serving of us three, by far: six years in service. And here I am scared I'm gonna lose my job simply because I'm probationary (just gotta make it to September!)
Any federal employee I've spoken to in the last 5mo has given the same answer when it comes to DOGE: They should've brought a scalpel instead of a wrecking ball. And when the government has over 2 million civilian employees, even a scalpel could still lead to lots of people losing their jobs. Obviously not whole "big-D" Departments or agencies, but maybe lower-level departments and divisions and offices. Even within the area I work, I question the organizational structure; it's so inefficient! And I'm not the only person within our group who's said that.
Pretty early on, before Trump and DOGE, since I started when Biden was still in office, even I wondered why my position existed. I understand why this position exists a bit more now, why I'm needed, but there's still a part of me that's like, "Huh, is my position truly mission critical?" After all, the team was fine for at least 13mo while I was going through the hiring process. And back in December, when we thought the government was going to shutdown, none of us three GSs were deemed "essential." We'd've gotten furloughed.
Lastly, I sat in on a government panel discussion a month or two ago where some higher-ups were talking about a new drive to adopt more efficient, more streamlined processes and getting rid of bureaucracy and inertia. To be more like the private sector. When all the attendees heard that, there was a lot of clapping and cheers. We get it; we want what this DOGE guy wanted. Will it happen? Eh, remains to be seen. Probably not. We'll probably need to establish a whole new department and processes and bring on contractors -- since we're in a hiring freeze -- to monitor and encourage the streamlining of current processes 🙃
Because this is the Internet, even if it's not reddit, I feel like I have to say the following: I am not a young person; I've spent the vast majority of my now 20yr career outside of the government. Mostly in non-profit, but a little bit of for-profit, too. I know all these issues of wastefulness, whether that's in purchases, projects, or personnel, exist outside of government. This isn't the first time I've worked with people who don't seem to pull their weight and/or know what the fuck they're doing, yet somehow still cling on to that position and paycheck for years. Neither realm is perfect; I know this.
But I know that most federal employees would be happy to see some layoffs and dismissals. Provided it was done in a correct manner that actually made some semblance of sense.
The problem with DOGE is that it was never really intended to reduce waste. It was just intended to destroy government. That’s why they use a wrecking ball, to destroy as much as possible quickly before the courts or future elections can stop it.
This has absolutely not been part of my experience in the private sector. My experience has been watching the c-suite waste millions of dollars reorganizing and restructuring only to make everything worse, then laying off workers to goose to quarterly numbers, then a year or two later hiring again because they can't meet their SLAs because (surprise surprise) they got rid of half the people who knew what the hell they were doing and worked the other half into the ground. I've watched this cycle repeat multiple times in the last 15 years or so.
The idea of "running the government like a business" terrifies me, because the only thing I trust the executives at my company to do is chase trends and think short term. They didn't give a fuck about anyone.
I used to work at a private IT company where one of my coworkers had been in the military. One day we were talking about some of the bad decisions made by management, and I said “we are almost as wasteful as the military“. (The military is famously considered a wasteful government entity that pays hundreds of dollars for a nail or something.)
He said the private companies he’s seen were way more wasteful than the military, and that the hierarchy of the military helps it avoid some of the dumb decisions that middle management does in private companies, and the military tends to have more accountability.