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77 sats \ 21 replies \ @freetx 9 Nov \ on: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy denies that 5-day office mandate is a 'backdoor layoff' news
Did you know that a sizable portion of Federal employees work from home? (I've heard up to 20%).
One of the ways they are thinking engage in Federal "Workforce Reduction" is simply to declare that everyone needs appear to office for normal workday.
ERS's and NIFA's workforce size and productivity temporarily declined following the agencies' 2019 relocation from offices in Washington, D.C., to Kansas City, Missouri. Coinciding with the loss of staff in fiscal years 2019 and 2020
decline in the number of employees in certain protected groups persisted. For example, the proportion of Black or African American staff at NIFA declined from 47 percent to 19 percent.
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Definitely, one of the best suggestions of draining the swamp would simply to move agency HQs out of DC.
I think this would also have the salutory effect of attracting less people who are in it for the power and prestige (and thus want to be in DC, near power brokers), and attract more people who are actually competent and want to do the job.
See also: #756327
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You know that in our profession there's a pretty strong correlation between status obsession and technical competence. My guess is that there would be a permanent reduction in competence.
Who cares, though? It's not like most of that work is valuable.
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Good point. At the lower levels, recent grad and early/mid career levels, I would definitely agree. Not as sure about leadership levels though.
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I only know a few older government economists and their competence level is frankly an embarrassment to the profession.
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I'm just catching back up here.
A government economists seems like an oxymoron and I'm sure it is.
I think the best government employees are Park Rangers. And guess where they have to work?
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Most economists work for the government. It's not ideal.
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It's ideal for them because they can't get a job doing anything else. It's welfare.
This would be very difficult to do and the government would be on the hook for the relocation costs of everyone who doesn't live near the office.
You're probably right that the savings from people quitting would more than make up for that extra cost, though.
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Best of both worlds
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Rubber rooms like the ones they have for NYC public school teachers who are suspended with pay
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paying for relocation cost is still worth it
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