Under Elon Musk's Eye

A conversation with a federal employee

Plastered everywhere in the news right now, as it should be, is talk of firing federal employees en masse. Fathoming the scale of sending a termination letter to some 2 million people is discombobulating, so it made me wonder what it must feel like to be just one singular federal employee. Through my social media accounts, I was lucky enough to connect with just such a person who bravely agreed to talk with me on condition of anonymity out of fear of being fired for no stated good reason. With their job safety in mind, I asked them six vague enough to protect them but (hopefully) specific enough to still be interesting questions. Still, I struggled to know what I should or could ask, given that the situation is already a quagmire. Along with Elon Musk’s mass terminations of federal employees are the sometimes disastrous attempts to reverse those terminations just as abruptly. Take for example the termination of the National Nuclear Security Administration employees this past weekend, the agency tasked with managing America’s nuclear weapons. DOGE summarily fired all 300 employees, abrogating human resources despite the possibility of dire national security repercussions. Oopsie. Because of that failure to follow normal protocol, rehiring them has proved to be a huge logistics and personnel hurdle, what with the fact that their emails had been simply shut down and government-issued phones turned off. Yikes.

That said, with that kind of malevolent, if disorderly gaze upon them, I’m honored someone who works in the federal government felt comfortable enough to briefly chat with me and allow me to share any responses with you here. It’s troubling to realize Trump has been in office less than 100 days, and yet, I already feel compelled to operate in a totally unfamiliar cloak and dagger way. Still, I wanted this person to feel protected, so at their request, I am using they/ them pronouns instead of their preferred pronouns and not sharing which agency they work for. I still strongly believe their perspective is worth sharing as it helps give a human face, if a slightly blurred one, to a shameful chapter in our country’s history. Thank you for reading, sharing, and supporting my work!

1. How have you and others been feeling the past few weeks? (If you feel comfortable speaking for others.) Is this situation something people feel comfortable talking about at work?

I think everyone is feeling pretty disheartened and filled with anxiety. We all got into this work, because we wanted to serve the public. We all took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. We were all proud to be in a position to help people, that we worked on projects that are meant to help the public. It’s awful now to feel like we are now being attacked for our service. Personally, I’ve had a knot in my stomach and been feeling like I can’t breathe for a month now. I think a lot of people are feeling pretty depressed and anxious but also ready to fight for this country. I thought this was a job I’d do for the rest of my life, and I really enjoyed it, because I got to work and help people all over the country. It may have been in a small way, but it felt impactful being part of the federal government.

Now I don’t know what I will do, how I will take care of my family if I lose this job. Everyone in these jobs are the same as any other American. We are in the same communities and so have the same variety of opinions on politics. We generally don’t talk politics, but everyone is feeling how awful this is. What is great about government work is everyone works together no matter your background or political beliefs. Nobody can ignore what’s happening right bow, because we’re all equally under attack. Just like many Americans, I’ve been just as affected by the financial crises and high prices, and I still live paycheck to paycheck without any real savings. I thought I now have a stable job and have been slowly building a life for me and my family. Losing this job could mean I could quickly lose everything. I’m sure I’m not the only federal worker that is feeling that right now. To see people celebrating the destruction of all these American families just because they don’t understand or are misinformed about the work that we do as public servants is truly devastating.

2. Have you noticed any small or large acts of resistance throughout your agency? Of course, please only share whatever you feel comfortable talking about!

I think there have been some small acts, but so far we’ve mostly been just moving along, trying as best we can to continue to focus on getting our jobs done. We all have our missions and we are trying to focus on that as much as possible for as long as we can.

3. How has Trump and Musk’s attacks on federal agencies impacted you or people you know?

I haven’t talked to anyone yet who has lost their jobs, but I know everyone I’ve interacted with has a lot of anxiety about it. On top of that, people are spending a huge amount of time finding office space for the return to in-person work order. The public doesn’t seem to realize that we’ve had remote employees in the government for years. I saw a number saying that it’s been a thing at least since 2000. Particularly with housing prices being so high, it allows us to hire talented people without forcing them to move to an expensive area to live. We’ve actually lost people before, because they just couldn’t afford to live in the community with cost so high. After COVID, the federal government recognized even more that everyone actually continued to execute their missions whether they were working from home or not. So the policy became a little more flexible.

Most people still work from the office, but there was flexibility for teleworking and hiring remote workers. The change in this policy just means we’re arbitrarily losing talented people for no reason. We’re also now wasting time and energy on finding more office space for everyone without anything showing why we need to do that. Since the data actually shows that people work really well from home, there’s nothing backing up the idea that somehow there’s something wrong with remote work or telework. On top of that the arbitrary firings are a huge waste of resources. A lot of time and resources is put into every person hired by the federal government and now all that is just flushed down the drain. Many places in the government were already understaffed, and now it’s going to be 100xs worse. New employees are brought on to help replace retired or retiring workers and now all that is lost too.

4. Have you thought about leaving your job? What do you think of the buyout you were offered?

I’ve considered finding a new job, mainly because this job now feels so unstable. I would never take the buyout offer, though. There’s not enough assurances that you would get the money, or that congress couldn’t later decide the buyout was illegal and make everyone pay the money back. It’s overall a terrible offer.

On top of that, Elon Musk might as well have told us “let them eat cake” when they said we could take the buyout and “go on our dream vacation”. He doesn’t seem to understand that everyone has bills to pay and can’t afford a vacation just because we’re not going to an office every day. We still have to pay those bills and on top of that find a new job. With government funding being arbitrarily cut by Elon Musk in all industries, it means it’s going to be hard to find another job. It took me 8 years after graduate school to get a stable full-time position, because I came out of school just after the financial crisis. I may be in a better position now for finding another full-time job, but 8 months might not even be enough time to find something else. Overall, the buyout is a joke. I have a feeling the people who took it were either already going to retire or had nothing left to lose, because they felt that they were going to be fired soon.

5. Has your union been supportive?

The union has been amazing. They are doing their best to communicate and provide us with all the facts and to advocate for us. Also just having meetings has helped reduce my high level of anxiety. Now that we are so dependent on them, I have to say that I’m very happy that we are in a union and have their support. The administration is already going after them to try to make us weaker, but we are united in this fight.

6. Why, in your opinion, is the federal government important and why do you feel like Trump and Elon are launching this attack now?

The federal workforce is the backbone of America. Civil servants have always been there working no matter the administration. Firing us is like ripping out America’s spine so that the rest can be sold for parts.

Civil servants not only carry with them their own training and knowledge, but they also have the institutional knowledge passed down from previous generations. I remember once talking to a friend in a farming community and noticing that the work they had done on their land was the minimum of what they could do. I asked why hadn’t they done these other things and they said how would we know to do that. We did what was required and that’s it. Losing federal employees means you lose all that expertise that can help provide people with more options so they can plan better for the future. It’s impossible for everyone to be an expert in everything. Thats why you lean on those with the expertise to provide knowledgeable answers to questions. They know what has been tried before and what works and what doesn’t.

On top of everything, these cuts could have a huge impact on our ability to continue to do scientific research. The federal government houses a huge amount of scientific data. It also has continuous collection of huge amount of data. The American people have paid for all these data and they have all been made freely available. The private sector can not match the federal government in ability to continue long term monitoring over large scales. It would turn into a mish mash of data that would be difficult to put together and analyze. Also, one of the advantages of government sponsored websites and data are their continuity. One thing that makes long-term data sets valuable is that the methods used to collect the data remain the same, so you can continue to compare information over time. All these data can be used and accessed by everyone to answer questions about health, agriculture, extreme weather, flooding, drought, housing etc.

Losing these long-term data sets means we can no longer provide proper warnings to the American people. Soon, if they have their way, we won’t even be able to provide the daily weather. All of this will have big impact on everyone in the country.