Because of Boeing… the PRIVATE contractor who seems incapable of delivering an actual flight worthy craft. But don’t worry, we’ve all been told the private sector is the solution to every problem.

The cuts aren't performance based. They're based on the ease of dismissal.

The voluntary resignations are what they are--I can't fault anyone for taking a good deal, and from what I have heard (married to someone in the government, with many friends as well) no one is being pressured inappropriately.

However, the other cuts are dominantly people who are 'probationary' which means that they are new to their positions, either by being recently hired or in some cases promoted. These people are, actually, on the whole harder workers than those who have been in their jobs for a long time, because they're still being competitive in order to move forward. The non-probationary employees have stronger civil service protections which means that they are harder to fire. This is the major discriminant used to decide who leaves and who goes.

> Laying off what is presumably the bottom 10% of the NASA workforce is probably a healthy decision in an environment where Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams still have not returned home.

Per the article, the 10% includes both people that have taken the deferred resignation offer and probationary employees. The former are probably generally older staff that are already considering retirement. The latter are, according to what I could find on the definition of federal probationary employees, either new hires or existing employees that were promoted or otherwise moved into a new position.

I don't see how you square that with "the bottom 10% of the NASA workforce". On the back end you're losing institutional knowledge. On front end you're losing your future contributors (see the old adage about "eating your seed corn").

Thinking that people in charge can correctly identify the bottom/top X% of their employees on some sort of metric is fooling oneself into believing those in power are better than those below them. It’s going to be 10% of _something_.

One episode of Suits comes to mind.

Let’s be honest, firing people reduces cost, because humans are expensive, and executive and ownership class want to keep costs down and profits up. That’s it.

Framing the narrative in terms of firing the worst performing employees puts the blame on individuals.

In a health company, of course if you can’t perform the duties of the job you should be helped to get to that point (if employer is nice) and let go if you eventually can’t. A firing of 100s of 1000s of people at once is a failure from the top in terms of planning.

You know and I know and everyone reading this knows the administration isn't laying off the bottom 10%. They're laying off people perceived to be insufficiently loyal, or who are working on things the administration would rather not discuss. The "probationary" designation does not mean entry-level, nor does it mean people on some kind of Amazon-like PIP. A probationary employee in the civil service could be someone with years or decades of experience who recently got promoted or transferred. They are firing the folks with the probationary designation because they are the easiest to let go, as career civil servants can't generally be fired.

It's not the "bottom 10%". So far it's people who were hired recently and are therefore easier to fire because they're in a probationary period. Performance has nothing to do with it.

There is about zero chance they have been identified bottom 10%. Plus, what chaotic decision making primary does is that top performers leave by themselves.

Which is likely the goal anyway.

They are probably removing the best 10%, the ones that can find other jobs. I’ve seen it at my previous job.

That's a lot of presumption.

we have 0 evidence that's what is actually happening