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Comment by arunabha | Hacker News Reader

Setting aside the politics of the issue(which is very polarizing) this is the part which troubled me the most

> "Instead, they found themselves on a call with people who wouldn’t say where they worked in government; in a few cases, some people wouldn’t disclose their last names, or any part of their names"

This is terrifying if this is true. Forget this happening in a Government department, if I were in a meeting to discuss the details of my work with people I didn't know and refused to provide basic identification, the standard response would be to call security.

Whether you agree or disagree with the goals of DOGE, I think we can all agree that the approach chosen is incorrect.

Edit: - Fix formatting

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Yep. And there are established processes to handle reduction in force (RIF) directives and performance issues.

None of that was followed. No attempt was even made.

Drastic cost cuts are usually not simply performance issues and usually the mistake of top management (usually overhiring), but of course it hurts most the employees.

This is irrelevant to what DOGE is doing. They aren’t cutting costs; they are (1) enacting the “retribution” that Trump spoke of in the campaign and (2) creating an organization that has fealty to a single person.

This is a massive insider or outsider threat risk. Anyone with knowledge of this interview process and access to 18F's calendar could schedule one of these meetings and probe the scared employee on the call for sensitive information about the org.

I do work for a US company from outside the US and if I can't identify the people I'm talking to I have to hang up. We have yearly training on the importance of not sharing internals if not authorized.

In that case I'd ask them for the full name so I can look them up and call them back. But I also wouldn't be scared of getting fired for that, quite the opposite I'd also happily resign if they ask me to talk to random people about internals.

Why set aside the politics? Everybody that is not high drinking Xitter punch can see that this is a national tragedy. I'm a libertarian. I actually believe in many of these ideals that are being used as a smoke screen for this fascist coup. Am I happy they are at least finally getting some attention? Fuck no! In the least worst case their political capital will have been burnt for the next several decades. In the likely case, these looting vandals will have destroyed much of the wealth and culture of this country that made it possible to ponder the possibility of lofty ideas like widespread individual freedom.

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