Is there any proof that they're coding errors? A simpler explanation, to me at least, is that they first blanket fired people by dubious criteria, and are now using this as an excuse to backpedal when they realize they've cut something important.
"Coding error" could mean anywhere from "we wrote an actual good-faith attempt to measure some sort of performance, there was a bug, and we blindly followed what it said without double checking" to "the code we wrote to 'select * from employees' when firing people was in 'error' in hindsight because we now wish to have some of those people working for us again".
No matter how you cut it, in the absolute best case scenario, the people doing the firing were so incompetent that no one can tell they weren't being malicious.
The median scenario, they were simply being malicious.
Nope, the code worked perfectly and did what was asked of it.
So it's Incompetence or Malice. Pick your poison.
They are in charge of making cuts but never bothered to understand what the departments do, the value, or where the excesses are. Yet they still make the cuts.
I think there needs to be one more element like agency? Because under this definition of evil, a sponge elected as president is evil although it wouldn't do anything at all in any situation. Maybe that's still evil?
Russell Vought, Trump’s pick for the director of the Office of Management and Budget (a job he held during Trump’s first term), has said: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/books/review/administrati...
I get that within a software development project, blaming on individuals isn't a healthy way to deal with bugs, but this extends beyond just loss of revenue or uptime and well into personal tragedies.
“… fix the broken systems left to us by the Biden administration.…”
A whole lot of harm could have been averted if the media was willing to call him out on this 10+ years ago instead of embrace the profit potential. But welp.
- They were able to get them reinstated within 24 hours.
- A presentation seen by Science said the overall NIH RIF (reduction in force) was based on administrative codes and that some “may not have been intentional.”
If this was the first "mistake" made by the new administration and DOGE, then these items would be understandable. Or the second mistake. Or the third, maybe.
This is intentional. That is the only conclusion one can draw now. From the terseness of the letters of dismissal to the unreliability of the message ('you're fired! Wait, no you're not!'), one can only assume this is part of the destruction of democratic institutions that the current administration is pursuing.
Obviously everybody would prefer there be 0 mistakes, but I think in general this is, ironically, quite a good indicator!