Despite these ongoing threats to job security that might push some to resign, the OPM repeatedly emphasized that any choice to accept a buyout and resign was “voluntary.” Additionally, OPM explained that employees could rescind resignations; however, if an agency wants to move quickly to reassign their roles, that “would likely serve as a valid reason to deny” such requests.
On Reddit, workers expressed concerns about “critical departments” that “have been understaffed for years” being hit with more cuts. A lively discussion specifically focused on government IT workers being “really hard” to recruit.
“Losing your IT support is a very efficient way to cripple an org,” one commenter wrote, prompting responses from two self-described IT workers.
“It’s me, I work in government IT,” one commenter said, calling Trump’s return-to-office mandate the “real killer” because “the very best sysadmins and server people all work remote from other states.”
“There is a decent chance they just up and ditch this dumpster fire,” the commenter said.
Losing talented workers with specific training could bog down government workflows, Redditors suggested. Another apparent government IT worker described himself as “a little one man IT business,” claiming “if I disappeared or died, there would be exactly zero people to take my place. Between the random shit I know and the low pay, nobody is going to be able to fill my position.”
Accusing Trump of not caring “about keeping competent workers or running government services properly,” a commenter prompted another to respond, “nevermind that critical departments have been understaffed for years. He thinks he’s cutting fat, but he’s cutting indiscriminately and gonna lose a limb.”
According to another supposed federal worker, paying employees to retire has historically resulted in spikes in agency costs.
“The way this usually works is we pay public employees to retire,” the commenter wrote. “Then we pay a private company twice the rate to do the same job that public employee was doing. Sometimes it’s even the same employee doing the work. I’ve literally known people that left government jobs to do contractor work making far more for doing the same thing. But somehow this is ‘smaller government’ and more efficient.”
