16h ago

Musk says all federal employees need to explain their work — or be let go

His post on X said employees will receive an email “shortly” requesting to “understand what they got done last week.”

All federal government employees will have to share what they’ve been working on in the last week or face dismissal, Elon Musk said Saturday.

Musk posted on X that employees will be receiving an email “shortly” requesting to “understand what they got done last week.” A lack of response, Musk said, “will be taken as a resignation.” It’s unclear what legal authority, if any, Musk is relying on.

MBFC
\ Archive

politics @lemmy.world

grumpo_potamus @lemmy.world

14h ago

Musk says all federal employees need to explain their work — or be let go

www.politico.com /news/2025/02/22/musk-federal-employees-explanation-dismissal-00205613

59 20

88 comments

Wait. Musk has access to every address of these workers. Many have mortgages. Is this just a play to have the bank take their homes and then they are auctioned for cheap to Musk et al?

So his approach to reducing bureaucracy is having everyone document and explain what they do?

It turns out, he can say "not responding to this email is a formal resignation" until he's blue in the face, that doesn't make it so. Ignoring the part where it's not legal. He WILL be paying unemployment to all of them, and likely wrongful termination. Of course by "he" I mean "all of us" because it will be our tax dollars.

Remember, you don't have to to work for the government to reply to hr@opm.gov
Just saying...
- It's quite easy for a Mailserver to ignore external mails
  
  Don't email servers still have to check who is sending an email to ignore it? You could theoretically DDoS them by accident i would think.

Well just got that email just now. I know why it’s happening i just hate that our safety systems we have in place arent doing anything to stop this nonsense.
- Sorry to hear that, they will undouptly run this trough an AI to decide. So game it the old fashioned way with all the buzzwords (and definitely none of the black list words) or modern prompt injection
- Also that email doesn't state anywhere about no response being considered a resignation. It's been sent on a Saturday night, and given just over 48 hours to respond, meaning many employees will be on RDO and unable to respond.
  
  Well i am working today and just got an email from my director saying that we are to fill it out cc our manager and he will find out more on monday. I refuse to send anything without more guidance and union representation.

This is basically the platonic ideal of the most incompetent manager/boss possible.
What, is Elon gonna personally read 3 million emails?
Is he gonna hire a team of contractors to go through them?
Will Elon or his team of broccoli boys even understand any of the technical or process specific terms people use?
This is an obvious farce, all it does as serve as the flimsiest way possible to at any point claim he can fire anyone for any reason as 'I am unsatisfied with your self directed performance evaluation'.
Beyond this all being completely illegal, of course.
... Hopefully, if we're lucky, Elon will have all these emails printed out, like when he decided to print out Twitter code for review, and he trips down the stairs with a bankers box or two of these emails, and breaks his fucking neck.
- Feed the emails to grok, summerize, then fire people based off whatever it hallucinates.
  
  Unironically that is probably what he will do.
  
  Better inject all the emails with prompts then!
  
  Data harvesting and expecting people to release classified information.
  
  Better winterize it first
- Will Elon or his team of broccoli boys even understand any of the technical or process specific terms people use?
  Ooooh malicious compliance idea:
  Send the email and make it chock full of every acronym and industry terms you can think of. Make it as opaque as possible so only a technical expert can read it.
  
  Include the entire dictionary in white single point font
  
  And needlessly define the most obvious words while ignoring the tricky ones.
  
  I wouldn't do that. The burden of the proof to let someone go isn't on the DOGE people. If they don't feel convinced in whatever very-brief time they spend looking at someone that the person needs to be there, I expect that the DOGE people are liable to put them on the chopping block.
  I'd treat it as a job interview. The interviewee has to convince the interviewer that they should work there, or else they aren't going to be hired. Same thing here, just less-pleasant mood in the room.
  If I were in the potentially-laid-off people's shoes, I'd lead with a pretty concise summary of the important stuff that happens because of me doing my job, since I bet that the DOGE crowd isn't spending a whole lot of time deeply looking at any of this.
- It's the same exact tactic as used in Elonia's "polls" on Xitter...
  Attempt to show "cover" or "support" for what he's going to do anyway regardless of outcome.
  Simple theatrics.
  🤦‍♀️🤷🫏🤡🖕🖕
- A baby or two would probably break his fall.

It makes sense we’d move through “Office Space” territory on our way to “Idiocracy.”
- Office Space was the first thing I thought of.
  
  What time is your meeting with the Bobs?
  
  A pile of fish guts on the TPS reports does not constitute a "lack of response", and is therefore not a fireable offense. Any wagers?
- 'office space' probably still lives....
  in treasury department computers.

My wife just got one of those emails and it’s hilarious
This email has been received from outside of DOl - Use caution before clicking on links, opening attachments, or responding.
EXTERNAL] What did you do last week?
Please reply to this email with approx 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager
Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments
Deadline is this Monday at11:59pmEST.
- Tell her to report it as phishing through her security department. Those are the type of emails you're trained to report.
- So if your entire job description is classified, which is pretty common, you're fucked.
  This will be even worse than when he used the same strategy on Twitter.
  
  This week I [REDACTED] the [REDACTED].
  
  There are unclassified ways to talk about classified information.
- this is insanity... so when will Americans finally implement trumpets desires and kick out this shitty immigrant back to wherever he came from?
- What happens if you don’t respond?
  
  — Copy of my other comment from this thread
  Word on the street is that if you don’t reply you’ll get fired.
  My wife just got one and sent me this right after
  Posted with her approval ofc

Hey Musk you asshat, stop wasting all of our government’s time asking federal workers what they did last week! We all know what you did, mass terminations and backpedaling, because you and “DOGE” are INCOMPETENT.
——— The good news is that all of us will die someday. It’s a small consolation but it’s what helps me smile today.

Musk : Explain your work.
Employee : You gave me this work.
Musk : Fired.

what an incompetent shitheel.
- Well look, I already told you! I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to! I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people! Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?

I wish Musk's head would let go of his body
- His head would just grow a new body like the monster from The Thing

lots of federal workers don't work a normal schedule or get government email at home. they won't even know about this til its deadline is past. not that that's the only problem with this.

Have him justify his existence first

"Fucked your mom. Sorry you had to find out like this."
- "Spent some time with my kids."

now everyone is getting messages to not do it. and calls.

Does this count Congressmen and Senators, too? How about Special Government Employees?
- I don't think that Musk is doing this for whatever he's being directly paid. He may benefit indirectly in that reshaping the government in some ways might be favorable for his business or financial interests. But he's not in any kind of need of money. Anything that the government would pay him would be a rounding error on his other sources of wealth. Just no point.
  kagis
  https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-doge-paid-donald-trump-white-house-2032709
  However, as previously reported by Newsweek, Musk is not receiving a salary for his role, according to White House filings. Musk has been classified as a "special government employee," a designation that allows individuals to work for the government on a temporary basis.
  Yeah.

He's not going to even understand most of the responses he gets, so this is an exercise in futility. In some cases it would be like having a village idiot judge the Nobel prize candidates.
- He and his goons don’t even understand how SQL works.
  
  Or COBOL, apparently.
  Could it be they didn't understand some fundamental information on how COBOL handles default date values? No, it must be the 150 year old vampires exploiting Social Security!

Perhaps Tesla, SpaceX, X, and all of his other companies should send him the same email. No way he is getting anything done as their CEO while he is ripping and tearing through the federal government.

I replaced the tremie pipes to address the side fumbling on my department's retro encabulator.
- Replaced the tremie pipes with frampton valves in our encabulator's dint socket and got a 23% decrease in lateral frundling. Is yours the version 1.04a or 43?
  
  Still on 1.04. I've been pestering my manager to upgrade to 1.04a for months now, but stuff moves slowly in the government. The day I no longer have to tighten the girdlesprings to synchronize the Magneto-reluctance fluctuation with the variance of the cardinal grammeters, I'll be a happy man.
- Classy, rockin' the Retro Encabulator. Hoping to upgrade to the Turbo some time in the future?
  
  I think it'll be tough to find the budget for the 300 new hires we'd need to operate it.

He sent this even to contractors. There is no authority to hire and fire contractors. This is ludicrous, and also highly illegal for federal civil servants. I plan on reporting this to the security office as spam immediately Monday morning.

It's like watching Office Space happen in real time.

Dear fElon,
After the daily struggle to keep this government running despite efforts to the contrary and repeated unmitigated budgetary damage, I currently lack the crayons and the spare time to properly school you on a description of my job; even at a level so high you could use it as a space elevator.
Please let me know if that's your goal, as we could realize a cost-savings for NASA. Otherwise, I can recommend some intro courses on forecasting and management that could get you a little more up to speed, and we can arrange a time to meet and talk afterwards.
Have a super day.
-Me

Judging from the article, my suspicion is they are going to use the data to train AI, to eventually replace human workers. It is not to justify one's self to not be fired, it is to allow the AI to replace them.

Remember when Trump got rid of the White House pandemic office?
Because Trump was a great business man who knew how to save money.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/

Copy job posting. Paste into email body. Send.

Can he explain his work without sunglasses this time?

Let's start with you, bub.

My company of 60 people has us do this and the responses don't get read. I'm sure 90% of people use GPT to give their responses anyway.
Have fun with that Muskrat
- Word on the street is that if you don’t reply you’ll get fired.
  My wife just got one and sent me this right after
  Posted with her approval ofc
  
  This right here.
  External email is asking for work information. It is my actual boss's decision if it should warrant a response.

More fuel for the inevitable lawsuits from all the people working for the largest non-profit org in the world. Hope they can make him personally responsible.

Oh, so that’s how he’s trying to run the country like a business! Sell everything off, and then move to a different one.
I also seriously doubt he’s smart enough to understand what many employees, such as scientists and engineers, actually do.
Unelected, immigrant traitor, in the process of selling your future.
To be clear, I have no problem with immigrants, but many of his conservative “constituents” do!

Can you imagine working for this guy. I supervise a small team and would never micromanage this way without a really good reason for it. Who the fuck has time for this.

Explain to me, Orange Man. What value do you bring to the table?

I'd send them the longest fucking email back detailing everything in painful detail of what I did last week. 99% being straight up fluff.

[Scene: The Oval Office. JD Vance, the Vice President of the United States, is seated at his desk. Pete Davidson, a reporter, enters the room with a notebook and recorder.]
Pete Davidson: So, Mr. Vice President, I've been looking into your role here in the White House. Can you tell me what you do?
JD Vance: [smirking] Well, let me tell you. I deal with the goddamn politicians so the lawyers don't have to! I have people skills... for people who are trying to get things done!
Pete Davidson: But... but isn't your job more about policy and-
JD Vance: [interrupting] Policy, schmolicy! The people want me to deal with the people, not just talk about them. And let's be real, I'm good at dealing with people. I've got charisma, I've got charm, and I've got a Twitter account that can turn anything into a meme!
Pete Davidson: [skeptical] Uh-huh... And what exactly do you mean by "dealing with the people"?
JD Vance: [leaning forward] I mean, I'm like a social media influencer for the Trump administration. I get to say whatever I want and watch it blow up on Twitter. It's like having my own reality TV show! The engineers are just there to document everything so everyone knows I'm not a total disaster.
Pete Davidson: [taken aback] Uh... okay, got it...
JD Vance: [grinning] And can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people who can't see the genius of my role?!

88 comments