NOAA appeared to be happening in two rounds, one of 500 and one of 800, said Craig McLean, a former NOAA chief scientist who said he got the information from someone with first-hand knowledge. That’s about 10% of NOAA’s workforce.
It’ll be interesting to see the people up in arms when the tornado season starts and the NWS’ forecasts are not perfect. I wonder if they will be able to make the connection to the person they voted for…
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This is not good, working offshore we need accurate weather forecasts for planning our work.
Well if the forecasts aren’t perfect I’m sure we can just use a Sharpie pen and fix them.
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Wow not good at all.
I stand under correction here, but weren’t these mostly new hires? It’d be illuminating to know where the knife cut the hardest. Maybe the motor pool? The armory? Which is a thing, btb. Cafeteria services? The pretty people whose only job is to fill water carafes at meetings?
Ok, I kinda made that last one up. The UN has water bearers, dunno if NOAA does.
2nd, isn’t automation a thing?
Finally, how many of the people fired were involved in climate vs. weather work?
The majority currently does not favor NOAA’s climate activism. Does the people’s will not have weight?
good riddence, sayonara dead weight.
computer models replaced all of these many years ago
New hires doesn’t mean no experience.
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Big picture:
The developed world just went through downsizing in 2022. Mass retirements because of the demographic cliff of the Baby Boom. That’s why things don’t move a smoothly as they did in 2019.
In every industry the layer of experienced gray-headed people in charge at every level of production and governance suddenly thinned out in 2022. Factory managers, machinists, farmers, lawyers, policemen, everyone. There’s fewer of them, and even fewer experienced ones.
Tried to get a doctors appointment lately? Takes some time doesn’t it?
Notice all the plane mishaps since 2022? Takes a lot of people in a complicated chain of production, maintenance, and operations to keep planes flying safely. Take the most experienced people out of the system suddenly and it doesn’t work as well. Doors fly off. Planes fly upside down. Head scratching stuff until you remember that thin strata of gray-haired people throughout the workforce suddenly thinned out.
Multiply the simple demographic fact of Baby Boom retirements across the entire workforce and you get mistakes at every level. Which will decrease as the replacements for those people learn their jobs over several years.
But if there is performative chaos in the workplace, if cuts are made with no regard to who really runs things at each level of the operation, or if the workers just decide to quit because they feel disrespected and there are better jobs elsewhere, then the system becomes dysfunctional. Because no one gains experience.
In private enterprise if this happens and a company crashes the owners just shut down and walk away. No owner of a company ever admitted they were a poor manager.
This is especially the case with tech industries. When the company goes bust they blame the market for what was their own poor management, capitalize on the loss, and walk away. Dot-Gone Bust. Theranos. Enron. Etc.
I admit that sometimes they end in jail.
Note that the tech giants like Elizabeth Holmes never admit their guilt when they crash a company. At first it’s all theater and dressing in black clothing and waving around chainsaws. (They have an obsession with wearing black). The crowd loves them. But when the company crashes it’s never their fault.
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NWS offices are manned 24/7 to warn of mesoscale events; severe thunderstorms, downbursts, tornados and so forth. Computer models don’t work at that scale.
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Crash the company? That was just straight up fraud from the start.
It was a well-known tech company concept called ‘Fake it till you make it’.
You begin with the concept of an invention or business you think might work. Then, you hype the idea with performance art and business bullshit to attract investors, telling everyone it absolutely will work. Because you are so much smarter than everyone else.
You suck in huge amounts of money and use it to hire talent who you then task with the job of making the thing you didn’t know how to make yourself but guessed could be made.
If you pull it off you’re hailed as a visionary genius . If you fail you can end up in prison like Holmes. Most start-up types who fail just pocket some of the start- up funds and walk away.
The system relies on the investors who were duped being so embarrassed by it they just shut up and act like it never happened. Or they blame someone else.
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No, and that’s the problem with blanket I’ll-conceived orders.
There are several news articles covering long term employees who were recently promoted, due to experience and performance, but since all new positions are “probationary” for the first year, they were cut with the rest of the probationary new hires.
Literally shooting ourselves in the foot. Anyone who’s ever worked for a company going through a downsizing knows it’s an opportunity to high-grade and cut the dead weight. This executive order does the opposite and forces cutting some of the best and brightest because they didn’t take the time to write the order in a sensible, dare I say efficient, fashion.
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How does someone get experience if no new people are being hired?
When the experienced people retire they MAY need to be replaced to keep the shop running.
If not, that is a good time to shrink the work force.
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They may not be experienced at the position they were hired for but that doesn’t mean they have no experience. Many of these people are former contractors for years who were finally hired on by the government. Working in the same room next to the same people for a long time. Many of these aren’t people fresh out of school with entry level jobs.
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Project 2025 is the outline but the concerning thing is nobody knows what Elon is actually doing. His handler is Stephen Miller and even he doesn’t know what information Musk and his minions are walking out the doors with. They don’t have security clearances but are still accessing critical information.
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Unfortunately the cuts targeted new people which oddly included people who simply took a new position even if they had worked for the Agency for years.
Rather than exercise an orderly RIF where the agencies can target cuts to preserve critical staff and functions this decision is simply made based on how long you have been in a position combined with a hiring freeze so there is no way to fill critical vacancies. It does not support the orderly reduction in force.
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Overall new reality summarised in the final words…
“… collective stupidity. Welcome to the future. You voted for it.”
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