Defending civil service

Published on: 2025-03-08 Updated on: 2025-03-22*

Our civil servants deserve better than this (AP News). These people are not nameless/faceless bureaucrats who are shuffling paper. They have families and bills to pay. They cared enough about their fellow countrypeople to dedicate their lives to public service. And yet, this (PBS) is how they are being treated. The people coming into the administration have no idea what public service means (and most of the DOGE bros don’t even know about any kind of service). These civil servants are bright and, rather than going into the private sector to make bank, they put their knowledge and skills to work for the American people.

One such person is my partner, who until a few weeks ago was a Health Science Administrator for the National Institutes of Health. She was sent a separation email and was put on administrative leave due to “poor performance,” in spite of a recent promotion and two exemplary performance reviews. This was all part of the mass firings of probationary employees in this effort to make government more “efficient.” The reality is that the people who were fired had spent much of their lives preparing to get those jobs, from their educational paths to previous positions gaining specialized skills, all to secure that dream job of working for the greater cause.

In fact, when I was in the midst of burnout from a previous job and looking at what types of positions were out there, I came across both the United States Digital Service (USDS) and 18F, which is was part of the General Services Administration (GSA). Working at either of these was a dream job for people like me, wanting to work in public service using skills learned in the tech world. I could do what I do now but for the American people? Help make federal websites more accessible and efficient? Heck yeah. But now, seeing that USDS is now DOGE and 18F gutted and disbanded makes me so sad. And what’s worse is knowing people who did get to work there, felt like they could be there forever, but then started to see the writing on the wall that changes were coming (Moving on from 18F. — Ethan Marcotte).

To all of you who were affected by these mass firings, thank you for your service. I hope you’re able to come out of this process with your head held high, knowing that it wasn’t your fault; it’s just that this administration doesn’t care about your knowledge and skills.

— Mat

• Updated link to 18F from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine (since their website was taken down by DOGE)