By the end of today, NASA's workforce will be about 10 percent smaller

[bryanlarsen]

It sounds like they're firing the wrong 10%.

From what I've heard, the problem at NASA is it has a lot of lifers who justify their positions through bureaucracy.

This reduction gets rid of the people at NASA who actually get stuff done. People who get stuff done can easily find jobs in industry, so are more likely to accept buyouts. It also gets rid of the young probationary employees who are still idealistic and have not yet been corrupted by the system.

[floatrock]

> People who get stuff done can easily find jobs in industry

> It also gets rid of the young probationary employees who are still idealistic

So you're saying there's suddenly a bunch of space engineers on the market looking to accept whatever terms some space contractor offers them? I wonder which space contractors already have a list with their names and personnel information...

[perihelions]

- "they're firing the wrong 10%"

This was something people overlooked about the CDC layoffs: those, likewise, targeted people who were administratively easy to fire, which in that case was highly skilled experts hired under an exceptional federal employment statute ("Title 42"), which allowed them far higher salaries than other public service workers—but without the standard protections.

- "EIS officers are hired under Title 42, a mechanism that allows the federal government to bring in the best and the brightest, in some cases paying them at rates higher than the typical public sector wages. It offers workers fewer job protections, however, making Title 42 workers easier to fire."

https://www.statnews.com/2025/02/14/trump-cdc-cuts-include-e...

[whatshisface]

I imagine that laying off the best would lead to a decline in overall performance that would justify further cuts.

[p_ing]

> People who get stuff done can easily find jobs in industry, so are more likely to accept buyouts.

Who wants to give up a fed pension for a 401k?!

[vasco]

And then they can find jobs at SpaceX.

[cratermoon]

Probationary in the civil service does not equate to young or junior. A person with decades of experience can get promoted and must go through a probationary period.

[blackeyeblitzar]

Yes, there are a lot of lifers and they have social connection to support each other. Every younger person I know who tried NASA (government jobs not subcontractor) has absolutely hated its culture and found the lack of productivity boring. At least in my small sample, they all left and went private. The ones who stay are happy to be doing little and can tolerate the politics.

[kamaal]

>>the problem at NASA is it has a lot of lifers who justify their positions through bureaucracy

Not every job in the world works well with 'Move fast, and break things' philosophy.

Doing things quickly isn't even a goal for NASA. Doing things right is.

Why do people keep saying every thing either needs to be as chaotic as a dorm room start up or cease to exist?

[jrs235]

Normalization of deviance, the process of becoming inured to risky actions, is a useful concept for today that was developed to explain how the Challenger disaster, and later the 2003 Columbia disaster, happened.

It's what DOGE is doing: becoming inured to risky actions.

[martin-t]

Wrong sadly depends on perspective.

When you see someone seemingly contradicting their stated goals, ask yourself if perhaps they have different, unstated, goals.

[xyst]

This is the intended outcome from neoliberal parasites like Thiel and Musk. They want public government to look like an absolute joke so private corporations can take over with zero regulation and extract as much profit/wealth.

[silexia]

Change the laws so we can fire federal workers based on productivity instead of seniority.

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

Taking the engine out of the car to reduce weight and improve efficiency

No biggie... the effects won't be seen until a Democrat is in charge again, business as usual.

[callamdelaney]

Because Nasa is renowned to be an efficient organisation which has in recent times made good decisions? The space shuttle springs to mind.

[scottcha]

Just an anecdote but my family member does university research and gets grants from NASA (also is ex NASA and left NASA due to too many rest & vest folks). In the last round of reviews there were 20+ NASA employees sent locally to review for a couple 1 hour meetings. Initial take from the outside is it looked like a seriously bloated process.

[doubtfuluser]

Not sure in how many countries it would be ok to slash NASA personnel while having your own space company.

[dmix]

Wouldn't an expansion of NASA benefit SpaceX, not the inverse? They don't exactly compete.

[bpodgursky]

I get the sentiment, but NASA doesn't really compete with SpaceX on anything. They pay SpaceX for launches.

NASA has essentially 0 in-house manufacturing nowdays. Separate question whether that's a good thing, but that's not something the current NASA headcount is doing.

If anything, slowing down NASA slows down launch cadence which hurts SpaceX.

[quacked]

I work for a NASA contractor. This is a very stupid, bad move, since young and recently-called-up civil servant talent are often the people we really want to keep. We will be hurting on the Artemis program if the probationary civil servants all fired.

In general, I agree that a thorough house-cleaning of NASA would be great for technical achievement, but this is one of the stupidest ways you could do it.

[hodgesrm]

> In general, I agree that a thorough house-cleaning of NASA would be great for technical achievement, but this is one of the stupidest ways you could do it.

Unfortunately it's business as usual for the X-style organization reform model. (Not that Musk was the first to do this, of course.)

[bamboozled]

Do you think it was stupid or premeditated ?

[lukashoff]

Surely it's a conflict of interest when private space man fires government space people?

[lenerdenator]

That's great. Was it done in a way that is in accordance with the law, or are we trying to run government like a business, which it definitely should not be?

[seydor]

Businesses are ran according to the law, and get punished if they don't. Sometimes that doesn't happen with the govt

[insane_dreamer]

NASA will likely find themselves in a position where they have to outsource more work to companies like ... SpaceX.

What a coincidence, and a totally unexpected outcome from these cuts to "save taxpayer money".

Ultimately the goal is privatization. Ask the British how privatizing their rail network has worked out for the average citizen.

[Steve16384]

Privatizing the water companies would be an even better comparison: literally a shit-show. Privatization only works if there's competition.

[ctrlp]

From the article itself:

"Are cuts needed?

It is also clear that, as within other federal agencies, there is significant "bloat" in NASA's budget. In some areas, this is plain to see, with the space agency having spent in excess of $3 billion a year over the last decade "developing" a heavy lift rocket, the Space Launch System, which used components from the Space Shuttle and costs an extraordinary amount of money to fly. In the meantime, the private launch industry has been running circles around NASA. Similarly, consider the Orion spacecraft. This program is now two decades old, at a cost of $1 billion a year, and the vehicle has never flown humans into space.

One could go on. Much of the space community has been puzzled as to why NASA has been spending on the order of half a billion dollars to develop a Lunar Gateway in an odd orbit around the Moon. It remains years away from launching, and if it ever does fly, it would increase the energy needed to reach the surface of the Moon. The reason, according to multiple sources at the agency when the Gateway was conceived, is that the lunar space station would offer jobs to the current flight controllers operating the International Space Station, which is due to retire in 2030."

[jeffbee]

The only bright side here is that the grossly over-subsidized regime of Alabama, where the local economy is 95% government science "overhead", is going to get kicked in the face by DOGE boot, and no state deserves it more.

[alephnerd]

Hunstville, AL tends to vote Blue [0]

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Alabama_House_of_Represen...

[matwood]

AL already got smacked with the NIH cuts. 15% indirect cost is ridiculously low and will basically shut down all research at big universities.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/12/trump-universities-...

[whatshisface]

>According to sources, about 750 employees at NASA accepted the "fork in the road" offer to take deferred resignation from the space agency later this year. This sounds like a lot of people, but generally about 1,000 people leave the agency every year, so effectively, many of these people might just be getting paid to leave jobs they were already planning to exit from.

The culling of "probationary" employees will be more impactful. As it has done at other federal agencies, the Trump administration is generally firing federal employees who are in the "probationary" period of their employment, which includes new hires within the last one or two years or long-time employees who have moved into or been promoted into a new position. About 1,000 or slightly more employees at NASA were impacted by these cuts.

Just in case anyone thinks this could tighten up performance, the layoffs are being targeted at the most mobile and the best.

[jauntywundrkind]

Like every other decimation that's happened, it will be whatever is politically expedient and have nothing to do with need, skill, capabilities, or job performance.

[metalman]

The real cuts are comming when the debt ceiling is threatening a goverment shutdown, which will then allow the introduction of "emergency measures" vs it's our budget and we have the legal right to bankrupt the country

[robofanatic]

Would be interesting to see if SpaceX headcount grows in near future.

[amai]

ESA is hiring: https://jobs.esa.int/

[readthenotes1]

Pretty funny all these comments about something that didn't happen.

[sciencesama]

Spacex will be 6% larger

[avalys]

10% seems pretty innocuous to me.

[strangeloops85]

Letting go of all probationary employees (hired in the last year) is precisely the wrong way to do any of this.

I suspect we will also be hearing about the long time experts that are the only ones who maintain or know about certain systems being rehired desperately..

DOGE is frankly ruining the reputations of Silicon Valley and software engineers in a way I didn’t think possible.. they’re being very stupid about what they’re doing.

[mlinhares]

I take you haven't seen what SV execs have been doing or saying for the last decade to think this is what is going to ruin their reputations.

[lubujackson]

You don't hire 22 year olds to do hard work. You hire them and inflate their ego so they will do things they shouldn't, without question. Maybe not there yet (?) But I fully expect these kids to do some highly illegal shit that will land them in prison or worse.

They are effectively a meat shield for Elon who is a meat shield for Trump who ignores the courts anyway.

[hedora]

The big tech companies seem to mostly be aligning with this stuff.

However, historically, SV’s strength has been that startups fly under the radar of the east coast, so they can bypass the corruption holding the rest of the country back.

I hope this is one of those times, because every time I check the news, another democratic or capitalist institution has been gutted or defected.

[lbarron6868]

Silicon Valley and it's executives ruined their own reputations. DOGE is going on a bigger scale and ruining the United States and the federal government. SV execs think they can play god and do whatever they want, that they're the chosen few. Simply firing the probationary workers in every department has to be one of the stupidest things to ever happen to this country.

[morkalork]

Ruining more you mean? Techbros did it to themselves and the rest of us too.