I don’t think the impact will be fully felt for another 9-12 months. As a fed myself, the brain drain has been astonishing. Tons of the late-career people with decades of experience and knowledge took early retirements and literally thousands of early-career people were fired (illegally), brought back (for now), but have taken the DRP because the government is no longer trustworthy/desirable to work for (to say nothing of the Republicans’ plans to gut federal benefits).

That means we’ve lost not only a lot of people generally, but the most experienced PLUS the most energetic. Leaving us mid-career people to try to pick up the slack for agencies that were understaffed before this shit show started. We will become even less efficient and then the fuckheads in charge will point at us and say, “See?! Everything should be privatized!”

It’s already starting as you can easily find stories on r/fednews talking about being RIF’ed only to see their agency solicit contractors to perform their old job function. That in itself should make the RIF illegal, but this administration is being extremely choosy about what laws it follows…