What if government cutbacks meant getting rid of the poor performers rather than the poorly connected? Isn’t the idea of a MERITOCRACY built into the fundamental assumption about how a free people’s government works?
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April 19, 2026
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When I was in civil service I found out another employee received the same outstanding review I did even though I did 3-4 times the work, extra out side hours work, and had to help that person quite a bit. That person had quite a few more years than me so who would have been kept & who would leave?
Because we’re dealing with fallible human beings that is always going to be the situation to some degree. Evaluations regarding performance are always going to be subjective at best or downright corrupt at worst..The only way around that is an entirely robotic workforce. Even then there will be programming bias. There is no perfect world and handling people is more of an art than a science.. It’s been my experience that people who like their job tend to put more of themselves into the work and people who don’t like their job trend more towards finding ways to secure/advance their… Read more »
When I was in the USAF [Carter/Regan Years]; promotion boards to higher ranks [O-2/6] were composed of officers in that rank & AFSC [AF Specialty Code].
They reviewed the numerical scores in each category of the Officers Evaluation Report [OER] and the written comment which included the following:
But enough about MY OERs.
I had not realized that 90% of those that left government employ did so voluntarily. On the surface, as Bill said, it seems this was a good thing. But I suspect that those who left this way did so because they believed they could a better job in the private sector be cause they were competant at their, were high performing and were discouraged the union-type system of rewarding workers based on seniority. In other words, we may very have lost the better/best workers. Those who were not productive at their job likely stayed because they feared actually have to… Read more »
I kinda remember there being a few rounds of buyouts, early retirement packages and such. It was along the lines of “we’re going to cut people, the more people that take the buyout, the fewer we have to fire. Do you want a check or a pink slip?”
It was mostly the (probably) union stewards, the die hards, and the ones with TDS that made a big stink about being fired, thinking they would keep their Deep State jobs, as well as their government positions, via their comrades in the judiciary.
As an IRS employee, I witnessed this and knew several that left. There were two main types that left in my experience. 1 Poor performers who were afraid they would get fired, and took the extra cash. Knew two, but one bad performer is still there. 2:Really good experts who were near retirement age. There were many of these. We lost too much knowledge too fast to train replacements. We are still hurting, and thrashing around to get things done. And yes, we are hiring. Too many left. When 20% gone estimate was put forth, I thought that would be… Read more »
If I’m not mistaken, the country of Somalia runs its economy through their government and their government gets its money through graft and other kinds of mass theft. America is a big “donor” in this respect, probably enough they could even have a good argument for renaming their capitol New Minneapolis.
In addition to rating, hiring/firing, promoting by merit, I think the new system should be rank and yank (forced distribution). At least everyone hired in the last 10 years. The bottom 20% or 25% get fired for poor performance for a few years. I know these systems pit good worker against good worker, but in this case it’s pitting mediocre worker against mediocre. And the current culture is probably more toxic than would be created by keeping rank and yank forever anyway.