'Honestly terrifying': Yosemite National Park is in chaos

[grnidone]

https://www.sfgate.com/california-parks/article/yosemite-national-park-in-chaos-20163260.php

[ergophobe]

That article is pretty outdated. There was a huge blowback and now things are looking pretty normal.

There were 11 people fired and all of them currently have their jobs back, though many jobs are under review. There were 15 early retirements.

Our friend who was the only EMT in his park (not Yosemite) and should not have gotten fired under the guidelines being used by DOGE, got his job back.

The seasonal hiring freeze has been unfrozen and, in fact, the park was approved for *more* positions than last year.

The real tragedy is that it threw people, including career employees into uncertainty. People with years of outstanding reviews were told they were being fired because of poor job performance. That includes a personal hero of mine who is one of the most inspiring and dedicated rangers in the service.

The logic is ironclad: I can only fire you for bad performance and I do plan to fire you, therefore your performance is bad. Also, at the bottom of the letters, it essentially said, Congratulations! "You will now be able to transition from a low-productivity government job to a high-productivity in the private sector."

A lot of people in NPS get that government spending has to be brought under control and maybe some cuts have to hit NPS. It is the chaotic and cruel way this was done that upsets people, not the fact of cutting positions.

When you do this to people, a lot of loyalty evaporates instantly. Devoting your life to a job that pays way less than the private sector, but taking that cut because you believe in the mission and in public service, and then being told that you are a villain and a parasite does not rally the troops. These are unforced errors.

I would be personally happy to see a lot of unforced errors, but these cause real harms in the lives of real people for no reason.

[buckworks]

DOGE is like a doctor who says you need to lose weight, then proceeds to achieve that by amputating your leg.

[ergophobe]

> amputating

There does not seem to be any operating definition of efficiency. If efficiency were the goal, some areas would be cut and some would be expanded.

Or put another way, which government is more efficient, the one that has 100 people processing passports and it takes three years to get one, or the one that has 200 people processing passports and it takes three hours to get one?

I know that it doesn't seem like the math on that would work, but it's like a traffic jam - once you exceed capacity, everything backs up and that backlog can never clear until load drops well below capacity, which in the passport example you would achieve by lots of people just giving up and not getting passports. Which is efficient from one perspective (headcount) but not from another (getting passports to citizens).

[grnidone]

Ergo:  posted this because I knew you'd have the real skinny. Thank you.

What most people don't realize is that most government jobs are HARD to get! You really have to be the best in your field.

Probably the easiest job to get in the gov is to run for office.

[ergophobe]

> easiest job to get in the gov is to run for office.

A bit OT, but it reminds me of something I think posted in the quotes thread:

"While you sit on the sidelines crippled by imposter syndrome, actual idiots are out there running the world."