The Federal government is simultaneously rolling out chaotic return-to-office mandates and a confusing "buyout" program that mirrors Twitter's controversial severance approach. This combination threatens to drive away its most valuable talent—precisely the people needed to modernize government services.
Unlike Twitter, where service outages were merely inconvenient, Federal services are essential to people and businesses nationwide. The stated desire to modernize the Federal workforce is laudable – and would require retaining talented employees who understand complex systems like federal technology infrastructure.
The kind of people who are most employable in the private sector and therefore likely to leave.
The problems are twofold:
First, there's the rushed return-to-office mandate. Agencies are trying to end all telework and remote work within a 30-day timeline that's remarkably aggressive compared to private sector approaches like Amazon's four-month transition – which itself was delayed in over 40 locations until later in the year given a lack of seats, among other issues.
Mandates like the one at Office of Personnel Management (OPM) are creating immediate challenges:
Remote workers may need to relocate and it’s unclear whether moving costs will actually be reimbursed.
Agencies aren't sure they have enough physical workspace, which leads to unclear office assignments for those same workers.
The timeline leaves little room for proper planning or for people to make decisions that in many cases involve uprooting families, finding new housing and increased costs.
Second, there's the problematic “buyout” program. The Trump administration extended a deferred resignation offer with a one-week deadline for many in the Federal workforce. The offer, which in itself has created massive confusion, was shared in an email that nearly copies the one sent to Twitter employees (“A Fork in the Road”), many of whom later sued over unpaid severance
Even Elon Musk later admitted Twitter's approach was a "mistake" after losing critical talent and scrambling to rehire dozens of employees.
History shows why a voluntary “buyout” approach is uncommon. When Charles Schwab faced their first-ever round of layoffs in 2001, they initially considered voluntary severance packages. Co-CEO Dave Pottruck ultimately rejected this approach, recognizing they would lose the talent needed for turnaround.
Google recently announced to a select group of employees who teams had been merged that they’d run a voluntary process — but on a very specific group.
Standard private sector downsizing is at least rationally designed to minimize organizational damage, even if it doesn’t improve performance. Typically it…
Targets non-critical functions
Reduces management layers
Removes low performers
Protects core capabilities
The current Federal approach does none of this. Instead, it combines rigid return-to-office mandates—which research shows drive away highly skilled workers and women at up to 3X the rate of men—with untargeted buyouts that let top talent walk away.
As I told Federal News Network, this "looks to an outside observer like an effort simply to sow chaos."
Show notes
Work Forward is written by Brian, a human. I use tools to help me edit and the occasional AI-generated image — you could tell, couldn’t you?
Thanks to the dedicated public servants who’ve talked with me over the past few weeks (and years) about the challenges they’re facing. These are hard-working, underpaid, apolitical civil servants — currently under seige.
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