Dystopian novel plots / pantomimes / farces spring to mind about these emails along with all the other recent White House antics….. as well as adages such as truth being stranger than fiction and the perils of ignoring the lessons of history.

Such a familiar situation - I once walked into a room to hear a senior manager telling his team that the planned redundancies were 'not his idea but HR were making the company decrease headcount'.

Its very depressing. None of it makes any sense. My understanding of the DOGE dept is to reduce cost and make it more efficient. There are 2.9 million federal employees. Average hourly pay in the Federal sector is $54. Assuming that it took everyone about 30 minutes to recall what they did, write it up, check that they hadn't included any classified info and sent it, that exercise cost around $74 million. And that's before someone reads and does something with those e-mails. I saw someone post that there are 467 people in that HR team and that if it took them 15 mins to read and assess each e-mail it would take them 160 days to go through them all, if every single one of them did nothing but that.

It seems an incredibly wasteful exercise

No words.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyz2xk7d9xo

In reply to Tania:

Do we have a facepalm emoji? Words fail me.

In reply to Anka:

In reply to Teresa:

Great maths and calculations of waste there Teresa. When I saw this and all the posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, Blue Sky and the news....I thought, this is all about power, control and reach. Sometimes the signalling is what creates the impact rather than the task itself.

When I saw this, I thought this is all about power and control. It happens on a smaller, local scale so often so I guess it lifts the lid on how any function, gets to be used as the conduit for ill advised initiatives like this. How many HR professionals or other professionals have been told to do things they fundamentally disagree with or think are unethical but can't complain or blow the whistle on them because they fear for their own jobs. I think it shows the delicate balance of power in organisations, how hard it is to speak up and how fragile the psychological contract is.

Elon Musk and his team all over everything it seems, I wonder how much they are charging for that service and what the cost/ benefit analysis is for this 'efficiency' saving work. Strange times in the world, I wonder what is going to be the tipping point to stop it.

In reply to Steve Bridger:

Mr Musk has been pushing the genius line for many a year. I see hubris, similar but different.