Public sector — Blog

Can you DOGE this?

I am glad I finally got new tires on the M2, right before another pair of rain storms is due to hit the San Francisco Bay Area. Not that I will be doing any driving during that time. It’s just nice to know that in an emergency, I don’t have to treat the accelerator pedal with the smoothest of care. The original set of rear tires were truly at its end of life.

It’s been interesting to see Elon Musk’s DOGE running through Federal agencies looking for redundancies and waste. Legalities aside (I’m not a Constitutional lawyer so I’ve no idea whatsoever), any fiscal conservative worthy of the claim should welcome a culling of the largesse. (Please don’t forget the Pentagon, Elon!) Indeed, why should billions in taxpayer money still go to other countries, when the referendum for last year’s election is the ill economic feelings of Americans?

President Trump wishes to cull the actual number of Federal workers. He probably saw Elon getting rid of 80 percent of the Twitter workforce, and what is now known as X doesn’t seem to be worse for it. I’ll take some of that! DOGE probably can’t go that far with the Federal workforce, but there’s stuff to be cut for sure. The stereotype of the lazy public worker who does nothing but collect a paycheck (and protected by a union) is based on some reality, no? We all either know a person (raises hand), or know a person who knows a person.

With San Francisco facing a fiscal cliff, the new mayor might need to pull the layoff lever. Some in the San Francisco subreddit hilariously wrote the city can use a DOGE-like makeover. Surely our weathly scion of a mayor can ask some business tycoon friend of his to spearhead such endeavor.

Actually, an entity that we can all agree that needs to be way more efficient: the Department of Motor Vehicles. Elon is more than welcome to get his team of twenty something software engineers to hack into the DMV system.

Government work

Last week I wrote about the aim to not spend any money on Black Friday. I am happy to say: mission accomplished. Going away somewhere during Black Friday helped tremendously. I’m not tempted to click on the latest slickdeals tweet if I’m nowhere near a computer! Today is Cyber Monday, yet another black hole of potential spending. I’m doing my best to avoid Amazon right now.

During Black Friday we ran into a friend whilst getting lunch at Costco. Say what you want about inflation, but Costco food court prices have remained consistently low. A hot dog, a soda, and a slice of pizza can still be had for less than four dollars. If gas prices weren’t so enormously inflated, I’d drive to Costco more often for lunch. If the price of a hot dog ever increases from $1.50, surely the American economy have gone to the toilet. Hasn’t happened yet in my lifetime!

Right, the friend. He works at a credit union slinging loans to people looking for a lower interest rate than the big banks (credit unions are great). He said he’s looking to switch to a government job, perhaps with the city of San Francisco. The allure of excellent benefits and a pension at the end is rather tempting for a person in his mid thirties wanting long term stability. Especially during these uncertain times: we’ve all read about big tech massively laying off employees. Companies not doing layoffs are freezing hiring.

I guess I should consider myself lucky to be employed by the State of California. I didn’t realize a government job can be so desirous by those on the outside looking in. The conventional wisdom is that the private sector pays substantially more than the public sector. Everybody wants a solid rock to climb onto during times of uncertainty and recession. Public sector jobs also typically offer excellent work-life balance, something I cherish greatly.