Health and Sciences: Spiraling in the Rankings
Today, HHS leaders have apparently been told to rank *thousands* of employees with the threat of imminent layoffs. This 'selection' is a route to destruction of expertise.
Feb 6, 2025: the Washington Post is reporting that the CDC and other leaders across the Department of Health and Human Services are being told to rank employees. The intent is not to come up with action plans or even to figure out if particular divisions are under-performing. The intent is to undermine expertise and functional ability of government agencies to perform their mission.
This is personal. It has always been. I know people in these positions. They are incredible, talented, doing mission-driven work. Those in probationary positions (i.e., relatively recently hired) are the most vulnerable and, without intervention many of these talented folks will be laid off.
The irony of course is that these folks are often more junior: they made the choice in their late 20s, 30s or 40s, to apply their technical skills and sense of duty to serve in agencies that are meant to improve health and well-being. If we - the people - lose them from government service we will be in deep trouble. We will also lose continuity: the combination of people across career stages with complementary technical skills and wisdom in how things work in practice is a wonderful mixture to do hard things.
This kind of 'selection' is also a route to self-destruction.
HHS is not a website. It has individuals with deeply complementary expertise: data analysis, laboratory work, coding, visualizations, communication, management, clinical care, drug design, and more. It takes a team to tackle truly complex problems. We won’t get a more efficient CDC or NIH if folks are fired capriciously. Although DOGE may have broken laws (which others in the legal sphere can comment on) and they may or may not be limited down the road by judicial injunctions, if left unchecked they will certainly have accomplished their goal: breaking government.
Tell me which is more essential in your car, rank it please.
Of the 100 top parts, take away 50. It’s a fork in the road: choose the wheels or the chassis; the engine or the seats. At some point, you strip away pieces and you are left with junk. Sadly, that seems to be the objective.
We have world-leading programs in the biomedical and health sciences. Support for government-funded research is immensely popular. Explain to me like I am in kindergarten why HHS needs to be stripped down to parts and then discarded.
Note: WSJ has similar reporting, this is not a drill: “White House Preparing Order to Cut Thousands of Federal Health Workers”.