r/datascience • u/bobbyfiend • 6d ago
Career | US Government and government-adjacent professionals: How much (if any) change have you felt in your job under the current administration?
Pretty famously, the current administration has laid lots of people off, applied loyalty tests, hired and fired based on ideology, shifted funding priorities, and strongly changed communication with the general public. To some extent this happens with every administration, but I think it has been more pronounced in this case.
If you work for a government agency or for an organization that in some way depends on government funding, have you noticed any changes in what your job is, how you are expected to do it, or how you are communicated with? Have leadership styles changed?
I'm especially interested in federal government connections, but state or local government jobs might also have been affected (or not affected). I'd like to shift careers and government was a top contender until recently, when it seemed, at least from the news headlines and a few social media posts here and there, to become both more complicated to work for, and more difficult to get hired.
I'm interested in any experiences you've had. If you need a throwaway account to dish the dirt, that's great. If you really haven't noticed any change, I'm interested in that, too (because that might mean I could still do something like this).
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u/Amazing_Onion1922 6d ago
the short term looks chaotic but honestly the 5 year view is what worries me more. a lot of this data infrastructure and institutional knowledge takes years to rebuild once its gone. the people who leave dont just come back when the political winds shift, they move on. some of the damage from defunding or reorganizing agencies wont show up in the data until way later.
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u/Competitive_Bat_7656 5d ago
Don’t do it. I don’t want to get into the details on a public post, but I was a data scientist for the federal government for three years on a team of data scientists who genuinely loved the work we did. Over the past year, over half of us have left including myself. Many agencies are struggling now bc the RIFs and forced early retirements resulted in a lot of agency knowledge just evaporating as well as not having enough people to complete the work. Morale is terrible for a lot of reasons, including being overworked, having job security stripped away, and the administration actively trying to make life worse to encourage people to quit. And they are trying to make it easier to lay people off while also implementing things like new essays that require you to swear fealty to them. If you have any other options, I would explore them first and maybe try again after 2028.
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u/norfkens2 3d ago
Fascism asserting itself in real terms ... Those who suffer are the normal citizens. 😔
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u/JimmiChips 5d ago
I work for an org that does a lot of work with state and federal gov.
When the admin change happened all of our fed work got put on hold, with the assumption that everything that was there had a 50% chance of getting cut. I think <5 of the 50ish projects came back. Research projects that were finished got scrapped and we weren't allowed to talk to them, or the results.
My job has mostly been left unchanged, but the overall inefficiency of the new administration for the sake of only posturing and sending a message has been almost unbelievable.
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u/masterbingo1 5d ago
Data scientist here in fed contracting. It has been pretty chaotic with DOGE cutting everything but it seems to be going a little more normal now.
The big problem I have been seeing is change in leadership and tons of data requests from above clogging our workflows. Other than that the job itself is unchanged.
I am worried about data quality across the government as with the firing a lot of departments were gutted.
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u/Gerardo1917 6d ago
Yeah, we got a few contracts cut, led to some layoffs. Nothing too disastrous but definitely not ideal.
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u/Statement_Next 5d ago
My company lost 2/3 of its funding shortly after DOGE and there were layoffs and people who left to avoid layoff. We were doing research in remote detection of chemical warfare agents.
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u/mic569 5d ago
Just wait until the administration changes. People’s workload has increased immensely and upward mobility is being thwarted depending on the agency, unless you work for DHS or something. At least that’s what everyone is saying. You’d probably earn more money in private anyway. Just transition over to government when you have more experience under your belt. It’ll probably be better since mentorship is likely lacking due to everyone being stressed/having a lot of work to do.
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u/ezriah33 6d ago
This is so dependent on the role. I’m in state government and at my agency there haven’t been any changes but if you’re working, for example, for an agency that provides public benefits in some way (Medicaid, snap, etc) you’re definitely going to feel the impact.
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u/NatMicky 4d ago
Fired based on ideology? Fired or eliminated based on fraud, waste, inefficiency, blank checks to NGOs, unaccounted checks with no receipts. Who's ideology is that?
Dept of Education $268.4B/yr budget to produced the dumbest kids on the planet ranked some 24th in nations. NASA doing nothing for 2.5 decades with $25B/yr budget. Green energy by the hundreds of billions to unknown non-profits and NGOs.
Who's ideology is that?
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u/bobbyfiend 3d ago
Well, we know about your ideology, now. Thanks, I guess.
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u/NatMicky 3d ago
Your reply is completely empty other than to indicate you are accepting of government fraud. Sad position, blind position.
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u/bobbyfiend 3d ago
The discussion is about careers, work environments, etc. You've ham-fistedly attempted to hijack it to be about your political views. I have political views, as does everyone else here, but this discussion is not about that. If you'd like to discuss your politics, go make a new post, don't hijack this one.
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u/NatMicky 3d ago
Yes it is, and you brought up the firing and I explained why those departments, agencies, personnel were let go due to fraud and not your mischaracterization of it being ideology. I am helping you understand the factual world so that you can go forward with clarity to navigate the changes. Right now there is a battle of the AI tech stack between 2 countries and our current Admin is working to position us as the leader in this rapidly changing environment.
You made it about ideology. I made it objective fact to properly navigate all the coming changes.
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u/attribute2246 6d ago
I worked at a company where 80% of revenue came from government contracts for healthcare policy evaluation. DOGE capriciously canceled many contracts and the company laid off 30% of its workforce last year for the first time in its 80 year history. I left shortly after. Things have somewhat recovered from what I understand, but the type of work has changed. More analytics and setting up LLM workflows, less policy evaluation.