So yeah, if you’ll remember, I got fired by the NRCS a month ago.
I miraculously got hired for the same Civil Engineering position by a private firm 2 weeks later (I was literally under/unemployed for 2 years so this was insane fortune).
I got a call from USDA telling me not only am I reinstated and getting back pay, I also have the chance to do the ‘deferred resignation’ bullshit Elon came up with so I’d get paid until September.
It’s great I’m literally getting paid to do nothing, it’s great I’m literally stealing funds from the great satan but but I feel bad because…
Well, because this money is not coming directly from the private coffers of Elon.
And I actually believed in the mission of the agency.
But 
I guess I come out of this winning (?) AND unquestionably fucking over the Federal government
I have some experience with the NRCS (not as an engineer, but a natural resources person doing maps etc) and while the frontline workers may believe in the mission, a lot of the farmers and ranchers who are clients just see it as a piggybank and couldn't give less of a shit. They will jump to the highest bidder like Fish & Wildlife if it produces a few thousand more dollars over a 30 year period. Leadership is extremely fickle and incompetent (look how quickly they folded to DOGE), training is non-existent and you can be hired straight out of school and expected to take over programs for an entire county on your own while the rest of the office also has less than 6 months of experience. People in the state office will not help you, but will for sure call you the second you do anything wrong. It's basically the stereotype of government inefficiency DOGE claims it is, not because workers are lazy, but the terrible structure of the organization and lack of incentives for people to stay in a role they are not respected in.
It sounds like the engineering side may be better, but for some other roles, it's not great and I wouldn't feel an ounce of remorse for getting free money out of them.
Lmao but that’s the good part!
It's great for credentials and you do learn a lot, but it's not great feeling like you don't know how to do your job correctly even a year later. Real trial by fire stuff that leads straight to burnout.
Oh yeah, it’s not such good thing when literal crops are rotting due to mismanaged the effluent runoff cause you literally don’t know shit