NASA Probationary Employee Update
Keith’s note: Probation firings at NASA are on pause – but only temporarily. Some sort of suspense date on an action related to this that involves some sort of email notification is still being carried internally with a 21 February due date (see Coming Personnel Actions At NASA). The enhanced, closely-monitored performance mentioned by NASA PAO today of employees is indeed underway – but it is somewhat pointless since everyone at NASA has good performance ratings already. The “pass/fail” part of performance ratings is apparently being discontinued. So … this enhanced review starts with everyone having a gold star. Yay Team. The probationary numbers that OPM has from NASA are not yet complete. 959 names are involved – but only half of them are in work – while the other half are still being completed for submission. Meanwhile, if you are among this number of probationary employees who are over 40 years old, then you apparently get another 30 days to think this over before submitting your paperwork. As always, your mileage may vary, contents may settle during shipping, and this is no way to explore the universe.
3 responses to “NASA Probationary Employee Update”
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Only Half of the 959 probies paper work is in process because as per usual NASA never has enough staff to do all on its plate
The contracting and engineering world at NASA is chronically understaffed and seeking to hire new employees. No COs. No contracts. No Engineere no progress against milestones .And given the shaking footing of entering NASA as a probie, and only being able to hire 1 new persons for every 4 that leave…well that is a recipe for extinction. And Congress is now pulling together budget packages that up the contribution to FERS, reduce pensions , etc. on salaries that are well lower than industry
Who would ever want to jump into that hot mess?
No one , that’s who
NASA is headed towards being a contract mechanism to steer $ to private industry. NASA leadership should make that declaration so they can attract workers who wouldn’t mind that role .
It’s already headed that way. The spacesuit and rovers are all leased. Orion and SLS are hanging by a thread and soon NASA won’t need engineers, only contract managers. Most of which even today are Engineer no longer needed to engineer.
Thanks Keith for keeping us continuously updated. I am trying to help a colleague of mine anyway I can to avoid all of this and yes, she is on probation. This knee jerk approach to firing employees is awful. It would be understandable if they put some thought into it first. Even us 10 and 20 year employees are worried.