Yes, you are being too cynical. There is no way that anyone who chose to work at 18F - a place that exists to make government actually more efficient, that has a reputation for quality and execution, and that doesn't pay nearly as well as the private sector - is at all okay with Musk's slash-and-burn version of "efficiency". This kind of message exists to point out the difference: if you actually care about efficiency and good governance, you wouldn't possibly dream of firing these people. Hanlon's razor can't even explain it; even if you're an absolute moron you wouldn't do it. The only possible explanation is actual malice.

No, you can explain it without actual malice. All it takes is Musk having no clue who these people actually are, and not taking the time to find out, because he's got a whole government to go through, so he can't take the time to actually look at any department.

But it isn't easy to tell the difference between that kind of no-time-to-check recklessness and actual malice, at least in any one instance. (You might be able to tell statistically, at the level of the whole government. Not with any one department, though.)

But it's just as destructive as actual malice, so maybe it doesn't matter whether it's malice or not.

Yes. These people are the rank-and-file, doing good engineering work until the USDS got hijacked by Elon's crew.

It's also harder to speak out when you're a US government employee, but now that they've been fired ...

I think the goal is to not antagonize the administration but convince them that they're making a mistake and to reverse it.

No, it's a dishonest question, regardless of your intentions. Let's look at your question:

> Am I being too cynical if I read from this that they were fine with it until they got fired?

What is *it*? What exactly are you suggesting they were fine with? If you don't spell it out, you're asking a dishonest question because it's the type of vaguely defined question that dishonest people use to let peoples' imaginations run wild.

The people working at 18F were always about making government work better and more efficiently.

Absolutely nothing on the page suggests they were fine with the sledgehammering happening or granting access to systems that hold sensitive information. If anything, it suggests they wanted to be kept around to moderate what's happening and help lessen the damage.

The issue isn't whether you're becoming too cynical, it's that you've defaulted to a cynical theory, you've failed to examine your theory critically and you asked a question in a way that is indistinguishable from a dishonest question based on a dishonest premise.

I didn't know what 18F was until today and all I had to go by was their letter of grievance after being fired. I think it would be foolish to take a post at face value, so I asked. I think your thoughts, while well-conceived, are based on assumption that I should have implicitly known to trust the words of this organization.

I know you're upset and I am too. The United States is in a very embarrassing state right now and it's frustrating, right? Especially the amount of misinformation, disinformation, astroturfing and all that going on. I was fortunate to receive a number of helpful responses soon after my question, which helped guide discussion on the topic in other forums.

Don’t take this the wrong way—I’m not calling you dishonest; I’m calling the question dishonest.

My point wasn’t that you should have known to trust the organization. I’d never ask you to trust anyone or anything.

My argument is that the question’s vague phrasing and misleading premise make it nearly impossible to answer while also inviting the reader’s imagination to spiral into meaningless speculation.

While it may not directly inject misinformation, it fosters the kind of speculation that often leads to it—because, believe it or not, grown adults can be surprisingly impressionable.

I also got that from the subtext

Yeah, I don’t see that implied anywhere.