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[8] Ethan Marcotte’s homepage Posted on 18 February 2025

Moving on from 18F.

Note: This post gets into the last few weeks of American politics. If that’s
not your cup of tea, or if that’s a stressful topic for you, please feel free
to skip this one. (Also, it’s a bit long. Sorry about that.)

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Last week, I finished my tenure as [9]a designer at 18F.

I want to state up front: I’m not leaving under a “[10]deferred resignation.” I
also wasn’t laid off. (Though it’s possible I almost was; more on that later.)
Instead, I resigned from my position as a product designer, submitting two
weeks’ notice…well, two weeks ago.

Before I get into any of that, I’d like to write a bit about 18F, and why it
was so hard to leave.

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While I was writing this post, I thought I’d revisit [11]what I wrote when I
joined 18F last May:

     1. Every single person I’ve met this week — and I’ve met quite a few!
         — has been smart, kind, and really happy to be working where they do.
        As someone new to the organization, that’s so encouraging to see.
     2. It’s, like, remarkably energizing to be around people who are really
        (really, really) passionate about making digital services work better
        for people.

Honestly, that holds up. Because really, the thread here is the people working
at [12]18F, and the culture they’d built: I really, really liked showing up for
work each morning. Everyone I met at 18F was inviting and kind, and excited to
talk about what they were working on. (And just as crucially, what they did
outside work.)

And my goodness, they were helpful — which, as a new kid joining the team, I’m
always going to remember. Here’s one example: during my first month, I was
grousing about some weird little computer issue, and a random coworker just
offered to hop on a call to look at it with me. They hadn’t dealt with the
issue before, and they definitely hadn’t dealt with me before, but they thought
they might help a coworker out. And that impulse — maybe I can help someone out
 — sums up so many of my interactions with everyone at 18F. They were, and are,
a remarkable group of people.

At the same time, I was proud of the work I was doing. Alongside my coworkers
at 18F, I worked with client teams to help them define requirements, refine
their designs, and build better products. I even got asked to pitch in on a
small branding project, and I’d be the last person to call myself a brand
designer. But I mention that because I was often asked to stretch myself, and
every single time I felt safe trying something new — safe, and supported by my
team. I can count on one hand the number of times over my career that I’ve felt
that kind of safety at work. I doubt that’s true of every job in government,
but I know it was true for me at 18F.

I know it sounds pat, but 18F was one of the best places I’ve ever worked.
Until it wasn’t, and I felt I had to leave.

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Before I dive in, here are a couple points that’ll become relevant:

  • I was considered a probationary employee because I’d been employed by the
    government for less than a year. [13]Probationary employees don’t have most
    of [14]the protections afforded to “full” employees, and can be dismissed
    more easily.
  • Due to some idiosyncrasies of how our roles were defined, many (most?)
    people in my organization were legally not eligible to join a union.

So. After last year’s election, I was trying to decide whether or not I could
stay at the job. A far-right candidate had won the election^[15]1, and was
threatening to [16]reshape the government into something more partisan, more
regressive, and more autocratic. My job involved putting rectangles on screens,
and couldn’t have been further from any kind of political influence or impact.
But despite that, I didn’t know if I could let myself be part of that
government, even in a small way. (Also, [17]as you might have guessed: I was
panicking.)

During that time, a friend suggested that while things were calm at work, I
should write down some lines I wouldn’t want to cross: things I’d want to watch
out for that, if they materialized, might be a reason to leave. This was
wonderful advice, and I’m grateful to them for it. Equipped with a plan, even a
small one, I started thinking through what my lines would be.

I’ll spare you the whole list, but I’ll share three of the entries.

 1. First, I need to work remotely. If the incoming administration made good on
    its promise to end teleworking for federal workers, I’d likely have to find
    another job. (This is, of course, [18]why “return to office” policies
    happen.)
 2. The second line was whether I’d be asked to work on a project that could
    kill or surveil people. I know precisely what governments are capable
    of — for good and for ill. But one of the things that drew me to the work
    at 18F was that I understood they tried to weigh individual workers’
    preferences when projects were staffed. I figured if that ever changed, and
    I was asked to work on something I was morally opposed to, it’d be time to
    leave.
 3. The third was being asked to meet with someone who didn’t work for the
    government, and being asked to discuss what I did for work.

The first two were things I looked into when I was first interviewing at 18F:
some of the basic criteria I was screening potential employers for. The third
was driven at least in part by the election, and by the billionaire they were
putting in charge of “government tech modernization.” I expected that if things
went south, he’d just try to run the same horrible [19]Twitter layoffs handbook
, and bring in employees from his other companies to rank — and cull — workers.

But it wasn’t just about that. Many things started happening to the federal
government after the inauguration, none of them good. While the administration
was conducting its vicious rollback of civil liberties and publicly funded
research, [20]this billionaire’s so-called “department” was sweeping through 
[21]various federal agencies, pushing aside career civil servants and the law
to [22]hoover up [23]radioactively [24]sensitive data — our data, bought and
paid for with our tax dollars, I should add.^[25]2 And from what I’d read the
group was acting on [26]dubious legal authority, and with even less [27]
oversight or [28]transparency. I didn’t want to sit down with anyone involved
in that, and pretend like any part of their work was lawful, legitimate, or
moral.

Anyway. The list was a tremendous help; I’ll always be grateful to the friend
who suggested it. But given the speed at which government typically moves, I
assumed I’d have several months before I’d have to wrestle with any of these
questions. If not longer.

(I know, I know. I’m in the future, too.)

A few weeks ago, a member of [29]the new leadership announced they’d be
reaching out to workers to discuss their recent “technical wins”, in order to
better understand how the organization worked. The stress on “technical wins”
to a [30]cross-functional organization felt significant to me; it also felt
significant that most of the sessions seemed to be getting scheduled with folks
who’d only recently joined government — probationary employees.

Just to state the obvious, this isn’t what you do when you want to understand
how your organization works; it is what you do when you’re preparing to slash
the size of your workforce. As you might imagine, this caused no small amount
of panic across the agency, including within 18F. The new leadership hadn’t
communicated these plans to anyone before making their announcement, which left
18F’s own leaders and supervisors frantically working to fill in the
information void.

Shortly after the announcement, I started hearing about folks who’d had their
meetings, but that they didn’t meet with the director who said they’d be
conducting the interviews. Instead, they found themselves on a call with people
who wouldn’t say where they worked in government; in a few cases, some people
wouldn’t disclose their last names, or any part of their names.

And while I was watching these reports trickle in, I got a calendar invitation
for my own interview. From the first email announcing the meetings, I figured
one of my lines was in danger of being crossed; I just figured I’d have more
time.

With only a few hours before my interview, I did a quick overview of my
options. It looked like this:

 1. I could do the interview.
 2. I could refuse to do the interview.
 3. I could delay: call out sick, take a personal day, whatever.
 4. I could resign.

The first item wasn’t really an option, as sitting down with this “department”
wasn’t something I could let myself do. Refusing to participate would’ve likely
been seen as insubordination by a probationary hire; delaying would’ve just
been, well, delaying the inevitable. (It also could have been seen as
insubordination.) My math would’ve been different if I wasn’t probationary or,
even better, if I’d been allowed to join a union. But given my lack of labor
protections, and the options available before me, leaving 18F — withholding my
labor — felt like my best and only option. I called a meeting with my
supervisor, and gave two weeks’ notice.

In a terrible coda, a large number of [31]probationary employees were summarily
let go at [32]my agency just before my last day.

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Leaving was the right call for me, but I’ll never feel good about the decision.
I mean, there’s the grief angle: up until about a month ago, I was working on
projects that felt like they mattered, and working alongside people who cared
about helping government services work better for the public. A few months ago,
I would’ve told you I’d like to stay there for years, which is not something
I’ve said about any other place I’ve ever worked. I am incredibly sad to leave
this job.

And look, being able to leave is, flatly, a privileged option: I can’t not work
forever, but I can not work for a little bit. Most of my coworkers didn’t have
that option. Some had just bought a house; some returned from parental leave,
only to learn they might be losing the jobs they’d counted on to support their
families.

I’m also angry at what was taken from me. At what’s being taken from all of us.
I’ve watched a wonderful job, a wonderful place to work, a wonderful team get
pulled apart by rich men in ill-fitting suits, each of them parroting the same
talking points around “realignment” and “right-sizing”.^[33]3

But what’s happening right now is not about “government efficiency,” nor is it
about “cost-cutting.” I would gently urge you to look at the net worth of the
people who are telling you otherwise. After all, there is no financial
analysis; no review of possible downsides, no weighing of potential negative
impacts. There is no discussion of what could happen if our math is wrong? Or
even more importantly, no consideration of who might be harmed?

Instead, as [34]Anil Dash predicted, the billionaire’s so-called “efficiency”
“department” is best understood as a sprawling form of [35]procurement capture,
in which a group of impossibly rich individuals are trampling over the
regulations — and the federal workers — that stand between them and a deep,
deep [36]revenue [37]stream: [38]your tax dollars. And as they do, they’re
making an explicitly fascist move to roll back rights for every marginalized
community in the country — for anyone who doesn’t look like them, or who stands
in their way.

So, yes. This is a wholesale attack on the American safety net, led by
billionaires and far-right politicians who are frighteningly comfortable with
fascism and autocracy. The last month has been called a coup by [39]politicians
, [40]researchers, and [41]watchdogs alike. I don’t want to diminish the harm
these people will do — the harm they are doing. I also don’t want to downplay
the terror of this moment, because lord knows I fucking feel it.

At the same time: what’s happening right now is also a labor story.

If the American government is slow-moving, it’s because rapid change is deadly
when you’re talking about healthcare, social security checks, market
regulations, food safety, or any of the other countless critical functions it
performs. Those federal agencies are, quite simply, infrastructure. And as [42]
Deb Chachra showed in [43]her excellent book, infrastructure is how a society
invests in its future: in its ongoing economic, societal, and political
stability.

In government, that infrastructure is built by laws, policies, and regulations.
But regulations alone do not infrastructure make. Regulations require workers
to become infrastructure: those workers who labor to understand new policies,
how best to enact them, and then work to make them legible and understandable
to the American public — and, yes, to enforce them. Without those federal
workers, and their labor, these systems fall apart. And the architects of this
assault on the federal workforce are keenly aware of that fact.

The last month has, flatly, been hell. But even so, I wouldn’t trade away my
time at 18F for anything. It was a fantastic place to work, filled with
genuine, hard-working people who cared for that work and for each other. Even
when things got rough, I saw the leaders of 18F scramble to answer their team’s
questions; I saw coworkers reaching out to support each other in countless
little ways. All while ensuring they got their project work in on time. I saw
something wonderful at work, in my work. I’m always going to be grateful for
that, and to my coworkers.

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Resources

If this story’s moved you, I hope it moves you to action. Because the workers I
mention above quite literally need your support.

A few resources, if you’re interested:

  • Wired has some [44]good coverage on the layoffs I described above, and [45]
    on the billionaire coup more generally.
  • [46]Labor Notes also has some indispensable coverage around [47]this
    administration’s attacks on the federal workforce, and how organized labor
    is fighting back.
  • The [48]Working Families Party and [49]Emily Amick both had some great
    primers on what it means to call your members of Congress, if that’s a
    thing you’re able to do.
  • If you’re looking for other ways to get engaged, [50]Mariame Kaba has
    pulled together a massive list of [51]actions that are not protesting or
    voting.

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Footnotes

 1. A victory by the slimmest of margins, mind you. But still a victory. [52]↩︎

 2. And, seemingly coincidentally, thereby ending [53]various investigations
    against the head of said “department”, and occasionally [54]lining his
    pockets. [55]↩︎

 3. And perhaps just as excruciating for me: “datalake”. [56]↩︎

Tagged with

  • [57]work
  • [58]jobs
  • [59]politics
  • [60]us politics
  • [61]employment
  • [62]government

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You can find more entries in [67]my journal.

Read another post

[68] Previously: A challenge of blog questions.

What did I just read?

Photo of Ethan standing in front of a leafy green hedge.

Hi! I’m Ethan Marcotte, an independent web designer and writer. Some time ago,
I coined the term “responsive web design.” (You can [69]read more about me or 
[70]my work, if you like.)

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[71]You Deserve a Tech Union is a book about the tech industry’s resurgent
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References:

[1] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/leaving-18f/#content
[2] https://ethanmarcotte.com/
[3] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/
[4] https://ethanmarcotte.com/books/
[5] https://ethanmarcotte.com/work/
[6] https://ethanmarcotte.com/contact/
[7] https://ethanmarcotte.com/search/
[8] https://ethanmarcotte.com/
[9] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/18f/
[10] https://www.afge.org/article/afge-cautions-feds-not-to-be-tricked-into-resigning-you-might-not-get-paid/
[11] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/18f/
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18F
[13] https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce-rightsgovernance/2025/02/what-are-the-rules-for-probationary-periods-and-federal-employees/
[14] https://www.mspb.gov/
[15] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/leaving-18f/#fn-margins
[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
[17] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/catalog/
[18] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/quarter-bosses-admit-return-office-104103939.html
[19] https://web.archive.org/web/20221102222024/https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/29/elon-musk-twitter-takeover/#:~:text=The%20note%20continued%3A%20%E2%80%9CPlease%20come%20prepared%20with%20code%20as%20a%20backup%20to%20review%20on%20your%20own%20machines%20with%20Elon.%E2%80%9D%20Later%2C%20people%20inside%20the%20company%20reported%20that%20Tesla%20engineers%20were%20in%20fact%20reviewing%20the%20code.
[20] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c23vkd57471o#:~:text=Despite%20its%20full%20name%2C%20Doge%20is%20not%20an%20official%20government%20department%2C%20which%20would%20have%20had%20to%20be%20established%20by%20an%20act%20of%20Congress.
[21] https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-lackeys-office-personnel-management-opm-neuralink-x-boring-stalin/
[22] https://abcnews.go.com/US/judge-decide-block-doge-accessing-sensitive-labor-department/story?id=118575362
[23] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/doge-affiliated-employee-accessed-irs-system-sensitive-taxpayer-inform-rcna192423
[24] https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/17/politics/doge-irs-taxpayer-data/index.html
[25] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/leaving-18f/#fn-conflicts
[26] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/04/elon-musk-government-legal-doge/
[27] https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democrats-oversight.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2025-02-06.Dem%20Members%20to%20IGs%20re%20Musk.pdf
[28] https://www.404media.co/doge-employees-ordered-to-stop-using-slack-while-agency-transitions-to-a-records-system-not-subject-to-foia/
[29] https://www.gsa.gov/about-us/newsroom/news-releases/gsa-announces-new-commissioners-tts-director-and-general-counsel-01242025
[30] https://experience.dropbox.com/resources/cross-functional-teams
[31] https://www.npr.org/2025/02/13/nx-s1-5296928/layoffs-trump-doge-education-energy
[32] https://fedscoop.com/gsa-looks-to-terminate-probationary-employees/
[33] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/leaving-18f/#fn-datalake
[34] https://www.anildash.com/
[35] https://www.anildash.com/2025/01/04/DOGE-procurement-capture/
[36] https://newrepublic.com/article/191506/musk-bezos-pichai-zuckerberg-microsoft-trump-climate
[37] https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/12/04/1107897/openais-new-defense-contract-completes-its-military-pivot/
[38] https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-lieutenant-gsa-ai-agency/
[39] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/03/dems-elon-musk-doge-takeover-treasury/78187978007/
[40] https://www.techpolicy.press/anatomy-of-an-ai-coup/
[41] https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/tracking-the-doge-treasury-raid/
[42] http://debcha.org/
[43] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612711/how-infrastructure-works-by-deb-chachra/
[44] https://www.wired.com/story/doge-tts-fired/
[45] https://www.wired.com/tag/elon-musk/
[46] https://labornotes.org/
[47] https://labornotes.org/2025/02/federal-workers-organize-against-billionaire-power-grab
[48] https://www.instagram.com/workingfamilies/p/DGLZz2CP9bH/
[49] https://emilyinyourphone.substack.com/p/everything-you-need-to-know-about
[50] https://bsky.app/profile/prisonculture.bsky.social
[51] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OSWxykA1WHOi0vTPLAJDaCeVhR3uSfh7PhlCj4t4yT0/edit?tab=t.0
[52] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/leaving-18f/#fnref-fn-margins
[53] https://www.npr.org/2025/02/12/nx-s1-5293382/x-elon-musk-doge-cfpb
[54] https://www.levernews.com/musk-just-scored-more-government-cash-while-pushing-education-cuts/
[55] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/leaving-18f/#fnref-fn-conflicts
[56] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/leaving-18f/#fnref-fn-datalake
[57] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/tag/work
[58] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/tag/jobs
[59] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/tag/politics
[60] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/tag/us-politics
[61] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/tag/employment
[62] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/tag/government
[63] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/on-context/
[64] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/the-bricks-we-lay/
[65] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/free-faster/
[66] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/hello-editorially/
[67] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/
[68] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/blog-questions-challenge/
[69] https://ethanmarcotte.com/
[70] https://ethanmarcotte.com/work/
[71] https://ethanmarcotte.com/books/you-deserve-a-tech-union/
[72] https://ethanmarcotte.com/books/you-deserve-a-tech-union/
[76] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/leaving-18f/#
[77] https://ethanmarcotte.com/
[78] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/
[79] https://ethanmarcotte.com/books/
[80] https://ethanmarcotte.com/work/
[81] https://ethanmarcotte.com/contact/
[82] https://follow.ethanmarcotte.com/@beep
[83] https://bsky.app/profile/ethanmarcotte.com
[84] https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethan-marcotte/
[85] https://ethanmarcotte.com/accessibility/
[86] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/feed.xml
[87] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/leaving-18f/#top
[88] https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/leaving-18f/#content