5 Bullets: Being A Federal Worker In 2025

“Did you send Elon your five bullet points?” has become the newest greeting at work. The talk about OPM’s email sent to every federal employee was all very tongue in cheek, but there was a slight edge to it. The subject line beckoned, “What did you do last week?”  An innocuous enough thing to ask, but it raised questions in the minds of myself and my fellow federal employees. Questions like, “Does this even apply to us?” or “Who is even reviewing these?” and “How much detail should we go into when answering?” As seen in the media, no one in any agency had any immediate answers.  

From the ground level, we were all hoping headquarters was having meetings and making the appropriate phone calls to get answers for us. Unfortunately, the media seemed to have more information than leadership had or more information than supervisors were willing to share. Tough to tell which.  

To this end, finding out the origin of the question “What did you do last week?” was a bit dread-inducing. Elon Musk posed the same question to Parag Agrawal, then CEO of Twitter, shortly before firing him. That discovery led to an even bigger question in our minds, as the deadline set in the now infamous email approached: “Will I actually be fired for not answering?” 

There has been speculation that this is all part of Elon’s plan to cut the federal workforce - as in, he wanted to induce enough anxiety that some people will simply quit or retire. I can’t speak to the number of people who took this Faustian bargain, but I can attest to the high levels of uncertainty created by the entire situation. I can’t share what I sent in, but you’d better believe I responded according to agency guidelines and long before the deadline arrived.