What about if the administration lays off staff during the shutdown instead of furloughing them? I would think that would not require any compensation.
They've been threatening RIFs, those require 60 days notice so the earliest RIF separation would be 1 November or so if they notified people today. And then you get a severance when you're RIF'd based on years of service (1 week/year for first 10, 2 weeks/year above that, with a multiplier if you're over age 40). Max of 52 weeks severance.
So they'd still be paid for the time up until they are actually separated under a RIF, and potentially more for any severance they are due under a RIF. Severance only counts whole years, 10 months doesn't get you 10/12ths of a weeks pay, it gets you $0.
EDIT: BTW, this is one reason DRP was such a mixed deal. The most admin leave someone got under the first DRP was about 5 months, around 21-23 weeks. If you had 15 years of service or more, the DRP was worse than waiting for a RIF. You were getting at least 20 weeks of severance + 60 days for the notice period. If you had 10 years of service, it was a wash. RIF notice + 10 weeks severance was about as good as DRP offered. And that's comparing to the best possible DRP admin leave period. DRP also bars you from UEI in most (every?) state since it's technically a voluntary resignation. Any delays in being put on admin leave (which was never actually guaranteed under DRP) made it an even worse deal than just waiting for a RIF.
The only people it made sense for were those intending to leave with a job lined up, seniors who were going to retire soon anyways (so DRP became "terminal leave"), and those with less than 10 years of service. The vast majority were better off waiting for a RIF.
This already does happen for nighthawk coverage for example where a non-US radiologist will provide a wet read and then a US rad will sign off. The US rad will always bear the liability however.
Radiologists are often the ones who are the "brains" of medical diagnosis. The primary care or ER physician gets the patient scanned, and the radiologist scrolls through hundreds if not thousands of images, building a mental model of the insides of the patient's body and then based on the tens of thousands of cases they've reviewed in the past, as well as deep and intimate human anatomical knowledge, attempts to synthesize a medical diagnosis. A human's life and wellness can hinge on an accurate diagnosis from a radiologist.
Interesting - living near a large city, all of the radiologists I know work for hospitals, spending more of their day in the hospital reading room versus home, including performing procedures, even as diagnostic radiologists.
Separate from the phone and screen time discussion, you are at an important juncture of your life, a transition to parenthood that could change everything. I say "could" because I fundamentally believe that half of people who have children don't have the self-awareness to change and adjust their habits and emotional state.
One of the monumental realizations for me when I became a parent (not necessarily the first day but over the first 5-7 years) was distinctly what my parents did right and wrong. My dad told me on the phone one day that I shouldn't show my child my feelings, that I should hide any negative feelings and only show positive feelings. And now I see that this is what my father did to me and it constrained my ability to share negative feelings with my friends and family, instead leading to me bottling up negative feelings like anger and sadness.I realize that this is not the correct way to parent, your child should see the full range of human emotions from their parents and although you want to be careful to not put too much emotional burden and stress on them to create an anxious child, you want to also be sure they see you at your best and worst. They should see you discuss your feelings with others and with them and when you lose your temper, as we all do, you should also afterwards rationalize what you were feeling with them, apologize if necessary (and it's usually always necessary because there is no need for any human to lose their temper with another human that's been on the Earth for only a few years).
Any way, I think of parenthood as a journey of self-reflection and improvement, much like childhood. Just like some people have a negative painful childhood, parenthood can be similar. The goal for you is to be open and honest with yourself and your growing family, and to be constantly looking for ways to improve.
Apologies if this sounded like a lecture but wish you the best in what may turn out to be the most important job of your life.
Having had a stint in my youthful life where I studied Technocracy a great deal, I still see some powerful concepts that I can't let go of. The emphasis on standardization and elimination of the price system, even if nothing more than a though experiment on human nature, seemed like worthwhile concepts to consider. Rather than demonize the technocracy movement, I would recommend some investigation into the ideas that underpinned it, especially as we now witness a transition from a limitless growth world to steady state.
My basic issue with technocrats is that they conflate aesthetic rationality with effective rationality. The perfect city is not a symmetric grid, for example. Yarvin’s writing is Brasilia in Substack-form. A lot of tech “geniuses” are like this (e.g. Thiel, Andreesen)
Not to be overly pedantic but there are more than 3. It's just 3 that are commonly used in asset management (S&P, Moody's, Fitch). Others include Morningstar DBRS (Dominion Bond Rating Services - rates primary Canadian debt issuers). Kroll is another one (used to be Duff & Phelps).
It's very difficult if not impossible to design a system that allows for a madman to be in charge, because to do so, the system would have to severely curtail the executive's powers which would render him or her useless. The tacit assumption has always been that the voters would not select a madman to run a complex system but here we are.
The value of life isn't your work. Work can be turned off any moment, due to tyrant or recession. Work is fleeting. The value of life is your personal relationships, your family, your own character and ability to deal with difficulty. We don't know what the future will bring, but stay strong, we all have an uphill climb ahead.
The human race has benefited greatly from individual researchers who made their work the main source of value in their life, and from societies, patrons, and government institutions who gave these people the stability and financial support to pursue such a single minded focus.
Not everyone agrees with that though. You absolutely can make your work the pride of your life. People valuing work above all else are sometimes the reason for humanity’s advancement.
