Young scientists were elated to work at NOAA. Now, they're devastated by DOGE cuts.
In one social media post after another, newly hired employees share their joy in starting careers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration after dreaming of the chance for years.
“Excited for what's next!” wrote physical scientist Andy Hazelton in October when joining NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center.
“I am extremely excited about the adventures and challenges that lie ahead,” meteorologist Matthew Eovino wrote a few days before joining the National Weather Service in Anchorage, Alaska, in December 2023.
On Thursday, a single email crushed the hopes of these scientists and others who had been thrilled to be doing something they loved with an agency they loved.
NOAA staff members, like thousands of others, were caught up in the mass terminations underway in the federal government as part of the Trump Administration's cost-cutting measures.
Hazelton, like others, was still considered probationary, not for poor performance, but because he'd been in his job for less than a year. Eovino said he was caught up because his conversion paperwork to be off probation was submitted in time but never processed because of the hiring freeze.
Paste BN talked with more than a half-dozen dismissed NOAA employees, only two who agreed to be identified. Others said they were concerned about getting rehired if the courts ultimately side with the employees over the legality of the terminations or the ability or to being able to get another job in the competitive market they’ll be facing.
Government cuts hit NOAA
An executive order released by the president on Feb. 11 discussed President Donald Trump's goal of "a critical transformation of the Federal bureaucracy." It required agencies to submit plans to reduce the size of the workforce.
From the beginning, Trump and his senior adviser Elon Musk made it clear they planned to slash the federal budget and government spending. The Department of Government Efficiency keeps a running tally of cost savings on its website.
The probationary terminations are the second of what is expected to be at least three waves of departures for federal employees. The first were tens of thousands who agreed to accept the administration’s proffered “Fork in the Road” plan, agreeing to be placed on administrative leave and paid until Sept. 30. A third wave is expected to be the result of a reduction in force the president has ordered across the federal government.
The exact number of employees let go remains unknown. NOAA spokespeople have declined to comment on personnel matters. Sen. Maria Cantwell’s office said Thursday it had confirmed the number at 880, but former NOAA officials said in a Friday call the number was closer to 650.
Further complicating matters, Friday was the last day for NOAA employees who had agreed to depart under the "Fork in the Road" plan, and other employees with enough years of service are retiring.
'Sad and bewildered'
To Hazelton, and others, one line in the form emails shared with Paste BN jumped out as a cruel blow: “the Agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the Agency’s current needs.”
“It made me sad and bewildered,” said Hazelton, who specializes in the computer models used to analyze weather and atmospheric data and help forecast where hurricanes are going and how strong they'll be.
"It feels like a slap in the face to get something so impersonal when I’ve devoted so much of my time and effort to serving the public," he said. It isn’t like the agency isn’t familiar with its employees and their skills when they’re hired, he said.
For Hazelton, the past few weeks have been like living with a cloud overhead, he said. “I was trying to do my job and hoping for the best."
Long road to a NOAA job
Federal jobs aren’t easy to get, Hazelton said. “It’s not something you jump into."
He had applied for a full-time position at NOAA several times during the more than six years he worked with the agency on contract in partnership between its Atlantic Oceanic Meteorological Laboratory and the University of Miami’s Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies.
Finally, last July, in the midst of a busy hurricane season that saw he and other scientists climbing aboard multiple hurricane hunter flights, he got the hoped-for job offer. After nearly three months of vetting and background checks, he went to work in October.
Other NOAA labs also hire specialized scientists after they've worked on contract with the agency through university collaborations.
Teams in the lab where Hazelton was working tackled high-level projects ‒ such as building a new version of a hurricane forecast model, and "the software infrastructure that drives all of this,” he said. He and others fear losing staff could have implications for improving forecast accuracy.
'The next brilliant generation of scientists'
Around a dozen of his colleagues at the Environmental Modeling Center were terminated Thursday, Hazelton said. Like others, he fears the terminations, together with the employees taking the "fork in the road" plan and the reductions in force, are going to be "disruptive to the whole enterprise."
He's frustrated about one particular aspect of the situation. If the administration is looking for efficiency and cost savings, he said, why not keep the young people who are hoping to “improve efficiency and the organization itself?”
“Most of us had just started. We were motivated to make the organization better,” he said. “We were young and motivated but had enough experience to know how things work. That’s critical for an organization to grow.”
The weather service, under Director Ken Graham, was in the middle of its first major "transformation" in more than 30 years, when the administration changed.
In a social post Eovino gave Paste BN permission to use, he said working for NOAA "meant the world" to him. He added that it's an agency "filled with dedicated professionals who work tirelessly, often behind the scenes, to serve the public."
Rick Spinrad, NOAA administrator during the Biden administration, said Friday that he's talked with university students at recent conferences and worries about how the reductions will affect students currently obtaining degrees and advanced degrees.
"There's a collateral impact," Spinrad said Friday. "It's going to to take years for NOAA to recover the trust of the next brilliant generation of scientists."
Dinah Voyles Pulver covers climate change, wildlife and the environment for Paste BN. Reach her at dpulver@usatoday.com or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X.