I currently believe this is effectively what the letter is offering, but most of the (social) media response disagrees with me.
“If you resign under this program, you will retain all pay and benefits regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025.” (Emphasis added.)
My reading of this is that federal jobs come with a workload and a (at least partial) return-to-office mandate. Instead of technically firing people, this letter is offering to remove all two of their job responsibilities.
Most people seem to think you would still have to WFH if you took the resignation offer; I'm not really sure why they believe that.
Whether or not Trump/Musk can be trusted to actually deliver the cash is immaterial to the resolution of this market.
1,000
3.00https://www.opm.gov/fork/faq seems to say that's what it is. To resign rather than be fired, but that's trivia.
Will I really get my full pay and benefits during the entire period through September 30, even if I get a second job?
Yes. You will also accrue further personal leave days, vacation days, etc. and be paid out for unused leave at your final resignation date.
I think this is pretty straightforward tbh—the original wording was ambiguous/sloppy, seemingly referring to just "in person work requirements" (& thus potentially implying you might be expected to WFH). But that's just sloppy language, I assume included because they wanted to extra emphasize that they really care about in-person work (one of Musk's obsessions, & the language in the email is borrowing heavily from Musk's preferred language used at Twitter). The later clarifications & FAQ make it clear they just mean "you don't have to work" (outside of special, rare cases). So the spirit of this seems like a clear YES, your interpretation is correct. But there's a reason for the initial confusion, the language they used was really dumb (again, because Musk is obsessed with emphasizing in-person work, & the writer was flattering him).
James Surowiecki tweet thread emphasizing why the wording is confusing, and then below linking to the FAQ emphasizing that this is meant to exempt you from work (with rare exceptions)