Good morning!
There is no doubt that federal employees and contractors are going through the gauntlet right now. Large swaths of government workers have been fired, rehired, or left in limbo. Many contractors at organizations heavily dependent on federal fundings have also found themselves suddenly unemployed. In the midst of this uncertainty, some workers, like Wayan Vota, have started to build online communities to provide support for others like them.
Shortly after President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January halting foreign aid, Vota lost his job at a D.C.-based nonprofit focused on humanitarian development and predominantly funded by federal grants. He was heartbroken but knew there thousands of others were facing a similar situation.
“I woke up and said: ‘Okay, I am not going to sit here and be a crying, blubbering mess. I’m going to get up and do something about it,’” Vota told my colleague Sara Braun.
A week after he lost his job, Vota started a Substack for unemployed workers affected by federal cuts called “Career Pivot,” with the aim of helping them find new roles. A little more than a month in, he has more than 9,000 subscribers. And while Vota imagined that a majority of his readers would be those in the foreign development sector, his base has grown to include workers from other agencies affected by recent cuts.
“A huge part of Career Pivot is helping people translate their skills into terms the private sector understands,” he said.
Site users who Fortune spoke with say that although they have received practical help with things like using AI to optimize their résumés, a major feature is finding a sense of camaraderie during a challenging time.
“What I found was that it was a community,” subscriber Joel Levesque told Fortune. “This was really quite a traumatic thing that happened for people actually working in the sector. I don’t think anyone was expecting this. So to be able to engage in a community where people are like me, and going through the same thing, really made me feel like I wasn’t crazy.”
Brit Morse
brit.morse@fortune.com
Around the Table
A round-up of the most important HR headlines.
Even executives who are enthusiastic about the administration’s latest efforts say the whiplash of uncertainty could cause larger economic problems. Wall Street Journal
Amazon employees are starting to reflect on their work lives after coming back to the office full-time, and the results are mixed. Business Insider
While some federal contractors are losing out, cutting swaths of federal workers could increase the government’s future reliance on others across the private sector. New York Times
Watercooler
Everything you need to know from Fortune.
Targeting higher education. Yale, MIT, and dozens of other universities are being investigated for alleged racial discrimination as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to end DEI programs. —Collin Binkley and the Associated Press
Another RTO approach. UBS told hybrid employees that they would no longer be able to work from home on a Friday followed by a consecutive Monday. —Ryan Hogg
Not enough savings. Blackrock CEO Larry Fink says there’s a growing retirement crisis in America, noting that most people are unprepared. —Eleanor Pringle
CHRO moves: Allstate appointed Andréa Carter to executive vice president and CHRO, effective May 12, a role previously held by Robert Toohey until September of last year. Carter will step down from her current role as CHRO of Global Payments on March 31. Every Friday morning, the weekly Fortune 500 Power Moves column tracks Fortune 500 company C-suite shifts—see the most recent edition.
