Welcome to USAID Hunger Games! Worst Game No One Wanted

A choose-your-own-disaster adventure for USAID staff from Friends of USAID

You wake up in a cold sweat. Was that a dream about the movers showing up a week early, or did your phone just light up with a last-minute “Quick All-Hands” starting in 14 minutes and ominously titled “Does your position still exist? A facilitated discussion.”?

It’s only 5 am, but your inbox is already full: new guidance on PCS dates (again), a G-chat asking you to preserve vital records for a project that’s already been canceled, and an email demanding a risk report on the same project (that no one will ever read, and which is due by COB in a time zone fourteen hours ahead).

Your coffee’s cold, your VPN’s down, and you’ve lost count of how many “Fork in the Road” emails you’ve received this week.

Welcome to life inside the American development industrial complex, Spring 2025 edition.

[This is a great post by Friends of USAID]

A completely rational way to make your next major life decision

If you're reading this, you may be:

• A USAID Foreign Service Officer who’s been told you’re being separated on either July 1 or September 1, with all the rhyme and reason of a magic 8-ball. Ego check? Absolutely.

• A contractor (aka PSC or ISC) who’s either already been fired or is about to be fired with all the ceremony of a damp envelope.

• An eternal optimist clinging to the hope that Bill Gates will use his vast fortune to buy USAID and rehire every last one of us.

• Or maybe you're just trying to figure out whether it’s time to pivot to an NGO, another government, or something involving sourdough and small-batch vinegar.

It’s time to play: Whose Career is it Anyway?!

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Ready to play?

Let’s figure out what’s next the only way that makes sense anymore: a high-stakes, low-reward, completely not-rigged decision tree.

Step 1: Are You Currently Employed?

🔲 Yes → Congrats! You’re living in limbo like the rest of us. Go to Step 2.

🔲 No → Join the club. We meet on Microsoft Teams every Tuesday and cry into our keyboards. Skip to Step 4.

Step 2: Is Your Current Job Soul-Crushing?

🔲 Yes, but I have health insurance → Go to Step 3.

🔲 No, I genuinely love it (???) → Go to Step 3 and also, are you okay? Blink twice if you need help.

Step 3: What Kind of Employee Are You?

🔲 Foreign Service or Civil Service → Welcome to the Schrödinger’s Layoff Program: you’re still on payroll but already fired. It’s like a vacation, if your vacation also involved trauma, bureaucratic hoops, and screaming into the void.

🔲 PSC/Contractor → July 1 is the end of the road. No Forks for you. If you’re still working, it’s either a warzone, a miracle, or an administrative oversight.

🔲 ISC/Contractor → We’re so sorry. And we miss you.

🔲 Locally employed staff → Is your government hiring? Sent you a DM.

Step 3.5: Are You Eligible for the new State Department “Humanitarian Assistance” positions, aka the “USAID Hunger Games”?

🔲 Yes → Cool. Roughly a few hundred jobs for thousands of qualified people. Most of them already earmarked. Definitely not a charade. Go to Step 4.

🔲 No → Go directly to Step 5. Do not pass “reassignment.” Do not collect severance or health insurance.

Step 4: Are You Still Secretly Hoping This Will All Work Out?

🔲 Yes → Sweet summer child.

🔲 No → Congratulations, you are now emotionally prepared to become a successful mid-career consultant. Skip to step 8.

Step 5: Are You Still Being Asked to Finish Work for Programs That No Longer Exist?

🔲 Yes → Please document the closure of your own sanity using five weekly bullet points. Be sure to cc: OAA and Elon Musk. Skip to Step 6.5.

🔲 No → What’s your secret? Are you hiding in a supply closet? Go to Step 7.

Step 6: Are You Stuck in Unending Signal Groups All Asking the Same Question?

🔲 Yes → Someone has to keep responding to 37 different threads asking about unemployment insurance and whether The Fork comes with dental. It’s you. You’re doing amazing. You can go to Step 6.5, but honestly, you’re already doing enough.

🔲 No → You may be emotionally healthier than the rest of us. Or you just haven’t been added yet. Check your messages.

Step 6.5: Do You Fantasize About Writing a “Tell-All”?

🔲 Yes → You already have a Google Doc called “Final Draft (Angry Version).” Writing is healing. (And someday, possibly, litigation.) Send us the link when it goes live. Go to Step 8.

🔲 No → Cool, cool. Just us then. You’re either very professional, seriously repressed, or dangerously well-adjusted. Either way, we respect it. Go to Step 7.

Step 7: Have You Considered Walking Away from It All?

🔲 Yes → Incredible. You’ll finally have time to start a podcast, or run for local office, or maybe launch a consultancy called “We Told You So, LLC.” You don’t need a budget earmark to make a difference! Go to Step 8.

🔲 No → Of course not. You’re 19 tabs deep in a procurement closeout checklist and three email threads arguing about the standard template for a report no one will read (because they’ve already been fired). Hang in there, champ. Your loyalty will totally be rewarded. Probably. Maybe.

🔲 Every Day, But I’m Still Here → You are the emotionally compromised glue holding this whole farce together. You’ve cried in a stairwell, delivered three overdue reports, and you haven’t thought about September 2 because you’re still stuck in May. Please don’t check Signal for the next hour—you deserve a break.

Step 8: Have You Started Developing an Exit Strategy?

🔲 Yes → That’s called growth. Also survival. Go to Step 9.

🔲 No → See Step 6. Then Step 11. Or just stay here forever. That’s fine too.

Step 9: Are You Still Holding On to the Idea That Your Career Should “Make the World Better”?

🔲 Yes → You’re probably a Libra. Or a former Presidential Management Fellow and/or Peace Corps alum. Go to Step 10.

🔲 No → Congrats on reaching Stage 4 of the USAID Grief Cycle. Be sure to send your e-learning certificate to EXO before you off-board. Go to Step 10.

Step 10: Are You Going to Leave US Development Work?

🔲 Yes → May the LinkedIn algorithm gods bless your resume submissions.

🔲 No → Someone’s got to rebuild this thing. Your institutional knowledge will be valuable, right after this next restructure. Or the one after that. Skip to Step 14.

🔲 Maybe → It’s okay. You’re still parsing the meaning of “special priority administrative lateral reassignment eligibility.” We’ll see you in the next all-hands.

Step 11: Are You Considering Early Retirement?

🔲 Yes → Respect. You’ve unlocked the rare “graceful exit” ending.

🔲 No → Then you probably can’t afford to quit, which means...go to Step 12.

Step 12: Do You Want to Work Somewhere Else in the U.S. Government?

🔲 Yes → Great! Hope you enjoy three years of Kafka-esque hiring freezes, security clearances, and being told you’re “too experienced” for a GS-9 but “not quite a fit” for a GS-14.

🔲 No → Honestly, fair. Go to Step 13.

Step 13: Can You Pivot to Something Outside the Government?

🔲 Yes → Go to Career Pivot, an actually useful resource started by a fellow USAID alum. Maybe you’ll run for office. Maybe you’ll start a podcast. Maybe you’ll finally monetize your rage through artisanal bread and TikTok. The options are endless. And unpaid. But endless!

🔲 No → Go back to Step 8.

Step 14: What’s Next?

Time to choose your next dream career!

🔲 Another U.S. government agency → Good luck transferring into an agency that isn’t shedding staff like a Golden Retriever in July.

🔲 An NGO → Ah yes, the nonprofits. Enjoy doing the same job with 30% less pay and 500% more “collaborative design jam sessions.”

🔲 A bilateral donor → Honestly, great choice. Especially if you’re okay being the only person in meetings who still knows what the program cycle is.

🔲 The Private Sector → Are you ready to say things like “synergy” and “pivot to scale” without vomiting? If yes, your salary may finally match your student loan debt.

🔲 Start a farm, write a novel, move to Portugal → We fully support this plan. Also, do you have a spare bedroom for us?

Thanks for playing the worst game no one signed up for

Congratulations! You’ve completed your journey through bureaucratic chaos, moral injury, and logistical absurdity.

Thanks for playing “Whose Career Is It Anyway?!” — where the rules change daily, the prize pool was converted into DOGECoin, and the only guaranteed reward is that you won’t be audited on your next tax return because they fired everyone at the IRS.

If it all feels like a cosmic joke right now, you’re not wrong. But the punchline isn’t you.

Whether you’re rage-applying on LinkedIn, quietly ghosting your COR, or just trying to finish one last impact report, just remember this: we know that behind every surreal memo and every cliffhanger PCS date, there are real people and real communities whose lives you’ve touched.

You’ve tracked malnutrition data in remote villages, negotiated clean-water deals with local leaders, and stayed up nights coordinating emergency responses that saved lives. That work wasn’t a footnote in a budget line—it was hope delivered, crisis averted, dignity preserved.

So if you feel like you’ve been run over by a flaming clown car, just know: you were never the clown. (That job is already taken.)

You were the one who believed. Who made it count. That matters—whether the system admits it or not.

Your fellow burned-out idealists see you. We salute you. And we’ll save you a seat at the weirdly specific NGO happy hour we’re all destined to end up at.

In solidarity,
Friends of USAID