Senior Executive Service

Um, that description also appears in Radiance Technologies' public announcement when he joined the company in twenty twenty-two.

In the book, he dates his entry into the Senior Executive Service to September twenty eighteen.

The American government describes that executive tier as occupying key positions just below its most senior presidential appointees, and that's the point I was just making before.

Stratton described his eventual position as the civilian equivalent of a two-star admiral.

The silver tsunami.

Yeah, and the numbers here are frankly alarming, particularly when we look at the Senior Executive Service, the SES.

Okay, the SES.

For the public admin grads listening, you know that these are the generals of the civil service.

That brutal four-to-one attrition rule that erased 75% of vacancies and shrank the workforce by 350,000 people

Just staggering numbers

We look at the profound loss of institutional memory as the senior executive service plummeted by 30% and 105,000 highly experienced clearance-holding feds walked out the door

The silver tsunami

And this is the kicker about SES.

So it's special executive service or senior executive service.

I can't remember the exact acronym, but it's senior executive service.

And they get paid above GS-15, which is like $250,000, $300,000 a year.

And they get a bonus with public money.

That detail is the absolute linchpin to understanding his credibility.

In the complex hierarchy of the Department of Defense, a civilian two-star general equivalent means he was operating at the highest echelons of what is called the Senior Executive Service, or SES.

The SES.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

yeah but there's a judicial insurrection in this country like the judges are the ones insurrecting not us and then there's also the senior executives there's also the senior executive service which is this like uh you know we had to create the carter said we have to create this organization that's going to exist between the administrations like hello red flag and you know basically it's going to be because like oh it's continuity it's really important that we keep governing you know so hard Daddy.

So we have to have the senior executive service to be there in between.

So anyway, these people are called the civilian generals, and they make between $185,000, $230,000 a year.

They have incredible lives.

So that might drive some of the turnover as well.

The large political workforce is also coupled with shrinking career SES staff.

Can you talk about how those two trends are interacting and maybe some of the findings that you're looking at there?

We really are seeing the politicization of federal leadership, whereas you mentioned the career senior executive service leaders across government that are really the bridge between political appointees and the larger career workforce have shrunk drastically under this administration by nearly 30% so far into the president's term.