The U.S. Department of Education has been cut down to half its previous size. Over the past month, as more than a thousand former employees carted their belongings out of the building at 400 Maryland Avenue, they were greeted by protesters denouncing the clumsy cuts and callous execution. Social media provided a stark contrast, as Trump supporters cheered the paring of the federal bureaucracy.

Me? I kept finding myself thinking of Mike Judge’s cult workplace comedy Office Space. (Amazon aptly describes it as the tale of “a white-collar worker [who] rebels against corporate drudgery.”) Since January, DOGE has evoked thoughts of the film’s “two Bobs,” the consultants brought in to reduce headcount at the cookie-cutter tech firm Initech. I can see Bob Porter in the standard-issue meeting room, cheerfully explaining, “We’re gonna be getting rid of these people here. . . . First, Mr. Samir Naga– . . . Naga– . . . Naga– . . . Not gonna work here anymore, anyway.”

In principle, I wholeheartedly endorse what Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said when she announced the cuts: “Today’s reduction in force reflects the Department of Education’s commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers.” That’s exactly right—cuts are a means, not an end.

I mean, it’s no secret that there’ve been deep-rooted problems in the culture of ED. There were the endless meetings, frequently missed deadlines, the FAFSA debacle, the failed audits, a sprawling communications office, and an extreme number of unanswered emails and calls. There were employees who maybe were capable but putting in, at best, probably 10 or 20 hours a week of actual work. Mark Schneider, the former director of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), recently discussed the sense that many staff were more focused on protecting their own fiefdoms than anything else. In an anecdote that would’ve warmed the two Bobs’ hearts, he related:

When I first showed up at IES, we brought in [consulting firm] McKinsey & Co. to do an analysis of how to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization. They went around and interviewed people—staffers, program officers—to try to get some idea of what was going on. . . . They interviewed one of the program officers who said to this outside consultant, “I’m never giving up this contract. You will have to pry it out of my dead hands.” I mean, that’s a stupid thing to say, but it’s also illegal. This is a long-term project officer who admitted to an outside person that they had been totally captured, totally in bed with the contract shop.

Reading accounts of departing workers, I’ve been struck by how frequently they described working for ED in ceremonial rather than substantive terms. There was the employee who said, “This is an assault on public education, because . . . a person like me, who came from nothing from Toledo, Ohio, from nothing, can end up working in a place like this.” Another staffer, who’d been at the department for a decade, explained, “My goal was to work at all these wonderful places, learn as much as I can about education and then go to the federal government as a culminating experience: the final step of my career.” Reading these heartfelt testimonies, I kept thinking that these seemed like nice people, but for the life of me I could find nothing that left the impression their roles were necessary or useful.

It all brought to mind the scene in Office Space where the two Bobs are interviewing checked-out Initech employee Tom Smykowski about his job:

Bob Slydell: “What would you say . . . you do here?”

Tom Smykowski: “Well look, I already told you! I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don’t have to! I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people! Can’t you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?”

Through decades spent interacting with ED, I’ve imagined that conversation many times. But the issue isn’t just unnecessary employees; it’s organizational culture. It’s kludge. It’s misaligned incentives. It’s accountability (or lack thereof). Until the DOGE posse came to town, ED officials hadn’t sketched a vision for addressing any of this inefficiency in anything but the most platitudinous sense. They never explained how they were streamlining processes, eliminating redundancy, evaluating performance, or altering incentives.

Motivation is partly about the individual, but it’s also a function of organizational culture. I’m reminded of the Office Space scene where protagonist Peter Gibbons explains Initech to the two Bobs:

Peter: The thing is, Bob, it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I just don’t care.

Bob Porter: Don’t . . . don’t care?

Peter: It’s a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don’t see another dime, so where’s the motivation? And here’s something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.

Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon?

Peter: Eight bosses.

Bob Slydell: Eight?

Peter: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That’s my only real motivation, is not to be hassled. That and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

Thus far, the cuts have been made in a manner that’s frequently seemed chaotic and ham-fisted. That’s not a great way to reset organizational culture. There’s been no explanation for why some units were cut and others were not. Civil service rules dictated a strategy of axing some whole units while keeping the entirety of others. This is nobody’s idea of how to streamline operations.

Then there’s the stuff that seems intentionally punitive, like the ban on all telework and the intensive scrutiny of when staff are badging in and out. Was there too much telework at ED? Absolutely. Was it being abused? Absolutely. Were new rules and restrictions in order? Absolutely. But imposing Office Space–style cubicle culture is going to alienate talented professionals who have viable alternatives and will make it tougher to recruit competent staff. That’s a recipe for cultivating mediocrity.

The goal shouldn’t be a culture where staff quietly mumble, a la Peter Gibbons, “So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it.” As Secretary McMahon has said, it should be a culture of accountability, efficiency, and competence. Well, by that standard, the exodus from 400 Maryland was only the beginning. Now comes the hard work of creating that culture.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”