When Matt O’Malley was forced out of his position at the National Resources Conservation Service, he didn’t just lose a job: He lost a job he’d worked toward for 15 years.
O’Malley first learned about the NRCS as an undergraduate. The agency, which is a part of the United States Department of Agriculture, helps landowners conserve their natural resources. He studied biological systems engineering, which would allow him to focus his work on helping farmers and agricultural producers achieve a more sustainable relationship with their land. To him, working for the NRCS would mean “looking towards the public good and working with typically smaller farmers who don’t have access to the same type of inputs and opportunities that larger commercial farms do, helping them succeed, and doing it in a way that also helps the land.”
In the years after his graduation, O’Malley did everything he could to gain the necessary experience for that job. He learned how to help farmers and producers manage erosion and conserve water. He worked on a farm that grew vegetables and raised broiler chickens. He joined the Peace Corps to demonstrate his passion for public service, working as an agricultural extension technician with subsistence farmers in Malawi. Last November, O’Malley’s dream came true when he started as an agricultural engineer at NRCS, based in Colorado. “I intended for my employment at the NRCS to be the last stop of my career,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post.
O’Malley was fired in February as a part of the mass layoffs directed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and placed on administrative leave. In April, he accepted a buyout of his federal position, which seemed a safer bet than returning to a job from which he could be fired again with far less severance. I spoke with O’Malley about what it was like to briefly hold his dream job, the hidden benefits of agricultural engineering, and his fears for how ongoing government cuts will threaten farmers who already live on the margins.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
I first wanted to ask if you could tell me about your path toward public service.
I originally was finishing up my undergraduate degree way back in 2009, when the economy was not doing the greatest and it was difficult to find a job. So I went looking for an internship through the Student Conservation Association. They had an agreement with AmeriCorps so that you would also earn an AmeriCorps award—so it wasn’t straight volunteer, no pay, but it helped cover some loans after the fact. That position actually brought me to New Hampshire to work with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. During my undergraduate time, we had to go to info sessions on the different engineering departments that were there.
The environment degree led you to be more in wastewater and water treatment, while the biological systems engineering evolved out of agricultural and would do a lot more work focused outside of natural systems. So through my undergraduate, and then that first year out of school, kind of lucking into an internship partnered with the Natural Resources Conservation Service made me realize that I really enjoy working with landowners and agricultural producers to help them meet their conservation goals while also helping to increase their yields and decrease the amounts of inputs they needed to put into their land.
Since my ideal job was with the government. I went to go get some experience. I worked with a private engineering firm after that, writing total maximum daily load reports and implementation plans—that’s to help streams meet the Clean Water Act. So it was a private company but still working towards public good.
Keeping an eye on federal job market, I realized I might have to do some additional things to help get a leg up. I went and served in the Peace Corps from there. While serving in the Peace Corps, that really solidified that I really enjoy working with the public, using my technical experience to help others meet the goals that they’d like to see.
What were you doing in the Peace Corps?
I was an environment volunteer [in Malawi]. So I was working basically as an agricultural extension technician, working in a community towards nutrition goals and—sorry my cats are demanding a little attention—working on agroforestry projects, kitchen nutrition gardens, and just helping the helping the community, in addition to that, meet the other goals that they’d like to meet. One of my proudest [moments]—it wasn’t even really my project—there was an opportunity for my community to write a grant, because they were very interested in creating a school feeding program based around the school garden that we had built together. I just connected them to the source. They wrote the grant themselves, and then were selected to implement their project.
I was working in a more rural community. No paved roads. They had a primary and secondary school and a clinic nearby. But transportation in and out of my community was done typically in the back of a one-ton truck with a tarp over it, and everyone just kind of sat in the back to get to the larger trading center, which was about a two hour ride away.
Unfortunately, since I extended my Peace Corps service, I ended up finishing my service in May of 2017 during Trump’s first administration. So with with the hiring freeze at that time, federal employment with the Natural Resources Conservation Service wasn’t really an option, so I went looking for other jobs. I had a little bit of difficulty finding an engineering position, so I ended up working as a surveyor for five years, and working towards a graduate degree, until I was finally able to get hired on with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in November of 2024 to a position that had been open for at least one if not two years.
Do you know why it was open for so long?
Salary for engineers in the federal system is typically below what the private sector will pay.
When you applied for the job at NRCS, did you have to relocate, or were you already based in Colorado?
I was already based in Colorado. I was very fortunate that I didn’t have to move for this position, especially since it no longer exists.
What did an average day look like for you on the job?
It’s hard to kind of distill an average day, just because it was a very customer-facing position. The ultimate responsibilities of my position were to work with the planners in the office, along with the agricultural producer, to create designs for the practices that required engineering input. For my office in eastern Colorado that typically meant irrigation systems, a terrace system for dry land farming, and grass waterways to help control erosion through fields. Those were all the projects I was working on up until I finished my employment there.
I would love to know more about that [design work].
I had primarily only worked on preliminary designs, so that involves the use of GIS [geographic information system] software and information, CAD [computer-aided design] software and pulling in elevation information from different sources. So that was typically enough to determine a design for irrigation systems. It provided enough information to provide the preliminary designs for the grass waterways and terrace systems. But in order to complete those I would have had to go to the field and collect more detailed GPS information on the areas to better fit the designs to the land itself and the agricultural producers equipment. So that would involve the site visit, chatting with the producer, and also spending time either surveying or, for the grass waterways in the case of the terrace system, just kind of laying it out with the way the land was.
After the practices were implemented, I would have had to go back for a second site visit to ensure that they were built to standard, both NRCS’s and state’s standards, before they would be able to be paid their incentive payment.
So the farms and landowners that you were working with were opting in to this kind of remodeling.
Yes. What I like most about the Natural Resources Conservation Service—it is entirely opting in. It’s non-regulatory. All of the producers come to the NRCS to ask for assistance. It’s not like the EPA, where they’re going out and finding infractions to law. This was 100 percent volunteer-based.
What kind of farms would you work with?
It ranged all over, from producing irrigated crops for human consumption, to dry land farming for food for cattle, to even some smaller vegetable farms. We were starting to work with a school on the outskirts of Denver who had a school garden program, and trying to figure out how we can best assist them in growing food for both the school and the community, based on the limited access that they had as well.
Creating better irrigation systems, that helps these farms save water. Is that correct?
The benefit is mostly the saving of water. Unfortunately, here in eastern Colorado, water is a very valuable resource, and there’s been less and less availability of it as time has gone on. The greater Mountain West has been in a drought for over 20 years. The Colorado River is over-allocated, and the aquifers out on the eastern planes are becoming more and more limited as well.
Is this primarily because of climate change, or is it more complicated?
Primarily climate change is my understanding. Population growth can be another reason as well.
Were there any particular projects that you were excited to be working on at your job?
I was very excited to potentially start working on a stream bank restoration project for a small vegetable farm in metro Denver. One of the ditches that runs through town providing water to some different landowners was starting to severely undercut one of their structures. So I was very excited to be able to go out survey the stream and then come up with a design that would protect the land and the structure from being continuing to be eroded.
What was your experience of being fired? Were there any warning signs?
I got about a two-hour notice that I was going to be receiving an email on February 13. My co-worker was also a probationary employee [and] had started late February, so unfortunately she was also still in the probationary period, and, due to the alphabet, found out around six o’clock that she had been fired.
Because her last name was earlier in the alphabet?
Correct. Other than that, just the general unease that most federal employees had been feeling—if not since the first week of the new administration, definitely since USAID was shut down without notice.
Do you remember where you were when you found out, and what the experience was?
I was with some friends out at a happy hour, fully aware—knowing that this was coming. … A lot of them are Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. A lot of them are also federal employees, so it was somewhat nice to be around folks that understood the mental state I was in.
I definitely was mad and upset that this job that I would like to devote my career to seemed to be disappearing before my eyes, and also sad that the producers in my area—that have been waiting for an engineer to be in the area and be able to assist them more quickly than having engineers from other areas come in to help out—were going to be impacted as well.
I remember from reading your [LinkedIn] posts that you also had somewhat of a circuitous, dragged out process. I was curious if you could talk a little bit more about what happened after this email and up to the status that you have today?
Since it was a holiday weekend after I was fired, once that Tuesday rolled around, I started reaching out to contacts, former supervisors, other folks I know, letting folks know that I’m looking for work [and] I unfortunately had lost my job. So started job searching pretty hard right after I was fired but also keeping an eye on the lawsuits and merit board suit that was brought forth to see if I may or may not be getting my job back. After about three weeks, I found out that I was going to get reinstated … I think it was March 5. The order to reinstate at least the USDA employees was put forth by March 12.
I was brought back on to admin leave with back pay. And then I can’t remember when—it might have been around March 24—I got given a return-to-office date of April 7. However, by the time that date was coming around, they had offered the deferred resignation program again. And seeing that the administration’s goal was to return to staffing levels of around 2019, or less, I opted to to take the deferred resignation, and I ended up not going back to the office.
Was that decision difficult for you?
Absolutely. This is 100 percent my dream job, and it doesn’t really exist in the private sector or even the public sector outside of the federal government. There’s very little need for agricultural engineers in the private sector, and most farms are unable to pay for the work on their own. So the cost, the incentive payment, was very helpful to them as well.
Has this disrupted your personal life in any ways that we haven’t had a chance to talk about?
It’s definitely stressful to be back looking for work, especially with where the economy is, and just being unsure if the positions that are being offered are going to still be there even by the end of a hiring cycle. Everything feels very—what’s the word I want—volatile. Everything feels very volatile right now.
I was going to ask if you have a sense of what you’ll try to do next. Will you try to go to the private sector?
I’m honestly keeping all options all open at the minute, I would prefer to work in the public sector or public sector–adjacent, just because I believe in the work that gets done through those institutions, in the caring for both the environment and people. But needing to make sure that I’m able to take care of myself may mean that I switch over to the private sector.
What your fears or concerns are for the communities, the farmers, the landowners that you worked with amid these government cuts?
With the cuts and also freeze to the Department of Agriculture’s funds and payments to agricultural producers, I’m very worried that they’ll be able to continue operating at all. Some of them have loans—either through the Department of Agriculture or privately—that they took out in order to implement these projects before they were able to be paid their incentive payments. So they’re out thousands of dollars that, right now, looks like they may or may not get paid. Which then threatens their livelihood and the ownership of their farm.
It sounds like some might risk losing their farm. Is that accurate?
I believe it is. Unfortunately, agricultural producers are live very much on the margins of their income and expenses. Even a flood or a dry spell can cause irreparable harm to their growing operations.
I wanted to ask if you had any other fears or concerns beyond the NRCS, but about the USDA in general.
I continue to be concerned about the vulnerable populations of our country, farmers, children, veterans, Social Security recipients, anyone that needs to interact [with] or receives funding through the federal government. [Federal workers are] trying to find ways to continue serving the people to the best that they can, without that money, or for Veterans Affairs and Social Security, without the folks to staff call centers and assist folks.
There’s so much going on. It’s hard to fully know what things are going to look like in several months, let alone a week from now.
If you have lost your job as a result of ongoing government cuts and are interested in speaking with me for this series, please contact me on Signal at simbler.88 or [email protected]. I would love to hear from you.