Carly Arata received an email around 9 p.m. on Thursday saying her position in the federal government had been terminated.
When she saw the email, Arata told ABC News that she "screamed."
"I didn't think it was real at first, so I reread it like three times, then kind of started crying because I was relying on this job," Arata said. "My husband and I just purchased this house in December, and now we're not really sure what we're going to do."
Arata is one of possibly more than 200,000 workers affected by mass firings of probationary employees.
Arata had been a probationary employee since September with the Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service but had worked as a contractor in the role for a year before that. Arata, who turns 32 on Sunday, has experience in this area. She obtained her bachelor's degree in environmental science and her master's degree in ecological restoration.
"We're relying on this job and we're qualified for this job, and yet, we're losing it just because we're under a year," Arata said.
Arata develops conservation plans for farmers in Georgia and helps them get federal funding.
"These poor farmers. … It's like I abandoned them, and that's not the case at all," Arata said. "They were amazing and cared so much about their land, and I wanted to help them preserve that."
Arata said the message from Elon Musk and President Donald Trump about waste in the government is misguided.
"Everyone that is there loves what they do, and they bust their butts to do it," Arata said of her colleagues. "They know their jobs inside and out."
She added that the firings will damage farmers the most.
"They say they care so much about their farmers, and they're taking away the people that help them the most," Arata said. "And they already aren't getting the funding from [the Inflation Reduction Act] currently because the IRA funds are frozen. … A lot of people are going to miss out on money that is vital to their operations."
Arata said she was the only soil conservationist in her office overseeing two counties in Georgia. Her role also included helping farmers with installing wells and watering facilities for animals, cover cropping and cross-fencing for cattle.
When asked about her message to Elon Musk and Trump, Arata said: "You're offering uncertainty and fear, and I don't see how they think that this is going to make anything better."
Among the roughly 2,000 workers fired from the Department of Energy is Corey Krzan Matta, who works on the legal team for the Hanford site nuclear cleanup in Washington state.
Krzan Matta said the firings are "haphazard." He acknowledged that while previous administrations have also tried to cut waste and reduce the government workforce, he argued Trump and Musk are going about it in an "arbitrary" way.
"There's no consideration for the mission. There's no consideration for whether or not this position is critical," he said.
Krzan Matta joined the Department of Energy after six years of active-duty service in the Navy and after years of legal experience.
"I'm not one who likes to sit around twiddling my thumbs," Krzan Matta said. "If there's one thing that's not deficient, it's my performance, and then to have a letter from the Department of Energy that says your performance isn't in the public interest -- it just, there's no rhyme or reason to it."
Krzan Matta received the termination email Thursday night. Immediately, his computer access was terminated, and his badge was deactivated.
"You know custom courtesy within the profession is give you two weeks' notice, give you time to figure out your future," he said. "It is simply: It's done. It's over with. Leave."
He argued that rather than cutting waste and increasing inefficiency, Trump's and Musk's efforts are simply overloading already-overworked federal government employees.
"I think of my colleagues who are already overworked from an incredibly busy schedule with an understaffed team who now have to shoulder all of my work -- because it doesn't just go away because I go away," he said.
Hanford is an old Manhattan Project site from when the United States was in the race to build a nuclear bomb during World War II. Fast-forward to 2024, "the mission is clean up that mess we made while we were producing plutonium enrichment," Krzan Matta said.
"I was overjoyed to have found a job that I really fell in love with, not just for the work that I do [find] interesting and fulfilling, but the mission out here of cleaning up the Hanford site and supporting the community that I grew up in," he said.
To Arata, the future looks bleak.
"I'm going to be driving food delivery or something until I can find something, and thank goodness I have my master's degree and a load of student debt," Arata said sarcastically.
"The nonprofit world isn't looking great either, with what's happening with grants, and that's where I came from," she added. "So I'm not sure I'm going to be able to go back to that, and now I don't have an income at all."
Arata said colleagues who accepted the buyout offer are even more confused and have received no guidance. She said those who accepted the offer but were in their probationary periods were also terminated.
