These Philly federal workers loved their jobs. But amid Trump’s shakeup they chose to leave.

“Way back in 1996, a young and idealistic tree-hugger from a little Pennsylvania steel town called Phoenixville started his career at the U.S. EPA in Washington DC, intent on changing the world for the better,” Andrew Kreider wrote on LinkedIn June 12, his last day working for the federal government.

After nearly 29 years at the Environmental Protection Agency, most recently out of Philadelphia, Kreider this spring took a retirement package offered by President Donald Trump’s administration.

Leaving the agency was “bittersweet,” he said, and not what he’d expected for the end of his federal career. Still, he felt “a lot of relief.”

“I didn’t need to struggle in this sort of space of cognitive dissonance where I’m committed to a mission that the administrator [of the EPA] himself doesn’t seem to want to fulfill,” he said.

In recent months, the Trump administration has been encouraging federal workers to leave their jobs as it aims to shrink the federal workforce. By the end of this year, there will be 300,000 fewer federal employees across the U.S., due in large part to voluntary departures, the administration has said.

Philadelphia federal offices have seen some of those, including deferred resignations, an option the Trump administration first offered in January to allow federal employees to quit and continue getting paid through September.

Pennsylvania’s federal workforce shrank by some 2,600 positions this year through July, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics — and that was before deferred resignations taking effect after Sept. 30.

“They say that people don’t leave bad jobs. They leave bad bosses,” said Kreider. He wants to work at a job where “leadership exemplifies integrity and honesty and where my commitment to the mission is respected and supported.”

“And unfortunately, EPA is no longer that place,” he said.

Emily Adler, 31, left her job in Philadelphia at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in May, and moved to Anchorage, Alaska. She now works in environmental consulting at a small firm.

“If you told me a year ago that I’d be in the private sector, I feel like I’d probably think you were crazy,” said Adler, who resigned without taking any incentives from the Trump administration.

When Adler saw the posting, about five years ago, for what would become her government job, it felt “serendipitous,” she said.

“I felt like this job was my dream job, without even knowing that the job existed,” she said.

Her team evaluated Superfund sites and wrote public health assessments — work that felt “very impactful,” she said. The job was hybrid, based in the EPA’s Center City office.

Adler was already thinking about her next career move, but when the Trump administration came in, she said, she and coworkers became demoralized. She knew she had to go.

A sense of stability — once a key benefit of federal government work — was gone, she said. She watched coworkers get laid off, and the announced reorganization of her agency under the Administration for a Healthy America.

She also noted the “barrage” of emails from the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources agency. Breaking from its usual procedure of going through agency leadership, the office has been contacting federal workers directly, offering the deferred resignation program and asking them, for a time, to describe what they’ve accomplished on a weekly basis.

For a short while, Adler felt stubborn about staying in her federal position, “to hold the line, so to speak,” she said. And she was skeptical about the deferred resignation program, wondering, like others, how it would be funded.

She ultimately resigned without taking the administration’s offered incentives. And she took a big pay cut, Adler said, but she was “really eager to get out.”

Earlier this year, Charlie Elison did something he hadn’t done since he was an undergraduate student: He got on LinkedIn.

Then a public affairs officer for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Elison saw the “uncertainty” in the federal job market. And in his own agency, he saw a role in U.S. immigration that had “changed drastically.”

He said the agency had been the “legal adjudication side of immigration,” but it’s been pulled into the realm of enforcement this year. It has been “extremely difficult to reconcile that radical shift in priorities,” he said.

Elison had deleted his LinkedIn profile years before, he said. Many federal workers historically didn’t use the networking site, he explained, as they typically find opportunities through internal agency channels.

“I was that typical fed,” Elison said. He figured “‘I don’t have to put myself out there.’ Until I did.”

To help others navigate the job market, he helped put together a workshop in March for federal workers looking to transition to other positions. The initiative has grown, with workshops taking place at libraries around the city.

Elison found himself a new job too: executive director of Philadelphia’s office of immigrant affairs.

When he left the federal government, he posted on his nascent LinkedIn profile: “While my personal compass leads me elsewhere, I will always keep USCIS’s mission — to uphold America’s promise as a nation of welcome and possibility with fairness, integrity, and respect for all — close to my heart.”

He said he’s “thrilled” to bring his experience to the city role. “I was absolutely heartbroken to leave, but the time was right.”

In June, Joyce Howell went to the EPA’s Center City office to hand in her work badge and computer. Colleagues applauded her, on her last day after 32 years at the EPA.

“It was very sweet,” said Howell, the former executive vice president of AFGE Council 238, which represents EPA workers across the country. She had been an EPA attorney.

During her decades at the agency, she said, “We did an enormous amount of work that reduced the environmental hazards in the Philadelphia area.”

“There’s some pollutants that were in the air that are no longer there at all because of cases I was involved in.”

Howell chose a retirement option through the deferred resignation, despite her initial skepticism, when it was offered for a second time and stepped down from her union role as well.

“If Vice President [Kamala] Harris had been elected, I would still be working at EPA,” said Howell.

After Trump was elected, the union work became “pretty relentless,” and “really difficult,” she said. Now as she watches from the sidelines, she says the challenges union leadership face are “tremendous.”

» READ MORE: Philly-area union officials say they’re not backing down as federal agencies cancel contracts

Brad Starnes, president of the union for local EPA employees, was planning on retiring next year. But he decided to leave sooner, in part so he could have a better work life balance as he manages union work.

He had to forgo some pension advantages, he said, but the deferred resignation package “is lucrative enough” to make up for that.

In June, he concluded a three-decade career at the agency. It was, he said, “a phenomenal place to work.”

But despite the efforts of his remaining colleagues, he said, it’s become a different place recently.

“The current environment — political environment, administrative environment — has become toxic to put it mildly,” said Starnes.

Karen Ford-Woods also retired to focus on union work, in January. She had worked in logistics at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and is president of AFGE Local 1793, which represents local VA workers.

“There was no way that I could effectively represent the employees if I’m still there, because right now, we’re afraid of reprisal,” she said.

In his resignation announcement on LinkedIn, Kreider shared a photo from his early days at the EPA alongside a photo from March at a protest for EPA employees and supporters in Center City.

Kreider, then a congressional liaison in the Office of Public Affairs, was photographed and featured in an Inquirer article about the event that day. About a week-and-a-half later, he was removed from his position and placed on the Superfund program.

» READ MORE: Philadelphia EPA workers protest at City Hall, saying ‘clean water is under attack’ amid Trump’s cuts

Kreider said he learned from colleagues in D.C. that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin was aware of the photo of Kreider at the rally published by The Inquirer.

“When that happened, it indicated to me that we are all working for an administration and a boss who doesn’t value a diversity of opinions and viewpoints and isn’t open to working together toward fulfilling our mission,” he said.

A spokesperson for the agency said the “EPA does not comment on individual personnel matters.” They added that the EPA “continues to be laser-focused on its core mission of protecting human health and the environment in [Trump’s] second term.”

Kreider feels concerned and anxious about his former colleagues who remain at the agency. He says he continues to speak out because, “I love EPA too much to be quiet.”

At the end of his LinkedIn post, Kreider thanked federal employees. And he noted that he’s open to work in a new job “where integrity and empathy are guiding principles.”