# Probationary Period The **probationary period** is the initial trial period of federal employment — generally one year for competitive-service positions and two years for many newer hires and for the [[Senior Executive Service]] — during which an agency may terminate an employee for performance or conduct with abbreviated procedures. Probationary employees have sharply limited appeal rights. Absent an allegation of prohibited discrimination, partisan-political discrimination, or marital-status discrimination, they generally cannot appeal a termination to the [[Merit Systems Protection Board]] on the merits at all. That asymmetry made probationers the cheapest available cut in 2025, when agencies terminated them in large numbers ahead of formal reduction-in-force procedures. Litigation followed over whether the terminations were genuinely performance-based, since a termination that is in substance a workforce reduction is subject to [[Reduction in Force]] rules. The [[Office of Personnel Management]] rule effective September 2, 2026 moves adjudication of probationary appeals from the MSPB to OPM itself. See [[How a Federal Agency Is Dismantled]].