Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has appealed to “competent” and “caring” people to join the cost-cutting team.
Applications to join the billionaire’s newly formed advisory department, which aims to slash federal spending by trillions of dollars through budget cuts and mass firings, are now live.
“The DOGE Team is looking for world-class talent to work long hours identifying/eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse,” DOGE’s post on X (formerly Twitter) said. “These are full-time, salaried positions for software engineers, InfoSec engineers, financial analysts, HR professionals, and, in general, all competent/caring people.”
Applicants must be U.S. citizens, are not permitted to work from home, and must be located, or be willing to relocate to, Washington, D.C.
The strict terms, in keeping with Musk’s crusade against remote work, raised eyebrows on social media.
“It would be far more efficient to allow telecommute or remote work,” someone replied on X.
“Sorry, love the DOGE goal, but I am not moving to DC,” another person said.
“Only hiring people willing to work in DC goes against the essence of DOGE,” someone else added.
In November, DOGE said it needed “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries” willing to work “80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.”
Users on Reddit mocked DOGE’s landing page for its simplicity.
“It’s extremely immature looking. It’s a landing page and it’s not even a good one,” one person said. “It’s literally an HTML page reminiscent of the late 1990’s or early 2000’s. Why put a website up at all if it’s not developed?”
“Ironically this is the group that is going to modernize and apply tech to the govt,” another said.
Musk’s former DOGE partner Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur turned failed presidential candidate, has already bowed out of co-chairing the department.
Ramaswamy reportedly backed away due to “deep philosophical differences” over how the advisory board should function.
The two also battled over who the true leader of DOGE was, The Washington Post reported, given Musk’s large presence. Sources told the outlet the partnership was probably doomed from the start.
“I don’t think Vivek would have signed up under any sense on paper he wouldn’t be co-lead,” said one person with knowledge of DOGE’s structure. “All the assurances were they were going to be coequal leaders.”
Tensions between the two bubbled after Ramaswamy earned the ire of some Trump allies by claiming the U.S. does “not produce the best engineers” in a post supporting H-1B visas.
