- The Office of Personnel Management will see new leadership under President Trump. New hires include a 21-year-old whose resume says he worked for Palantir and a recent high school graduate, Wired reported Tuesday.
While all new presidential administrations bring a swath of fresh faces to government offices, President Donald Trump’s Office of Personnel Management will reportedly have a handful of wide-eyed Gen Zers taking top spots within the agency.
Among the new hires for the body overseeing federal hiring and firing is a 21-year-old and a 2024 high school graduate, Wired reported Tuesday, citing anonymous sources within the federal government. The 21-year-old will serve as a senior advisor to Scott Kupor, Trump’s pick for the director of OPM, and the newly graduated high schooler will directly report to the agency’s chief of staff Amanda Scales, according to the outlet. Wired did not name the two individuals out of sensitivity to their ages.
The incoming Trump administration is evidently not opposed to hiring young people. Karoline Leavitt, who made her debut as White House press secretary Tuesday, is the youngest person to hold the position, at 27.
The onslaught of unconventional new hires reflects Trump’s sweeping approach to hirings, firings, and freezes that has so far shuffled at least 240 government employees. These changes are complementary to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency Services, which replaced the Obama-era U.S. Digital Services. DOGE’s goal is to overhaul federal bureaucracy through cost-cutting, and eliminating what the administration sees as unnecessary roles.
New hires with ties to Musk
The fresh blood at OPM have more in common than just their new place of work; some also count themselves as former employees of Musk’s numerous tech companies. Scales reportedly recently worked for xAI, Musk’s AI firm that developed the chatbox Grok for X. The recent high school graduate working under Scales had a summer gig at Musk’s neurotechnology company Neuralink—in addition to work as a bike mechanic and camp counselor—according to an online resume and high school student-published magazine, Wired reported. The 21-year-old senior advisor did not previously work for a Musk-owned company, but reportedly listed on his resume a job at data analytics firm Palantir, co-founded by Peter Thiel, a member of the PayPal Mafia alongside Musk.
Overlaps between Musk’s former employees and up-and-coming government personage extend beyond OPM. Steve Davis, Musk's chief cost-cutter at X, might now be an advisor to Musk on cuts made through his DOGE Service, Fortune reported earlier this month.
OPM did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
OPM’s ‘Fork in the Road’
Musk’s fingerprints on the federal government’s hiring and firing is growing more evident. The White House is offering a buyout to employees if they tender their resignation by Feb. 6, it said in a memo sent Tuesday.
The memo, titled “Fork in the Road,” bears strong resemblance to the email Musk sent to X, then Twitter, employees in 2022 following his purchase of the social media app. The message, which also had the “Fork in the Road” subject line, asked workers to commit to a “hardcore” work culture or take a buyout. During Musk’s transition as company owner, he was responsible for eliminating 6,500 of 8,000 positions at the company, trimming its headcount by 80%.
“This will mean working long hours at high intensity,” Musk said in his 2022 email. “Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”
OPM’s Tuesday memo used similar language, saying it would update its performance standards and “reward and promote those that exceed expectations.”
“The federal workforce should be comprised of employees who are reliable, loyal, trustworthy, and who strive for excellence in their daily work,” it said. “Employees will be subject to enhanced standards of suitability and conduct as we move forward.”
In August, Trump praised Musk for allegedly firing workers who complain about their jobs. "You're the greatest...I mean, I look at what you do,” Trump said in an interview on X. “You just walk in and you just say, 'You wanna quit?' They go on strike, I won't mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, 'That's OK, you're all gone...Every one of you is gone.'"
