Minister Ma recruits online: 80 hours of work per week, free of charge!
At noon on November 14, Eastern Time, the government efficiency department led by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy posted a post on the social media X to recruit volunteers, and asked those interested to submit their resumes directly to private messages. The post reads:
"We are very grateful to the thousands of Americans who have expressed their willingness to join DOGE to help us. We don't need more people to help part-time to figure out how to cut costs. We need super-high IQ small government revolutionaries who are willing to work 80+ hours a week to cut our costs. If that's you, send your resume to this account privately, and Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will review the top 1% of applicants."
Musk then posted on his personal X account and added that the work would not be paid. Musk wrote:
"Indeed, this will be tedious work, may offend a lot of people, and there is no pay. What a good deal!"
This recruitment is similar to the message Musk sent to employees shortly after acquiring Twitter (later renamed X). In 2022, Musk sent an email to employees asking them to commit to "full commitment" and "long hours and high intensity work" or they would take the money and leave. Musk estimates that about 80% of employees left X in early 2023.
On November 12, Eastern Time, Trump announced that DOGE will be jointly operated by Musk and former Republican primary candidate and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. The department's mission is to assist the government in dismantling bureaucracy, cutting excessive regulations, reducing wasteful spending and restructuring federal agencies.
At present, it is unclear how Doge will differ from the existing government auditing agency, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), or how the two departments will work together.