Without Elon Musk, DOGE likely to fizzle out: Former staffer says staffers may 'just stop showing up to work'

A former staffer of the US government's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) predicted the future of the department after Elon Musk's exit. In a recent interview, software engineer and former DOGE staffer Sahil Lavingia said that the DOGE project is likely to quickly "fizzle out". 

The interview comes after Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced that he is exiting as a special government employee, but said that DOGE would continue to function without him. With a mandate to cut down US government spending, DOGE has overseen job cuts at roughly every federal body, including at the US nuclear programme. 

Lavingia, who was fired from DOGE this month, told news agency Reuters: "It'll just die a whimper". He also mentioned that much of the allure and appeal surrounding DOGE was the tech billionaire. 

He said that DOGE staffers may "just stop showing up to work. It's like kids joining a startup that will go out of business in four months." Sahil, the founder and CEO of creator platform Gumroad, said that he was recruited by DOGE through a personal contact and joined the team in March. 

While he said that he was proud of the achievements at the Department of Veterans Affairs, he was often unsure about what work was expected from him. 

"I got dropped into the VA with an HP laptop. What are we supposed to do? What is the road map?" Lavingia said. "I felt like I was being pranked," he added. 

While Boring Company president Steve Davis ran DOGE's day-to-day operations, Turkish-born venture capitalist Baris Akis helped with DOGE recruitment and logistics. 

He added that when instructions did come through, they were communicated through phone calls or small chats on the Signal app that would typically auto-delete in a day. He said that instructions included moving faster to increase mass layoffs at the Veterans Affairs, the US government's second-largest agency. 

Moving on, he also recounted the only time he met Elon Musk. The Gumroad founder and CEO said that he met Musk at an all-hands meeting in March with 40-60 staffers. He said that during this meeting, he asked to open-source some of his computer code, which Musk approved. 

Then, he asked if they could live stream DOGE meetings to increase transparency, a suggestion which was initially approved by Musk but rejected later due to security risks. 

Lavingia had to quit in early May after he spoke to a media outlet about working at DOGE. He noted that his computer access was revoked, while adding that Musk and his team leaders never clearly told him not to speak to journalists.