- cross-posted to:
- BackTo1985@lemm.ee
- cross-posted to:
- BackTo1985@lemm.ee
Summary
Twenty-one staffers from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) resigned, citing ethical concerns over dismantling public services and compromising sensitive data.
Formerly part of the U.S. Digital Service, they criticized Musk and Trump’s overhaul, which included layoffs and politically charged interviews.
Their letter warned that removing skilled technologists endangers essential services like Social Security and veterans’ benefits.
The resignations add to growing concerns over Musk’s aggressive federal cuts, amplified by his recent CPAC speech where he symbolically wielded a chainsaw against “bureaucracy.”
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More Luigi pls
I was watching an interesting video by an ex-Tesla employee who basically confirmed what we all know - Musk is operationally incompetent and loves to showboat, firing people regardless of their value to the system, piling stress and additional work onto others. And does it even when there are process improvements that would yielded the same savings (or increase profits) and preserve jobs. That’s literally his own mode of operation - work people harder with the threat of firings.
And now he does the same BS with the federal government. People will die because of this.
The move fast and break shit is something that worked in the computer sector, and as an elder millenial who grew up with computers since early childhood (my family’s first computer was a C64 in the 80s. I was too young to actually use it) seeing how computers have changed and exploded in power was something to behold. A mid-high end computer in 1980 was stone age junk to a mid-high computer in 1990, and the same thing from 1990 to 2000, and 2000 to 2010.
But you cannot apply the same shit to other sectors. For public services you can’t expect to enter some place, fire everyone, and then think it’ll be OK. It just isn’t. They are services that are DESIGNED to have redundancy in order to properly work.
Take 911 emergency lines for example. I had to call 911 a few times in my life. Do you know how long the average wait time for me was? Zero seconds. Someone picked up right away. Can you imagine what hell would happen if they decided to apply regular customer service rules to a fucking 911 line? If you had to wait 5 or 10 or 15 minutes to get to someone, PEOPLE ARE GOING TO DIE. Criminals are going to be getting away with their shit far more frequently than before. They will get bolder, too, since they know that police response times will be dramatically increased. (even in the 1970s. The stopwatch gang in Canada had a system where they would get in a bank, rob the place, and be out in less than 60 seconds. The speed at which they operated made it very difficult for people and police to get there on time since most people won’t even have fully processed whatever the hell was going on in that amount of time).
But that being said. I am genuinely amazed at just how successful Elon has been in enriching himself despite being a highly stupid, socially inept, and extremely inarticulate individual.
I don’t think it’s move fast and break shit, so much as it is not thinking things through. He’s a narcissist and he believes what he thinks no matter how unfiltered stupid it is and doesn’t respond well to criticism. Look how he fired all of the supercharger people. Obviously the managers there told him something he didn’t like and he responded like a pissy bitch. Then he had to rehire most of those people to undo the damage he himself had caused.
This is true, but not everyone who starts rich is necessarily destined to become the wealthiest man on earth. I think his skill is in the fact that he not only have no scruples (what billionaire does?), but he really, really knows how to bullshit a lot of people. Like when he made Zip2 in the 90s, the website just wasn’t complicated. It was nothing more than the yellow-pages online. He had a shitty computer for a server (it was the 90s. Web hosting was done very differently then) but he got a fancy looking case and lied about its capabilities to make it look like some ultra-high end machine when it was not. He was able to trick investors into thinking it was something better than it was.
He also had some genuine help from others (who are not very rich today, sadly) who rewrote the code for his barely functional site. He managed to get 20 million dollars for the whole thing. He lied and cheated his way to the site working and the sale, but it was a success.
I think it is more that he kinda understood how to get other smarter people to somehow allow him to take credit for their work, and also being at the right time and place for everything.
See also: Thomas Edison
I am genuinely amazed at just how successful Elon has been in enriching himself despite being a highly stupid, socially inept, and extremely inarticulate individual.
I think starting rich is the real factor to this.
It’s really no surprise to anyone who’s followed the current state of things. The Department of Government Excrement. I only hope a heinous and abhorrently-wild remainder of life to those who have cheered for the dismantling of the institution previously. I say dismantling, because most people are influenced by any end game prospect or “promises” than the actual process. If you still believed the process could somehow work, with changes rather than taking a hammer, I still think the intentions were wildly misguided at worst. However, if you truly wanted near (if not full) fascist rule, and thought it would lead to the “greater good” with what we have now, I hope you realize it will only ever be for the good of the wealthy until millions - and that especially you yourself suffer. I get that is easy to be swept up in the rhetoric. Americans are (or at least we were 10+ years ago) taught from a young age that trust and commitment to the government will lead to helping the general public. It’s especially a shame that the most self-sufficient US agency (the National Park Service) was touched at all. But I guess that government handouts for exploitative employers (business tax benefits/reliefs) sounds sexier. Even if they remove chunks of the most truly efficient government entity. The DoD? Keeping the ones they love safe - even at home far from most international conflict. Civil service? It’s not sexy, but if you want to truly help - or improve what the federal government offers and also learn to to better - you will be fine.
By now, hopefully a majority of people agree the most wasteful and damaging agency is the current one believing it can cut without consequence.
Holy shit you guys are proper fucked. America went full retard
He will blame us Europeans.
You ain’t seen nuthin yet!
That’s the spirit!
We are proper fucked. No need to bring ableist slurs into it, though.
Have you ever called someone an idiot?
I’ll call you one if you think that word carries the same stigma.
It doesn’t, that’s not my point though. “Idiot” is just a watered down form in the modern era, but its still a slur for someone with poor cognitive abilities. And much like “retard” it was used in a clinical/technical context originally.
A person calling someone an idiot is using a culturally softer term to get away with conveying the same exact message. You feel contempt for someone for being dumb, a totally understandable emotion. Calling someone an idiot though doesn’t convey the same bite, sure, but that is almost the problem. Why would you pull punches if you feel earnest contempt for them and their lack of intelligence? Its insincere.
To provide another example of what I mean: If someone says “DEI people” they want to say the N-word without actually saying it and they are rightfully called out on that all the time.
Ehh, pretty sure he’s going off the movie Tropic Thunder so it’ll slide
In their resignation letter, the former USDS staffers recounted how they were interviewed the day after Trump’s inauguration by figures wearing White House visitors’ badges who “demonstrated limited technical ability.”
“Several of these interviewers refused to identify themselves, asked questions about political loyalty, attempted to pit colleagues against each other,” the workers, all of whom previously worked at tech companies such as Google and Amazon, recounted. “This process created significant security risks.”
Forty USDS staffers were laid off following these interviews as part of Trump and Musk’s ongoing slashing of the federal government’s workforce. Around 65 remaining workers were then incorporated into DOGE, 21 of whom have now resigned from their positions.
Well thats 44 assholes
Or 44 minus a few people sabotaging things.
Relevant bit from the article, because some of y’all apparently comment before reading:
The staffers who resigned were all originally employees of the United States Digital Service, a technology unit established during President Obama’s second term in 2014. The unit was renamed and reorganized in January via executive order by Trump into the Musk-headed DOGE.
My understanding is: Founding a new Department can only be done by Congress, so they had to “redefine” (more like corrupt) an existing one.
I have seen some news sites giving this with headlines like “DOGE Goons resign” without the part you just quoted of course. top notch newsmanship
Yeah, they renamed it to DOGE, presumably because using the term duke would be off putting to their drone followers. Then they gave the organization a fuck ton more authority and ignored judicial rulings. What does any of it have to do with Obama though?
It has nothing to do with Obama. Is that a trigger word for you or something? It’s because of comments like this.
Trigger word? I was asking why they are trying to tie an authoritarian move to a president who left office in the way a democratic Republic set up over 2 terms ago.
Have fun with your buzzwords.
You seem very confused about the text quoted by the previous poster.
How so?
Because you seem to imply that there’s something nefarious about citing Obama to describe that the US Digital Service office was established during the Obama presidency, when it’s just what happened.
The point of the copied text was to point out those workers were not newly hired and realizing they didn’t want to participate in bad acts, they were employees that existed prior to this administration and quit because they didn’t want to take part in bad acts.
At no point do we hear that the employees worked for that company for at least 9 years, meaning that Obama starting the US Digital Service office is irrelevant. They could have started 2 years ago, 7 years ago or 9 years ago, that information is unknown so to tie it to the Obama Administration was chosen for a reason. I don’t say the IRS started by the Abraham Lincoln has seen the O’Donnell resignation unless I am specifically trying to call attention to Lincoln.
It’s just a weird choice to bring it up
As an end run around constitutional checks and balances, instead creating a new agency l they corrupted and took over an existing agency set up by obama
The president had no authority to create a new agency but seems to be getting away with a technicality
Notice you said a president can’t create a new agency, then said Obama did. He didn’t create it, the 114th Congress did. Both the Senate and the House were Republican majority when it was created. So it is true if Obama didn’t want it he could have tried to veto it, but the only way it could have been created was by a majority vote.
Something possibly worth noting as well: “This bill directs the President to continue to operate, for FY2017-FY2026, the United States Digital Service as such program operated using funds made available under the Information Technology Oversight and Reform account in division E of the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, 2016.” -H.R.5372
DOGE may be auto defunded after Fiscal Year 2026 unless the Congress/Senate push through a continuation which undoubtedly they should be able to get approved being that they hold the house and Senate majority again.
They weren’t. They were responding to the FAFO comments about the people who resigned in protest.
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The agency that got renamed was formed during his presidency?
It’s not uncommon to mention the president who started an agency in little blurbs describing their history. Like with the Environmental Protection Agency & Nixon.
I would love to see posts like this end up on right leaning spaces like critical posts about left leaning issues end up on left leaning spaces.
Trumps base has such a sycophant army that they just swarm spaces and post this stuff every minute of every day. But the opposite doesn’t happen. Having even 100 people posting stuff like this across their space would do more than a 10 000 person protest ever could but it amazes me that 10 000 would take time off work, go stand in the rain for a week instead of shit posting effectively.
Yeah, but right leaning spaces block people critical of the right. Just look at the cesspool that is /r/conservative
Pretty much.
So does left spaces but they get through by their conviction to have every random base member spread it. The left is literally asleep
This is based on the faulty liberal assumption that fascists are only fascists because they have yet to be shown all of the facts and logic.
Let’s just speed run the scenario where you post this article on a right space: you post the article, every trumper comes out and says the resignations were good because the staffers were woke, and then you scratch your head wondering why your appeal to facts and logic didn’t work on fascists. At this point you might just start spamming right spaces and have all your posts go directly to spam.
It’s honestly kind of disturbing how you write off actual protests in favor of online activism, and I couldn’t think of a more liberal take tbh. Anyone, at this stage of the game, who is taking the position of “less protests, more…” should be evaluated extremely critically - especially if your alternative is spamming r/conservative with liberal thinkpieces.
I can’t even post in r/conservative. Once I tried with my old (now banned) account to make a comment to explain quite clearly that what Americans on r/conservative thought of Canadian voter ID laws was simply not true. I couldn’t even MAKE the comment. It wasn’t some smarmy insult-laden attack, but a very simple and clear statement that in Canada you don’t need an ID if you have someone to vouch for you, and that there are literally countless things that would qualify for an appropriate ID to use. It isn’t like in some states in the US that have a very, very narrow definition of what is an acceptable ID that it rules out most forms of ID. This isn’t the case in Canada (where even a utility bill can suffice).
https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&document=index&lang=e
Just look at what is accepted as ID in Canada. In the US they would have only a few kinds of ID that not everyone has. In Canada because of universal healthcare, EVERYONE has a healthcare card.
And, I forget the source, voicing your opinions online has shown to be quite useless in terms of making actual change. Will try to find the source if needed.
If all people did was post things online then there is no chance in hell anything would change.
Literally everything has changed with shit posting.
That was trumps entire campaign strategy. Dems mocked them for their online spend and now look. GamerGate, YouTube ads, Swarmfront and 4Chan have shaped the internet discourse to be right leaning on nearly every popular platform. I hate to admit it but shitposting did created change. The alt right pipeline radicalized young men into trump voters.
Be the change you want to see
might be a good idea to make a sub dedicated to organizing your efforts
Those are the ones you want to stay. They have ethics.
No, no, that’s the point. This is a feature, not a bug.
It’s a tough decision. People are afraid of retaliation. No one wants to end up in the Nuremberg trials
to me, it seems like a good thing if lots of people refuse to cooperate, refuse to be made instruments of this regime. enough people refuse and the regime is disempowered.
Then they get replaced by loyalists. It’s what Trump has been doing for weeks. Installing loyalists in every part of thr government.
I thought they were just like 6 white dudes. How did they ever hire over 20 people?
Original USDS employees, which Musk merged into DOGE
DOGE is a restructuring of the existing US Digital Service. The people leaving are mostly people who worked there before Elon took over.
Doge is not even a real agency. As you said, it is the US digital service. The executive order Trump signed admits that Trump does not have the authority to rename an agency, and that Doge is only the “public, alternative name.”
So fucking cringe.
Well, the article says these people were software devs who were modernizing software for the IRS, etc
Ignoring the people who worked there previously, Elon hired more than 6 white college kids (but the media just focused on the juniors because clicks)
And 21 loyalists (yes, america, you’re heading to monarchy) will be hired to fill those spots and nobody is left to resist.
They were doge staffers, wouldn’t they already be loyalists? Edit: nvm, down the thread explanations that it was a department already that got converted to doge
I am always confused why they don’t just sabotage the efforts? Like it would be so easy and they definitely aren’t paying attention…
One aspect is that working in that kind of system destroys your mental health. Having to play games to hide the good things, trying to mitigate the bad things. It’s pressure.
My state has been basically been doing Project 2025 for the past five years. I had a friend in an important position in a fascist overtaken state organization who held on for a long time, fighting the good fight - but it drains. She fought her fucking hardest, but a human being can only fight for so long.
The kurds have been fighting a war from the desert for decades, but Americans get whipped by paperwork and call it a day
Well, we can’t shoot our fascists yet. It would probably be pretty helpful with the mental health part.
At the very least it’d be cathartic, plus humans are wired for killing more than paperwork. See problem smash problem is a lot more immediate than slow boring paperwork
plus humans are wired for killing more than paperwork
A common misconception, and anti-scientific one at that, often postulated by white supremacists that point at chimps in the jungle and say “That’s where our nature/culture comes from.” Humans are social creatures, we suck at speed/strength/endurance/lethality compared to most animals on earth because we’re less hardwired for violence than we are for social abilities. Yes, while our fists are shaped to maximize damage to human faces, and human faces are shaped to minimize damage from human fists, that’s a far less unique human attribute than our brains. That’s why you don’t see male chimps writing poetry and songs to court a female chimp that builds orbital satellites while doing a physics PhD.
Humans beings are far and beyond more wired than anything else to sit around a fire and solve problems with eachother through abstract reasoning while sharing food. That and husband/wife swapping (i’m speaking strictly from anthropological data that made my own preconceived biases go “huh?”)
Actually, our endurance is one of the best in nature. Most animals would overheat if forced to keep up with us over long distances. Here is a source confirming it.
Okay then add ‘sweating’ to the list of human traits more engrained than violence.
We actually shot him once. But he survived
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I feel like there will be a “How To Count To 10 In American” video coming out in the next 4-8 years.
Different people are able to take on different levels of risk.
Just because these people resigned doesn’t mean that some other people aren’t staying in for the purposes of being subversive, and you shouldn’t ever hear about the latter.
That’s the thing, though. They’re not really taking risks.
Much of what DOGE does is completely illegal and does not go through the proper channels and processes. By simply doing their jobs and forcing everything through the proper processes, they can slow down everything, maybe even to a halt, while being completely in the right and thus can’t be fired.
Yes, it takes a mental toll, but these guys have a responsibility.
They’re unemployed government workers, there are less government jobs now than ever, and their resume literally says DOGE on it. They are taking a risk.
No. They resigned from a job. They were not fired. And as long as they don’t break any rules, it’s hard to fire them.
I never said they were fired, but since you brought it up, when you’re fired, you’ll usually get a severance to help during the job search, they won’t, they’re just unemployed.
… because they resigned. Seriously, what’s your point?
If they wouldn’t have resigned, they would still have a job. And since they couldn’t have been fired easily, they would have continued to have a job for quite a while.
That’s not a complex concept, what’s so hard to understand about that?
They resigned from a job they believed was wrong, which will lead to substantial financial consequences for them. You tried to dismiss their efforts as if it was nothing, so I called you out for being dismissive. You say “Seriously, what’s your point?” As if I’m the one making provocative statements from the sidelines.
Sabatoge can carry extremely harsh legal penalties, particularly if it has any type of lasting impact. Beyond that, just phoning it in and doing a bad job can slow things down but doesn’t actually stop it. If you’re then let go it’s on their pace, it looks worse for you and it’s less noticeable.
A mass resignation can be the only thing some people can do. It sends a message, it gets noticed outside the organization, and it lets objective news reporting share your motivation, which would normally fall under opinion.
It also leaves a big gap in the organization that isn’t getting anything done.Can’t persecute you for sabotage if it just happens to coincide with proper office protocol.
but… he who saves his country can not break the law. right??!
Guys, dumping tea in the harbor is illegal, just pay your taxes to the crown. It’s just a king, everyone has one
The American revolutionary war was difficult enough with an entire ocean separating us from a king. Now the self appointed king is here.
Not if you make an Italian strike. You are following every single step of the process, taking the time needed, all by the book. And when the higher rank says something then everyone working resigns all at once.
Lol getting fired doesn’t look bad. It doesn’t look like anything because you aren’t legally required to tell a future employer if you were fired, and they can’t ask the previous employer
I’m pretty sure any future employee that saw you were fired after Trump took power (because you didn’t express loyalty to a fascist) would see this as a good thing.
It’s public information if a government employee is terminated, and there’s nothing stopping them from reaching out to the previous employer.
State laws determine exactly what a potential employer can ask, and divulge
Yes and no one ever violates those
And do you think that that prevents them from disclosing that they terminated an employee for unprofessional conduct or unsatisfactory job performance?
Further, for government employees certain details about their jobs are simply considered matters of public record. It’s not something they divulge, it was simply never private in the first place.
Mostly the risk of jail, probably.
Or execution.
Or stochastic terrorism
Because they don’t disagree with it, they only can’t bring themselves to be the ones with the blood on their hands. Otherwise they don’t care what happens.
I know everything is bad now, but not everyone is bad all the time.
HOLY SHIT HELL YES!! Finally someone with some backbone god damn. Best news I’ve heard in a month!
Well, they’ll soon be replaced with people who worship Elon, so it’s a short term win if anything.
Propbably tired of getting cussed out and the partners leaving them.
It’s tiresome to deal with a boss who is on drugs all the time
TBH it’s interesting that there are always staffers available when the previous trump admin had staffers go very long times without a job as a result of their affiliations.
Working with the fascists is a huge negative on your resume, kids.
I just want to know what these people were thinking when they took the jobs in the first place.
I think the ones resigning were part of the old department that Musk took over and converted into DOGE, so they didn’t actually join DOGE originally.
They already worked there.
Musk took over the US digital Service and they were preexisting employees
Well… one of the doges is the USDS skinsuit one. There’s actually several iterations. And it’s not clear Elon works for any of them?
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Needed a job to pay that ridiculous rent, I suppose.
They probably thought they were actually gonna make shit more efficient.
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Naiveté knows no bounds.
who did they submit their resignation? musk and trump can’t lead so it’s not them.
Probably had to tweet a poop emoji at Musk.
