Elon Musk's DOGE is looking for people to help cut government spending. But is he offering a real job? And is it paid?
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- Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is looking for people to join the effort.
- Musk posted that the compensation is "zero." So, is this a real job opportunity?
- DOGE hasn't answered questions about pay, or whether you need an X account to apply.
The new quasi-department Elon Musk is creating to root out wasteful government spending has generated lots of buzz — but how exactly does a person apply for a job there? And is it actually a paid job?
So far, it's not entirely clear.
At the moment, what we know about a potential position at the new unofficial Department of Government Efficiency comes from a post on its newly created X account. The post says DOGE — named after a Musk-linked cryptocurrency — is looking for the "Top 1%" of applicants who must be "super high-IQ" and willing to work 80-plus-hour weeks.
It's unclear if the demanding role would come with a paycheck.
In response to one user's post, Musk wrote on X: "Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero. What a great deal!" He concluded the comment with a crying-laughing emoji — making it not quite clear if he was joking about the no compensation part.
Musk didn't respond to an email from BI, and the DOGE account didn't respond to a direct message. The Trump transition team also didn't respond to an email asking for more details.
We are very grateful to the thousands of Americans who have expressed interest in helping us at DOGE. We don’t need more part-time idea generators. We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting. If that’s…
— Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) November 14, 2024
Earlier this week, Brian Hughes, a Trump transition team spokesman, said in a statement to BI: "As President Trump has said, Elon Musk is a genius, an innovator, and has literally made history by building creative, modern, and efficient systems."
Representatives for Vivek Ramaswamy, who incoming President Trump tapped to co-lead DOGE alongside Musk, also didn't respond to a request for comment.
Among the other questions about the possible job opening is how a person is supposed to apply. DOGE's post on X asks prospective applicants to send their resumes via direct message to its X account.
But, as a number of X users pointed out, the department's DMs at first apparently weren't open for users who didn't have a paid X subscription. The account's DMs as of Friday afternoon were open to any X user — and BI was able to successfully send a message to the account without a paid subscription.
Still, a job seeker would need to have an X account — even if just a free one — to send a direct message to DOGE. That means that if someone didn't already have an account on the platform that Musk owns, the person would — as of now, at least — need to start one to apply for the role.
It's not clear if there will be an official DOGE website coming with a more traditional application process.