A month after Donald Trump’s reelection to the office of President of the United States, and it seems we’re yet to wake up from the bad dream. Yes, he really was voted into the top job again – despite everything we know about him this time. And yes, his cabinet picks still read like a who’s who of dodgy US politicians.

But hands down, the most head-scratching of Trump’s current schemes has been the appointment of Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk to the wholly made-up Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

This is laughable for a few reasons, none of them good. Musk, of course, is a car salesman whose latest offering, the Cybertruck, looks like something Kanye West would design in collaboration with Hot Wheels. He has also recently become CEO of X, sorry, Twitter. Or is it X now? Who cares? What is interesting is that the platform is now worth a fraction of the price he paid for it, despite countless layoffs.

Musk has also succeeded in turning X into a Mecca for ‘free speech’, which is code for the sort of filter-free hatred the new president is so fond of. (Remember when he refused to condemn actual Nazis?). And of course, through Space X we know Musk has become an integral part of government.

Meanwhile, Ramaswamy ran against Trump in the Republican primaries and for a while was touted as the most Trump-like of the contenders. If they couldn’t get the real thing, Republicans were seriously considering going all-in on the knock-off. Thankfully, the Big Man returned to finish the job in the end.

So, DOGE reeks of jobs for the boys, favours returned. And supporters will say that these two billionaires – Ramaswamy founded Roivant Sciences – are just the people to help the government cut money. Especially so because in Musk’s case he’s an outsider, i.e. not a politician in the traditional sense. And look, the acronym ‘DOGE’ even shares a name with Musk’s ropey crypto currency, dogecoin. Isn’t that funny.

Already we know DOGE is being referred to as a sort of "reverse ‘New Deal’” – referring to the massive programme of government spending between 1933 and 1938 that helped the US climb out of the Great Depression. Does this mean Americans are about to become more depressed, or that government funding on pointless projects like roads and infrastructure will finally end?

Elon Musk, Co-Chair of the newly announced Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Image: Getty

And, as Trump’s administration gears up to take over in the New Year, DOGE and other departments are firing full steam ahead. The question, then, is not why would people want to work for a new governmental department, but who are the people emailing their CVs across to Musk and Ramaswamy?

, DOGE is looking for 100 full-time workers with software engineering and finance backgrounds, with college students and executives applying. They will, naturally, all be “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries” willing to work “80+ hours per week”. And the best part? “This will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero,” Musk said, adding that, “This is a chance to work on the reverse ‘New Deal’.”

Chinmay Singh, a start-up founder and CEO, told Forbes that he’d made a brand new CV and sent it out on X, hoping to land himself a special new job. One of his big aims should he get the job would be to cut down on Medicare fraud. “Messaging your resume to an X account is unusual, so I took an unusual approach, too,” he said. “I haven’t heard back yet.”

According to Forbes, candidates are attracted by the chance to relocate to Washington, D.C, as well as access to billionaires like a16z cofounder Marc Andreessen and former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.

Tom Dean, from the UK, now lives in LA and works in marketing for a crypto start-up. He sees DOGE as the way to finally achieve his dreams. “That American dream was very much alive for me, and it’s felt like it went a bit wayward in recent years,” he told Forbes, expressing hope that the department will cut through governmental red tape.

Vivek Ramaswamy, Co-Chair of DOGE. Image: Getty

“I am young enough and idealistic enough that I would work very long weeks in service of the people and country that I love, and I would happily move,” Dean said. “What’s 18 months in comparison to the next 80 years? It’s nothing.”

Forbes also spoke to a computer science student in California who expressed the desire to bring a “technologist’s perspective" to government, calling working at DOGE a chance to do “something meaningful”.

Critics might point out that it all sounds a little bit like young men eager to make lots of money without too many regulations. In short, a libertarian’s wet dream. But some, like computer science and philosophy student Shawki Sukkar, are motivated by something more powerful: patriotism.

As a Syrian immigrant, Sukkar claims the US government has been “undermining of the Anglo-Saxon tradition of classical virtues,” and hopes that Musk can help usher in a new era of “natural aristocracy,” favouring the most talented and virtuous citizens. “A chance to see change is better than not doing anything,” he says.

There is also a third reason for throwing your chips in with Musk, as another tech worker told Forbes: “There are three main factors in joining DOGE,” they said, “Patriotism, ego and access”.

Of the three, ego is surely the most disconcerting. Although, not everyone seems to be in it for themselves.

Bob Greenlee is chief operating officer at New York-based Tusk Holdings and former Deputy Governor of the state of Illinois. He told Forbes that DOGE offers a “generational opportunity” to have tech workers become more involved in public affairs – something that can only be for the better. “If you believe, like I do, that tech solutions are the right answers, then a bunch of engineers is great,” he said.

Regardless of who ends up populating the DOGE offices, it’s clear that the job is attracting a certain type. Guys, mostly, who want to do things their way and see this as a way of doing something significant. Guys not unlike a young Musk.

But they shouldn’t get too comfortable: saving Americans from overspending might not be a full-time role. DOGE aims to hit the ground running on 20th January, but it has a clear end point of 4th July, 2026, completing its work as an Independence Day gift to the American people. What a day that will be.

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