Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's Department of Government Efficiency, a nongovernmental advisory group created to slash the federal government's budget, is looking to hire "a very small number" of full-time, salaried positions, according to its X account.
The group — nicknamed "DOGE" after the memecoin that Musk has promoted — is recruiting people to fill software engineering, information security engineering, HR, IT and finance roles, Business Insider reported.
The X post instructs applicants for the HR, IT and finance roles to direct message the DOGE account with their resumes and "a few bullet points about why you are interested in DOGE." In a separate post, applicants for the software engineering and information security engineering jobs were told to send bullet points "demonstrating exceptional ability" along with a cell phone number. The posts do not offer details on job descriptions, salaries or how many positions will be filled.
Musk, who has said DOGE is looking to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, said in November that DOGE employees would not be paid. "This will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero," he posted on X.
Trump announced in December that William McGinley, a longtime election attorney who served as cabinet secretary in Trump's first term and has been appointed White House counsel for his second term, will be DOGE's attorney. McGinley has also served as the Republican National Committee's outside counsel for election integrity. Katie Miller, deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security under Trump's first administration, would also DOGE, Trump said.
Trump announced the creation of DOGE weeks after he was reelected in November. Musk and Ramaswamy, the billionaires he put in charge of it, have pledged a "chainsaw" approach to cutting the $6 trillion federal budget.
Ramaswamy has suggested eliminating programs that have lapsed spending authorizations despite still being funded by Congress, such as veterans' health care services, housing assistance and the Justice Department. Musk has called for "deleting" the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
In an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal, they pointed to $535 million allocated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $1.5 billion for "grants to international organizations" and nearly $300 million allocated to "progressive groups like Planned Parenthood" as examples of funding that could be cut.
Fiscal policy experts say their proposals misunderstand the role of funding authorization in Congress.
"They have a fundamentally superficial understanding of what they're doing," Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, said. "They have a meme-level understanding. 'Let's get rid of unauthorized spending' is the sort of thing that you might see in a Facebook meme."
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