Without billionaire Elon Musk in the Trump administration, his cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency project is likely to sputter out, a former DOGE staffer said in his first interview since leaving the team. Tesla CEO Musk announced on Wednesday evening that he was ending his time as a special government employee but vowed that DOGE would continue without him. Administration media representatives also said in statements to Reuters that DOGE would continue its work. DOGE has overseen job cuts at nearly every federal agency as part of U.S. President Donald Trump\u2018s attempts to shake up the federal bureaucracy. However, software engineer Sahil Lavingia, who spent almost two months working for the group of pro-Musk technologists, said he expects DOGE to quickly \u201cfizzle out.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019ll just die a whimper,\u201d Lavingia, who was fired from DOGE earlier this month, told Reuters. \u201cSo much of the appeal and allure was Elon.\u201d He said he expected DOGE staffers to \u201cjust stop showing up to work. It\u2019s like kids joining a startup that will go out of business in four months.\u201d That would cap a remarkable undoing for DOGE, which Musk initially vowed would cut $2 trillion in federal spending. Instead, DOGE estimates its efforts have saved around $175 billion so far and the group\u2019s tallies have been riddled with errors. The White House praised DOGE but did not comment on Lavingia. \u201cDOGE is integral to the federal government\u2019s operations, and its mission, as established by the President\u2019s executive order, will continue under the direction of agency and department heads in the Trump administration,\u201d White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said. Musk did not respond to a request for comment. Lavingia, the 32-year-old founder and CEO of creator platform Gumroad, said he was recruited by DOGE through a personal contact and joined the team in March. While he said he was proud of certain achievements at the Department of Veterans Affairs, including modernizing the agency\u2019s internal artificial-intelligence chatbot, he said he was often at a loss about what work he was expected to do. \u201cI got dropped into the VA with an HP laptop. What are we supposed to do? What is the road map?\u201d Lavingia said he asked, to no avail. \u201cI felt like I was being pranked.\u201d Veterans Affairs press secretary Pete Kasperowicz said in a statement to Reuters: \u201cVA looks forward to continuing to work with its DOGE liaisons to help the department improve its performance, customer service, and convenience to Veterans.\u201d Lavingia said Steve Davis, the president of Musk\u2019s tunneling enterprise the Boring Company, ran day-to-day operations while Turkish-born venture capitalist Baris Akis helped with DOGE recruitment and DOGE logistics. Davis and Akis did not respond to requests for comment sent via the White House. When instructions did come through, they were usually communicated through phone calls or small chats on the encrypted Signal messaging app that would typically auto-delete in one day, Lavingia said. Lavingia said instructions included moving faster to increase mass layoffs at the VA, the federal government\u2019s second-largest agency. The only time he met Musk, Lavingia said, was at an all-hands meeting in March with what he estimated was between 40 and 60 fellow DOGE staffers. Lavingia said he asked to open-source, or make freely available, some of his computer code, which Musk approved. He then asked if they could livestream DOGE meetings to increase transparency. \u201cElon said: \u2018That\u2019s a great idea. We\u2019ll do it next week.\u2019 He then caught himself and said: \u2018Maybe we pre-record it because of security risks.’\u201d Lavingia said he never heard back. In early May, after he spoke to media outlet Fast Company about working at DOGE, Lavingia said his computer access was revoked in what amounted to a firing. He said Musk and team leaders never explicitly told him he should not talk to journalists. \u201cMy DOGE days were over,\u201d Lavingia wrote in a blog, opens new tab about his experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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