21 DOGE staffers resign as they refuse to 'dismantle critical public services'
21 DOGE staffers resign as they refuse to 'dismantle critical public services'
"We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data," they wrote
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."
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.
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.
More Luigi pls
Holy shit you guys are proper fucked. America went full retard
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.
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.
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 am always confused why they don't just sabotage the efforts? Like it would be so easy and they definitely aren't paying attention...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Be the change you want to see
If all people did was post things online then there is no chance in hell anything would change.
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.
Literally everything has changed with shit posting.
might be a good idea to make a sub dedicated to organizing your efforts
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.
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
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
I thought they were just like 6 white dudes. How did they ever hire over 20 people?
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)
Original USDS employees, which Musk merged into DOGE
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?
Needed a job to pay that ridiculous rent, I suppose.
They probably thought they were actually gonna make shit more efficient.
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.
Putin will not be pleased.
