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.
Holy shit you guys are proper fucked. America went full retard
He will blame us Europeans.
We are proper fucked. No need to bring ableist slurs into it, though.
Have you ever called someone an idiot?
I’ll call you one if you think that word carries the same stigma.
You ain’t seen nuthin yet!
That’s the spirit!
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.
They’re unemployed government workers, there are less government jobs now than ever, and their resume literally says DOGE on it. They are taking a risk.
No. They resigned from a job. They were not fired. And as long as they don’t break any rules, it’s hard to fire them.
I never said they were fired, but since you brought it up, when you’re fired, you’ll usually get a severance to help during the job search, they won’t, they’re just unemployed.
… because they resigned. Seriously, what’s your point?
If they wouldn’t have resigned, they would still have a job. And since they couldn’t have been fired easily, they would have continued to have a job for quite a while.
That’s not a complex concept, what’s so hard to understand about that?
They resigned from a job they believed was wrong, which will lead to substantial financial consequences for them. You tried to dismiss their efforts as if it was nothing, so I called you out for being dismissive. You say “Seriously, what’s your point?” As if I’m the one making provocative statements from the sidelines.
Mostly the risk of jail, probably.
Or execution.
Or stochastic terrorism
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.
I thought they were just like 6 white dudes. How did they ever hire over 20 people?
Original USDS employees, which Musk merged into DOGE
DOGE is a restructuring of the existing US Digital Service. The people leaving are mostly people who worked there before Elon took over.
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.
Be the change you want to see
Yeah, but right leaning spaces block people critical of the right. Just look at the cesspool that is /r/conservative
So does left spaces but they get through by their conviction to have every random base member spread it. The left is literally asleep
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.
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.
Hmmm… TIL some incels actually have morals. Who knew?
The people who resigned originally worked for the US Digital Service, which was established in 2014 by Obama.
Twenty-one staffers from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) resigned
… Which was renamed and converted from the United States Digital Service, established by Obama in 2014.
And that’s when they should have left.
Many people in government service are nonpartisan and took the job to do the job, not politics
HOLY SHIT HELL YES!! Finally someone with some backbone god damn. Best news I’ve heard in a month!
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.
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
My understanding is: Founding a new Department can only be done by Congress, so they had to “redefine” (more like corrupt) an existing one.
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.
Trigger word? I was asking why they are trying to tie an authoritarian move to a president who left office in the way a democratic Republic set up over 2 terms ago.
Have fun with your buzzwords.
More Luigi pls
I just want to know what these people were thinking when they took the jobs in the first place.
They already worked there.
Musk took over the US digital Service and they were preexisting employees
Those are the ones you want to stay. They have ethics.
No, no, that’s the point. This is a feature, not a bug.
