Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sahil Lavingia, founder of Gumroad, provides a rare inside look at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), previously led by Elon Musk.
What Happened: On the Hard Fork podcast, recorded over a week ago, Lavingia discussed his 55-day stint at DOGE, embedded in the Department of Veterans Affairs.
In the nearly hour-long podcast, Lavingia highlighted the chaotic and dysfunctional nature of DOGE since its early days. What was pitched as a bold effort to inject Silicon Valley know-how into the federal government instead turned into a disorganized and opaque operation, he says.
“There was no offer letter, no salary details, nothing.” Weeks into the job, he still didn't know how much he was being paid, “I assume it's zero,” he says.
The White House did not immediately respond to Benzinga’s request for comment.
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Assigned to the VA without clarity on his role or direct reporting line, Lavingia was given a government laptop that couldn't run Python or Git. “It was like being asked to cook with no equipment,” he said, describing the limits placed on DOGE engineers in federal environments.
Despite the chaos, Lavingia said he intended to reduce inefficiencies without harming services to veterans. However, he noted DOGE's primary mandate focused on slashing contracts and reducing headcount, not shipping software or improving user experience.
Lavingia describes DOGE’s internal culture as being fundamentally at odds with the Federal workforce. “I joked I was here to RIF everybody,” he said, referring to the Reduction in Force initiative and all he got in return was “Dead silence.”
He says his time at the department came to an abrupt end after speaking with a journalist. “I was ghosted,” he says, after his access to GitHub was revoked without any explanation.
Lavingia concludes by saying that the effort was naive but well-intentioned. “Mistakes were made,” he said. “Hopefully, I was more the baby than the bathwater,” which is a play on the old saying “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” which means to say not to discard something valuable when trying to get rid of something undesirable.
Why It Matters: Donald Trump‘s DOGE initiative has come under a lot of criticism in recent months, with the likes of Mark Cuban warning that “this isn’t a corporate turnaround, this is the United States of America.”
Cuban argued that while he was in favor of improving efficiencies and cutting waste in government, he would approach it with a plan, and “ready Fire Aim is not a plan” is not a plan.
Several policy experts, such as Erik Nisbet of Northwestern University, have slammed DOGE as being “very, very harmful,” and even “extra governmental.” Nisbet compared its effects to “a broke Humpty Dumpty,” and wondered if its damage could ever be undone.
Meanwhile, Musk’s brief tenure at DOGE was marked by aggressive job cuts across federal agencies, the dismantling of USAID and a series of controversial communications, including “fork in the road” resignation emails.
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