Elon Musk, the head of President Trump’s aggressive government cost-cutting operation DOGE, is now demanding the federal workforce justify its existence.
In a move straight out of Office Space, Musk warned federal workers that they’d all be getting an email demanding that they explain, in five bullet points, “what you accomplished last week.” And if they don’t reply by the deadline? That’ll be interpreted as the employee’s resignation.
The emails started to go out today. If this move feels familiar, it’s because it’s basically a real-world version of the famous scene from Office Space, the one in which the Bobs ask a hapless employee, “What would you say you do here?”— except, now, it’s happening in real life and for a workforce numbering in the millions. Musk, the self-appointed Trumpian king of government efficiency, is also not only taking a hardline approach to trimming the federal bureaucracy.
It’s also the same playbook he followed at Twitter, where a similarly worded email prefaced mass layoffs at the now-Elon-owned social network. And it’s pretty much the same thing he texted Twitter’s former CEO, Parag Agrawal, in the lead-up to Elon acquiring the company in 2022. The relationship between the two men had begun to break down, and Agrawal pushed back on some of Elon’s incendiary tweets — to which Elon responded: “What did you get done this week?”
Of course, this all aligns perfectly with President Trump’s broader goal of cutting government spending, with Trump even suggesting that Musk should get more aggressive. That’s right — Musk’s plan to weed out slackers thus far somehow hasn’t been “extremely hardcore” enough for the president. So, in classic Musk fashion, he’s gone all-in, demanding rigorous reporting, cutting contracts, and looking to save a cool $1 trillion along the way.
Meanwhile, over at DOGE (the acronym for the Department of Government Efficiency), employees are reportedly working 120-hour weeks and sleeping in pods to keep up with the billionaire’s demands. Will this lead to a leaner, meaner federal workforce, or just mass resignations and bureaucratic chaos? Either way, I think we all know how Musk would answer his own What would you say you do here? question: He led the DOGE team in hacking through the federal government like a caffeine-fueled lumberjack at a piñata party.
