A tech industry veteran who joined Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) revealed what has surprised him after three months moonlighting as an unpaid contractor.
Sahil Lavingia was embedded earlier this year by DOGE in the Department of Veterans Affairs, where he expected to help the government save money by employing some of the tactics that helped his Gumroad startup provide services customers wanted and increase profits through lean spending practices, he told Fast Company.
“The reason I did it is, I think, the impact I can have,” Lavingia told the magazine. "In the government, I really believe that I can have billions of dollars of positive impact just by being technically minded.”
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Lavingia had actually applied during the Obama administration to work for the United States Digital Service, a predecessor organization to DOGE, but found that process onerous, especially after Musk essentially snuck him through a side door at the VA.
“I just kind of woke up one day," he said of his decision to join DOGE, "and I was like, ‘F--- it, let’s just do the thing’”
Lavingia found himself surrounded at the agency by people who “love their jobs" and approach their work with a sense of mission, which isn't quite what he expected.
“In a sense, that makes the DOGE agenda a little bit more complicated, because if half the government took [Muks' buyout offer], then we wouldn’t have to do much more,” Lavingia said, implying that AI or other software could replace the departed workers. “We’d just basically use software to plug holes. But that’s not what’s happening.”
Lavingia helped keep Gumroad a lean operation through his abilities with automation, which is what he had hoped to bring to the VA, but he found the agency was much more functional – albeit slower than a startup – than he and other DOGE staffers thought they would find.
“I would say the culture shock is mostly a lot of meetings, not a lot of decisions,” Lavingia said. “But honestly, it’s kind of fine — because the government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest. I was hoping for more easy wins.”