Elon Musk’s new ‘department’ seeks ‘super high-IQ’ staff for unpaid jobs

Musk said separately that the jobs would be unpaid but that they would “greatly help America.”

“Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero,” he wrote. “What a great deal!”

President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday that he was appointing the two businessmen to jointly head up the advisory board to suggest spending cuts, target regulations for elimination and put forward ideas to restructure federal agencies. Musk and Ramaswamy have called for sweeping changes to federal programs, such as mass layoffs and deep cuts.

Musk is the CEO of SpaceX, which has $3.8 billion in contracts with federal agencies this year, according to government data. It’s not clear whether that spending is on the table for possible cuts. He is also the CEO of Tesla and the owner of X.

On Wednesday, Musk called for cutting grant money to nonprofit groups.

“‘Government-funded non-governmental organizations’ is obviously a contradiction in terms,” he wrote on X. “They are just an illegal arm of the government.”

Ramaswamy is a former biotech company executive who lost to Trump in the Republican presidential primaries this year.

The panel, which is called DOGE for short in a nod to an internet meme and cryptocurrency, won’t be an official federal department unless Congress passes a law to create it. Trump set a deadline of July 4, 2026, for the commission to complete its work.

Thousands of people have been replying to the DOGE account on X, some with suggested spending cuts. The DOGE account said Thursday that it was grateful to people for expressing interest in helping and that now it needs full-time staff members.

“We don’t need more part-time idea generators,” the account said.

It’s not clear who is writing the account’s posts, though Musk has reposted its statements in an apparent signal of their authenticity.