ALLYN: Sahil had joined DOGE, in part to learn how Elon Musk works and sees the world. And during this meeting, there was an E Q&A session-- time to ask Elon questions.
LAVINGIA: So I asked him. I said, like, what have you learned last week? Like, what-- you know, what are you learning about how the federal government works, basically? And he basically just sort of said, like, it’s just-- it’s just like a fractal of terribleness. And you just can’t believe how terrible it is until you peel back the next layer, and it’s even more terrible. And I just-- I just was kind of like, that’s cool, I guess. But, like, that doesn’t help me do my job. I was expecting a little bit more of a concrete answer.
ALLYN: Sahil was unimpressed. He’d gone into the meeting looking for a clear mission, hoping to get energized.
LAVINGIA: And I was like, honestly, I was super disappointed. I was expecting, like, a lot more of a plan of attack, like a sort of war room where we’re like, this is what we’re trying to get done. This is where we’ve failed. This is where we’ve succeeded. You know, a little bit more of, like, a team effort.
LAVINGIA: But when you join and you realize, oh, they’re actually trying to do the thing that I already wanted them to do, that is sort of like-- it’s good, in a sense, right? It’s great that they’re already focused on modernization, 100%. But also, it means that, like, you’re no longer the hero, you know? Like, you’re just an employee of this big organization.
That was an interesting Planet Money episode.
From the interview, it sounds like the DOGE employee (Sahil Lavingia) joined up based on the assumption that government departments weren’t already trying to modernize their IT infrastructure and fight fraud. In his case, he discovered that the VA was modernizing and preventing fraud, but it was hard, and time consuming.
It sounds like Dunning-Kruger at work. Musk and co think they know IT, so it should be possible to waltz into a large organization, throw some opensource/AI projects at it, and save a tonne of money. When they get inside, they discover that the systems are really complicated, and that there are existing initiatives to do exactly what they want. It turns out that most of the easy wins have already been won, and it’s only the hard tasks that are left.
It’s an interesting counterpoint to the modernization program that was started during Bill Clinton’s term. They took years to understand the systems they were trying to improve, and built incentives for people inside those systems to propose improvements.
