Federal workers interviewed by Elon Musk’s foot soldiers at the Department of Government Efficiency said the brief conversations have sparked anxiety and fear for their jobs.
Three staffers at the General Services Administration who spoke anonymously to Politico said some of the interviews were held the same day they were scheduled and often overlapped with client meetings already on the calendar.
Workers received a calendar invite from a Gmail account “with almost no notice,” and the interviews were framed as assessments of the team’s strengths and weaknesses.
“But the tenor of it clearly also suggests it has to do with ranking people and figuring out who to cut, especially since it started with probationers,” said a GSA supervisor whose staff were recently interviewed by a DOGE associate. “The interviews are anxiety provoking.”
The DOGE interviewer reportedly identified himself as an “adviser” to Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer named director of the GSA’s Technology Transformation Services last month.
One employee said their interview only lasted 15 minutes and mostly skimmed over their project management experience, which is key to fulfilling the GSA’s mandate of centralizing procurement for the federal government.
“Most people are trying to hype their technical skills,” the employee said. “They don’t think DOGE people respect the softer ‘moving complex projects through government bureaucracy’ types of skills.”
The DOGE interviewer did not provide any guidance on next steps, the workers said. One-on-one interviews are reportedly still ongoing.
This has made GSA employees fear for their jobs and the possible impact of staff cuts on the public. The agency operates Login.gov, the central login portal for services like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
“We’re not talking about saving money here. We’re talking about saving people’s lives and providing services people cannot go without,” said a data scientist interviewed by DOGE.
GSA and DOGE are developing an AI chatbot aimed at increasing worker productivity, a supervisor familiar with the talks told Politico. DOGE has reportedly proposed other AI tools to spot redundancies in contracts and streamline processes.
Musk has been leading the Trump administration’s charge to shrink the size of the federal workforce and pare down government spending by seizing control of multiple agencies.
Though many of the administration’s efforts to overhaul the government have been hit by lawsuits, a judge on Wednesday reinstated a controversial buyout scheme for federal workers.
