Business Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy suggest DOGE will end work-from-home for federal employees - part of their effort to trim the size of government.

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Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy on Wednesday floated ending work-from-home privileges for federal employees as part of their effort to trim the size of government.

The two entrepreneurs, tasked by President-elect Donald Trump last week to lead the newly formed “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), suggested in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that eliminating remote work would result in mass resignations that would help them achieve their goal of a smaller, more efficient, government.

“Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote.

“If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home,” they added.

Roughly 1.1 million federal employees – nearly half of the government’s civilian workforce – are eligible for telework, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

About 228,000 employees, or 10% of civilian personnel, work fully remote with “no expectation that they [work] in-person on any regular or recurring basis,” the agency noted in an August 2024 report.

The report was released two years after President Biden, in his 2022 State of the Union address, declared that “The vast majority of federal workers will once again work in person.”

Musk, the billionaire owner of SpaceX, Tesla and X, and Ramaswamy, the founder of pharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences, argue that Trump has the authority to “curtail administrative overgrowth” through several means, including “large-scale firings,”relocating “federal agencies out of the Washington area” and scrapping remote work.

The two men revealed that DOGE plans “to work with embedded appointees in agencies to identify the minimum number of employees required” for the agency to “perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions.”

Musk and Ramaswamy noted that the fired federal workers will be “treated with respect” and that “DOGE’s goal is to help support their transition into the private sector.”

“The president can use existing laws to give them incentives for early retirement and to make voluntary severance payments to facilitate a graceful exit,” they said.

 

[Woe-B-Gon (TM)]

Musk, you evil genius. You found a legal way to get rid of the women and the ethnic minorities.

https://archive.is/DJWUH

Studies suggest companies that have restricted or entirely ended remote working arrangements are paying the price in terms of decreased worker diversity—potentially losing out on business benefits found through more broadly comprised workforces.

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

Too bad any savings will be offset by the gigantic and growing interest payments on the national debt. Already eats up more than the entire DoD. If we get more trillion-dollar plus deficits like last time this is just smoke and mirrors to make it look like they're doing something.

 

[Nuns with guns]

Imagine being so braindead you enjoy and crave the company of your coworkers. You need help.

I’m not a miserable fuck who hates his coworkers because of some ideological purity. I’m also not too much of a pussy too rather hide myself in my fucking room and work from home rather than deal with people all day.

 

[TowinKarz]

And Bezos loses money every year on subsidizing the WP too. Making money isn't the point.

Also, most of that loss was performative rage quits of woke companies, who'll have to come crawling back (like Disney did) when they realize the ad potential isn't there on BlueSky.

Remember, they said what he was doing would lead to bankruptcy in a month.... that was years ago.

 

[blue gopher snakes]

Working from home just means you end up working all the time. It’s good to physically separate your work life from your rest time.

Also, I have contempt for government leeches and I hope they did relocate to bumfuck nowhere to telecommute during COVID, driving up rural and suburban housing prices, only to be forced to sell at a loss and move back into civilization if they want to stay on the government teat.

Tons of Californians did this. They contribute nothing to their new home towns and made it harder for the actual locals to buy and rent. I might be a Californian myself but I stayed in my own dumpster fire instead of bringing it with me to Idaho or Tennessee or South Carolina like so many people here have done.

Fuck ‘em up, Elon and your pet Pajeet!

 

[Jimjamflimflam]

Working from home just means you end up working all the time

Depending on the job we already have that mindset at the office.

Gotta put teams and email in your phone. What you didn't but Johnny Work did? Looks like he beat you on answering that email from the boss and is more likely to get promoted.

You don't want to goto the company Xmas party but Karen Nokids did to hob nob with management while you spent time with your family. Looks like she's your new boss because she sucked up.

Wfh biggest benefit was it got rid of the useless commute. No longer are you shackled to being near the office.

 

[Rootless Cosmopolitan]

So they want to spend more money on useless offices in order to have employees do something (work in the office) which has been shown to either have no effect or actively decrease productivity. AKA the literal opposite of efficiency.

Don't forget that if the federal employee is in a remote position (rather than merely teleworking), the government has to reimburse them the cost of moving. So more pointless expenditure.

No, you retard. 95% of federal employees are utterly useless. This is a way to force more of them to quit.

I support it.

 

[Starved Artist]

>Policy Maker can own stock in a company and make legal decisions involving the company that directly benefit them.
>Federal Worker must sell their stocks, no matter the value, if the company they own stock in EVER looks in the direction of their department, no matter their position in the company.
>IE: A Janitor/Paper Pusher/GraphicDesigner at the FAA/DOT/DOD can never own any stock with any company that ever does business or may do business with the government in the future because that's insider trading.

Federal Workers being scapegoated by republicans is the weirdest fucking thing. You want to cut excessive spending? Audit the Pentagon. Audit the House.

 

[Badungus Kabungus]

Based, make the lazy federal parasites quit on their own, or go back to the office, where they will be fired of not being productive.

 

[tehpope]

You want to cut excessive spending? Audit the Pentagon. Audit the House.

Bingo. I think Doge is just a bone thrown to Musk and Vivek. Miriam Adelson is probably calling the shots for these cabinet positions. Her husband was Trump's biggest donor. And she probably told him "if you want to continue getting our money, hire these folks and let israel continue the war in gaza."

The pentagon just failed their 7th audit in a number of years.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

If government employees can get a paycheck for working two hours a day 3 times a week, at least let them get fucked over by commute.

 

[TheMeanOne]

That just proves they're useless overhead

I feel like there are plenty of times someone needs to be in the middle of nowhere, though? I know an electrician who worked for almost a full year in the middle of nowhere in Colorado, living in some bad motel. If there's a construction project somewhere, a lot of people do end up in a corner of nowhere.

For the Feds I was thinking particularly of things like the Bureau of Land Management, or Dept of the Interior, National Parks - I can imagine someone having to be in the middle of nowhere but I also think those should be the exceptions, not the rules.

Do you have any actual data that you got more done in office, or is it merely feels on your part?

You know, I actually haven't applied for a grant to formally study it yet. But, well, let's see. There was Mr Jack Daniels on our Zoom call who thought the camera was off and he was getting away with it. There was my housemate who was drinking red wine & smoking weed all day, then crying at the end of the year that she didn't get a promotion. There were a lot of people texting about how much weed they were smoking at home and occasionally leadership found out about that. So I think they were right, a lot of people do need some light supervision or they'll just be fucked up all day.

Then there was me & all my co-workers, back in the office, surprised at how much more we were getting done.

When you can just walk over to a cubicle and talk to someone, that actually is more efficient than scheduling all these Zoom/FaceTime calls. Being in the office, we could use the printers etc (this was a marketing/sales job, so you do need booklets and datasheets for presentations) instead of emailing an admin to print them out so you can go pick them up later.

That was also a nightmare, an admin once sent my printjob to the wrong office a ~30 minute drive away. When people are communicating by text/phone you do end up with these game of telephone situations, where someone mishears something and it gets all fucked up. In person is much easier, in my experience there are way fewer miscommunications.

Being able to just talk to people, running into someone in the break room and then giving you a lead for your territory, or you giving them one for theirs, it actually benefited everyone and the business overall.

One reason Elons & Viveks want people in the office is that they want all these smart people bumping into each other exchanging ideas. That's why tech is all open-office plans (or at least most tech companies). A lot of innovations actually happen that way.

Your employer doesn't owe you the opportunity to work from home IMO. Maybe if you're recuperating from surgery or something, in a limited way for a limited time they should. But if your employer wants you in the office, gives you notice as to when you need to be back, I think they should be able to fire you if you protest too much. They're allowed to run their business the way they see fit, as long as they're not being actually abusive (shouting all the time, throwing things) or committing actual fraud.

 

[MrJokerRager]

The whole 'get back to the office' spiel is a psyop by (((those))) who own commercial real estate and are shitting themselves at the thought of losing all that precious rent money.

It was telling that the mayor of DC, a Democrat who supported the Kung Flu lockdowns, all of a sudden wanted the idea of remote work ended in DC lol.

I don't think it was because she was worred about productivity in the IRS department.

Bingo. I think Doge is just a bone thrown to Musk and Vivek. Miriam Adelson is probably calling the shots for these cabinet positions. Her husband was Trump's biggest donor. And she probably told him "if you want to continue getting our money, hire these folks and let israel continue the war in gaza."

The pentagon just failed their 7th audit in a number of years.

If DOGE doesn't fix the Pentagon in two years, it was probably just a meaningless feel good meme.

 

[Quixotic Man]

Generally I find it much better to have a hybrid schedule.

As someone who manages multiple people having people constantly wanting to come in to your office is a huge time waster. Boomers will talk your ear off about a vacation they took 15 years ago and millennials will complain to you about their cat having prejuvenile diabetes. Not to mention the poor schmucks who have to be in the "open office" rooms and have to listen to Fat Brenda slurp her giant Stanley of sugar water (optional coffee) and munch on snacks all day.

Forcing at least a couple days where most communication is through email makes you a lot more efficient. If someone can't get their work done at home, they aren't a good employee in the first place.

 

[Pomegrenade]

If DOGE doesn't fix the Pentagon in two years, it was probably just a meaningless feel good meme.

And a way to artificially boost DOGE bitcoin value for Musk. This is why I am extremely skeptical of this department. You have the owner of DOGE bitcoin and big pharma pajeet as the head of an agency called DOGE.

 

[FierceBrosnan]

I think we can all agree government wagies belong in cagies.

 

[Barry McKockner]

I've worked for the government before, I can tell you two things with absolute certainty:

1) The employees aren't the best and brightest, top of their career. My old government manager told my current company that he wishes he could have me back because of how great I was at the job. The problem is that I would have had to take a pay cut to switch over from contract to GS. So the talent they have is what they are paying for, which is not much for new hires. What you have is either old or sick people in it for the benefits and nothing more.

2) They actually fucking approved WFH for a contracting officer who had basically ZERO cell phone service, and nobody could get in touch with. Took MONTHS to get contract modifications approved that should have taken a week at most just due to not being able to contact them, and having to work around the times they had to do things like "watch their granddaughter" and other shit. You want to talk about creating inefficiency?

For the Feds I was thinking particularly of things like the Bureau of Land Management, or Dept of the Interior, National Parks - I can imagine someone having to be in the middle of nowhere but I also think those should be the exceptions, not the rules.

Field people like BLM or national parks won't be touched. You legitimately can't do those jobs from an office every day. They were never "in office" to begin with.

 

[Daily Happenings]

Working from home just means you end up working all the time. It’s good to physically separate your work life from your rest time.

This is not even remotely true for civil "service" jobs. It means they aren't working at all.

If they want remote work, they can feel free to apply for the corresponding remote private sector job they do. (Hint, there isn't one, as civil service is the world's largest jobs program.)

The IT workers making 60K a year in the federal service are doing it because they're either completely useless and can't get a private sector job or correctly don't want to work a job schedule that requires you show up and pretend to do something for 40 hours.

 

[The Gene Genie]

So they want to spend more money on useless offices in order to have employees do something (work in the office) which has been shown to either have no effect or actively decrease productivity. AKA the literal opposite of efficiency.

Don't forget that if the federal employee is in a remote position (rather than merely teleworking), the government has to reimburse them the cost of moving. So more pointless expenditure.

If you're a public servant with your wages paid through taxes, then you should be obligated to show up and be working in person entirely. I've had to deal with, in both the military and on civvy street, with civilian government laziness after the coof where wait times get longer and longer and service drops more and more because these useless fucks don't want to stop their Netflix marathon to do their useless laptop job.

Again, if you're paid through the public purse, then you show up to the work place in person. End of story.

 

[Uncle Phil]

From a traffic perspective alone, making people commute for no reason is some inefficient bullshit. In my city at least, there was a wild difference in traffic from pre-covid to covid, and in return to workplaces at various stages. It's like how traffic turns to dogshit every September when all the kids have to go back to school.

So much wasted gas, so much wasted time. If you actually have places to go and shit to do, you should want as many laptop lords jacking off at home as possible instead of holding you or your people up on the roads. If you have a stake in an organization that owns downtown parking lots then sure it butters your bread to have assholes commuting to the office for no reason but aside from that's it's just a big wasteful pile of dogshit.

The west was slow and dumb in the first place in adapting to modern telecoms technology and getting people working remotely, and no part of the west was more slow, dumb and behind the times than government. Most of this thread is arguing in favor of going back to the paradigm that was sluggish and backward even before the shutdowns.

People who work at the DMV need to be there when you show up to get a new license photo taken so that your bloated ass can be recognized on your ID. People processing the existing backlog of veterans' benefits can do electronic "paperwork" and phone calls from anywhere and you're wasting their time forcing them into some office.