Elon Musk, who often drives staffers across his many companies to adopt a “hardcore” work ethic, bragged that the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency is putting in 120-hour work weeks.
The Tesla and SpaceX founder took the helm at the new task force just two weeks ago, running an office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building that aims to slash federal spending by as much as $2 trillion.
“DOGE is working 120 hour[s] a week,” Musk wrote in a post on X on Sunday. “Our bureaucratic opponents optimistically work 40 hours a week. That is why they are losing so fast.”
The day before, Musk, who owns the social media platform X, boasted that DOGE staffers were working through the weekends.
“Very few in the bureaucracy actually work the weekend, so it’s like the opposing team just leaves the field for 2 days! Working the weekend is a superpower,” Musk wrote, adding a laughing emoji.
The grueling work week equates to over 17 hours of work a day for DOGE employees. The group is not technically a government agency, but a team working alongside the White House to cut costs.
However, it doesn’t come as much of a surprise, since Musk in 2018 claimed to work 120-hour weeks running Tesla, his EV maker. He has encouraged his employees to work the same long hours.
In 2022, when Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, he demanded staffers commit to a “hardcore” work life and put in “long hours at high intensity” – or leave for another company.
The performance crackdown pushed more than half of the company’s 4,000 workers to leave, opting instead for three months of severance, according to Business Insider.
Musk’s latest task force has wasted no time in shutting down operations accused of reckless spending.
Just a day after President Trump was sworn in, Musk took aim at diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across the federal level – shuttering the Chief Diversity Officers Executive Council, the government office responsible for DEI and accessibility programs.
Most recently, staffers of the US Agency for International Development – a six-decade-old US aid and development agency – were told to stay out of the team’s Washington headquarters on Monday after Musk said Trump agreed with him to close the agency.
