Elon Musk has claimed that his acolytes at the Department of Government Efficiency, reportedly a collection of youthful tech-bros, work 120-hour weeks in Trump’s quest to rid the U.S. government of wasteful federal spending and unnecessary staffers.
To operate such mammoth shifts, the DOGE disciples survive on a nutritious diet of takeout pizza, Red Bull and Doritos, according to The Times. What sleep they do manage to get is done in temperature-regulating sleep pods, that are powered by AI.
The pods have reportedly been installed on the fifth floor of the Office of Personnel Management, where the team is located – barely a five-minute walk from the White House.
The location also puts them close to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where Musk himself has claimed that he sleeps. According to The Times, the young cost-cutters take calls from the SpaceX boss at all hours.
Musk himself has proudly boasted about the stamina of his lackeys, writing on X in early February: “DOGE is working 120 hour a week. Our bureaucratic opponents optimistically work 40 hours a week. That is why they are losing so fast.”
The online job advertisement for DOGE employees states clearly that the department is looking for “world-class talent to work long hours identifying/eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.”
As well as stamina, commitment is apparently also high on Musk’s priority list. The Times also reported that one DOGE employee is even said to have moved his wife and young child into a makeshift suite on the floor above the sleeping pods.
The poor diets and working conditions perhaps do not bother many DOGE workers, many of whom are not far removed from university and even high school.
Business Insider reported previously are mostly “early-career professionals in their 20s and 30s” with backgrounds “primarily in tech but also in finance, law, and politics.”
One of the employees, named by the outlet, was just 19-years-old.
Musk has reportedly implemented similar practices in his other companies including Tesla and X, where he promoted similar “hardcore” work lives. with staffers expected to “long hours at high intensity.”
In 2022, city officials in San Francisco launched an investigation into the social media giant, after Musk added beds to office rooms at the company’s headquarters, which was registered as a commercial building.
“It’s yet another unspoken sign of disrespect,” an anonymous employee told Forbes at the time. “There is no discussion. Just like, beds showed up.”
After slashing Twitter’s workforce by over half, laying off 3,700 of its employees with little explanation for their departure, Musk said in a since-deleted tweet that he was planning to pull all-nighters at the San Francisco offices “until the org is fixed”.
Signs of possible sleep deprivation may be starting to peek through. This week DOGE claimed they had saved $8 billion by cutting a single contract — but the actual value was $8 million.
The team claimed it saved the massive sum by ditching a contract with business D&G Support Services to provide “program and technical support services” for the Office of Diversity and Civil Rights at Immigration Customs and Enforcement.
The contract was initially listed at a value of $8 billion when it was approved in September 2022, the Federal Procurement Data System shows. But at the end of January 2025, that figure was updated to $8 million.
In addition, DOGE previously said it has saved a total of $55 billion, but a recently published list of contracts it has canceled so far only accounts for $16.6 billion, Bloomberg reports.
