Volundr

Plenty of dictators were elected. Someone being elected does not make them good. And Musk was not elected.

Honestly it's hard to guess what your talking about here. As far as things the administration has used as examples they are pretty much all incorrect (e.x. condoms for Hamas) or wildly distorted so I wouldn't call it a win for transparency, or revealing something "essentially hidden".

If your talking things like their "org chart"* maybe, sort of. There's nothing there that wasn't already available pretty easily via OPM, but one could argue it's a nicer interface. To the extent that it's actually revealed anything to anyone is argue that it has more to do with it being the trending news so people actually bother to look, rather than it being "hidden" before.

https://doge.gov/workforce?orgId=69ee18bc-9ac8-467e-84b0-106...

I agree with the first part of your statement but disagree quite strongly with the idea that the government created them. Monopolies and oligopolies are the natural product of unchecked capitalism. Without government activily enforcing antitrust and breaking up monopolies you naturally end up with companies having a stranglehold on their sector.

I'd argue the difference between private companies and government is that in government that spending is public.

Spend a few mil on something of marginal utility, politicaly controversial, or funding a study for something that seems obvious? Congratulations! Fox News found it on USASpending.gov (maybe not now that 18F is dead), and is drumming up outrage. Now your fielding phone calls from senators who are looking to grandstand by reducing your budget.

Waste a few million on a Salesforce implementation that never works, never does what it promised and never gains adoption and is finally quietly abandoned? Doesn't even make the Shareholder meeting and the exec in question gets even more influence for his ability to lead large projects.

> There were no conservatives at 18F.

And we know this how?

I can't think of anything much more corrupt than someone in government directing a government contract to a vendor they own with no process for considering other vendors. If that seems fine to you, then I don't think we'll ever agree on what corruption looks like.

If Starlink is actually "very likely to be better for taxpayers" it should have no problem going through the normal bidding process competing with other vendors.

> How do we know it wasn’t corrupt to begin with

If we think that, isn't the solution to reopen the bidding with more transparency, rather than hand it to the guy who just so happens to both be in charge of the team pushing for this and owns the company the new contract is awarded to?

Your replacing "maybe this was corrupt", with 'this is blatantly and obviously corrupt"

I'm not an attacker, just a boring old software dev. If there's an SQL Injection I'd say all bets are off re: schema.

That said I've definitely worked on applications where knowing the schema could help you exfill data in the absence of a full injection. The most obvious being a query that's constructed based on url parameters, where the parameters aren't whitelisted.

So I actually do agree that the schema could potentially be of marginal benefit to the attacker.

To be fair I've done plenty of jobs where a daily stand is the norm. That said my daily stand isn't being sent to ??? (Who is actually reviewing these?) That's maybe be run buy a guy the CEO happens to know who might or might not be in charge of an unrelated department depending on when you happen to ask.

I've also never felt I had to avoid using certain keywords lest my work be labeled DEI and my job eliminated.

> Does it matter?

Yes it does. Chain of command isn't a thing that just exists in Trumps head. He has to actually put people in a position to give instructions.

How is a random government employee supposed to know this is an "official email" not a phish without even knowing who it's from? How do they know what information they are authorized to share? Just because something isn't classified doesn't mean it can be shared with anyone.

> Also, Musk is an SGE and he gets a level of authority with that designation.

Per your article SGEs can be granted the authority of normal employees. They don't magically get authority over the entire federal government. Court filings by the administration say he hasn't been granted any and serves only as an advisor.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/white-house-says-musk-is-not-d...

> Is it? You sound confident but do you have a source?

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1893386883444437415?mx=2

Where do you think "all federal employees" are receiving that email?

> There is a belief that many in government are not even checking their communications

Where are you getting this is the purpose? It certainly wasn't spelled out in the email. Sending an email on a weekend when they wouldn't be expected to check their email is an odd way to go about it.

> If they are part of the executive branch and the president or one of his delegates ask for it, they are in the chain of command.

Which one of his delegates is asking for this? It's again not been communicated in any way under whose authority this is being done. Elon tweets are not official communication and depending on the hour of the day he's either in charge or has no authority.

> My guess is that guy probably won’t have a “government email address” and if he does, he responds with “I worked xx shifts for xx hours running the scanner at the airport per my prescribed job duties requires.

Your guess is wrong. All employees of the federal government get an email address. And many contractors. Your reply doesn't sound like 5 bullet points as required by the email.

A lot of the concern is about how it's going to be used. Who is even asking for it? For what purpose? Are they even in the chain of command?

Also some positions don't really lend themselves to listing "accomplishments". E.x. what's the guy running the scanner at the airport supposed to write down?

If you want to avoid increasing the deficit, you have to take in via tarrifs whatever you cut in income taxes. So no this doesn't mean households now have more disposable income. That money they were paying in income taxes they are now paying in higher prices due to tarrifs.

You may also want to double check the plan. Yes there are income taxes cuts included to make the little guy feel like they got something, but as usual the bulk of the cuts will go to the top.

Can you clarify what USAIDs objectives are and which programs are "far outside those objectives".

Most of what I see being complained about can easily fall under socioeconomic development, which is ostensibly one of the objectives.

Can you clarify what "crazy stuff" you'd like them to report on? The actual crazy claims (100 mil on condoms, 150 year old people collecting social security, millions on transgender plays) all fall apart under scrutiny. There is plenty that I'm certainly open to calling waste (e.x. the foreign art program that said much less expensive play was a part of), but I've yet to see anything actually crazy nor the fraud that we keep hearing about.

And most of this was already public via the various government data portals, e.x. https://www.usaspending.gov/

Meanwhile the Whitehouse refuses to say who is actually in charge of DOGE. We have Trump saying it's Musk in public, and court filings saying it isn't and an Administrator the white house refuses to name.

Not only was it created in 2014, but it allows for a max of a 4 year tour. You know to keep bringing in fresh outsiders like the parent comment wanted.

I've been out of the market for a bit, but last time I was in it, it was really terrible. I think it's better than it was a few years ago, but no where near where it was. It took me over 6 months to land a role, where previously I generally had a few offers within a month or so.

For the market, your hit rate sounds good. You don't suck, it's just like that out there at the moment. The fact that you made it to a final round means someone clearly thought you were capable of doing the job.

My best advice is if you have any niche skills try to capitalize on those. Your average Java/.NET/JavaScript developer role is seeing literally thousands of applicants. The more you can get off the beaten path the better. If you know some less common programming language or technology you may well find you have better luck searching for jobs looking for that even if it's not your core competency.

> Well, it is a government agency tasked with audits. Why shouldn't it have root access?

Why should it? I've participated in a number of audits. None of them involved giving the auditors root access. They get read-only access to exactly what they need and nothing more, if they get access at all. Oftentimes it's the people with access pulling data based on what they request.

Losing weight by clipping your toenails.

> whose job it should be to be accurate.

Surely the people doing an audit should be just as accurate no? If they can't keep track of (several) zeros how can you trust them to accurately work through all the documentation involved in figuring out what is waste, what is fraud, and what is legitimate spending?

I'd actually support this effort if there was evidence any care was being taken. Instead I see wild statements like this, 100 million spent on condoms, people in the SSA database being too old with no discussion of if they are actually receiving payments or not (oh look they aren't!)

A real audit take time, discipline and attention to detail. I see none of that.

Bypassing the normal security procedures to ram a random person with a very shady background into our security apparatus seems like quite a lot of indulgence to me. I definitely don't believe Obama would have been granted the same.

I don't understand why people think this means he should be given unilateral goodwill and authority. Honestly I don't think any of the people saying it really believes that. If they did, the same logic would apply to Biden and Obama and anyone questioning them would be questioning democracy. Yet somehow this 'will of the people so it must be good' only showed up when Trump was elected.

How long do keep trusting when your verifications keep failing?

Europeans? Americans? Zimbabweans? Europe is a big place and has a significant impact on the world.

Also: https://secure.ssa.gov/apps10/poms.nsf/lnx/0200302000!opendo...

When dealing with a population the size of the USA, and edge case you can imagine will be hit. Dealing with uncertainty is a must.

There are procedures for people whose birthdate is unknown [1][2]

Without it a lot of people born during the great depression, born in other countries, abandoned, etc would never be eligible for social security. Even today it's entirely possible for a child to be born in the US without their birth being documented.

[1] https://www.ssa.gov/help/iClaim_poa.html

[2] https://secure.ssa.gov/apps10/poms.nsf/lnx/0200302000!opendo...

> Trump literally said in a press conference about DOGE a few days ago that he will follow all court order

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/us/trump-unfreezing-feder...

The judges issuing said orders disagree. Saying a thing is not the same as doing a thing.

The CFPB was effectively shut down with no replacement for the work it's doing (e.x. handling it when your credit card refuses to acknowledge fraud). I believe you on the fired. I don't on the "fixed immediately". I've haven't even seen DOGE itself claim that it's making any pieces of government MORE effective.

> You don't think the literal nazi salute elon gave at a rally, twice, warrants any comparisons?

Honestly? I was on team "he's a clueless weirdo" and was mostly amused by watching his supporters cortort themselves to avoid saying that... But he somehow managed to fish out and hire not one but two engineers with a history of blatant racism, and even decided to rehire the one that resigned once it became public.

I generally think the whole "Nazi" thing is easy and reductive, but what the fuck?

I use Optery and am happy with them. I can't offer a meaningful comparison to other services, but they seem transparent and responsive to user concerns.