US Digital Service Workers Discover They’ve Been Ghosted by Elon Musk’s Shadow Government
As Musk’s team avoids meetings and decisions, USDS workers question whether the agency even exists anymore.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has allegedly erected a “firewall” between itself and the legacy employees of the United States Digital Service (USDS), leaving federal tech workers wandering the digital wilderness like rejected Tinder matches.
According to sources who bravely whispered their grievances to WIRED, Musk’s team has gone full “hardcore mode”—which, in this case, means not showing up to meetings, ignoring emails, and generally acting like the world’s most dysfunctional startup.
“They don’t talk to us,” lamented one USDS employee.
“As far as I can tell, they’re hiding,” added another, presumably checking under desks for signs of life.
The Musk Doctrine: Why Attend Meetings When You Can Disrupt Bureaucracy by Ghosting It?
Since Musk took the reins at USDS, federal employees have been running on autopilot, continuing long-term projects from the Biden administration while waiting for… well, anything resembling leadership. Instead, they’ve been met with radio silence.
DOGE’s senior advisor Steve Davis and other Musk loyalists have been repeatedly invited to meetings, but they seem to have adopted a “why collaborate when you can dominate?” approach.
Even Ted Carstensen, the highest-ranking USDS official not orbiting Musk’s ego, was reportedly excluded from key discussions before dramatically exiting last week.
His departure email was filled with optimism, which in government-speak translates to, “I’m jumping off this flaming ship, but good luck to the rest of you.”
“It was important for me to get the team to a place where everyone could choose their own path forward,” Carstensen wrote, which many interpreted as: You’re on your own, folks.
The Fork in the Road: Take Musk’s Deal or Go Down with the Bureaucratic Ship
Musk’s administration has presented federal employees with what’s been ominously dubbed “the fork”—a choice between staying on payroll until September 30 or rage-quitting in protest.
Many are refusing the deal, worried that accepting it signals compliance with whatever dystopian tech-bro experiment Musk is running.
“There’s a strong feeling within USDS that people don’t want to take the fork because they don’t want to send the message that they’re somehow accepting or approving of the larger plan,” said a source.
What is the larger plan? That remains as mysterious as Musk’s Twitter rate limits. But with no replacement for Carstensen and his duties being arbitrarily scattered across the team, some employees believe the end is near.
“It’s almost indisputable that USDS is in the endgame,” one worker mourned.
“Time to start loading into the life boats,” added another, likely Googling “How to transfer federal retirement benefits before the great DOGE purge.”
A Vision for the Future: Total Silence and Unchecked Chaos
For now, Musk’s DOGE team continues to be as elusive as a Hyperloop launch date.
Their strategy—if you can call it that—seems to be equal parts move fast and break things and don’t even bother moving at all.
Meanwhile, legacy USDS employees will keep showing up, continuing their projects, and waiting for someone—anyone—to pick up the damn phone.
Until then, it seems their only marching orders are to quietly fade into irrelevance while Musk rewrites the script for digital government, 280 characters at a time.
Za-Head