1mo ago

Elon Musk's new 'department' seeks 'super high-IQ' staff for unpaid jobs

www.nbcnews.com Elon Musk's new 'department' seeks 'super high-IQ' staff for unpaid jobs

Musk said “compensation is zero” for the “revolutionaries” who will advise on cuts to the federal budget.

Summary

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s new "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) began recruiting "high-IQ small-government revolutionaries" willing to work 80+ hours per week with no pay to help slash federal spending.

Appointed by President-elect Donald Trump, the panel is tasked with recommending spending cuts, regulatory rollbacks, and agency restructuring by July 4, 2026.

Musk and Ramaswamy advocate for drastic measures, including cutting grants to nonprofits and potential mass layoffs.

191 comments

No high-iq individual will work 2 weeks per week with no pay in a society that requires money to live.
- That's a common tactic in scams. You want to weed out the actual intelligent people as early as possible lest they disrupt your scam. That's why scam emails tend to have misspellings and grammatical errors. Smarter people instantly ignore that. Dumb people click on through.
  
  So you're saying we all should apply?
  So that we can disrupt this shit
- No they won't... but rich people who can afford to support themselves while indulging in their love of making poor people suffer will be lined up around the block.
  Making a position unpaid is a classic tactic to keep out the poors.
  
  It's disappointing so many aren't getting this...
  It's the same as "unpaid internships" being advantage to rich kids who can afford to work without pay.
  Like, there is an inordinate amount of rich assholes that would love to spend 80 hours a week finding way to cut taxes, regulations, and the social safety net.
  If you're rich enough to begin with, this could pay a hell of a lot better than anything else you would spend your time on. Couple hundred million in the bank or stock market, and it would be more profitable than any actual job.
  And let's be honest, Musk and Trump aren't judging IQ by the freaking Wechsler exam, when rich idiots talk about IQ, they mean zeros in a bank account.
- Can you think of any other types of people who might be financially able to volunteer their time here....?
  Maybe those who have a vested interest in any number of outcomes that may result from their work there...?
  
  Or those willing to be paid in order to influence recommendations to the highest bidder
- Rich assholes who want to influence government will.
  
  Rich assholes who believe they are smart as a side effect of being rich assholes.
- They'll get paid by conservative think-tanks under the table so the Dept of Efficiency looks good and can pretend that it's efficient.
  
  This is what I was thinking also. It will be filled with people getting paid by corps and special interests.
  
  Or corporations who want to have a say. BP Oil will happily drop off a shipping container of cash at a "volunteer's" house if it means that they eliminate inspections of oil platforms in the gulf.
- This isn't aimed at the idiots who would line up around the block and work for free to be called high IQ by Musk. Doesn't really matter though, it's all performative
  They already know exactly what they want to cut, and billionaires don't need a salary to realize profits from deregulation.
  The job being "no salary" isn't indicative of how cost effictive a volunteer public servant could be - it is a dinner bell for the wealthy
  
  My goodness we’re gonna be MAGA’d so hard*, can’t wait
  *some people (with the best words) are saying this
- I want to believe this, too. But considering how there are smart people clubs with upwards of 50,000 members in the US that treat "passing" an IQ test as their sole entry criterion, I am sure there are some. Not all who have intelligence also have the wisdom to use it well.
- Evil ones will.

This dipshit thinks he can save the country 2 trillion dollars by firing government workers.
Even if he fired every single government position in the entire country, he couldn't make up 2 fucking trillion dollars out of that. The budget for payroll is, what? Like 15% of the total spending?
- He doesn't genuinely think that's true. It's all a grift.
  
  D epartment
  O f
  G rifting
  E veryone
- Eliminate military budget
  Eliminate all social services, payroll, including ACA, social security, etc.
  Suck Putin's dick
  Profit.
  
  Eliminate military budget
  Hah! Good one.
- The funny thing is this sweep will likely be very indiscriminate so among those fired many will have voted for Trump hoping groceries will be cheaper. They will learn first hand what happens when you entrust government to psychopaths and techbros.
- This dipshit thinks he can save the country 2 trillion dollars by firing government workers.
  This dude has no intention of saving anyone but himself.

feels like im playing plague inc. and these are all joke news
- Please, someone uninstall this version of the game!
  
  Drinking asbestos paste lets you escape the simulation
  And it's delicious
  The government doesn't want you to know this
  They want it all for themselves

So... if I apply for a super high IQ job that's unpaid, does that prove I'm under qualified?
- Yeah the real intelligence test is whether or not you apply, and if you do, you've already failed.

- So you need to be rich enough to not need the salary, morally flexible enough to work for Elmo, and stupid enough to brag about your IQ.
  
  People who boast about their I.Q. are losers. —Stephen Hawking
  
  ….. while not understanding the percentiles they gave you on the online IQ test.
- They will be paid, just not by the government.
  You thought lobbying was bad? Lol

So a billionaire wants people to work 80 hour weeks for nothing. People tell him to fuck right off. As in, find a cliff and keep walking.
- I don't think these positions will remain empty. Corporations will send a few lobbyists to check if the cost/power ratio is beneficial and if so, just flood the department.
  
  I hadn't thought of that, but this is 100% exactly what will happen. BP oil will surely pay someone VERY handsomely to 'volunteer' 80 hours a week toward eliminating all oversight of drilling rigs in the gulf.
  
  My first thought was spies... because they are already on someone else's payroll.
  Also, bootlickers and extremely desperate people that would take on any job.

Ok, get this. You elect politicians to "help slash federal spending".
What the hell is Musk even doing and why is he outsourcing this job to unpaid idiots, when politicians already get paid to do this?
Okay, I'll do a few suggestions for free:
Stop subsidizing companies. All of them.
Tax the rich to boost the federal income.
Legalize all immigrants so they can be tax paying citizens.
Crack down on employers using illegal underpaid illegal immigrants.
Provide universal health care. Sick people don't work.
Cut down on police force spending.
Cut down on car infrastructure spending.
Cut down "defense" spending in artificial oil wars.
Help Ukraine to defeat Russia, so Russia will have to surrender and disarm their nukes, so that USA can also cut down on cost for maintenance of nukes.
Expand renewable energy. It's free energy yo, and it creates jobs for tax paying citizens.
Stop mining fossil fuels. It will cost more to clean that shit up than is earned.
- Undocumented immigrants paid $96 billion in 2023, they don't benefit from them but imagine if all of them get to pay taxes.
- I just wanted to add some context for one of these bullets.
  The US is upping the amount it spends on nuclear weapons maintenance and production because China has reentered the game as a major player. They'd been stable at 300-350 warheads for decades but is expected to ramp up to producing 100+ per year by 2030.
  So one major adversary has just been replaced by another. Everything old is new again, including the cold war arms race.
  
  How are they making them? Just fuel reprocessing? You can make them pretty cheap as a side effect at scale of you want to. US can't though.
- my bingo card is almost full, just missing universal basic income - people with money, spend money, supporting businesses and thus "the economy".
- I want YOU to be POTUS. Right now.
- Russia will have to surrender and disarm their nukes,
  Interesting. During the Cold War, that was unthinkable, mostly because there'd be nobody to counterbalance a US monopoly on nuclear arms. Things have proliferated considerably since then, so perhaps a nuclear Russia isn't as important. If anything, they're proving themselves to be a liability.
- Why would Russia have to disarm their nukes? That doesn't make any sense. Getting them to surrender the occupied territory would be enough.
  
  That would be nice, but they won't suddenly surrender.
  Russia already lost 500000-700000 men. This war only ends when Moscow is in ruins or when the nation is bankrupted.

Smart people don't work for the bad guys for free Jack.

Can this department kick it off by eliminating itself, since it’s a wish.com version of https://www.gao.gov/
- It’s really great that his government efficiency department is in fact duplicative. An excellent microcosm
  
  Now all that's left is for the GAO to audit DOGE and discover fraud.

Win a grift by pretending you are an idiot
Your opponent is Elon Musk
- I think it'd be simultaneously easier, more productive, and more fulfilling to just take the L.
- Fuck. I can't out-stupid this guy. I won't win.

Just to make sure I understand. Musk is going to run an orgination who will advise the federal government to cut regulations that are in the way of him making more money. And this is in no way a conflict of interest.
- That's specifically why it won't be a government agency. So they won't be bound by any ethics rules. Make no mistake, this is not a silly one-off. This is the first step of privatizing the government.
  
  This message was brought to you by Brando. Water's stupid.

Man that leopards are gonna get so fat on conservative faces.
- They will have to sub contract out some of their face eating.
- What an idiot. Just ask daddy for a small 1 million dollar loan. Its just that easy.

do "high-IQ" individuals even exist on the republican isle? why would a lefty want to get involved in this shit, especially unpaid? what idiot would accept unpaid labour under a multi-billionaire?
- High IQ individuals definitely exist on the republican side. The only thing is that they are the most selfish kind (hence why they are republican) and hence they won't work for free.
  
  IQ tests intentionally omit any questions related to empathy, emotional intelligence and creativity, so it can favour people from the top of the pile and act as accurate perdictor of success in ruthless capitalist society. It implicitly promotes lack of those traits in individuals and explicitly promotes the definition of intelligence that's unrelated to them. While you don't get lower scores if you're highly creative or empathetic person, so it's not directly a detrimental for society and can be a useful metric for some cases like specific jobs, it's image as sole measure of intelect is manufactured to promote "specific kind of people", to which group many republican businessmen would belong.
  I'm not disagreeing with what you said, just thought I'd expand on that.
  
  I would imagine there's a few high IQ people willing to be exploited because they get to work with their heroes: Shit Bag #1 and Shit Bag #2.
- (They mean folk indoctrinated into their ethonationalist world view, usually white.)
- I'm considering it. I would cut the military budget in half.

Good grief. It's like he asked ChatGPT "how do I hire people suffering from the Dunning-Kruger Effect?"
Dear meme-lords: I need something with much more facepalm than the Picard one. A "super facepalm" if you will. Thank you.
- Perfection.
- You need super high IQ people to create memes like that
  
  Clearly. I'm also prepared to pay the handsome sum of $0. Where is my cabinet position?
- That was my reaction almost exactly. It’s like Dunning-Kruger the job description.

At least they're too cheap and lazy to properly push their fascist takeover.
- It's just gonna be rich failsons who are loving off their trust funds. It's gonna be bad
  
  yes they tried that in Turkey, president's highly incompetent son in law was made minister of Finance. At the start (2018) of this I think pounds/Turkish lira was sth like 4. He stayed for two years and it ended with maybe something like 10-12. As of now it is around 50 (people after him weren't that great either). Since nowadays production of almost anything in Turkey is tied to imports, prices of daily consumption goods as well as rent, housing etc went up by that amount too (salary increases not even comparable). good luck USA

They are calling it DOGE? 🙄🙄🙄
- 100% Musk's idea. Because he doesn't think the other 8 billion humans on the planet are real people and none of this is of any real consequence to him.
  
  Co leader Vivek Ramswamy is the founder of DOGE coin.
- Also, fuck that guy.
  Edit: and by 'that guy' I mean Ramaswamy. Fuck Musk too.
  
  Ew, I'd rather not fuck Elon. He's not my type.
- No X in name, so not Leons idea.

Much like unpaid internships, this is also a method to prevent anyone who is not independently wealthy from applying, so they can fill the department with the same people already benefiting from the current system and allow them to design one that benefits them even further.
No one that this department is ostensibly built to serve can afford to work on it, so who is it really (clearly) for?

Fun idea: Flood their contact addresses with fake applications and fake credentials like certificates with high scores on made-up IQ tests or Mensa membership cards.

"high-IQ small-government revolutionaries"
No, "rich people," because nobody else can survive with no pay.

The US are just a bad parody of themselves at this point.

America's saving grace may in fact be that the fascists are too stupid and lazy to do the work required to dismantle the federal government and cause mass human suffering.
- They're just going to speed run a bunch of wrenches into the gears of democracy.
  
  It’s gonna be like when he fired all those Twitter staff then hire some back again. Or when we got a bunch of servers shut down without knowing what they do and locked people out of their accounts. Or like the fucking CyberCuck.

There are oxymorons and then there is musk, the oxyless moron

They will make their money by fleecing the government of course.

I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!
--Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord
- Thank god most of Trump's government by grifters are stupid and lazy.
  
  And greedy. Can't forget greedy.
- Hell yeah, clever and lazy all day
  
  Work smarter not harder is the best advice.
  
  These are the people that invented automation. Why do a job when you can have a machine do it for you?

Department of Government Efficiency is the name of the department that ends up involved in creating Soylent green or some crazy human organ harvesting thing.
This sets off all sorts of red flags that bother the shit out of me. Like I'll take boring dystopia over human slaughterhouses TYVM

There are only two types of "Super High-IQ" people who will go for an unpaid job working in politics for the likes of Musk:
Very naive young things, hence very inexperienced and who are going to do all mistakes in the book and then some for the next couple of years as they learn the ropes. By the time they know enough about the job they'll be burned out from working for a guy like Musk not to mention knowing enough to know they're better of elsewhere.
Grifters looking for making maximum money from being in politics. Since they're not getting paid, that means corruption, lots and lots of corruption.
Also, even amongst the "very naive young things", in my own personal experience, the high intelligent types with the personality to be real believers of far right stuff, are at most above average intelligence but below genius level IQ (which is 120) and hence not really "super high"-IQ (which would more 160+) - I once worked with a guy like that who thought himself very intelligent and in his new job ended up working in an office with two genious level colleagues and he was very entertaining because of his "buttons" were so obvious and he was so easy to give the run around.
Super-high IQ people are often the very opposite of street smart, but one thing they aren't is stupid and at most fall into the first part of the saying "you can deceive most people some of the time, or some people all of the time, but you can't deceive most people all of the time" - they can be swindled but they'll figure it out faster than most.
- Also, most actual intelligent people understand that IQ is incredibly flawed at best, and put little stock in it.
  But I guess if your goal is "anti-DEI" or whatever, then of course you're cool with intelligence tests that make white people seem smarter.
  
  I'm a guy with a high "test IQ", and my sister, who is in the normal range is way more succesful that me in most aspects of life. You don't want high "test IQ", you want "smart people" not the same, and far more difficult to measure. High IQ basically means you are good at solving certain types of puzzles

He really believes it’s real.
- I think you might be the one who needs to accept reality.
  Shit is about to get bonkers.
- Oh it's real. It may not be a cabinet position but it can still be a committee.

Ah, this will be the Department of Dunning-Kruger. The workers are idiots who think they are supergeniuses. Led by an idiot who thinks he's a supergenius.
During Trump's first term, this was just a metaphor, suggested by random comedians. Now, life will imitate art to its full extent.

Tragedy or comedy? Why not both?

“Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) began recruiting “high-IQ small-government revolutionaries” willing to work 80+ hours per week with no pay to help slash federal spending.
Future headline : “Department of Government Efficiency still completely without staff as those meeting the high requirements to take the job are smart enough to have zero interest in doing the job under those conditions"
Alternate future headline: "Department of Government Efficiency plagued by yet another scandal as its 45th employee is charged with fraud for attempting to personally gain financially from fraud they were perpetrating in the government".
- How does one apply to live in such futures? Because this timeline looks like a bunch of rich douches will join the committee, use it to get richer and live happily ever after.
  
  I’m guessing they cut government departments, then privatize them by outsourcing the work to their own companies. Sounds like a solid grift.

Anyone smart enough wouldn’t want to work for him.

Well, if nothing else it's efficient 😬

You can't just make a department. Sorry Leon, only maga morons believe that. The actual government and CONSTITUTION work differently than what you think...
- Yeah, they would also need the other two institutions to pull this off. Oh wait, shit. Well the supreme court should be able to stop this. Oh wait, fuck.
  
  What do you think Clarence Thomas would do for a Klondike bar? Do you think he'd support this weird, smart person recruiting bullshit? Absolutely.
- Aw, that's cute...

So, slavery will soon be making a comeback in 2025.
- it never went anywhere
  
  Good point.

Wait, I think this is how we get work camps for people who are "too smart".
- Then it is easy to dispatch them. Like Pol Pot did with anyone who seemed to be able to read and write

Text book Elon, pay for super smart people and take all the credit for their work and say you're smart because of it. Guy fails upwards
- It literally says in the headline they won't be paid....
  
  I know, look at SpaceX, Nuralink, TESLA, ERON must did noting but fund those companies. That doesn't make ya smart. And then look at the CyberSuck, the one product Musky had a hand in, is a total piece of shit and should all be scrapped

Cut grants to non profits, but keep corporate welfare for the rich. America!

"High-IQ" aka boot lickers who agree with everything Musk says or does and are willing to do so for no compensation. And let's consider those who have the financial means "work" for free. The over privileged fundees who think they earned their wealth by hard work even those its all daddy's money... Rining any bells? Unpaid positions are exactly what we don't need to help with combat our economic woes anyways.

lol good luck picking candidates among highly intelligent incels and maga members

M-elon Head to run the department of slavery with un-paid workers. What an unstable 'genius'.

Staff it with rich fucks looking for relevence deep in that Musky sphincter and change it to "Department of Getting Eaten". Efficiency accomplished.

high IQ
work for free
lmao, hard pass. Thanks.

I don't know about you all but as soon as Trump was elected I immediately resolved to cut my personal spending by as much as humanly possible. I've already canceled many of my subscription services and I have reduced my use of Amazon and other online purchases to absolute zero. I'm going to work on paying down every dime of debt I owe as soon as possible and save every penny. Because shit's going to get fucked in the next 4 years with these clowns in charge. It's gonna be a light Christmas in my household this year.
I highly recommend you all do the same. Don't be the last one holding the bag when the music stops and reality sets in. For example, look at the people in the UK after Brexit.
- The UK was shit before Brexit, it was 14 years of austerity policies (read: cut health services, cut benefits, cut social housing, deregulation of services, legalisation of toxic dumping, I can go on...) by a right-wing "fiscally responsible" government who has left the current one with a sizeable financial black hole.... that has brought the country to its knees.
  If we had Brexit but still maintained public services, there's a good chance the country would have been fine.
  
  If we had Brexit but still maintained public services, there's a good chance the country would have been fine.
  It's almost as if you couldn't...
- Why pay down the debt?
  
  Interest rates aren't a fixed number. And I suspect that they will increase by multiple factors relatively soon (like a year from now at the very least). Having credit card debt will soon be as burdensome as having a tuition debt. (Which is also extremely fucked but I digress.)

Honestly, most of that headline should be in quotations.
- "Elon Musk's" "new department" seeks "super high" IQ "staff" for "unpaid jobs"

There are gonna be lots of applicants from the Intelligence Institute of Texas...

These people who get so incredulous about "soft" social sciences, (think critical theory) yet talk about IQ testing like it's Newton's 4^th law do not value, or do not understand the science. Even the serious people who defend IQ in good faith, speak of it with qualifications.
What is so attractive about a system to categorize and rank humanity? And what do the people who are attracted to it have in common?
- Fascists love the notion of a natural order, because it gives them license to hold power over people "lower in the hierarchy." They'll use anything and everything to establish whatever "natural order" serves their purpose at any given moment, and IQ works quite nicely in a lot of situations.
- It's so fucking cringe...

Maybe he should ask Trump since everything he does is the best and has never been done better or before.

High IQ people only wanted to do paid work for SpaceX because going to space is amazing.
I'm fairly sure none are working because of him though
Even paid work for any other Musk jobs would be an act of desperation. Fortunately, I suspect the unemployment rate will grow with Trump in charge.. Because it is likely more profitable to beg than make minimum wage (and he won't be increasing it). So maybe he will find people.

i would consider signing up just to see how much shit i could irreparably fuck up before they notice

Would you do that, Elon? No you would not. And you'd be tweeting unfunny mocking bullshit at someone who did in any other circumstances.

I think this will be easy to hire for; imagine the damage you can do to competition, or the low cost regulatory capture you can achieve, by just getting one clever manipulator near this not too bright narcissist
- Corporations will be stumbling over themselves to insert HIGHLY paid people into these positions.

191 comments