Even before entering government, Musk had a track record of reinventing his businesses through severe job cuts and cost-saving measures. His tactics echo a brand of harsh corporate capitalism that won plaudits in the 1980s and 1990s.
Jack Welch valorized layoffs as he built General Electric Co. into a conglomerate. So did Sunbeam Corp. turnaround guru Al Dunlap, whose approach earned him the nickname “Chainsaw” — the very tool Musk brandished on a stage earlier this year as he boasted about DOGE.
Just as Dunlap, who died in 2019, and Welch, who died in 2020, were lionized for improving efficiency by thinning the ranks, Musk and DOGE have demonstrated a “wish to really disembowel and downsize what the government historically has done,” said Rita McGrath, a management scholar and professor at Columbia Business School.
Yet trying to reduce headcount in the way DOGE has is likely to be costly, McGrath said. Institutional knowledge, social networks and shared sense of mission will have to be rebuilt if the government is to function, she said.
“There doesn’t seem to have been any thought at all devoted to that part,” McGrath said.
“We are simply advisers,” Musk said. “In that context, we’re doing very well. We cannot take action beyond that because we’re not some sort of imperial dictator of the government. There are three branches of the government that are to some degree opposed to that level of cost savings.”
[W]orkers who were turned out of their roles by DOGE said the ethos he brought to the government will remain.
“The concept of DOGE is still there, the ideas behind DOGE are still there,” said [Micah Niemeier-Walsh, an industrial hygienist in the Firefighter Health Program], the former NIOSH staffer. “It’s not going away.”
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