In the end, every efficiency doge eventually becomes a micro-manager drone. Here is Elon Musk's latest:
Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.
Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2025
The official follow-up instructions from OPM are even worse:
In the cult world of Office Space, these are the infamous TPS forms that everyone has to fill out weekly. They are practically an icon for insecure managers who prefer paperwork to simply keeping occasional tabs on their staff.
In any case, a few million federal workers are now required to fill out this pointless paperwork and email it to HR—who will do God only knows what with a few million emails. The only good news for workers is that HR probably thinks this whole thing is as stupid as they do.
POSTSCRIPT: I wonder whose idea this was? Elon Musk, who really does want to micro-manage everyone? Or Donald Trump, who has never managed a large organization and came up with a brainstorm that this might help him wrap his arms around the bureaucracy?
Here are my 5 bullets.....( a very MAGA firearm term)
1) Changed out my desk due to a fear of germies from a 4-year-old.
2) Made up poll stats - pulled from my expansive posterior.
3) Drank numerous Diet Cokes - using effort to push my beautiful and special get me a Diet Coke button.
4) Fired people then hired them back.
5) Stayed up past my bedtime to rant on Truth Social.
Can't wait until next week to post my next 5 bullet points.
Sure. Nobody's gonna check for accuracy.
Pretty sure this is all Musk - he did something similar when he took over Twitter, as I recall. But yes, anyone who’s ever managed a team of more than two or three people realizes what obvious idiocy this is; with Twitter, it seemed like an intentional strategy to drive away anyone with a shred of self-respect and independence, so perhaps the goal here too, though of course the remaining federal workforce has union protections and can probably safely ignore this for now since there doesn’t appear to be any legal authority for this request.
Oh, and apparently this is all set up as a literal email address anyone can send anything they want to, rather than an internal form linked to people’s federal accounts or anything logical like that, which is the cherry on top of the dumbness.
And already Kash Patel sent out a notice to hold off on responding to this.
So, if you reply, you're insubordinate and are fired. If you don't respond, you'll be "retired".
Catch-22 is an operations manual.
If you are fired, you can file for unemployment. If you quit, you can't.
The best there is.
I’d pay good money for a pay per view cage fight between Patel and Musk.
Only if they then forget to open the cage to let the survivor out.
Throw in a rabbid wild animal and lock it.
And it seems he has company atop the State Dept, the VA, the Navy and other departments, per Josh Marshall. Interesting turf war potentially boiling up here between Elmo and other strutting alphas like Patel (and Hegseth?) over who *really* gets to purge those underlings.
If this is what's happening, it's hell for the people affected and for anybody who needs what these agencies do, but otoh it's exactly the kind of piranha-pool spectacle that convicted felon trump wants to see among his subordinates. He won't lift a finger to tamp it down, instead will do his level best to stoke it. Could even be that this is why he was so triumphal at CPAC today, come to think of it.
+1
".. like Patel (and Hegseth?) .."
I don't see yet any sign that Trump allows Musk any acces to the DOJ or FBI.
The fact that they got the emails is probably because it was sent to all federal workers.
If Trump does allow Musk access to the DOJ and FBI it would show that Musk really is a co-president.
DOJ and FBI have been off-limits so far, yes (and in fact DOJ negotiated limits on dogie's access at Treasury; dogie's been inside DOD since Valentine's Day.)
However, I don't think this necessarily means that trump has forbidden Elmo from touching the FBI and that Elmo is respecting an edict like that. It could be; it could also be that Musk ultimately won't respect any boundaries he's given, just hasn't gotten to the FBI yet.
In either case, I read Patel's arm's-length pre-purges-- well before confirmation-- and this notice to FBI, as Patel drawing his own boundaries against Musk and dogie. Nobody sane expects Elmo to observe any boundaries at all, and least of all somebody like Patel, who likewise has never met a boundary he won't try to break through-- takes one to know one. So he's laying down markers against Musk.
Patel would do almost anything for trump, especially if it builds himself up, and in that way he's less dangerous now to trump than Elmo is. But at the FBI he'll have access to so much info that he could easily start to go all Hoover and build his own empire for his own purposes. So trump needs Elmo as a check on Patel, the same way he needs Patel as a check on Elmo. It's built in, and it's how trump has always operated. Sooner or later they'll be infiltrating each other no matter what trump says, because that's how he's structured it.
"... he could easily start to go all Hoover and build his own empire for his own purposes. "
I don't believe this theory. Patel hasn't the skill to build such empire, and Trump knows that and therefore trust him. He also has the DOJ above Patel to check what he doesi fi ti is actually needed.
"Sooner or later they'll be infiltrating each other..."
We will see.
I predicet Trump doesn't let Musk into the FBI or DOJ.
Patel isn't going into government departments, because his mission is first to totally corrupt the FBI, by promoting or recruting Trumpists and getting of anybody suspected of having any integrity. Then these people will go after political enemies of Trump, effectively under his direct control.
We'll have to see how it goes. Patel is the guy who ran confidential info from a House committee over to the White House for his then-boss Devin Nunes. Also in the first term he lied to higher-ups about getting Nigeria's overflight approval for a special op, put the whole mission in danger of getting shot down. Not a guy I'd trust to stay inside the lines or know his own limitations, if I was in trump's shoes, and very much a guy who sees himself as a mover and shaker, maybe behind the scenes and maybe publicly. Also definitely a guy I *would* expect to do something spectacularly stupid and/or underhanded that could wreck a lot of things for this administration. He might be able to deliver on what trump wants from the FBI in the short run, but then what?
Youd didn't read what I wrote.
Patel's job is to fill the FBI with Trumpists. These Trumpists will do the actual work, and they will take their from Trump (indirectly) rather than Patel.
All I can say is that you seem to have more faith in complex hierarchy than is warranted with this cast of characters, and seem much more committed to the idea that trump can be single-minded and focused, as well as totally ruthless and unbound by law or limits, in the pursuit of his own power.
I don't believe he understands the nature of bureaucratic power at all, nor does he respect what it can do for him. That's what sets him apart from most authoritarians or modern absolutists. He does understand cultural and money power, but not bureaucratic. And that's why he can put totally ineffectual nonentities like Hegseth at the tippy-top of a vast bureaucracy that's central to the kind of power he wants to hold, and it's why he'd much rather just break and destroy them all rather than control them.
Don't forget that his first term was his first experience of working inside a real bureaucracy. All through his life to that point, his own businesses have been a snake's-nest of partnerships and LLCs without any real structure. The whole MO has been to evade bureaucracies and subvert them. They're characterologically his enemy, as he sees them.
As far as he's concerned, he sits (or should in a righteous world) at the top of the dominance hierarchy, with a small circle around him in the next level down, and everything and everyone else at the same level-- the lowest one. Hierarchy is the soul of bureaucracy and such a simple idea of hierarchy can't deal with bureaucratic structures. And what he doesn't understand, he wants to destroy.
That leaves plenty of room for people who do understand bureaucracy to set up their own empires. I don't know whether Patel does or not. If he does, he'll eventually clash with Musk, if he's still running things for trump, or with trump himself. He wouldn't be the first apparatchik to fight with a supreme leader.
Anyway, no, I don't agree that trump will be watching closely enough inside the FBI to take effective control of it away from Patel. He'd destroy it first. Even the FBI.
"Little things! Hitting each other! That's what I like!!" --
Napoleon, watching a Punch'n'Judy show in "The Time Bandits."
What a great movie, still have it on VHS.
I would bet Musk, His High Importance.
He's produced nothing but a clear field for waste, fraud and abuse, and wants to be able to obscure it with cherry picking an idle remark from some hapless victim he can fire.
1. Executive time (watched Fox News)
2. Played golf
3. Met with Elon Musk. No idea what he's doing, but he's so smart it's gotta be great.
4. Approved firing of more people.
5. Sent out incoherent all-caps tweet.
Can you guess who this is? I knew you could.
I'll go with Musk, right up his alley, no one will probably ever read these emails except maybe LLM at some point (& supervisors who already know what is going on), but maybe seen as another way to annoy people into quitting.
Smells of both desperation and stupidity to me (as far as the law, and difference between private work force and public).
I cannot exactly fathom what these men are thinking, although this is the kind of thing you would see in some dystopian Sci Fi comedy novel about how the world would look if angry 14-year old guys gained absolute power.
I thought one possibility is that they are having trouble shedding civil servants fast enough and are setting up ways for Civil Servants to be "insubordinate" and thus fire-able or something by not returning required documents on time and in the correct format.
Like some weird Simon Says/Squid Game mash-up.
It's called Lord of the Flies: Office Edition.
Possibly what Musk thinks is the zinger! tweak is the inane (and totally unenforceable at law) "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation". Since not enough public servants accepted the "deferred resignation" offer, it's time to create stupid scenarios where they can be "deemed" to have resigned.
Sadly for the Chainsaw Massacre Genius, there is a well-established body of legal precedent to determine whether an employee has abandoned their employment. Failing to answer an email from an external agency that is not your employer doesn't even come close.
"well-established body of legal precedent"
Your belief in legal precedent in the era of the Roberts court is quaint.
+10.
I doubt such a clear-cut case would even be taken up by an appeals bench, let alone get anywhere near the Supremes. The applicable law could not be clearer.
They're not required at all to do this. Ketamine Muskler just wishes they were.
And as so many people posted in an r/nova thread about this: many folks aren't authorized to discuss their work outside of their chain of command, so ignored it. Contractors marked it as spam or phishing.
definitely musk's idea. trump would never come up with an actual management idea, even one as dumb as this.
I got a feeling the LLMs are going to receiving vast numbers of requests similar to the above.
Several someone’s have bought into the idea that people aren’t actually working. Pervasive among those opposed to remote work.
There’s always a slacker on the team researching furry costumes for their next cosplay convention or planning their wedding, but most people work damn hard. So what if they duck out and run errands, then make the time up later?
Yah, there is always some Wally (Dilbert reference) cruising the internet, skipping out to play golf, or booking the corporate jet to fly to the Daytona 500.
Let’s help the people trying to figure out how to reply:
1) Searched the Tesla website and ordered 100 cyber trucks for the White House.
2) “Liked” as many Donald Trump videos on YouTube as I could find in my lunch hour.
3) Reread Project 2025 then ordered my children to memorize it.
4) Found a local police officer enforcing the law and beat him senseless with a flag pole.
5) Removed “Animal Farm” from 3 local libraries and tossed the copies in the trash.
I dare you to fire me.
It gave him 'legal' cover to fire everyone at Twitter regardless of contract or labor laws.
He's doing the exact same here.
It's Musk. Just another excuse to fire someone. Don't respond and it's a presumed resignation. Respond and it'll be determined your not efficient enough and you'll be fired. He probably thinks this looks better than just randomly firing people. It really doesn't.
Let's see: 2.3 million federal employees, taking an average of 15 minutes to reply to a threat implying potential termination if the response is unsatisfactory.
That's 288 wasted man years of wasted effort.
per week
So this exercise will cost somewhere around $50 million, assuming that this is a one-shot deal and not something that employees are expected to do every week. I never believed that Elon Musk actually cared about government waste.
Meh. When I worked for the Feds, we already did this. Every week. The reports got compiled by managers and moved up the chain until they reached the White House. I doubt we were the only agency/department that did this. So there's likely minimal new work involved.
The timing though is awful. Sending out an email on a Satuday and expecting people to reply by Monday night. As if some people might be out on leave and miss the email.
That leaves the question of what they're trying to accomplish. Musk's original email mentioned resignations. Doubt that would be legal particularly since it wasn't mentioned in the official email. But we all know they don't care about legality. So that's one possibility. Another option is looking for employees that are doing work that they consider wasteful and getting rid of them. A third option is looking for programs/work that they consider wasteful so they can get rid of them. The final option - the one I'm going with is - because they can. It's a way to keep the Federal employees fearful and in line.
The tweet mentioned automatic resignation. The email never did. So, either it's an empty threat, or twitter is now used for official government communication. The fact that the order came from a guy who isn't a government employee, and definitely isn't in charge of firing anyone (for legal defense purposes anyway) seems to make the whole thing somewhat less than legally enforceable. Pretty soon we're going to have to admit that the concept of "law" is effectively dead, because this shit isn't slowing down, and there's nobody both willing and able to stop it.
+1 on emh1969
I’m sure this is an opportunity to look for more people who did some DEI work or whatever as pretext for firing them. Maybe new programs they missed. Or yet another way to flex control.its not like weekly status reports is some crazy new management technique - probably a large amount of workforce already does this.
But; this is not that. They don’t care what people are doing - just want to fire more people and make life miserable for the workforce.
This isn't micro-managing. Why do you think Musk fired 80% of workers at Birdsite? And yes, this is 100% Musk.
He's following the 10-70-20 rule. But unlike what he did at Birdsite, here they've already announced the upper range target of 10%.
For those who can't see what's been happening, Musk is now on his 3rd wave of firings.
(1) Get rid of ppl who are willing to leave or are otherwise not desiring to stay through all the BS.
(2) Selectively eliminate groups that ostensibly (through poor filtering) appear to be antagonistic to his goals of self-enrichment and getting rid of "DEI".
(2) Get rid of the remaining who Musk believes are at the bottom 10% of productivity who did not already leave.
They know they're going to lose hundreds of thousands of lawsuits for filing civil service workers without cause. These emails are a one molecule thick veneer on firing for "cause," that the right federal judge will allow them to get away with.
They're going to run these lists through a dipshit AI (or literally just filter for keywords) to keep people who are working on stuff that they thought about for five minutes or that generates bad publicity (VA work, nuclear weapons safety, etc.) and put everyone else on the chopping block.
Whatever you think the reasons or endgame are, it's dumber than that.
He's collecting data for his LLM Grok. Whatever responses he gets back is gravy for his truly crappy Grok, with a side of sadism sauce.
In the fednews subreddi, there is this megatrhead
https://www.reddit.com/r/fednews/comments/1ivtfnp/musk_says_feds_must_explain_what_they_did_last/
...with many, many trenchant responses< ex:
This week I accomplished:
100% of the tasks and duties required of me by my position description
100% of the work product that my manager and I have agreed to
100% of the duties and performance elements that are used to evaluate my performance
100% of the deliverables requested of me by my direct supervisor.
I exceeded expectations in the delivery of the above
Details available upon a formal request from my direct supervisor.
OR:
Classified
Classified
Classified
Classified
Classified
OR:
[REDACTED]
[REDACTED]
[REDACTED]
[REDACTED]
[REDACTED]
OR:
Supported and defended the Constitution of the United States against foreign enemies
Supported and defended the Constitution of the United States against domestic enemies
Bore true faith in, and allegiance to, the Constitution of the United States
Discharged the duties of my office well and faithfully
Responded to random email from an anonymous kid.
OR:
Send them this. 5 U.S.C. 3331 - Oath of office
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2021-title5/html/USCODE-2021-title5-partIII-subpartB-chap33-subchapII-sec3331.htm