- Paul Graham advised Elon Musk to work with the government carefully because it is not “just a company.”
- Musk’s actions mirror how he worked in 2022 when he bought Twitter, now X.
- DOGE aims to cut $1 billion to $2 billion from government spending, Musk has said.
Paul Graham, the founder of the startup accelerator Y Combinator, cautioned Elon Musk about his work with the Department of Government Efficiency.
“I’m generally sympathetic to what you’re doing. But I hope you will take your time and do it carefully. This isn’t just a company,” Graham wrote on X during a back-and-forth with Musk on Tuesday.
Silicon Valley leaders have long subscribed to the “move fast and break things” leadership philosophy. Musk, who is leading DOGE under the Trump administration, appears to be running the agency much like some of his companies.
Trump’s administration launched an immediate overhaul of the federal workforce, starting with a strict return-to-office mandate and offering buyouts to federal employees who don’t want to work under the new leadership. Trump and Musk have said the moves are meant to improve productivity and cut costs.
Musk’s actions mirror what he did in 2022 when he bought Twitter, now X. He sent a similar email to Twitter employees asking them to commit to an “extremely hardcore” schedule or get laid off. The subject line was “A fork in the road” — the same phrase used by the Trump administration when asking for federal worker resignations.
The Tuesday thread between Musk and Graham began when Graham wrote a post on X about the US Agency for International Development. After his post, the agency announced it was putting nearly all employees on administrative leave from Friday. On early Monday morning, Musk said that he “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”
DOGE’s changes would transform USAID, which managed about 0.47% of 2024’s federal budget and oversees humanitarian aid programs in 65 countries, including emergency food assistance and lifesaving medical services.
On Monday night, Graham wrote on X that the Department of Defense “surely” has more waste than USAID, but tougher access.
In response, Musk wrote, “Every aspect of government needs to be much more efficient, no exceptions. Classified world especially.”
Last year, Graham offered constructive criticism to Musk, including about X’s user experience, and the Y Combinator cofounder has praised Musk’s leadership at X.
Graham, who stepped down as Y Combinator’s president in 2014, is also a longtime writer. His September essay on “founder mode” took the tech and business communities by storm.
Neither Musk nor Graham responded to requests for comment.
