Twenty-one civil service employees quit their positions at Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on Tuesday, February 25, 2025, refusing to participate in what they describe as efforts to dismantle essential government services.
The mass resignation came from engineers, data scientists, and product managers who previously worked for the United States Digital Service (USDS), an office established during the Obama administration after the Healthcare.gov website experienced significant technical problems at launch.
“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the staffers wrote in their joint resignation letter obtained by The Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
The departing employees warned that many working with Musk in President Trump’s effort to streamline federal government lack the necessary technical background for the complex task ahead.
All the resigning staffers had previously held senior positions at major tech companies including Google and Amazon before joining government service. In their resignation letter, they described a concerning environment developing under Musk’s leadership of DOGE.
According to their accounts, shortly after Trump’s inauguration, nonpartisan employees faced unusual interview sessions with unidentified individuals wearing White House visitor badges. These interviewers questioned staff about their technical qualifications and political loyalties, while some demonstrated limited technical understanding.
According to the staffers, a number of these interviewers declined to disclose their identities, posed questions aimed at gauging political loyalty, tried to sow discord among colleagues, and exhibited minimal technical expertise. This approach resulted in notable security vulnerabilities.
Earlier this month, approximately 40 staffers from the USDS office were laid off, a move the resigning employees claim severely damaged the government’s technological capabilities. Those layoffs heavily impacted designers, product managers, human resources, and contracting staff, while largely preserving engineering positions.
The resigning workers wrote in their letter that the fired employees “were working to modernize Social Security, veterans’ services, tax filing, health care, disaster relief, student aid, and other critical services. Their removal endangers millions of Americans who rely on these services every day. The sudden loss of their technology expertise makes critical systems and American’s data less safe.”
Approximately one-third of the 65 staffers who remained at USDS quit on Tuesday rather than take on new duties under DOGE.
They declared in their resignation letter that they would not use their technological skills to compromise core government systems, jeopardize sensitive data belonging to Americans, or disrupt critical public services.
The Digital Service, originally created to improve technology services for veterans and develop systems that would make government technology purchasing more efficient, also helped establish a free government tax filing portal.
Musk’s DOGE represents a significant shift from what Trump initially described during his presidential campaign. Originally presented as an external blue-ribbon commission, DOGE has evolved into a more aggressive internal effort to reduce government size.
Musk has publicly embraced this role. Last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington, he raised a decorative chainsaw gifted by Argentine President Javier Milei while declaring: “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy.”
Former USDS members, speaking anonymously for fear of reprisal, noted that many who join government from the private sector initially struggle with bureaucratic processes but often develop an appreciation for why certain safeguards exist.
Cordell Schachter, who served as the chief information officer at the U.S. Department of Transportation until last month, expressed that the philosophy of “move fast and break things” might be reasonable for business owners who willingly take on risks and can contain any resulting damage. However, he cautioned that in government, breaking things means disrupting systems that belong to the public—individuals who never consented to such risks.
One of the few engineers let go in the earlier round of layoffs, Jonathan Kamens, believes his termination resulted from his public support for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and criticism of Musk in workplace communications.
Kamens expressed the belief that Elon Musk is engaged in questionable activities and suggested that any data Musk gains access to will likely be used in ways that are inappropriate and potentially harmful to Americans, according to comments made to the Associated Press.
The resignations represent a temporary setback for Musk and Trump’s technology-driven effort to reduce the federal workforce, which already faces multiple legal challenges seeking to block or reverse their initiatives.
