Elon Musk says he wants “super high IQ” workers for DOGE — but they may not be paid

Elon Musk is looking for a few good “super high-IQ” volunteers to do the “tedious work” of gutting the federal government.

Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — whose acronym is DOGE — is apparently recruiting unpaid volunteers from X, according to posts from the nascent agency.

A post made by the department’s account said it was looking for the “top 1 percent” of X applicants who have a “super high-IQ” and are “small-government revolutionaries” to work 80-plus hour weeks identifying allegedly wasteful government spending.

Based on one of Musk’s replies, it appears these super smart government gutters won’t actually be paid for their work.

“Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lots of enemies, & compensation is zero,” Musk wrote. “What a great deal!”

He ended the post with a crying laughing emoji, so it’s unclear whether or not he was joking.

Brian Hughes, a spokesman for Donald Trump‘s transition team, gave Business Insider a canned response when the outlet asked about Musk’s new department.

“As President Trump has said, Elon Musk is a genius, an innovator, and has literally made history by building creative, modern, and efficient systems,” Hughes said.

Trump tapped “gothic dark MAGA” Musk and failed GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the new department.

There was a minor conflict of interest early on in the department’s recruiting drive when users realized the only way to send a direct message to the DOGE account was by paying for a premium X account. That requirement has since been lifted so now any X genius with a desire to drain the federal government of funding can apply.

Even still, there are plenty of questionable ethics issues surrounding Musk’s involvement in the position; his SpaceX company holds billions of dollars in NASA contracts, and Tesla — where he also serves as CEO — benefits from government tax incentives for electric vehicles. It’s also subject to auto safety regulations.

Musk would be affected by regulation in the auto industry, the aeronautics industry, the emerging AI industry, and the world of social media. But he will, apparently, be an influential voice in determining which regulations need eliminated and which incentives need cut.

“There’s direct conflicts between his businesses and government’s interest,” Ann Skeet, the director of leadership ethics at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center, told the Associated Press. “He’s now in a position to try and curry favor for those enterprises.”