On March 17, Sahil Lavingia moved into a Washington, D.C., hotel to work for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Fifty-three days later, Lavingia, the New York-based founder and CEO of Gumroad, which helps creators sell products online, was suddenly booted from his DOGE post at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Lavingia speculated that he was targeted after he answered questions about DOGE from a Fast Company journalist.
Now the investor and engineer (who was employee No. 2 at Pinterest) is ready to talk about his DOGE days. Last week, he published a blogpost detailing his brief stint in government. And in a 30-minute call with The Standard on Monday, Lavingia expanded on his life inside Musk’s controversial cost-cutting machine, from attending the DOGEfather’s awkward all-hands meeting to expediting the government’s use of AI.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
How did you get involved with DOGE?
When DOGE was announced, I didn’t have any connection to Elon, but a friend mentioned that someone he met works there. I always felt like it’d be awesome to ship code for the federal government, so I was like, “I’d love to volunteer.”
A lot of my friends and family were not super happy that I was effectively going to go work for Trump. It certainly wasn’t the ideal situation. But I have a lot of faith in America as a democratic institution.
What was the recruitment process like?
Pre-inauguration, I went through three or four different Signal interviews, brief phone calls, etc., where they would ask me a couple of questions. [One of the interviewers was DOGE executive] Baris Akis, who then introduced me to Steve Davis [a key Musk lieutenant], whom I talked to for a brief minute. He was like, “When can you move to D.C.?” And I was like, “I don’t know. What is this job? What am I doing?”
He kind of laughed and was like, “I can’t really tell you that.” Then he gave me a little bit of a hint and said it was to insource a lot of federal government software. That got me pretty excited.
Describe your first day at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
[Cary Volpert, another DOGE appointee within the VA,] was the one helping me out with getting fingerprinted and onboarded. Then, I actually went over to the Office of Personnel Management for a bit, because the DOGE folks wanted me to sit in on a meeting around procuring an HR solution for the federal government. I can’t say who the vendors pitching were. I was hoping that meeting would be the tone for my DOGE experience — i.e., making big decisions, helping move the ball forward.
But I think, over time, we all learned that the government just moves really slowly, and it doesn’t even matter if you have Elon-level firepower. It’s not enough to make certain things happen. America is much larger than Elon. I mean, what is the net worth of America versus even the net worth of the richest person on earth? Elon is not even that big.
You attended an all-hands that Musk hosted at the White House compound in March. What was it like?
That was the only face time I got with Elon. There were about 40 to 60 people in this Secretary of War suite. I felt like I asked half the questions, to be honest. I asked Musk if I can open-source my code [Musk said yes, and Lavingia promptly posted his code], why don’t we livestream the meetings, what have you learned this week, etc.
Some people asked, “What happens to the economy if the federal government shrinks by a large amount?” We got ruminations from Elon, but it wasn’t the same as, “I’ve done a bunch of research, and here’s a really tight answer that I would defend in court.” It was, like, spitballing.
Describe the dynamics between you and the other VA employees. Were they helpful? Or put off by DOGE?
No one’s going to tell you they’re put off to your face, especially if they think that DOGE has power to fire them — which it does not, to be clear. Multiple people would tell me, “By the way, you know people are scared of you. They’re terrified of anytime you send a message in Slack. Or, when you walk into a room, people stop working, and they watch what you’re doing.”
What was the culture like within DOGE?
There was almost no culture. There was no group chat with Elon in it, or with DOGE engineers. There wasn’t nearly as much socialization as I was expecting — that was one of my biggest disappointments. I wanted to meet cool and smart and hardworking people who had a shared interest of mine to improve the federal government.
But, within DOGE, there weren’t clear, defined rules around what we were supposed to do, who we were supposed to hang out with. People were really cautious, so they didn’t do much.
Cautious? About what?
I think people were very paranoid about burning a bridge that they don’t know they’re burning. Especially people who were earlier in their career, who don’t have a reputation yet. They don’t want something to define them. Joining DOGE is already tough [reputationally]. And then if you get let go from DOGE, then you don’t have either side supporting you.
In a blogpost about your time at DOGE, you wrote that the organization was essentially a scapegoat for the mass government layoffs.
I don’t know what meetings or conversations have happened between DOGE and Trump. But when I talk to friends, they think that DOGE is doing stuff that they’re not doing. Frankly, a lot of it is just, like, regurgitating what they read on the internet. They’re just seeing, like, “DOGE shutters USAID.” Nope. Trump shuttered USAID, [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio shuttered USAID. But DOGE gets the credit.
Is there anything you’re particularly proud of?
The thing I’m most proud of is my modernization of the VA GPT, the department’s internal chatbot. Hopefully it goes to every single VA employee, which is 473,000 people. If that becomes the case, it’ll be like the most popular piece of software I’ve built outside of Pinterest. The plan is to open-source the VA GPT so then I can continue to work on it, and more people outside of the VA can use it. When that happens, I’ll try to reconnect with the DOGE people to fight for it to ship within the Department of Defense and other departments.
Looking back, do you think your work at DOGE was apolitical?
I wouldn’t say it’s apolitical. At the end of the day, you’re going to work in politics. It’s like working for any company: Do you agree 100% with what the CEO of the company is about? You can have a large impact on the world without agreeing with your boss.
Generally, I would say it felt apolitical. Improving veterans’ user experience on the VA app or helping VA employees do something faster with code felt relatively apolitical. I hope I get another shot to work for the federal government. I presume not via DOGE at this point, but we’ll see.