Getting Out of DOGE: A Discussion With a Former DOGE Engineer

Legal journalist Adam Klasfeld, founder of All Rise News, interviews a former engineer who joined the Department of Government Efficiency in 2025 after years of wanting to ship software for the federal government. The conversation opens with how the engineer was recruited through personal contacts, what a political alignment screening involved, and a first day at the Veterans Affairs central office where nobody was sure what the new hire should be doing.

The middle of the discussion centers on the VA contract review work. The engineer describes a Python script that sorted a very large set of contracts into a shorter list for career contracting officers to examine, stressing that software did not cut anything on its own. They also cover press coverage of that work, a long late-night call with Elon Musk that proved less structured than expected, and an effort to hire in-house developers, which a executive order allowed by redirecting a portion of contract savings to staffing.

In the closing questions from remote viewers and the room, the topics include data access, the overlap with the Government Accountability Office, and the abrupt end of the engineer's access after he answered a press inquiry. The practical takeaways are that federal agencies lack in-house software engineers, that data requests should be justified and logged, and that publishing public-sector code invites useful scrutiny.