The internet has a funny way of mixing up reality. If you search for elon musk doge engineers, you’re probably looking for one of two very different things. Either you want to know about the ragtag group of volunteers who’ve been maintaining the Dogecoin cryptocurrency since 2013, or you’re looking for the "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) squad that Musk led during his 2025 stint in Washington.
Honestly, it’s easy to get them confused. Both involve Musk, both use the same Shiba Inu-inspired branding, and both claim to be "optimizing" systems for the better. But the actual work—and the people doing it—couldn’t be more different.
The Original Dogecoin Developers (2019-2021)
Long before he was trying to slash federal budgets, Musk was quietly sliding into the DMs of the Dogecoin Core developers. This wasn't some corporate takeover. In fact, it was surprisingly low-key. Around 2019, Musk reached out to folks like Ross Nicoll and Michi Lumin.
At the time, Dogecoin was basically a "zombie" project. The original founders had left years prior, and a small group of part-time volunteers was keeping the lights on. Musk offered them a bunch of money to fund development.
They said no.
They didn't want the coin to become a "Musk project." They wanted it to stay independent. Instead of taking his cash, they took his advice. For a couple of years, Musk served as an unofficial technical advisor. He was obsessed with three things: decreasing transaction fees, increasing block speed, and making the whole thing more energy-efficient.
You’ve probably seen the tweets from May 2021 where he claimed to be "Working with Doge devs to improve system transaction efficiency." That wasn't just hype. He was actually connecting them with his own engineers at Tesla and SpaceX to look at how to scale the network without the massive carbon footprint of Bitcoin.
Meet the "Baby-Faced" DOGE Engineers of 2025
Fast forward to January 2025. The name "DOGE" shifted from a cryptocurrency to a government initiative: the Department of Government Efficiency. This time, Musk wasn't working with crypto volunteers. He was hiring what the media eventually dubbed his "crack team" of young, high-octane engineers to audit the U.S. government.
These guys weren't career bureaucrats. Most were in their early 20s, and some were literally still in college.
- Edward Coristine: A 19-year-old student from Northeastern University who had already interned at Neuralink.
- Luke Farritor: A Thiel Fellow and SpaceX intern who gained fame for using AI to read ancient scrolls from Vesuvius.
- Ethan Shaotran: A senior at Harvard and founder of Energize AI.
- Akash Bobba: A UC Berkeley student with a background at Palantir and Meta.
The vibe was less "government office" and more "Silicon Valley hackathon." These elon musk doge engineers were given badges and "write access" to federal payment systems. It was chaotic. One engineer, Marko Elez, reportedly gained direct access to Treasury Department systems to look for "zombie payments"—automated payouts that the government keeps sending out to people who might actually be dead or to programs that no longer exist.
Why the Tech World is Divided on This
Some people think this is exactly what the government needs. They argue that a 22-year-old who knows how to write lean code can spot inefficiencies that a 50-year-old administrator would never see. If you’ve ever tried to navigate a government website, you know the tech stack is basically held together with duct tape and prayers.
But there’s a massive "but" here.
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Critics, including many former U.S. Digital Service (USDS) members, pointed out that the government isn't a startup. You can't just "break things" when those things are Social Security payments or veterans' benefits. In early 2026, reports surfaced that some of these aggressive "efficiency" maneuvers led to unintended consequences, like frozen foreign aid that some experts claimed put lives at risk.
Musk himself admitted later that the job was harder than he thought. In an interview in late 2025, he mentioned that he wouldn't do it again, saying he should have just focused on his companies. It turns out, deleting lines of code in a crypto wallet is way easier than deleting departments in the federal government.
What You Can Actually Learn from the DOGE Approach
Whether you’re a fan of Musk or not, the way his elon musk doge engineers approached problem-solving is worth noting for anyone in tech or business.
- Question the Default: Just because a payment has been automated for 20 years doesn't mean it should be.
- Lean is Better: Both the crypto devs and the government auditors were obsessed with reducing "bloat." In software, bloat is slow code; in government, it's "zombie" spending.
- Youthful Audacity: Sometimes, not knowing "how things are supposed to be done" allows you to see how they could be done.
The "DOGE" era in Washington is officially winding down, with a sunset date of July 4, 2026. But the legacy of these young engineers is going to be debated for years. They proved that you could walk into the most powerful buildings in the world with nothing but a laptop and a "move fast" mindset—even if the results were, as Musk put it, only "somewhat successful."
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If you’re looking to apply these "efficiency" principles to your own projects, start by auditing your recurring costs. Whether it's a $10 SaaS subscription you don't use or a $100 million government grant, the first step to efficiency is always the same: finding where the money is going and asking "why?"