It started with a weekend tweet that sent a ripple of absolute panic through the D.C. beltway. If you work for the government, you probably remember where you were when the notification popped up. On Saturday, February 22, 2025, Elon Musk—acting as the head of the newly minted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—declared that every single federal employee was about to get an email.
The catch?
Failure to respond would be treated as a resignation. Just like that. No HR meeting, no performance review, just a digital "reply or die" ultimatum.
The actual email arrived a few hours later from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The subject line was deceptively simple: "What did you do last week?" It asked for five bullet points of accomplishments. It felt like a Silicon Valley "stand-up" meeting scaled to a workforce of two million people. Honestly, it was the kind of move that either makes you a hero of efficiency or the villain of a labor lawsuit.
The Reality of the "Five Bullets" Mandate
Most people think this was just about tracking work. It wasn't. Musk later admitted on X (formerly Twitter) that this was a "pulse check." He wanted to see who was actually at their desk and who was "capable of replying to an email." He even joked that the bar was so low it only required "two working neurons" to pass.
📖 Related: Will the US ever pay off its debt? The blunt reality of a 34 trillion dollar problem
But for the people on the receiving end, it was anything but a joke. Imagine being a field agent for the FBI or a nurse at a VA hospital and getting a weekend email telling you to justify your existence in five sentences by Monday night.
Why the email caused total chaos:
- Conflicting Orders: While the OPM sent the email, heavy hitters like FBI Director Kash Patel and the Department of Defense told their staff to "pause." They basically told their employees to ignore the billionaire’s request while they figured out the legalities.
- Security Risks: The email told people not to send classified info, but how do you describe a week of high-level intelligence work in five unclassified bullets? It was a trap for accidental leaks.
- The Weekend Deadline: The deadline was 11:59 p.m. on a Monday. For many, that meant scrambling over a weekend to document work that often spans months or years, not just five days.
Is it even legal to fire someone via email?
Here’s where things get murky. Musk’s "failure to respond = resignation" threat didn't actually appear in the OPM email itself. That was only on his social media feed. In the real world of federal employment, you have things like the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and union contracts.
You can't just delete a government worker like an inactive Twitter account.
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) went ballistic, calling the move "intimidating" and "cruel." They argued that a resignation must be voluntary and documented, not inferred because someone didn't check their inbox on a Sunday.
👉 See also: Pacific Plus International Inc: Why This Food Importer is a Secret Weapon for Restaurants
Interestingly, this wasn't the first "Musk-ism" to hit the federal inbox. Just weeks earlier, an email titled "Fork in the Road"—a direct callback to Musk’s takeover of Twitter—offered employees a "deferred resignation." Basically, "quit now, and we’ll pay you until September." About 154,000 people actually took the bait.
The Fallout: Where are we now?
By August 2025, the "five things" email program was quietly put out of its misery. The new OPM Director, Scott Kupor, basically admitted it was a manual, inefficient nightmare. It turns out that reading two million sets of bullet points takes... well, a lot of people.
The irony? A program designed to cut waste was creating a mountain of paperwork that nobody had the time to read.
Musk’s influence in the White House started to wane around the same time. After a public falling out with Trump over spending bills and tax cuts, the DOGE project was effectively "watered down." By early 2026, many of the rigid mandates have been rolled back, though the "culture of fear" it created hasn't entirely evaporated.
✨ Don't miss: AOL CEO Tim Armstrong: What Most People Get Wrong About the Comeback King
What federal employees should do today:
- Document Everything: Even if the weekly emails stopped, the administration’s focus on "data-driven" cuts hasn't. Keep a personal log of your weekly output.
- Know Your Rights: If you are a career civil servant, you have protections under Title 5. An email threat from a consultant (which is technically what DOGE was) is not a legal termination notice.
- Check Your OPM Profile: Ensure your performance reviews are up to date in the official system, as these hold way more weight than a random email response.
The "What did you do last week?" saga was a fascinating experiment in trying to run a government like a startup. It showed that while you can "move fast and break things" in tech, "breaking things" in the federal government usually just leads to a lot of expensive lawsuits and empty desks in departments we actually need, like FEMA or the Social Security Administration.
If you’re still in the federal workforce, the best move is to stay visible. The "pulse check" era may be over, but the scrutiny on federal headcount isn't going anywhere. Keep your accomplishments ready, but keep them in your official performance file, not just in a frantic late-night reply to a billionaire’s inbox.
Actionable Insight: Ensure your Standard Form 50 (SF-50) and latest performance appraisals are downloaded and saved in a secure, non-government location. In a climate of rapid workforce shifts, having your official paper trail accessible is your best defense against "pulse check" style management.