First, there's hardly any evidence that these are anywhere near "brilliant engineers" let alone 1%. Their claims to "fame" were being interns or working on tightly scoped greenfield projects. Some might be interesting, sure. But it's hardly relevant to operating in a complex organization.
But more importantly, the real issue is regardless of how old they are an unelected individual is doling out hyper-privileged access to sensitive data to folks without any kind of oversight. It's a total mess.
It's hyperbolic to the n-th degree to call these "the best of nerds" as well.
Government employees are never elected. They are hired by the elected officials. In this case the general public in the US was aware of DOGE before the election and chose to vote for it.
I don't understand the "unelected" aspect - he funded Trump and Trump got elected. Trump said Elon would get to run a wrecking ball through the ship of state and the magas cheered. He derives his authority from Trump. A lot of people work at the white house and only one of them was elected.
Why is that? I would bet large sums of money that these guys will have a bright future ahead of them, much of it because of the goodwill they get from working for DOGE.
It all depends on how persistent the new american system is.
During the WW2 german occupation of France, there were some french people who opted to enthusiastically work to support the german side, and they certainly benefitted short term from the goodwill earned
At the end of the occupation, a lot of them were shot or hanged by the resistance
You say goodwill, we say “consulting” with companies that have directly benefited from their decisions and will benefit from their connections. Going from high positions in government into the post-government life of consulting and leadership positions is neither new nor indicative of the value of their work.
>I would bet large sums of money that these guys will have a bright future ahead of them, much of it because of the goodwill they get from working for DOGE.
When the shit inevitably hits the fan from the massive amount of orgs they are dismantling, Musk and the DOGE will be used as a political scapegoat by Trump, that's how politics work.
And then from that, taking responsibility has never been Musk strongest point either, he'll push back the blame further to DOGE workers.
Then you've never watched any of Elon's interviews where he lays/discusses out designs of products and production lines of all of his companies in great detail?
I don't get how anybody can write "he's not an engineer". It makes 0 sense and kind of proves my point about anything to just rant on Elon another day.
Amazing that people sign up to be verified on Elon's tarpit and they funnily haven't heard anything about how Elon rewarded loyalty and perseverance there (hint: with a boot to the backside)
One of the dude literally solved a hundreds years problem and won a prize. He coded an AI to decipher an ancient manuscript AIUI. I certainly wouldn't look down on the achievement of that young programmer.
Advanced knowledge of the inner workings of governmental oversight, government funding, and the ability to understand what they are doing is illegal and dangerous.... Enough to know that whatever they have been promised is not worth the unintended consequences of their actions.
To Actually fix the embedded structural problems of an established system requires at least as much wisdom as intelligence. So far I have not seen Elon and his young minions demonstrating deep levels of wisdom
You are being impressed by irrelevant credentials.
This is what tools people into a sens of confidence while totally misplaced.
he is not helping to solve hard problems or deal with corruption.
He is aiding in destroying democracy and enabling corruption and collusion.
So would you say that the first step of detangling spaghetti code is to start deleting huge chunks of it without knowing what it does or why it was coded that way?
There is no control-z in physical systems, especially ones that rely on human constructs and tradition
What a load of nonsense. Expertise in one field does not mean you're going to excel in a different field. There are plenty of people with relevant expertise and equal problem-solving abilities, but these traitors actively don't want them, because they aren't going to say and do what they want.
There is no such thing as "being smart". You can be arbitrarily good at some things, and arbitrarily bad at anything else. Even the greatest physicists can have laughably naive philosophical positions. Linus Paulding, one of the greatest minds in chemistry in history, was convinced that you can cure virtually any disease with a large enough dose of vitamin C. Expertise, even the extreme peak, in one field doesn't give you expertise of any kind in another field.
IQ is mostly BS. And even if it's not, it only measures the ability to learn, not the actual skills. What I wrote remains true: just because you have skills in one area (AI deciphering of hieroglyphics scroll), doesn't mean in any way whatsoever that you have skills for something entirely unrelated (administrative matters).
or the achievements of the thousands of people who worked on ML before him to help set the stage.
I've worked with a wide range of brilliant people of various ages in my life. Nothing I've seen about these kids makes me think they are significantly smarter than the somewhat-above-average folks I've worked with. Historically, the government has hired people like this (for example the NSA pulls in some number of mathematically inclined graduates every year; NIH has brilliant interns, etc, etc).
And none of these kids skills mean they are particularly well suited to the subtle job of reforming the establishment.
None of that prepares him for the things he is working on now, and they have blatantly flouted the law and all security rules to get access to the treasury payments system
Ah yes, let's just make a sweeping generalization about 3 million people.
I've met plenty of people in the private sector who I could easily describe as "the worst kind of bureaucrats". You really don't know what you're talking about.
Even if that were true, it's far better than an unqualified, untrained, and unaccountable group who's only mission seems to be institutional destruction and theft.
As many issues as we have, I’d rather have somebody who understands the consequences of a security breach having access to sensitive information than someone who does not.
Think what you will about who came before or after, but everyone involved here should have experience or training in how to handle and secure sensitive information.
But more importantly, the real issue is regardless of how old they are an unelected individual is doling out hyper-privileged access to sensitive data to folks without any kind of oversight. It's a total mess.
It's hyperbolic to the n-th degree to call these "the best of nerds" as well.