In an X post on Thursday, Joe Gebbia, a Co-founder and former Chief Product Officer of Airbnb, announced that he would join Elon Musk’s government efficiency commission, DOGE.
“I’m excited to share that I’m bringing my designer brain and start-up spirit into the government,” Gebbia penned, adding that his first project at DOGE would be to improve the “slow and paper-based retirement process” for federal employees.
Musk had previously expressed dissatisfaction with the manual process of processing retirement applications and using paper records. He told reporters during a press conference accessed by BrandSpur digital news platform in the Oval Office on February 11 that he was informed that only 10,000 federal employees could retire each month due to the manual process.
According to Musk: “Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual, on paper. It’s manually calculated then written down on a piece of paper, then it goes down a mine. Yeah, there’s a limestone mine where we store all the retirement paperwork.”
In Boyers, Pennsylvania, Musk was referring to a mine that had been transformed. Since the 1960s, government documents have been kept at the mine, which was first owned by US Steel.
However, in an interview with Federal News Network last year, Guy Cavallo, the Office of Personnel Management’s former Chief Information Officer, stated that it would take “many years” to replace the paper-based system with an online platform they were evaluating.
Continuing, Gebbia’s penned post states: “Since leaving my operating role at Airbnb in 2022, I’ve been looking for the next digital design challenge. And I can think of few more important ones than volunteering to improve the user experience within our government.”
A video from OPM announcing the agency’s first-ever digital processing of a complete retirement application was linked to Gebbia’s post. In the video, interim director Chuck Ezell of OPM stated that the application was completed in a week. If the procedure were carried out by hand, it would typically take 64 days.
His post partly reads: “If anyone else in good standing wants to help design beautiful, user-friendly digital products, reach out.”
Elon Musk responded with a “Thanks!”.
A request for comment from Business Insider was not answered by DOGE representatives. Gebbia has never before acknowledged his connection to DOGE. The New York Times stated on February 13 that Gebbia would be joining DOGE; however, when contacted by the Times, Gebbia refused to comment. His compensation for his services at DOGE is uncertain.
Musk was described by the White House earlier this month as a “special government employee” who was not receiving compensation for his work. Gebbia has been on the Tesla board since 2022 and enjoys a positive relationship with Musk. In an interview with Reuters in June, Gebbia said that Musk had talked about purchasing a house from his firm, Samara.
