Musk scares Americans. “You can only hear quiet murmurs during lunch”
As the founder of the technology company, Mark is part of the startup community in Bay Area and believes that his policy is quite moderate. Understands the desire to change administration. But Musk's approach in Doge – which he perceived as a frenzy of cuts and dismissals of federal officials – seemed “absurd” to him.
On the online forum for the founders of technology companies, he wrote the answer to Elon Musk's enthusiastic post about the Government Performance Department (Doge), arguing that Doge is a cover for purifying political opponents. He came to the conclusion that at least some of the other founders on the forum would agree with this.
He was surprised. Instead, Mark – which we allowed to use a nickname so as not to expose him to possible trouble – he was attacked. – I was simply amazed at the amount of virulentness that came back to me – says. And then something else happened. Equally amazing.
Direct news began to flow from people who thanked him for saying what they were afraid to say. One of them even asked for a telephone conversation, provided that Mark would never agree to anyone's name or even introduce their conversation to his Google calendar.
Both in Washington and California, a narrative about Musk's attack on the federal government quickly appeared. When young Muska beds search sensitive databases and look through whole agencies, it seems that this is how it is done in the world of technology. And of course there is a very loud corner of the technology sector that agrees with it.
But in the industry, whose employees have mostly donated to democrats, in a region, whose voters were mostly supported by Kamala Harris, there are also many people in the technology industry who perceive Musk's work not only as dangerous, but completely contrary to running healthy business, not to mention the government.
They are simply more and more terrified to say it loudly.
– Not everyone in the technology industry support Elona Muska – continues Mark. “You just can't hear their pages because they are afraid to speak,” he adds.
– I hate to be careful this way. I am not a person of this kind – says anonymously one of the many years of technological communication specialists, who initially planned to use his name in this article, but his company's management told him that they could not risk disclosure. – We provide maintenance to over 100 people and all people who are maintaining them – he explains.
The chilling effect is becoming wider and wider vertebrae
Politico talks to investors, engineers, startup founders and public relations specialists working in the technology industry. Many of them speak anonymously to avoid professional or personal reaction. Everyone describes the industry known for openness and confidence, which was suddenly mastered by the universal culture of fear when it comes to criticizing Musk or Doge.
This chilling effect is obviously felt everywhere in the American establishment and outside, from university campus to powerful law firms and Congress rooms. But speech can be particularly risky in the technology industry now, when some of the most powerful investors and management in the industry-people who have the power to decide on whose technological start-ups will be financed or which employees will be released-they hug Trump's administration.
In a statement for Politico magazine, responding to the fears expressed by employees and leaders of the technology industry, the main deputy press secretary of the White House Harrison Fields said that “Doge actively implements the program of President Trump and although the coastal elites and bureaucrats with DC are screaming, Americans are mostly supporting”. The Doge representative did not answer the request for comment.
Despite this, Musk is increasingly seen as a threat to GOP. The recent Fox News survey has shown that 58 percent voters were not approved by the dog, and Trump reportedly told his internal circle that Musk will soon leave Washington. But until this happens – or maybe it will never happen, and Musk will probably remain a force in politics – public occurrence against him is risky.
This restraint among the very large liberal contingent of the Silicon Valley is a sharp phrase, as always. Until recently, the Republicans were afraid to reveal themselves as conservatives.
When Niki Christoff started working at Google, freshly after an internship in the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain in 2008, she says that she was treated “like a student from foreign exchange.”
At that time, the cost of lack of compliance with the dominant political ideology was social cost. Now technological leaders are afraid of losing lives or public harassment by one of the most powerful people in their industry, rejection by his allies and attacking through all his online army.
“It's a real terror,” says Christoff, who is currently consulting with the leaders of the technology industry through his company Christoff & Co, dealing with crisis communication and political strategy.
For employees of the technology industry, the sense of being in a muzzle is particularly severe, considering how much freedom we had previously wealthy, privileged employees of this industry.
Elon Musk uses methods straight from his companies
Over the years, when technology companies declared their involvement in diversity in the workplace, supported progressive political issues, such as immigration reform and the rights of LGBTQ +persons, and claimed that the priority was freedom of speech, technology employees enjoyed great freedom of speaking about injustice that they saw in the world and in work.
During the first administration of Trump, Google employees left their work massively to protest against the ban on administration for people from Muslim countries, emboldened by the fact that both their CEO of Pichai and co -founder of Google Sergey Brin were right next to them. This year, both men obediently stood on the podium behind Trump, when he was sworn in to office.
Not only their bosses have changed. This is the labor market in the technology industry. One of the reasons why technological leaders tolerated opposition during the first term of Trump is the fact that The recruitment market was so competitive that companies could not afford to alienate talents. It is currently estimated that from 2022 more than half a million technology industry employees have been dismissed, and good jobs in the industry are increasingly difficult to find.
– The dedication of your position is associated with higher personal costs – says one of the current Tesla employees.
He adds that he has gone from being proud of where he works, to apologize for this – but only privately.
– We are all embarrassed at this point [Muskiem]but these are only quiet murmurs during lunch – argues the employee with whom Politico talks.
It is not only about the fact that a significant part of the world of technology is against Muska's policy. They are also appalled by the idea that his approach is presented as a reflection of how their industry works. Some who worked for him say that this is not even a good example of a rough, but effective style of Musk management, which helped him build more than one company worth many billion dollars.
Of course, there are aspects of the Doge Muska strategy that seem familiar. His rhetoric of the Holocaust Day, micro management, organization of sleeping in the office and exemptions, followed by employment, are part of a well -documented textbook that Musk implemented in his own companies.
The current and former employees say, however, that in other respects his approach in Tesla was different. First of all, says Nathan Murty, who worked as an engineer in Tesla for almost seven years, employed people with experience.
“When you trust people and trust that they know certain things, they can answer how to build things – or destroy things – in your company that are in line with the systems you have built,” says Murty, who is currently the head of engineering in Verse technological startup. Murty compares Doge operations to the “Chesterton fence”, the philosophical principle that you should never destroy the fence until we find out why it was erected there. “They are doing the opposite,” he assesses.
Releasing experts and giving government neophytes such a large power leads to messy mistakes that would never take place in the business world – even in the world of rapidly developing, victorious technological startups, the interlocutors of Politico convince.
Already, the Doge claims regarding 150-year-olds receiving social security benefits have fallen after the acting of the social security administration commissioner improved the record. And the “wall of revenues” of the group, which he uses to track the cuts of expenses, has been bristled with errors, including one item that confused an ice contract worth $ 8 million. (over PLN 31 million) with a contract worth $ 8 billion. (over PLN 31 billion) in the first month of existence, each of the largest cuts listed on the page was later revealed as a mistake.
“If Elizabeth Holmes would do so, were thrown out of the city,” says one of the investors at an early stage, referring to the founder of Theranos, who is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence for deceiving investors. – When you are dealing with people's life and death, errors, fraud and fraud land in prison, not in an oval office.
Suddenly gutting the organization, assuming that in this way it will become more efficient, it is also “catastrophically risky thing”,, says the investor. – You would only do it if the risk of the company's fall was low.
And although there are some exceptions, he added, “in general, there is no success after cutting costs. There is a slow spiral of deterioration.”
The Doge approach is more “playing on the private capital market,” says Samuel Hammond, the chief economist of the right -wing Think Tank Foundation for American Innovation dealing with technological policy. “It's a kind of liquidation nation,” he adds, referring to the way private equity is dismantling companies into parts. Although he admits that Doge is not “widely praised or condemned” among conservative technologists he knows, more people in these circles begin to “talk about a dog that could be” and is not.
Even some cryptocurrency managers with whom Christoff cooperates, and who perceive Trump as a master in their industry, are sour Musk's approach. – They perceive this administration as a path to achieve their worldview, but it is really something other than thinking that this is any way for effective, efficient or effective conduct of surgery – he says.
As a communication specialist, Christoff does not advise his clients to be silent – they don't ask her if they should. He says, however, that he sees some cracks that partly result from the growing frustration by the way the Doge mission is contrary to its own business interests of technological leaders.
Part of what the Code of Silence drives is pure self -presence. No company dealing with cyber security or IT supplier wants to be on a black list of contracts with the current or potential customer as gigantic as the federal government.
However, this instinct is increasingly contrary to the fact that Doge actively limits contracts. – From a purely business point of view, these are capitalists. It doesn't make much economic sense – he adds …
The more dog reductions cut their own success – and Trump – the more technological leaders may feel encouraged to speak. “I think there is a moment when people could say something safer,” notes Christoff. – But this time has not yet come.
