Elon Musk said that federal civil servants who gave “good responses” to his bizarre demand that they provide a list of what they did last week should be considered for a promotion.
On Saturday, the Office of Personnel Management emailed workers across the federal government at Musk’s behest asking them to submit a list of recent accomplishments by mid-day Monday.
In a tweet, Musk threatened those who failed to respond with termination. And, hours later in the middle of the night, he suggested those who did comply with the order to his satisfaction should be rewarded.
“A large number of good responses have been received already,” he tweeted. “These are the people who should be considered for promotion.”
Musk insisted it would take employees less than five minutes to complete the task.
“To be clear, the bar is very low here. An email with some bullet points that make any sense at all is acceptable! Should take less than 5 mins to write,” Musk wrote.
The Tesla CEO and world’s richest man, who serves as an adviser to President Donald Trump, has cultivated a reputation for handing out pink slips rather than promotions.
Trump appointed him to lead the Department of Government Efficiency task force, which has marshaled the Trump administration’s efforts to fire tens of thousands of federal employees in recent weeks.
Those efforts, carried out by a group of Musk allies that include teen and twenty-somethings with no government experience or expertise to speak of, are part of a wider plan to find hundreds of billions in federal spending cuts by the middle of next year.
While some civil servants were quick to obey the OPM’s orders, earning Musk’s praise, several leadership teams across the federal government, including one prominent Trump ally, pushed back.
Employees at the Departments of State and Defense were advised not to reply to the OPM’s email, which arrived with the subject line, “What did you do last week.”
Similar directives were issued at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Internal Revenue Service, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
And Kash Patel, the newly confirmed director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations and one of Trump’s most enthusiastic and approbative backers, told the bureau’s staff to ignore the OPM’s request.
