Over the past week, Elon Musk has been engaged in a near wholesale takeover of key areas of the U.S. federal government. Working under the newly minted “Department of Government Efficiency” aka DOGE, Musk and a group of young Gen Z loyalists have begun wreaking havoc on our institutions. Online culture journalist Ryan Broderick joined me to break down who exactly these young men are, what their backgrounds say about the people Musk is hiring, and what the billionaire is currently doing to the U.S. government.
I never was a pain with my coworkers - I think… maybe? 🙂 But I remember being an insufferable know-it-all. My older coworkers put up with me because I actually did get shit done, but some of the things I said with the absolute certainty of someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about… Sheesh, I too cringe today.
Funnily enough, now I’m the old fart and I hear the same thing coming from some of our younger recruits. I mean they’re nice and all, but they regularly spew out absolute statements that immediately shut off the conversation and they won’t listen to more nuanced arguments. And I know better than to counterargue because I was like that too and I know it doesn’t work - which is probably why my coworkers back then also didn’t say anything back to me. More cringe 🙂
But there’s hope: one of the younger engineers swore by MS VSCode and would regularly tell me my text terminal and VI were “total shit” and “Welcome to 2025 grandpa”. But every once in a while, we have to work together on a problem in my office, where all the cool hardware lives, and he sees me work the terminal much, MUCH faster than he does his GUI tools. I don’t even say anything anymore: I do my things and he watches.
And the other day he meekly said “Well, your command line gobbledygook probably took you way too much time than it’s worth to learn, but it sure is quicker than what I do…” To which I replied “Then maybe it is worth taking the time to learn it eh?” The more I think about it, the more I think I’ll convince him by example rather than by proselytizing.