Elon Musk’s DOGE is looking for people to help cut government spending. But is he offering a real job? And is it paid?

• Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is looking for people to join the effort.
• Musk posted that the compensation is “zero.” So, is this a real job opportunity?
• DOGE hasn’t answered questions about pay, or whether you need an X account to apply.

The new quasi-department Elon Musk is creating to root out wasteful government spending has generated lots of buzz — but how exactly does a person apply for a job there? And is it actually a paid job?

So far, it’s not entirely clear.

At the moment, what we know about a potential position at the new unofficial Department of Government Efficiency comes from a post on its newly created X account. The post says DOGE — named after a Musk-linked cryptocurrency — is looking for the “Top 1%” of applicants who must be “super high-IQ” and willing to work 80-plus-hour weeks.

It’s unclear if the demanding role would come with a paycheck.

In response to one user’s post, Musk wrote on X: “Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero. What a great deal!” He concluded the comment with a crying-laughing emoji — making it not quite clear if he was joking about the no compensation part.

Musk didn’t respond to an email from BI, and the DOGE account didn’t respond to a direct message. The Trump transition team also didn’t respond to an email asking for more details.

Earlier this week, Brian Hughes, a Trump transition team spokesman, said in a statement to BI: “As President Trump has said, Elon Musk is a genius, an innovator, and has literally made history by building creative, modern, and efficient systems.”

Representatives for Vivek Ramaswamy, who incoming President Trump tapped to co-lead DOGE alongside Musk, also didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Among the other questions about the possible job opening is how a person is supposed to apply. DOGE’s post on X asks prospective applicants to send their resumes via direct message to its X account.

But, as a number of X users pointed out, the department’s DMs at first apparently weren’t open for users who didn’t have a paid X subscription. The account’s DMs as of Friday afternoon were open to any X user — and BI was able to successfully send a message to the account without a paid subscription.

Still, a job seeker would need to have an X account — even if just a free one — to send a direct message to DOGE. That means that if someone didn’t already have an account on the platform that Musk owns, the person would — as of now, at least — need to start one to apply for the role.

It’s not clear if there will be an official DOGE website coming with a more traditional application process.