Elon Musk’s DOGE Staffers Have Quite a Nice Salary—Thanks to Taxpayers

In another instance, Kyle Schutt, a software engineer at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is making a salary of $195,200, the maximum annual salary that a “General Schedule” federal employee can make, including bonuses. And Nate Cavanaugh, 28, whose work for DOGE comprises interviewing GSA employees, makes over $120,500 per year. That’s close to what the average GSA employee, who typically has been with the agency for 13 years, earns per year at $128,565.

When he began recruiting for DOGE in November, Musk described the work as “tedious” and said “compensation is zero,” calling his ideal candidates “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.” So far, the pseudo-agency has tapped into vital government systems and fired thousands of employees. 

Now it appears that compensation is far higher than zero for at least a few employees. Despite Musk describing DOGE as “maximum transparent,” spending and salary ranges for the effort have not been made public. A recent report says that DOGE has received about $40 million in funding, and the White House did not respond to Wired’s questions about salary ranges or where DOGE’s funding is coming from in the federal budget.