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I find it hard to believe that any 19-22 year old would have the appropriate level of experience to handle this responsibility.

Sure, a 55 year old also may not have the appropriate responsibility, but at least it's reasonable to expect that they could.



Pretty sure these whiz kids engineers are writing software to analyze things like where all the money goes.

Decisions will ultimately be made and implemented by the appropriate authorities, of course.


Kids tend to miss a reasonable doubt and tend to hate sincerely. This why they are good in rapid cutting regardless of consequences. Any amount of brilliance will not compensate even 10 years of experience.


> Kids tend to miss a reasonable doubt and tend to hate sincerely

What does this even mean?


that they are more hot-headed and militant in their opinions


A 55 year old learns to keep their hot-headed militant opinions to themselves. But from my experience in the insides they’re no different. And the 55 year old has held those opinions for 40 years and they’re not gonna change.


Agree. It seems largely they are just writing code to make sense of the enormous amount of data and unravel the tangled mess that is the US federal budget.


Right, 5 guys are gonna untangle what you allege is generations of tangled mess.

Got it.


How do you know that they are largely writing code? Is that because the appropriate oversight has indicated as such? What visibility do any of us have to what they are doing? And why should we trust any result they produce?

The lack of critical thinking in this entire comment section is breathtaking?


Why would you hire top software engineers to do anything else than build software systems?


Appropriate authorities? I have little faith in that at this point.


I think that’s a bit of a naive take.


[flagged]


George Washington led a revolution at 44 years old, and those guys were 32, 36, 31, and 29 when the constitution was drafted and the federalist papers were written. I guess the upside from the comparison could be that 11 years from now these kids might realize how badly they fucked up the federal government and try again with a more balanced approach.


Good point. I didn't mean that the founding fathers solely led the revolution, but that being "founding fathers" meant that they led significant part of the revolution. For instance, Hamilton was a chief staff aide to Washington, and Madison was in some state's legislature. Of course, they may not qualify as "leading" at that time, but at least they were participating, right? And that is similar to those 19-year olds in DOGE: they are employees in DOGE, and they are led by someone more senior.


You are of course conveniently leaving out all the people who were much older. Washington was 44, Jefferson 33, Adams 41, Hancock 39, Franklin 70, and many more. Those were just the top ones I could think of. And a quick click-through on the Wikipedia article shows that people under 30 were the exception, not the rule.

Your post is just a lie. A lie by omission.


Why is it a lie? Isn’t it obvious that some people were older and where the kids' superiors? And at least the younger ones were still our founding fathers, while the 19-year olds in doge are employees. Isn’t the entire cabinet of Trump much older than these 19-year old? Aren’t Musk and his lieutenants older than the 19-year olds? We’re talking about qualification for participating a job, not solely being responsible for it, no? If anything, I offered a stronger argument by comparing founding fathers, or political geniuses at their times, to merely some tech whizes under layers of management.


Not comparable. In 1776, kids started working and participating in society in their early teens.

Even Monroe at that time likely had years more of practical life experience than the people working for Musk right now.

On top of that, I would not automatically assume Musk's staff have the skills and talent of the people you mention.


> On top of that, I would not automatically assume Musk's staff have the skills and talent of the people you mention

Me neither. I was arguing the opposite: we should not assume that one does not have experience to the point that it is outrageous, just because that person is young. Such a young age should make us more doubtful, but should not give us complete conviction.




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