Without billionaire Elon Musk in the Trump administration, his cost-cutting ¡°department of government efficiency¡± project is likely to sputter out, a former DOGE staffer said.

Tesla CEO Musk announced on Wednesday evening that he was ending his time as a special government employee but vowed that DOGE would continue without him. DOGE has overseen job cuts at nearly every federal agency as part of U.S. President Donald Trump¡¯s attempts to shake up the federal bureaucracy.

However, software engineer Sahil Lavingia, who spent almost two months working for the group of pro-Musk technologists, said he expects DOGE to quickly ¡°fizzle out.¡±