A Cofounder of Airbnb Is Joining DOGE and Says He Can't Wait to Apply His 'Designer Brain and Start-up Spirit' to Government Work This is the first time Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia has confirmed his involvement with DOGE.
Key Takeaways
- Joe Gebbia is a cofounder and former chief product officer of Airbnb.
- On Thursday, Gebbia said he had joined Elon Musk's government efficiency commission, DOGE.
- Gebbia also sits on Tesla's board.
This article originally appeared on Business Insider.
Joe Gebbia, a cofounder and former chief product officer of Airbnb, said on Thursday that he would be a part of Elon Musk's government efficiency commission, DOGE.
"Excited to share I'm bringing my designer brain and start-up spirit into the government," Gebbia wrote in an X post on Thursday.
Gebbia wrote in his post that his first project at DOGE would be to improve the "slow and paper-based retirement process" for federal employees. Musk had previously complained about how retirement applications were being processed manually and using paper records.
Musk told reporters at a press conference in the Oval Office on February 11 that he was told that only a maximum of 10,000 federal employees could retire every month because of the manual process.
"Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual, on paper. It's manually calculated then written down on a piece of paper, then it goes down a mine," Musk said.
"Yeah, there's a limestone mine where we store all the retirement paperwork," Musk added.
Musk was referring to a converted mine in Boyers, Pennsylvania. The mine was originally owned by US Steel and has been used to store government records since the 1960s.
The Office of Personnel Management's then chief information officer, Guy Cavallo, said in an interview with Federal News Network last year that it would take "many years" to replace the paper-based system with an online platform they were testing.
"Since leaving my operating role at Airbnb in 2022, I've been looking for the next digital design challenge. And I can think of few more important ones than volunteering to improve the user experience within our government," Gebbia wrote in his X post on Thursday.
Gebbia's post came attached with a video from OPM, which said the agency had processed an entire retirement application digitally for the first time. Chuck Ezell, OPM's acting director, said in the video that the application was processed within a week. The process would take 64 days on average if done manually.
"If anyone else in good standing wants to help design beautiful, user-friendly digital products, reach out," Gebbia added.
"Thanks!" Musk wrote in response to Gebbia's post.
Representatives for DOGE didn't respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
This is the first time Gebbia has confirmed his involvement with DOGE. On February 13, The New York Times reported that Gebbia was set to join DOGE, though Gebbia declined to comment when approached by the Times.
It's unclear whether Gebbia will be paid for his work at DOGE. Earlier this month, the White House said Musk was a "special government employee" and wasn't being paid for his service.
Gebbia has a good relationship with Musk and has been a Tesla board member since 2022. In June, Gebbia told Reuters in an interview that Musk had discussed buying a home from his startup, Samara.
On January 19, a day before President Donald Trump's inauguration, Gebbia said in an X post that he had voted for Trump even though he had been voting for the Democrats his "whole life." The Democratic Party "aren't the same party they used to be," Gebbia wrote.
"Like your fashion sense, they've lost their way. Hopefully they'll make an effort to win people like me back," he added.
