About

DOGE Zoomer Employees refers to a group of young Gen Z men who were hired by Elon Musk amid the onboarding of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in early 2025. Their names were Akash Bobba, Luke Farritor, Ethan Shaotran, Edward Coristine, Gauthier Cole Killian and Gavin Kliger. The men were recent college graduates and one was believed to still be in college. Their young age and apparent inexperience were used to criticize DOGE and Musk. An infographic reading "Who are these little boys?" went viral on Bluesky and Twitter / X in early February 2025, showing pictures of the men and widely publicizing the story. Notably, Edward Coristine was pictured with a Zoomer Perm, also known as a Broccoli Cut, which led to memes and mockery online. Coristine was the one said to have graduated high school in 2024. WIRED originally broke the story in late January 2025.

Origin

On January 28th, 2025, WIRED published an article, titled "Elon Musk Lackeys Have Taken Over the Office of Personnel Management," discussing recent hirings at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) with connections to Elon Musk, such as Amanda Scales, a former xAI employee, being hired as the OPM chief of staff. They referenced but didn't outright name a 21-year-old OPM senior advisor who had been hired under Donald Trump's second presidency. The young man had worked for Palantir, linked to both Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Another young man, who reported directly to Scales, reportedly graduated from high school in 2024 but had a summer role at Neuralink. ^[1]

On January 28th, X^[2] user @Brendan_Duke tweeted a screenshot of the abovementioned excerpt, captioning it, "Hoo boy." His tweet received over 5,800 likes in six days (shown below).

On January 30th, 2025, WIRED published a new article on the subject titled, "Government Tech Workers Forced to Defend Projects to Random Elon Musk Bros." The article identified Edward Coristine as the recent high school grad who formerly worked at Neuralink.^[3]

On February 2nd, WIRED published a third article titled, "The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover," which fully identified the six Gen Z men between the ages of 19 and 21 who had been hired by Elon Musk.

The list included Akash Bobba, Luke Farritor, Ethan Shaotran, Edward Coristine, Gauthier Cole Killian and Gavin Kliger. Sources told WIRED that Bobba, Coristine, Farritor and Shaotran all had working General Services Administration (GSA) emails and A-suite level clearance at the GSA, meaning they worked out of the agency's top floor and had access to all physical spaces and IT systems.^[4]

On February 3rd, 2025, the WIRED X^[5] account posted about the article, receiving over 106,200 views in a day (shown below).

Spread

On February 2nd, 2025, Bluesky^[6] user edenrobins shared an infographic with text reading, "Who are these little boys?" (shown below). The post has since been deleted.^[7][8]

The infographic was reposted across social media soon after, like on February 2nd, X^[9] user @elaifresh tweeted it, captioning it, "Can't believe we're running the Iraq playbook on our own government," gaining over 57,000 likes in two days (shown below).

Others centered on the appearance of Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old who reportedly graduated high school in 2024, who had a Zoomer Perm, also known as a Broccoli Cut. X^[10] user @isaiah_bb posted a quote tweet about Coristine's hair on February 3rd, 2025, comparing his government access to his young age and haircut. The post received over 2,900 likes in a day (shown below).

On February 3rd, X^[11] user @spaceghost joked, "Give me their Discord server and I’ll have control of DOGE by EOB today," amassing over 111,000 likes in a day (shown below).

Also on February 3rd, 2025, X^[12] @anothercohen tweeted a video profile on Luke Farritor about making major strides in the Vesuvius Challenge concerning Ancient Roman scrolls that survived the explosion of Vesuvius in Pompeii.^[14] Farritor, while a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, decoded multiple passages in the scroll using AI. ^[13] The tweet received over 70,000 likes in a day (shown below).

This is one of the software engineers working with Elon Musk on DOGE to reduce our country's excessive spending problem. Unfathomably based pic.twitter.com/F7UjAWoBUy

— Alex Cohen (@anothercohen) February 3, 2025

Various Examples

Search Interest

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External References