Sahil Lavingia, the former member of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) first identified by WIRED, has a new job in government at the Internal Revenue Service.
Lavingia joined the IRS in November. In a conversation at WIRED’s Big Interview event with former acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration Leland Dudek and David Foote, outside counsel for the US Institute of Peace, Lavingia said, “I'm working at IRS for online accounts.”
Lavingia said that he joined as a career employee after Sam Corcos, a DOGE operative and the chief information officer of the Treasury Department, reached out to him after reading an article he'd written about his experience in government, offering to put him in touch with people who could help him find a role in which he could put his talents to use as a federal worker. When he asked the Big Interview crowd whether the IRS should have a mobile app, attendees enthusiastically said it should.
Lavingia was previously assigned to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), where he was part of a group of technologists brought into the government in the early months of DOGE’s takeover.
In 2015, he had applied to be a part of the US Digital Service (USDS), now the US DOGE Service. Like many DOGE technologists, he had no previous experience in government or in the specialized work of the agency to which he was assigned; he is the founder and CEO of Gumroad, a platform where creatives can sell their work.