Elon Musk’s Go-to man at DOGE is SpaceX’s 22nd worker, who has also worked at Tesla and Twitter. Meet …

Elon Musk departs the Capitol following a gathering with Senate Republicans

From pioneering area exploration at SpaceX to reshaping social media at Twitter (now X), Steve Davis has been a continuing determine in Elon Musk’s orbit for over two years. Now, the 45-year-old engineer faces his most bold problem but: Helping the world’s richest man streamline the US authorities. According to a latest New York Times article, Davis has emerged because the de-facto day-to-day chief of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a daring cost-cutting initiative given to Elon Musk by the US President Donald Trump.
Davis’s relationship with Musk started greater than 20 years in the past when, as a Stanford aerospace engineering pupil, he was handpicked by Musk to affix SpaceX as its 22nd worker. Since then, Davis has develop into considered one of Musk’s most trusted confidants, incomes a popularity as a relentless cost-cutter and a problem-solver prepared to deal with any job—irrespective of how daunting or unfamiliar. “Steve is like chemo,” Musk reportedly mentioned throughout a transition assembly earlier than Trump’s inauguration. “A little chemo can save your life; a lot of chemo could kill you.” For Musk, Davis embodies the best worker: an engineer with an unwavering work ethic and a knack for eliminating waste, even when it means ruffling feathers or slashing jobs.

Elon Musk’s go-to man Steve Davis “hates wastage”

According to an article in Fortune, former colleagues describe Davis as somebody who thrives on challenges, diving into tasks with little regard for his personal experience — or lack thereof — in a given space. This tenacity has made him indispensable to Musk throughout a number of ventures, from SpaceX to The Boring Company and X. At The Boring Company, the place Davis served as a prime govt, ex-employees recall his hands-on strategy to effectivity. Typically wearing denims and a ball cap, he demanded lengthy hours and a excessive work ethic from his staff, scrutinizing each expense — irrespective of how small. Spreadsheets and paperwork have been confined to free instruments like Google Suite, and even minor outlays confronted intense pushback. “He hates waste,” one former worker advised Fortune, noting that Davis insisted on being concerned in all decision-making.
This cost-cutting ethos reportedly adopted Davis to Twitter, the place he took on an identical function after Musk’s acquisition of the platform. “He was the one in charge of finding everything we were spending money on, who we don’t need, what offices we can close,” a former Twitter worker recounted, talking anonymously to Fortune. Davis’s meticulous oversight stored budgets tight, although it typically slowed decision-making as each expense required his approval.
Now, as Musk turns his consideration to DOGE, Davis’s observe file makes him a pure match for the function. In the lead-up to Trump’s inauguration, his title surfaced in reviews by Bloomberg and the New York Times as a central determine in Musk’s newest mission to slash authorities bloat. Colleagues who have worked carefully with Davis consider he’s able to executing Musk’s imaginative and prescient, irrespective of how bold or impractical it may appear to outsiders.
“He’d be able to carry out any task Musk gave him,” one colleague outdated the publication, acknowledging that such dedication might come at the price of jobs or entrenched programs. For Musk, who as soon as likened Davis’s waste-eliminating prowess to a life-saving therapy, the stakes are excessive. DOGE represents an opportunity to use the identical efficiency-driven mindset that reworked SpaceX and X to the sprawling forms of the federal authorities. Whether Davis’s “Chemo” strategy will remedy inefficiencies or show too aggressive stays to be seen.