Elon Musk’s right-hand man in charge of cutting costs is now hiring employees Department of Government EfficiencyAccording to a report.
Steve Davis has been loyal to Musk for years, working at his companies and even sleeping overnight in the Twitter offices with his wife and newborn during Musk’s takeover in 2022, when the billionaire asked his employees to Demanded to be “extremely fanatical”. Bloomberg report,
The aerospace engineer turned executive is known for driving hard bargains — and now he’s helping lead DOGE, part of Musk’s efforts to reduce government spending under President-elect Donald Trump, the report said. This is a new effort. He is working on DOGE while continuing to serve as president of The Boring Company.
Trump appointed both Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead DOGE, which is not a government agency but a new task force conceived by Musk to issue sweeping spending cuts.
The Boring Company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk’s construction and equipment company Boring, which wants to reduce traffic by building more underground tunnels, has raised about $800 million in capital. But Davis remains as frugal as ever. He has been known to sign signings that cost less than a few hundred dollars, sources told Bloomberg.
The tough negotiator Boring is negotiating the lowest prices with product suppliers on small items like raw steel, sensors and even hose fittings to save cash, sources told Bloomberg.
Musk ordered Davis to find a cheaper alternative for the $120,000 share. After working on it for several weeks, the engineer completed it for just $3,900, for which Musk sent a simple “thank you”, according to Musk’s biography.
According to the report, he is famous for telling staffers working on negotiations to “go back and ask again.”
Davis began working for Musk at SpaceX in 2003, shortly after graduating from Stanford University with a master’s degree in aerospace engineering.
As of 2016, Davis was head of The Boring Company, where he divides his time between Las Vegas and Bastrop, Texas, near the company’s two main facilities. In Bastrop, he lives in a mobile home with workers, where he can often be seen talking on the phone late into the night, sources told Bloomberg.
According to sources, Davis regularly scheduled meetings at or after 7 pm and would attend meetings remotely while eating dinner.
Former employees told Bloomberg that Davis kept such tight deadlines at Boring that he would send employees on flights between the two facilities to deliver machine parts rather than wait for commercial shipping.
At one point, according to former employees, a key part of the machine went off course while en route to Las Vegas via a delayed freight truck. According to the report, Davis’ deadlines were so tight that Boring paid a relative of an employee who lived in the area to track down the truck driver and get him back on the road.
Like Musk’s other companies, Davis had to contend with a number of government hurdles while at Boring.
Boring built tunnels to connect the Las Vegas Convention Center to two nearby hotels, and they are still closed to the public more than a year after construction ended. The Nevada Safety Administration fined Boring more than $100,000 after an investigation revealed workers’ complaints of toxic dirt falling from conveyor belts and dirt falling and spreading on the job site.
He worked multiple jobs through college, working full-time at SpaceX and working as a yogurt shop owner while earning his doctorate in economics at George Mason University in Virginia.
Davis’ professor, Alex Tabarrok, said the young engineer “had so much energy, and was so entrepreneurial” that he refused to quit any of his jobs.
“It’s been exciting to watch him become one of Elon’s most trusted right-hand men,” he said.
