Is there a good light under which to view this? It's corrupt. Isn't that far worse than whatever benefit you presume "HN" would be cheering?

You can be ok with the “what” and disagree with the “how” and the “why”.

There is no light you can shine on this that makes it look good. None. It's corrupt to the core. You can want a government organization or whatever to be run more efficiently and still find it horrifying when a private actor runs amok in that organization with obvious, blatant conflicts of interest and no oversight.

You are right about one thing: Musk and Trump are the enemy. You may mean that as snark, but it's the truth. This isn't "oh, Musk and Trump are Republicans, so anything they do is bad" -- this is "Musk and Trump are mask-off fascists tearing down government to serve their interests to the detriment of almost everyone else".

This is so much wannabe driving a narrative of your own choosing. If you can’t see the difference from generic hiring of engineers to fix an “ailing” government agency vs doing the same thing being led by the guy that owns the company said engineers are beholden while working for the very agency that directly regulates said company immediately after said owner has gone in and wiped out the employees of the agency so that it is now staffed with yesmen, then you're just not anyone near the same spaceport as reality.

Run on sentences be damned this is such a head in the sand comment you’ve made

Your pearl-clutching is a bit overwrought here.

"That poor, poor, richest man the world. He's demonstrating that he's above the law every day, but someone on the internet doesn't trust his motives. Hasn't this man been through enough?"

This implies the other engineers were unsuccessful because they worked for government.

The reality is the goalposts are being moved. Congress had set up all sorts of rules and regulations, and, most importantly, pay scales for public servants that are wildly out of alignment with industry.

None of these DOGE employees even list themselves as DOGE on their linkedin (most have removed their last name or profile altogether), it’s unclear if they are still getting paid their industry salaries, and some of them worked for government before working at a Musk company.

Yeah, if Elon hadn't bought in to the election, wasn't responsible for firing a good percentage of the federal workforce especially in areas that effect his companies, and wasn't pulling all this other shit, I'd have no problem with FAA hiring SpaceX engineers to improve their systems.

I mean, yes. Trump has thoroughly demonstrated that he's a colossal piece of shit and incapable of doing anything good unless by total accident. Every action he takes is correctly interpreted through that lens.