You’ve felt it. That soul-crushing moment when you’re filling out a government form that hasn’t been updated since 1997, and you think: there has to be a better way.
There is. And someone is actually building it.
Zohran Mamdani’s NYC tech team isn’t glamorous. They’re not on podcasts talking about how they’re going to make government run like a startup. They’re not firing people on Twitter. They’re doing something far more radical: they’re writing software that works.
While the Department of Government Efficiency was busy making headlines, Mamdani’s team was quietly doing the unsexy work of actually making government services function better. Not by eliminating people. Not by investigating critics. Not by settling political scores. By building tools that improve processes.
The difference between cutting waste and creating value is the difference between a surgeon and a chainsaw. Both remove things. Only one leaves the patient alive.
Here’s what most people miss about the DOGE debacle. The instinct wasn’t wrong. Government IS bloated. Processes ARE broken. Software IS ancient. Anyone who has interacted with any municipal system knows this in their bones. The frustration is real, and it’s justified.
But DOGE took that frustration and weaponized it. Instead of asking “what would make this system better?” they asked “who can we eliminate?” Instead of building, they dismantled. Instead of reasoning from first principles about what creates value, they operated from a posture of destruction dressed up as efficiency.
And here’s the thing that should make you angry: that approach doesn’t just fail. It discredits the entire idea of government modernization. It makes the next person who says “we should fix this” sound like they’re secretly planning to fire everyone.
The Mamdani team exposes the lie. When you build useful software, when you focus on making processes actually work, government gets more efficient AND more humane. People keep their jobs. Services get faster. Trust gets rebuilt.
Real efficiency isn’t about doing more with fewer people. It’s about freeing people from doing stupid things so they can do meaningful ones.
This is the fork in the road that nobody is talking about clearly enough. The same goal—efficiency—produces opposite outcomes depending on intent and execution. One path leads to a leaner, smarter government that serves people better. The other leads to a hollowed-out shell where essential functions collapse and the people who depended on them suffer.
DOGE chose the chainsaw. Mamdani chose the scalpel.
The comments on the original story tell you everything. “You mean they are making useful software and not just eliminating people and groups that were investigating Elon in some way?” That’s not a question. That’s an indictment. People can see the difference. They’re not stupid.
When government efficiency becomes a vehicle for personal vendettas, it’s not efficiency anymore. It’s power wearing a costume. And the costume is the thing we actually need—genuine reform—weaponized against itself.
The most dangerous thing about bad execution isn’t that it fails. It’s that it makes the right idea look wrong.
What Mamdani’s team proves is something we desperately needed proof of: technology can fix government. Not by replacing humans with AI or firing everyone with a clipboard. By building software that removes friction from systems that were designed when friction was the point.
Government wasn’t supposed to be hard to use. It got that way through decades of neglect, underfunded IT, and a culture that treated technology as an afterthought. The fix isn’t radical. It’s foundational. Write good code. Talk to the people who use the systems. Ship things that work. Iterate.
This isn’t revolutionary. It’s just competent. And right now, competence looks revolutionary because we’ve been living with its absence for so long.
If you care about whether technology empowers or undermines public institutions, you need to pay attention to this fork. Because both paths are being walked right now, in real time, and the people walking them are happy to let you confuse one for the other.
One team is building. The other is burning. Both call it efficiency.
Efficiency built on destruction is just demolition with better PR. Efficiency built on creation is the only kind that actually lasts.
FAQ
Q: Wasn't DOGE right that government needs cutting?
A: The diagnosis was partially right—government IS bloated. But cutting people without understanding what they do is like amputating a leg because your shoe is too tight. The problem was never the goal. It was the method.
Q: So what should government tech teams actually do?
A: Build software that removes process friction. Talk to the people using the systems. Ship things that work. Iterate. It's not glamorous, but competence looks revolutionary when you've been starved of it.
Q: Isn't this just big government with a tech paint job?
A: No. Building better software often means fewer redundant positions over time—but through natural attrition and role evolution, not arbitrary firings. The difference is whether you're optimizing the system or punishing the people in it.