# What’s truly going on inside DOGE?  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: What’s truly going on inside DOGE? - Show: My First Million - Owner / Host: Hubspot Media - Episode publish date: 2025-02-17 - Episode AI description: Dive into the wild journey of Iron Mountain, from mushroom farming to secure storage for sensitive information. Explore the digital asset world, examining how figures like Elon Musk influence finance and media. Uncover the quirky frustrations of outdated software and the economic cycles of government debt. The discussion also touches on the strategic maneuvers in AI’s corporate landscape and the impact of personal relationships on success. Stop by for some insightful laughs and a peek into the human side of corporate challenges. - Mentioned books: [Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order](https://share.snipd.com/book/27e5227a-fa4b-4b54-a3b1-a4d8c25c0ec8) by [Ray Dalio](https://share.snipd.com/person/d93bd5b3-d924-43df-ad46-b2d262e8c8b5) - Duration: 01:04:21 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/694e6ea6-278c-4726-8a6f-e5d928c96360) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/a3bc85ac-9318-431c-9821-7a14a7408e4b) - Export date: 2026-02-11T20:06:35 ## Snips ### [Iron Mountain's Origins](https://share.snipd.com/snip/342f1dfc-5a25-4f63-bb6b-f4b468ee41b5) 🎧 01:43 - 03:26 (01:43) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/d1f2ced9-80b6-4d2a-91c2-b66e2d73b041" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - In the 1920s, a mushroom farmer bought a cave. - Facing competition, he pivoted to storing bank documents, creating Iron Mountain. #### 💬 Quote > So in the 1920s, there is this guy who grew mushrooms. And I guess in order to grow mushrooms in the part of America where he was growing mushrooms, he had to grow them in a cave. > — Shaan Puri Shaan Puri on the origin story of Iron Mountain. #### 📚 Transcript **Shaan Puri:** And so I went down a rabbit hole and I had to figure this out. So can I tell you a little story about not just this mine, but this whole company that operates around this? So basically in the 1920s, there is this guy who grew mushrooms. And I guess in order to grow mushrooms in the part of America where he was growing mushrooms, he had to grow them in a cave. And so he was the mushroom king of America. At one point, he was the largest creator or grower of mushrooms in America. He was this German immigrant. And he was kind of like this funny guy where his advertisements, he called himself the mushroom king, whatever. And he had to rent a cave and grow mushrooms. And eventually, he bought a cave. And that's where he grew mushrooms. And this cave that he bought was massive. It a huge cave. And for some reason, starting in the 1950s, post-World War II, those damn Europeans started undercutting them and selling cheaper mushrooms. And he was like, my mushroom business is going to go under. This is not going to work. I got to figure out what to do. And so he bought a bank vault door that was $20,000 in 1950. And he installed it in his cave. He took out the mushrooms and he installed this bank vault door. And he went to a local bank and was like, hey, you guys have a lot of paperwork. You've got a lot of files that you have to store. I have the safest place on earth to store this paperwork you want to like make a make a business deal and so he's changed his business and he started this thing called iron mountain and it was called iron mountain because it was literally in like a a mine that was like they would use the i don't know how this all works but they would use like the the rocks to make like iron and he grew this thing like crazy and basically this company, it's called Iron Mountain. --- ### [Iron Mountain's Value](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2aeb2b94-2194-4b33-8322-40415c794aab) 🎧 03:26 - 05:11 (01:44) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/93fac791-cc62-421d-a38c-a4683a1fe754" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Iron Mountain, a document storage company, is worth over $30 billion. - They store various items, from Princess Diana's will to Sony's master recordings. #### 💬 Quote > Iron Mountain Inc. is a $30 billion company. > — Sam Parr Sam Parr on the surprising market cap of Iron Mountain. #### 📚 Transcript **Shaan Puri:** Google Iron Mountain Market Cap. Iron Mountain Inc. is a $30 billion company. Wow. Do you guys remember when marketing was fun? When you had time to be creative and connect with your customers? With HubSpot, marketing can be fun again. Turn one piece of content into everything you need. Know which prospects are ready to buy and see all your campaign results in one place. Plus, it's easy to use. Helping HubSpot customers double their leads in just 12 months, which means you have more time to, you know, enjoy marketing again. Visit HubSpot.com to get started for free. So this company, I looked it up since the year 2000, they have created a billion dollars at least, or roughly per year in free cash flow. And they now own something like, I think it was something like 80 million square feet of storage. And so they have everything. So it could be like Princess Diana's will is in there. But it's like Sony, the music company, Sony, the record label, Sony, has all of their masters recordings, like literally like the tape stored in Iron Mountain. But their biggest customers is like an insurance company in Connecticut who had been in business 100 years. They, for some reason, legal reasons, they have to keep their paper files. They have to save them for something like 75 years. This **Sam Parr:** is nuts, dude. So they're just a giant, they're just like a physical vault for documents. It says Enterprise Information Management Services, founded in 1951. So it's just a giant vault. And they're like, we will protect your files, we'll protect your paperwork. --- ### [Government's Use of Iron Mountain](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0845edde-3b85-4b7a-a442-a1f5c6e068eb) 🎧 07:01 - 11:42 (04:40) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/25e21b9c-1447-4266-947d-10d60c83401f" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The US government uses Iron Mountain to store physical retirement paperwork. - The process involves manual retrieval and review, taking up to 90 days. #### 💬 Quote > And so right now, the federal government is retiring around 100,000 people a year. > — Shaan Puri Shaan Puri explaining how the government uses Iron Mountain. #### 📚 Transcript **Sam Parr:** now. this is the thing that stores the government stuff or no, a business? **Shaan Puri:** Yes. So let's get to the government stuff. So he said there's a limestone mine where this is all stored. So he kind of dismissed it because it was a mine, but that's actually important. But the federal government is a customer of Iron Mountain. And so here's how this works. This part is absolutely insane. So starting in the 1950s or the 1960s, the federal government became a customer of Iron Mountain. And to this day, it basically operates the exact same way. And so right now, the federal government is retiring around 100,000 people a year. And when let's say you work for the FBI or some agency, federal agency, the Postal Service, whatever, and you need to retire, because of 100 plus years of laws, there's a lot of complications. And so when you retire, you're supposed to get a pension. Let's round numbers of $100,000 a year. But some people get $98,000. Some people might get 108,000. And the reason they will is because let's say this federal employee was a cafeteria worker for a federal agency. That a different set of rules. Let's say this person was a retired vet. Let's say this person was an amputee. There's like a million rules about what you are going to be earning after you retire. However, this is all done on paperwork. So every single federal employee, not just the current ones, but the past ones, they have a manila envelope in this mine in Pennsylvania that Iron Mountain runs. And so when you want to retire, you have to file a piece of paperwork. You literally write up on a piece of paperwork. You give it to your boss at your federal agency. The federal agency has to mail it to the mountain or to the mine in PA. And it takes roughly 60 days because one of the 600 employees at this mine needs to physically have the file in hand, needs to walk to your file in the mountain, which this mountain is 200 football fields or 200 acres. They had to literally hand, like by hand, go and get that file. And they got to look at your file. They got to say, all right, Sean looks like he's 65. It looks like he actually retired at 59 years old. Then he came back. So that gets a different thing. Turns out he served in the Iraq war. So he gets this thing, this thing, this thing. And then they close the file and they put it back and they send the paperwork back to your agency to let them know, here's what Sean is going to be paid for his pension fund. And that process takes something like 90 days to do that whole thing. And since the 1980s, they have spent hundreds of millions. It's approaching billions of dollars to digitize this. It's failed every time. And the New Yorker in 2004 wrote this amazing article. They're like, we tried it in 1980. We're trying it now. We tried it in 1995. Why **Sam Parr:** they digitize too much or it gets **Shaan Puri:** rejected? It's a huge task. But this mountain, it's in rural Pennsylvania. And these Pennsylvania folks, they were literally mine workers. That's what they were, this mine, when it was an active mine. So it's like generations of miners who are now doing this thing. So it's not like these 600 employees aren't exactly like computer experts. They're like physical laborers. So don't exactly have the labor there to do it. But also just the bureaucracy, the same thing that uh when obama launched was it healthcare.com or whatever like it's just really hard within a government within the four years that a president is president to make this massive change and so this **Sam Parr:** nobody and you're not going to get huge pat on the back for like digitizing this process you know what i mean **Shaan Puri:** people who work at the mind they interviewed a couple of them they were like it's a pretty miserable miserable place to work in the winter time when we arrive at work, we're there when it's dark. And then when we come home at night, it's still dark and you can't have a flame in the mine. So all of the food has to be delivered for us every day. And it's like fried food or pizza. That's like our two vendors. But they let you have unlimited overtime if you, if you want. And it's an eight to five job, and no one leaves. The retention is 100%. They're like, it's just a good, stable job. These guys need a podcast. **Sam Parr:** I want to be listening to Iron Mountain Pod, where there's just these miners just talking about paperwork and eating pizza. It's like an ASMR channel of the limestone mine. And the New Yorker **Shaan Puri:** did an article, and they talking to these people and they were like, if you guys want to see taxpayer waste, you should see what happens when a federal worker retires, goes back to work and then retires again. One guy they interviewed, they go, I'm working on a case now that's taken me 120 days to figure out how much pension this worker is owed. And it's just a nightmare. --- ### [Iron Mountain vs. Tech](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e6f29bbd-4903-448e-ac23-6f2097495512) 🎧 11:42 - 12:02 (00:19) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/cd8e5a09-74fa-4ea3-92bc-211cb9c68da6" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Iron Mountain's physical storage business model has surprising resilience. - Its market cap surpasses tech companies like Snapchat, Pinterest, and Twitter. #### 💬 Quote > Dude, this vault, this giant filing cabinet is worth more than Snapchat. It's worth more than Pinterest. It's worth more than Twitter as a company. > — Sam Parr Sam Parr on the surprising market value of Iron Mountain compared to prominent tech companies. #### 📚 Transcript **Shaan Puri:** And so it's like literally a physical labor job to walk around and find all these files. **Sam Parr:** Dude, company, this vault, this giant filing cabinet is worth more than Snapchat. It's worth more than Pinterest. It's worth more than Twitter as a company. Isn't that crazy? The $30 billion company? --- ### [Elon Overshadows Trump](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1c8c241a-4128-4597-a2c7-2a5505aad321) 🎧 14:57 - 16:47 (01:49) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/7bec0dc3-1cec-4789-bce8-adb01b9a7e98" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Elon Musk crashed a Trump press conference, discussing Iron Mountain. - Trump reacted with surprise, showcasing Elon's dominance. #### 💬 Quote > [...] Elon Musk 100% outshined Donald there. That was so emasculating to have Donald just sitting there and Elon standing up sort of behind him. > — Shaan Puri Shaan Puri on Elon Musk overshadowing Donald Trump. #### 📚 Transcript **Shaan Puri:** Is that what you want to talk about? **Sam Parr:** Well, there's one other I want to get your read on. What's one other? Doge as a whole. **Shaan Puri:** Nine. Nine or ten. Yeah, let's go in that order. Okay. **Sam Parr:** Okay, so start at ten. **Shaan Puri:** Yeah. So you sent me a text last night and you said, rule number one, never outshine the master. Elon Musk, and you're referring to the 48 laws of power, how to be powerful. You never outshine your master. Elon Musk 100% outshined Donald there. That was so emasculating to have Donald just sitting there and Elon standing up sort of behind him. He was going to and put his hands on his shoulders. You know what I **Sam Parr:** Yeah, he hijacked the press conference and just started giving his own speech, a wordy speech, while his kid is there rambling also. And Trump is just sitting there like a goon at the table. And it was just so interesting. I'd never seen anyone who's not the president give their own press conference from the Oval Office while the president sits there. what they were even talking about just that was like whoa hold on this is like uh you know like if you watch the bachelor sometimes they do a two-on date it's like whoa hold on it's not a one-on it's a two-on oh there's gonna be some drama here that's how it felt it felt like a bachelor two-on because when **Shaan Puri:** elon told the story of iron mountain trump like look back at him and he goes huh no shit really like he was like like he was learning like he was being entertained at that moment as well. Do you know what I mean? I **Sam Parr:** also love how Trump sometimes is like, we're going to send Elon in. Elon's going to go in. He's going to, he's going to do great things. He does great things. And he's just like, that'll be the plan. But honestly, that's actually not a bad plan. It's like, if I was going to say one thing, it's like, we're going to send Michael Jordan on the court and he's going to shoot. He's a great shooter. It's like that's kind of what he does with things. He's like we're going to send Elon in there. He's going to take of things. That --- ### [Doge's Unlikely Success](https://share.snipd.com/snip/68c52866-bc61-423f-b4d0-ae6e798e10a1) 🎧 17:01 - 25:50 (08:49) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/98ef0555-2cd3-411d-934b-7f4818355dea" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Sam believes the current political/economic climate made Doge's success improbable. - He finds the alignment of Trump and Elon Musk in cutting government spending fascinating. #### 💬 Quote > I cannot believe we ended up on this timeline where Trump gets elected. Elon Musk, the greatest entrepreneur of all time. > — Sam Parr Sam Parr expressing disbelief at the current political and economic landscape. #### 📚 Transcript **Shaan Puri:** it was pretty good. It was a very, that had a lot of promise there. What about the Doge stuff in general? I have a, I have a very opinionated take. Do you? I **Sam Parr:** have a big picture take and then I have just like small things that I wish, wish more stuff would come out from. So here's my big picture take. I cannot believe we're on this timeline. So if you just rewind the clock like a couple years ago, here's what was going on. I was reading this Ray Dalio book. Did you ever read the Ray Dalio, like, I forgot what it's called, Rise and Fall of Nations or something like that. It's basically how empires like fall, right? No empire lasts forever. **Shaan Puri:** Honestly, the title scared me and I was like, I just kind of want to be ignorant. But I read his first one, Principles, and I know that he comes off historically as a pessimist, right? No, **Sam Parr:** no, no. He's a realist. I don't know. He's just an observer of how things are. So if you're going to watch one thing, by the way, watch on was alarming. He's got this thing called the how the economic machine works it's a or 30 minute youtube video which sounds long but it's amazing it's an animated video where he just explains how the economy works in a way that even a you know bozo like me could understand and it's it's it's amazing go watch that like you should just pause this podcast and go watch that kind of thing it's called how the economic machine works the **Shaan Puri:** bridgewater office by the way is literally miles from my house. If you want to go and just talk to them. Yeah, we should. just walk right in. **Sam Parr:** Yeah, we absolutely should. So he wrote this book about the rise of fallen nations. And he basically talks about, like he studied all the empires, the Dutch empire, the Roman empire, the Chinese empire. And basically, why do the empires end? Why don't they just keep going? They have all the advantages. They got the power. They got the best military. Like, where do things go wrong? And he saw that over time, things go wrong in a very predictable, cyclical fashion. And then because he studied history, he could see that, okay, even if it's not going to the same, it's probably going to rhyme. I should look out for some of these signs. And one of the signs that he talks about is around the big debt cycle. So there's like a short-term debt cycle. There's a long-term debt cycle. It's like an 80 to 100-year debt cycle. And what happens is, you know, the countries or empires will end up going into too much debt, which the U.S. is in right now, like $35 trillion of debt, like just an absurd number. And then the interest payments are really high. Then because people lose faith in their ability to pay off that debt, you know, they lose at some point their status as the global reserve currency, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So Ray Dalio makes this argument. It's an interesting book. You should read it. **Shaan Puri:** Now. Does he mention a mukbang? Where on the timeline is, do **Sam Parr:** you know what mukbang is? Listening to people eat? Watching and listening to **Shaan Puri:** people eat? Incredibly fat people just stuff their face with ramen. Yeah, **Sam Parr:** it's like a governmental Mukbang is what **Shaan Puri:** he describes. Does he mention when the decline is when Mukbang gets popular? There **Sam Parr:** were signs. **Shaan Puri:** So... My friends, if you like MFM, then you're going to like the following podcast. It's called Billion Dollar Moves. And of course, it's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the number one audio destination for business professionals. Billion Dollar Moves. It's hosted by Sarah Chen Spelling. Sarah is a venture capitalist and strategist. And with Billion Dollar Moves, she wants to look at unicorn founders and funders. And she looks for what she calls the unexpected leader. Many of them were underestimated long before they became huge and successful and iconic. She does it with unfiltered conversations about success, failure, fear, courage, and all that great stuff. So again, if you like My First Million, check out Billion Dollar Moves. It's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. Again, Billion Dollar Moves. All right, back to the episode. So **Sam Parr:** as he's talking about this, it's like, oh, okay, shit. You look at the kind of the current world, you're like, oh, shit, we got inflation. But then, you know, to fight inflation, they got to raise rates. When they raise rates, that slows down the economy, which slows down spending, which creates this other problem. Then you get stagflation. get like all these, oh, man, this could go poorly, right? Oh, they're printing too much money. That could hurt the dollars. You know, they're debasing the currency. That's what he says that they do. This is what's going to happen. And it just seemed inevitable. The problem was you looked at, he's like, but who's going to go and fix this, right? It's not like a company because a company has to face reality. So what a company has to do is ultimately the company needs profits and the shareholders are going to demand that the company stop this excess spending. But the problem with the government is the government can sort of go infinitely in debt until it can't. It could just print money, right? Like imagine if you or I just had a little machine in the closet. It's like, well, I could solve this problem with hard work, cutting back, tightening the belt, you know, or I could just go in the closet, push this button. I'll just do it this one time, just this one time. Okay. And like, that's what just keeps happening. You go and you push the button, you print the money. And so, so that's the problem. Okay. And it just seemed like there was no solution to this because anybody who wanted to get elected, right? The leader, first, the leaders were not business people, right? So problem number one, the people who run the country were lifelong politicians typically, and they were not CEOs or executives who had that as their core skillset. to get elected, it's like middle school all over again. You've got to go promise we're going to have free pizza every Friday. It's like, who's going to pay for that? I don't care. I just got to say it and promise it. We'll deal with the consequences because that's what gets me elected. So the presidency is never about, hey, I'm going to cut back all your favorite programs. It was always going to be, we're going to do more for you. We're going to cut your taxes. Okay. So less revenue for the government. How's that going to work? We're already in debt. We're We're going to cut your taxes. And you know what? We're going to spend more on this. We're going to invest in education. That sounds great. We're going to give you free health care. We're going to pay off your student loans. It's like, wow, we're just going to, where's the money coming from? And the money was coming from that magic money printer in the closet. Okay, so it just seemed like, dude, there's no way. And somehow this insane situation has occurred. And I'm not saying that it's going to work. And I'm not saying I agree with everything about these people. I don't agree with everything Trump says. I don't even, I didn't even vote. Okay. Look, you can't even hate me. Okay. I didn't vote the guy. I vote for anybody. So, so you can hate me for other reasons. I don't agree with everything that Elon does, but he's an impressive, ultimately impressive entrepreneur. think he's the greatest entrepreneur of all time. Okay. So, but I also, yeah, don't think he, I agree with, I don't agree with everything he says. Great. My caveats are out of the way. I cannot believe we ended up on timeline where Trump gets elected. Elon Musk, the greatest entrepreneur of all time. And if, even if you disagree, okay, he's second, **Shaan Puri:** right? Like he's close. When did Trump, was it January 20th? Is that, or four? 20th is the inauguration, yeah. **Sam Parr:** So less than a month ago. Okay. 40 weeks ago. And he brings Elon Musk in and basically like- Like he's still doing onboarding. If you just said, what's the only way America can get out of this? I be like dude we got to get like someone as smart as elon musk in there with a mandate and somehow have a free mandate to actually go and cut all the bloat to get us out of this excess spending to cut the deficit to balance the budget to get us even into a surplus that's the only way we got to like somehow do that. That sounded impossible two to three years ago. Like there was no path where something, he's not even an American citizen. He can't be president. He's not going to run. The president's not going to just give him free reign. Well, somehow we ended up in this 0.1% probability timeline where Trump gets elected. Elon becomes his bestie by backing him and giving him a bunch of money and put throwing his weight behind him. Elon's stipulation was like, I want to create Doge. Ha ha, Doge. And he's like, I'm going to cut spending. And Trump's like, okay, great. And somehow it became cool to cut spending, which was never cool before that. And now he just took like this army of his smartest, most ruthless people. **Shaan Puri:** It's not even an army. It's 40 or 50 folks who are 24, one person's 19. You go get a bunch of 10X type of people. **Sam Parr:** And he's literally like raiding, he's like raiding buildings and he's taking over payment systems and being like, okay, I can't change the laws, but I could stop the flow of the money. I can audit everything from this payment record system. He's bringing like young hackers in. He's bringing some of his smartest people in. He's doing this. Now, will this be successful? I have no idea. I can't tell you. Is this fascinating? Absolutely. Is this one of our only shots to get out of the death spiral of excess spending? I believe so, and I cannot believe it happened. End of rant. All --- ### [The Human Cost of Doge](https://share.snipd.com/snip/415817de-18a2-4cb3-a51f-6a9ee0878f86) 🎧 25:50 - 28:11 (02:21) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/0f107e1f-a832-4f6e-be14-0842d90182e4" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Shaan acknowledges the positive impact of Doge's spending cuts. - He criticizes Elon Musk's lack of grace in laying off government employees. #### 💬 Quote > Even if those things are good, and I agree with him, I just that like the maturity level would go up because at the end of the day it's cool for like these tech guys to say like cut them cut them let's make the government smaller whatever but it's at the end of the day it is real people's lives [...] > — Shaan Puri Shaan Puri discussing the impact of Elon Musk's cost-cutting measures on government employees. #### 📚 Transcript **Shaan Puri:** right, let me give you, let me give the audience a counterpoint. And I'm going to get for this. You're going devil's avocado on me? I'm going hardcore devil's avocado on you. No, not exactly. Because I'm on board with like what a lot of stuff he's doing. But listen to this. Let's just say that you're 45 years old. You got two kids in high school. You got a mortgage and you're thinking like, you know, life's pretty good. And then all of a sudden you get a message that says, look, we appreciate you, Diane, for working for the government for so long, but you're done. You got to get out. And you're thinking, how the hell am I going to pay my mortgage? How am I going to like provide for my kids? You want to go to college? And then you look online to learn about your situation. And you're like, wait, the guy who just decided to fire me changed his Twitter handle to Harry Balls. And he put in his description that he's offering circumcision for 69 cents. And did he just call a guy a retard on Twitter? Dude, **Sam Parr:** someone yesterday sent me an advanced search. He knew you, Twitter advanced search. It was just like a single link I could click that was just Elon Musk saying the word retard. And bro, you could scroll for days. It was unbelievable. It was an unbelievable **Shaan Puri:** link. It's sort of like a really successful entrepreneur CEO doing layoffs because money's short from his beautiful chalet in Aspen with a beautiful view behind him on Zoom. And for Elon, I'm do what you got to do. But can you not be so smug about it and have some fucking grace when you're doing some of these things? Even if those things are good, and I agree with him, I just that like the maturity level would go up because at the end of the day it's cool for like these tech guys to say like cut them cut them let's make the government smaller whatever but it's at the end of the day it is real people's lives and half of these people they're not like hungry power people they're just fucking guys who are working nine to five and they just want to play softball on the weekends you know what i mean and that that that bumps me out i wish that he would show a little grace uh when he's slashing you know what mean like i **Sam Parr:** think you bring up great points i think he's uh it's like i've been told many times **Shaan Puri:** you're not wrong but your delivery sucks what do they say in the big lebowski you're not wrong man you're just an asshole yeah that's like That's like what's going on here. --- ### [Government Contract Side Quest](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d9c797c0-d078-4ee3-a311-ca647aeb514f) 🎧 28:11 - 31:30 (03:18) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/bd8b3570-85ef-48e6-8593-dc2d46bb8591" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Sam helped a friend secure a lucrative, low-effort government contract. - He now fears Doge will expose this contract as wasteful spending. #### 💬 Quote > Let's get you a government contract, baby. > — Shaan Puri Shaan Puri reacting to Sam Parr's story about helping a friend get a government contract. #### 📚 Transcript **Sam Parr:** So I think you're absolutely right on that. I will say they did offer eight-month severance. I will also say this wasn't like an optional or flimsy thing. It's not like somebody's just messing around. But that's **Shaan Puri:** what it seems like when you changed it to **Sam Parr:** hairy balls. He made it seem like that. You're absolutely right. It certainly seems like he's messing around. The is bad. I think the substance is good. The reality is the way that the government works is actually like a financial terror attack on all American citizens. And so as much as Diane, I don't like that Diane is going to possibly lose her job. The reality is she shouldn't have had that job probably in the first place or this old, maybe not her specifically, but the overall system is spending so much. It is going to tank the entire economy. Like you look at all these crazy stats about how much of job growth is just federal jobs. How much of spending is just going to federal employees. It's like, you know, a wormy, like the game of snake when you start to eat your own tail. It doesn't even make any sense. I'll give you, I'm going to tell you something. I have a friend who was last year or two years ago. They had an unlucky break. They wanted this promotion or this job. They didn't get it. They didn't really know what to do. Didn't look like they had a great, you know, like upside. I thought that they deserved a little bit better. So let me just see if I can help this person out. And around this time, I had met some people that were some fat cats who were doing well with government contracts. And I'm talking about like, you know, one company, for example, they just, they're a web dev shop. They made websites. They're **Shaan Puri:** a fat cat. We got to bring that back. Great **Sam Parr:** usage. Fat cat. Yeah, exactly. And what I mean by that is they were making websites, which you can go on Fiverr and get a website for five bucks. You can go on Upwork and get somebody to do it for a couple hundred bucks. You can go on Squarespace and do it yourself. You could, there's a whole bunch of things you could do. They're getting 19, $20 million contracts to build simple websites. It was unbelievable. And there were multi-year contracts to do things that literally I have interns that could do them in three, four days. These aren't like high traffic, not complex apps, not super sensitive data. Just like a Squarespace. **Shaan Puri:** Informational websites. Put your menu online. **Sam Parr:** Yeah, exactly. So I started noticing this. So I go to my friend and I say, let's get you a government contract. And I can't say too much specific stuff. We got this friend a government contract to do something that probably takes four hours. Not even high-skilled time. Anybody could do it. My sister could do it. My cousin could do it. Anybody could have got this contract. It's been going for two years. And now it's a hilarious game of hide and seek. Because I'm like, yo, Doge is going to find this contract. And when Doge finds this contract, they're going to publish this thing. It'd be like, we paid for this. And I'm glad that my friend got like, you know, a great job, a lifestyle. However, it's the, what is that thing called the free rider problem in society? It's like, I forgot, there's like some social term for this where it's like, you can abuse public parks and public transport because nobody's kind of like on the hook for it. And like, well, I'll get mine. I'll get mine. And when everybody tries to get theirs, we all get --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts