Role: Chief of Staff, U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), January–April 2025; subsequent contracting advisor to OPM after returning to xAI. Prior: talent acquisition, xAI (Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company).

Basis for Inclusion

Subject classification: Public Official.

Scales served in a politically appointed senior OPM role with documented authority over the federal hiring freeze exemption process and the channeling of probationary-employee separation lists. Her name appears in the original OPM directives that a federal court later found likely unlawful (AFGE v. OPM, N.D. Cal., Judge William Alsup). She is a public official acting in an official capacity, not a private citizen — the private-citizen inclusion gate does not apply.

Background

• Education: University of California, Davis (undergraduate).
• Early career: Internship at the American Enterprise Institute during college.
• Uber (2014–2022): Talent acquisition; helped build “infrastructure for exponential headcount growth” during Uber’s high-growth, multi-scandal period.
• Human Capital (San Francisco): Human resources / talent acquisition at the venture firm.
• xAI: Approximately five months in a hiring/talent role at Elon Musk’s AI company immediately before her OPM appointment.

DOGE Role and Authority at OPM

Scales was appointed OPM Chief of Staff shortly after President Trump’s January 20, 2025 inauguration. Multiple outlets (WIRED, The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Government Executive, Federal News Network, The Daily Beast) reported that she became “the point of contact for all OPM guidance related to the Trump administration’s purge of federal employees.”

Documented authorities and actions:

• Probationary firing pipeline (January 20, 2025 memo). OPM’s inauguration-day guidance required every agency to provide its list of probationary employees by January 24, 2025 and to determine which should be retained. The memo directed agencies to send the resulting reports to OPM with a copy to Amanda Scales, making her the central clearinghouse for the probationary purge.
• February 14, 2025 separation directive. A follow-up email from OPM instructed agencies to “separate probationary employees that you have not identified as mission-critical no later than end of the day Monday, 2/17.” The OPM communications channel for this rollout ran through Scales’s office.
• Hiring-freeze exemption authority. Scales was among the small group with authority to approve exemptions to the Trump federal hiring freeze and to the mass firings, giving her decision rights over which agencies and roles continued staffing.
• “Fork in the Road” deferred resignation program (January 28, 2025). Scales’s OPM was the originating office for the “Fork in the Road” memorandum offering federal employees deferred resignation with administrative leave. The program closed February 12, 2025; roughly 6.7% of the federal civilian workforce (more than 154,000 employees) resigned under it.
• Coordination with DOGE. TechCrunch and other outlets described Scales as having “helped lead” Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative from her OPM perch.

Court Findings and Memo Walk-Back

In March 2025, U.S. District Judge William Alsup (N.D. Cal.) found that the January 20 OPM probationary-workers memo and OPM’s related efforts had likely unlawfully directed the firing of probationary employees across agencies that OPM does not control.

In response to the ruling, OPM:

• Retroactively edited the original guidance to insert the disclaimer: “OPM is not directing agencies to take any specific performance-based actions regarding probationary employees.”
• Removed the instruction to copy Amanda Scales on agency reports — a direct acknowledgment that her name had been the operational hub of the directive the court found problematic.

The underlying litigation (AFGE v. OPM and related actions) has produced additional findings against the agency through 2025 (Federal News Network, September 2025).

Conflicts of Interest

• Unpaid leave of absence from xAI (not severed). Financial disclosure records obtained by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) show Scales took an unpaid leave of absence from xAI rather than resigning. She remained on xAI’s roster, retaining a contingent employment relationship with a company majority-owned by Elon Musk while implementing personnel directives co-led by Musk’s DOGE. Earlier press coverage that described her as a “former” xAI employee was incomplete.
• POGO’s broader finding. Scales is one of three senior OPM political appointees POGO identified as having previously undisclosed deep financial or employment ties to Musk’s businesses.
• Direct Musk-network pipeline. The xAI → OPM → xAI trajectory (five months at xAI, then OPM Chief of Staff, then return to xAI by April/May 2025 while retaining a contracting role advising OPM on hiring plans) is a textbook revolving-door pattern that the Revolving Door Project flagged in its DOGE Agent profile of Scales.

Real-World Impacts

Federal Employees

• Operational hub for the probationary-firing channel that a federal court found likely unlawful; cumulative OPM-coordinated actions during her tenure contributed to 217,177 federal positions eliminated by November 2025 (OpenFeds DOGE Impact Dashboard).
• Exemption authority shaped which agency components could continue hiring or retain probationary staff.
• “Fork in the Road” deferred resignation program removed roughly 154,000+ employees from active federal service.

American Citizens (Public Services)

• Decisions on hiring-freeze exemptions and probationary separations directly affected which federal services continued at full capacity and which degraded. Agencies including HHS/CDC, SSA, IRS, VA, and others reported service interruptions and rehiring of erroneously fired staff.

Vulnerable Populations

• Indirect impact via degradation of safety-net and public-health agency capacity following probationary terminations (subsequently partially reversed by some agencies).

Privacy and Data Security

• OPM Chief of Staff role included supervisory access to federal personnel data systems. A 2025 lawsuit (reported by Newsweek) raised broader concerns about Trump administration data flows to ex-Musk-network personnel during this period.

Other Documented Harms

• AFGE v. OPM (N.D. Cal., Judge Alsup) court findings against OPM, including the retroactive memo edit removing Scales as a recipient.
• Subsequent rulings and oversight reporting through 2025 (Federal News Network, September 2025) continued to surface compliance and legality concerns from the probationary-firing rollout.

Post-OPM Trajectory

In April–May 2025, Scales returned to xAI in a full-time talent role while reportedly maintaining a contracting position with OPM advising on agency hiring plans (TechCrunch, May 20, 2025) — a dual arrangement that compounds the revolving-door concerns raised by POGO’s earlier disclosure that she had never severed from xAI.

Sources

• WIRED, The New York Times, Washington Post — DOGE/OPM coverage, 2025
• NPR, “Who is part of Elon Musk’s DOGE, and what are they doing?” — February 2025
• Government Executive, “Musk visits OPM following workforce assignments for DOGE” — January 2025
• Government Executive, “OPM retroactively edits probationary firing guidance” — March 2025
• Federal News Network, “OPM revises probationary employees guidance” — March 2025; and AFGE v. OPM coverage through September 2025
• The Hill, “OPM walks back memo on firing probationary employees” — March 2025
• FedScoop, “OPM tells agencies it’s not directing probationary firings” — 2025
• The Daily Beast, “Baby-Faced Musk Cronies Have Taken Over Key Federal Office” — 2025
• TechCrunch, “Amanda Scales, a Musk hire who helped lead DOGE, has returned to xAI” — May 20, 2025
• Project On Government Oversight (POGO), “Musk’s Deep Financial Ties to Top Feds Revealed”
• Revolving Door Project, “DOGE Agent: Amanda Scales”
• AFGE v. OPM, N.D. Cal. (Judge William Alsup)
• OpenFeds DOGE Impact Dashboard, November 2025
• Newsweek, “Lawsuit Accuses Trump Admin of Funneling Data to Ex-Musk Employee” — 2025
• Wikipedia, “2025 U.S. federal deferred resignation program” (corroborating program timeline and participation numbers)