Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Cat Hicks (grimalkina@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 07-Apr-2025 08:37:02 JST Cat Hicks

   re: the DOGE "hackathon" at the IRS

   Tech folks have a hard time with this but we gotta keep asking ourselves how every single ritual and shibboleth and piece of jargon and identity-signaling is so completely on the side of THIS; they're not calling anything they're doing a "teachathon" for instance. The tech association is fundamental

   • Embed this notice
     Cat Hicks (grimalkina@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 07-Apr-2025 08:37:24 JST Cat Hicks

     in reply to

     every "Hackers Seize Power That Makes Us Innately Good" attitude that's been stewing around a homogenous tech culture feeds into this. It's not everything! It's just a vulnerability that folks who really know have been long fighting while folks who are too comfortable kept clinging to the benefits

   • Embed this notice
     Cat Hicks (grimalkina@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 07-Apr-2025 08:37:25 JST Cat Hicks

     in reply to

     The wishy-washy inability to hold values even where people hold them in tech-aligned spaces, has just served up a buffet of unearned power stances and credibility bullshit designed to advance "no one can say no to this." Exploiting entirely the beliefs that have been stewing for so long on this

     Paul Cantrell repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Cat Hicks (grimalkina@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 07-Apr-2025 08:43:03 JST Cat Hicks

     in reply to

     I'll tell you what, if I were an engineer right now myself I would be thinking very hard about how the hell I will find a way to make "engineering" something different, because you all have not been doing that. Maybe it's just me but I wouldn't be sleeping well at night without doing that.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 07-Apr-2025 08:43:03 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     @grimalkina
     ☝️Every day in the classroom. Story of my whole danged teaching career.

   • Embed this notice
     Cat Hicks (grimalkina@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 07-Apr-2025 08:43:04 JST Cat Hicks

     in reply to

     Like the problem isn't whether it's a bad or a good hackathon (I know how you all like to fight about whether things are True Tech) the problem is the values are simply not encoded or committed to in tech and that exists outside of, you know, technicalities.

   • Embed this notice
     Cat Hicks (grimalkina@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 07-Apr-2025 08:43:04 JST Cat Hicks

     in reply to

     I think it's a mistake to think these people don't do storytelling and know they're doing it. Storytelling is a critical piece of what they've been good at doing. They align continually with whatever stories bring them unchecked and sweeping structural power. So, "engineers" was an obvious way in.

   • Embed this notice
     Cat Hicks (grimalkina@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 07-Apr-2025 08:43:05 JST Cat Hicks

     in reply to

     Additionally I have had a small project on the benefits of hackathons: thinking about it, asking myself "will this work for them and advance their goals" and concluding it genuinely could. this shows the limits of psychology absent context as well. I mean, you can have a vibrant learning culture for a team that's causing utter destruction to everybody else! It will probably work for their outcomes! Things working isn't morality. They are working well at what they're trying to do imo.