by mezzie2 | 2025-04-17 15:11:35+00:00
I had an interesting reaction to this piece in that I agree with some of what she's saying but I think she makes a lot of fundamental errors in her assumptions and her approach is wrong. Some of my thoughts have been mentioned in other comments, but I wanted to get them out all in one place without derailing any sub conversations.

For personal consideration/bias purposes before I go into my thoughts:

- Like Dr. Hicks, I'm a queer woman from an uneducated family who found success in academia. I had to leave before I could do a PhD because I got MS, but I am the only person in my immediate family with a graduate degree and I worked in academia for over a decade. I say this because, since she's relying a fair amount on standpoint epistemology, I'm in identity categories that according to her own approach say I can evaluate what she argues from that standpoint, and some of my disagreements come from her being overly narrow in interpreting her experience.

- Unlike Dr. Hicks, I'm an oddity in that I'm Technical (by her definition) by birthright (I'm a 3rd generation programmer and 3 out of 4 of my grandparents as well as several other elder figures in my family were all hackers/tinkerers/etc. - I started programming when I was 4-5 years old.) I'm not good or spectacularly talented since I've focused on other areas and talents of mine, but I have unambiguously done 'Technical' work and would be/am considered 'Technical' by most people. I've also observed 'Technical' culture for a long time and have what I would consider to be a fairly robust knowledge of the history and development of that culture. A fair number of my disagreements come from my own observations so I think clarifying my own position is important.

Where I agree with her is in her pointing out that there is unambiguously a 'Technical' culture that has an often antagonistic relationship with other cultures and that has a sense of self-superiority which often goes unchecked. I also agree that there are various aspects of Technical culture that result in some very, very offputting decisions when those decisions are enacted on a wider society. And that, because of the massive amount of societal power this culture has begun to wield in such a short time (on a historical scale), the faults and downsides of this culture are causing harm and suffering. I relate a great deal to her realization that the people who treat her nicely do not do the same for her friends/loved ones. I'm in the culture and so generally treated decently, but, like Dr. Hicks, I spend a lot of time around people who aren't/don't and the discrepancy in treatment really bothers me.

That said, she gets a lot of things wrong:

- She pretty much only studies the culture by observing the most materially successful inhabitants. It's like only studying how the royal family lived in England in 1600 and using that to extrapolate about English culture in general. Ironically given her talking about having to study the opposites of matters to fully understand them, she completely discards anyone Technical who is not working in Big Tech. The legions of IT workers and devs at lower companies, FOSS and general non Big Tech techies (like I don't think anybody would question Linus Torvald's 'Technical' status), freelancers, etc. Working at any company or organization usually requires at least somewhat licking the boot of whatever culture they profess - it's a self-selecting pool. Of course people she studies in Big Tech are going to act that way: It's a prerequisite to being there in the first place!

- She ascribes a lot to Technical people that she sees as unique, but I don't think are. Like when she talks about not wanting to be a U/X or tech 'People Person' because she can come up with a good, robust idea and can't make the engineering managers do it. Does she think that non Technical managers are any better at taking feedback and policies from people they consider outsiders? They aren't, in my experience. There's a decent amount of friction between academic librarians and other faculty members at a lot of institutions because the academic librarians don't always have a PhD, and good luck trying to convince the Sales and Marketing departments in a giant megacorp to do something that makes sense if it goes against their temperaments. Likewise, it's true that it's a mostly male group and this causes them to overlook some aspects of the female experience. I've found that groups and places that are overwhelmingly female do the same thing in the other direction. The results are different because of how our society is set up, but any group full of one type of person is going to be bad at considering matters outside of that group's experience because humans are pretty self-absorbed. I can also assure her that academia is very hostile and condescending to people outside its bubble on much the same level as high-status Technical people, and I see much of the same discrepancy of treatment there. High-status Technical people treat my working-class friends poorly, and so do academics. She just might not notice because she's in that club - most working-class people who 'make it' end up very attached to the culture of the people who lifted them out.

- She seems to think that Technical culture status is conveyed on high by some central authority, when in my experience, squabbles over who is in the culture or not are fairly common and not all of us agree. I, for example, would absolutely consider some devs at Big Tech to not be 'Technical' based on various measures. When people are offering her 'access to the tent', they're saying they see her as one of them. There's not a group chat where we update who's in and out. Likewise, you can absolutely convey 'Technicality' on to someone, but you don't do it by just saying 'this person is a techie'. You do it by introducing them to the culture, teaching/mentoring them, and helping them with projects/work. Then you let them speak for themselves and their own work. Having someone speak for you is actually kind of an anti-signal in some ways, because a strong indicator of Technical culture is being able to speak for yourself, your work, and your thought process.

- I think she lacks an understanding of Technical history. A lot of the hostility in Technical spaces came about because the first generation to 'make it big'/be socially accepted and impactful had very hostile interactions with mainstream culture before that point. She notes that she's treated with hostility because she doesn't meet Technical expectations or qualifications, but that's the same experience a stereotypical Technical person has outside of Technical spaces. I move in 'people oriented'/mainstream non Technical spaces well because I'm a bubbly, somewhat charismatic white woman who can read social cues well. I'm attractive/feminine enough to not be considered 'weird' or 'creepy', and I know how to tailor my appearance/speech/etc. to different groups. It's better than it used to be, but a lot of that top down antagonistic culture from Technical people is reactive, and the superiority is partially a defense mechanism/coping. This is also one reason Technical people tend to take critiques from outsiders poorly, especially when that critique is 'you need to be more like us! :)' This is also related to the changing demographics and dynamics of the Internet/Web and a lot of Technical people feeling like they lost a bubble and safe place.

IDK, good on anyone who reads my word vomit, I just wanted to get my thoughts out. They're not particularly well formed or organized, though.