Cat Hicks

Probably a different communication goal then!

please give me some credit that after spending every ding-dong working day collaborating in some very tangible way with software teams for the past 10+ years I have actual experience here; it is not a rare word.

but then there would be fewer jobs for people like me hehe

happy birthday!!!!

I can relate so much to this. Glad for your ability to transmute this into something that benefits others!!

I don't think we can avoid our context-specific ways of speaking, but just that it helps to be aware of them when there are repeatable patterns of misunderstanding that can be gently guarded against for those who care about these collaborative convos :)

Some people have joint conversational and communication goals, hard as it may be for you to imagine (or impossible, perhaps!)

🫶

...but genuinely, the psychological role I've played on this has been the most impactful thing I've left a lot of partners with, especially in spaces of working on social problems

literally just being a person who is "not afraid to think about how we make an argument with numbers" (I do not at all mean this in a contemptuous way, many people are very unfairly treated when they HAVE tried this) has made me invaluable to many partners. Ofc I have many richer complex skills....

much of the "help people with technology" work in the world is way more stuff like this than anything else

very underappreciated way of seeing all of this right now is reckoning with HOW MUCH most of the world has been cut off from truly being able to analyze data and how much they want to. No one ever really believed me on this when I was doing data science consulting but I keep thinking of it now

I feel like it's a mix

Yes that's what I'm pointing out

(excluding people who are actually math*educators*, the very folks most underappreciated by your average math prof)

Yeah well math can't figure out how to teach most of the people on the planet so I don't pay much attention to what math profs say about human learning and problem-solving

Oh all good all additive

I mean I do think it serves important communication goals in that context

Makes sense!

trivial-as-joyful-scaffolded-ease-by-relying-on-some-innovation vs trivial-as-dismissive-replacement context essentially

I don't really have an opinion about which side should cave on this, I just observe it, constantly

this is one of those little emotional context conversation traps I see every single day

just a general observation from someone at the intersections: folks in software do not usually realize that people outside of software find the convention of calling things "trivial" incredibly off-putting!

“Plotkin knew what would happen if Kennedy became health secretary. “Oh, I expected it,” he said of the myriad changes that Kennedy has overseen. “I did everything I could when Kennedy was up for confirmation, to convince people like Senator [Bill] Cassidy to vote against him — and failed.”

We're getting into "could do a better powered study than many of the developer case studies people are freaking out about" sample size territory with number of people using my Learning Opportunities skill, based on stars

Our work at Quotient wouldn't be possible without the fast-moving research happening in our space. We're excited to keep building on that foundation by welcoming Cat Hicks, PhD to join our res... Our work at Quotient wouldn't be possible without the fast-moving research happening in our space. We're excited to keep building on that foundation by welcoming Cat Hicks, PhD to join our research ad...

Happy to share that I'm joining the research advisory for Quotient as a Strategic Advisor. In a time of great opportunity and change for software development, it's a joy to collaborate with a team that is building for lifting their partners with shared evidence.

www.linkedin.com/posts/lizzie...

Either way I shall continue on my chosen path of, as one of my wonderful readers described my book in one of the best quotes I've gotten about it: "a compassionate obliteration of the way I would have explained the last fifteen years of my life, but somehow I want to say thank you"

But question the pipe itself???? Heresy.

Situation is different now. Not sure if we'll calcify back down into "the SWEs have to look exactly the same" or seize this as an opportunity to *actually* question the narrow mental model of technical problem-solving.

The model in everyone's minds back then was "oh lord we do not have enough software engineers", but essentially ZERO curiosity available to question what software engineering skills were or bad assumptions about that. Some ppl did very good work achieving goals of getting more people into the pipe

It's not that there's not room for a lot of voices, it is necessary to have many perspectives, but the way "I was an engineer" was always elevated over those of us who worked on the social science side of education was noticeable