Your technical jargon does not scramble my wee lady-brain

An open letter to (mostly) dudes who use jargon and acronyms in my comments, in github, and in my dms in an ungentlemanly like manner. The usual round up of what I'm researching will resume next week. Thanks for reading, you all rock.

I study complex systems: social, organizational, and technological

I don't know who needs to hear this (actually I do, but this is a convention I see a lot and thought I'd try out)...

...but I never said I was an engineer.

Although I have been given the title engineer and architect when it was convenient for someone doing sales, and never when it was convenient for me, I am not an engineer. I was never allowed to call myself an engineer on my own recognizance; I'm not sure if that's because I am a weird combination of artist and social scientist in addition to technologists or because I possess a uterus and present as biologically and socially female (more or less). I also realize thanks to my friend Mauricio Manhaes, Ph.D. that it's pretty much a distinction without a difference. A lot of people DO call themselves engineers that really aren't.

If you cut and paste code or tinker around you aren't an an engineer. It's the opposite.

While I value the tinker and the feeling your way through of things, in art, code, philosophy, and life, I'm really respectful of people who do actual engineering. I am also cognizant that there are hacks, coders, and developers, and none of them are necessarily able to be engineers. (You need to understand the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions to come at me here, ok?) Yes, I realize that title "engineer" has become a way of giving people the illusion of professional advance or of creating it from thin air. You have to earn it, in my book. Not necessarily by a PhD, but that's the usual way. What really earns that title for me is you take a step back, design at the systems-level on paper, test, and collaborate your way to solutions that are both innovative, lean, and feasible, and create values for humans instead of extracting them.

I learned the code-switch from watching Oprah on tv. Different kind of code, but related.

So a lot of PhDs don't qualify as they hack and tinker their way through shit without a care in the world as long as the metrics look good, which are rarely human-centered ones. Some very high profile people are out there sounding more like hackers than engineers and that's partially why we are up shit's creek without a paddle. (I still haven't seen this show but want to.) Let me translate that cliché idiom into Engineer:

We have reached a critical system failure and our resources are insufficient to mitigate it.        

You see? I can code-switch. I'm not a BIPOC person but relate with their need to code switch. Poor is a dialect. Unlike BIPOC folks I can pass, so they have it worse. I respect you as much as any engineer. I am always working on my allyship. Tell me how to do better. It's my job to listen and not be self-protective and defensive.

I used a quote from Jane Austen above, but I'm no Regency period dame. (She's not a Victorian. Stop saying that.)

However, whatever you are or pretend to be, don't assume that using technical jargon will scramble my wee lady brain. I'm neurodivergent but fast processing and I have an ability to apply learning from one domain to another better than most. I'm also life partner to a person who was an engineer and and an MD who was a certified technology project manager and Lt. Col in the USAF and we talk a LOT. One might even say, we are consultative to and for each other.

I am GenX, and starting with a work-study for college in the IT lab, I have made my way up from growing up on social security income to paying a whole lot of taxes and living bigger paycheck to bigger paycheck. Trust me: you don't know how we--the GenX "IT Crowd"--are built. We were swiss army knives and did all the things before the rich dudes in khakis figured out it was all important. Our IT department didn't get kombucha on tap, fooz balls. We were in the basement and our colleagues showed crack crawling under desks. More importantly.

We were gamers before you could use jewels and daddy's credit card to buy boosters.

To boot, I mentioned that poor is a dialect. I grew up at the lower end of the socio-economic scale in Catholic NY. I know a lot of people that died and suffered running into burning buildings almost 23 years ago. They still suffer. I know how to calculate an exacta and a quinella and calculate points on a personal loan as well as I know how to calculate p-values and margins of error and confidence intervals. This last is sort of a subtle way of saying, don't mess with me. M'kay?

Love and air kisses,

JP, who understands much more than people sometimes think I do, and who understands that I should be above salty responses to trolls, but feels that there was something illustrative and worthy in this little piece of (at least attempting to be) witty social media literature.