Ethan Marcotte
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ethanmarcotte.com
Ethan Marcotte
@ethanmarcotte.com
10K followers 380 following 2K posts
designer, writer, roommate to two kittens. I think you deserve a union, and I wrote a book about that: https://ethanmarcotte.com/books/you-deserve-a-tech-union/

hi friend
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ethanmarcotte.com
current redesign status
A person sits in front of an old-school personal computer. Over their shoulder we can see the computer screen, which displays the words “YOU ARE UNDER ARREST” in imposing green letters.
November 11, 2025 at 10:07 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
EXTREMELY glad I could show up for @kickstarterunited.org’s Boston rally today.

History in the making, folks.
Photograph of a green picket sign held in front of a busy downtown street. Sign reads, “OPEIU Local 153 Kickstarter United: ON STRIKE.” The Kickstarter United logo appears in the center of the sign, showing two hands shaking over some lines converging on a point in the horizon. Photograph of a couple dozen people standing in front of a brown office building, nearly all of them smiling and holding various picket signs. The signs have slogans like “KICKSTARTER UNITED: ON STRIKE” and “5 DAYS: WEAK; DEMAND: 4 DAY WORK WEEK”.
October 23, 2025 at 6:53 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
[updates browser]

i am so tired
Screenshot of a browser’s right-click context menu, with a new “Ask an AI Chatbot” menu item selected. The submenu has three options: “Summarize page (labeled as new)”, “Choose an AI Chatbot”, and “Remove AI Chatbot”.
October 15, 2025 at 2:57 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
my brain this morning: bleh, everything sucks, let’s go for a walk

the universe, twenty minutes later: have you perhaps considered……DOG IN BACKPACK??
A small brown-and-white dog with big poofy ears is hanging out of its person’s bright red backpack. The dog’s tongue is sticking out slightly as the dog pants happily. A small brown-and-white dog with big poofy ears is hanging out of its person’s bright red backpack. The dog’s looking off-camera inquisitively.
September 27, 2025 at 5:39 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
thank you both for the superlative thread, also may i share my most prized fridge magnet here, okay good night
Close-up photo of a refrigerator magnet I’m holding in my left hand, which has a picture of Morrissey, former singer of The Smiths and human-shaped pile of dirty laundry. The bottom of the magnet reads, “SHUT UP, MORRISSEY”.
September 4, 2025 at 12:07 AM
ethanmarcotte.com
some folks are doing noisy work right outside the house; the hiding places have been found
A gray-and-white kitten named Olive is hiding behind a wooden box that’s underneath a nightstand. Her ears are just about the only thing visible from behind the box.
August 25, 2025 at 1:22 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
—wait no it might’ve actually been
Screenshot of the title screen for “Hunt the Wumpus,” a very old video game. A pixelated drawing of the wumpus, an orange two-legged monster with huge teeth, sits next to the text “The hunt is about to begin…”. The word “WUMPUS” is drawn in big blocky letters, with the “M” stylized to look like a bat. The copyright notice at the bottom reads “©1980 Texas Instruments”.
August 24, 2025 at 12:17 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
Screenshot of an old school video game with multiple panels. The main center panel shows the character’s view as they look down a long, dark hallway in a dungeon. The leftmost panel shows icons for the actions the player can take, like “speak”, “pick up”, “look”, and so on. The rightmost inventory panel shows a person framed by the objects they’re carrying. The bottom panel spans the width of the screen, and shows a log of what’s happened in the game.
August 24, 2025 at 11:16 AM
ethanmarcotte.com
(i added my two cents in february, after leaving a wonderful government team: ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/leavin...)
Screenshot of two paragraphs from my blog entry on leaving 18F. Excerpt reads: But what’s happening right now is not about “government efficiency,” nor is it about “cost-cutting.” I would gently urge you to look at the net worth of the people who are telling you otherwise. After all, there is no financial analysis; no review of possible downsides, no weighing of potential negative impacts. There is no discussion of what could happen if our math is wrong? Or even more importantly, no consideration of who might be harmed? Instead, as Anil Dash predicted, the billionaire’s so-called “efficiency” “department” is best understood as a sprawling form of procurement capture, in which a group of impossibly rich individuals are trampling over the regulations — and the federal workers — that stand between them and a deep, deep revenue stream: your tax dollars. And as they do, they’re making an explicitly fascist move to roll back rights for every marginalized community in the country — for anyone who doesn’t look like them, or who stands in their way.
August 21, 2025 at 12:53 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
An exasperated man stands in front of a wall covered with different logos, with a microphone held in front of his face. Caption reads, “If I speak Twitter will suspend me.”
August 6, 2025 at 5:17 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
nobody tell @eyemadequiet.bsky.social
A GitHub commit message from Ethan posted 7 minutes ago reads “drop them caps”.
July 25, 2025 at 7:32 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
looking over a fairly involved feature branch we’ve been working on for @unbreaking.org, and being presented with all these reminders that i’m a professional web designer
GitHub commit message that Ethan wrote three weeks ago: “okay nope don’t actually need any of this”
July 25, 2025 at 5:16 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
Just hit our fifth adoptiversary with Olive and Lily! how it started / how it’s going
Two little gray-and-white kittens named Olive and Lily rest on a sunny window sill, looking up toward the camera. Two tiny gray-and-white kittens named Olive and Lily rest sleepily next to each other on an orange fabric chair. Two slightly older gray-and-white kittens named Olive and Lily are resting together in a gray cat bed. Olive is on top of Lily and seems delighted by the situation; Lily looks less pleased.
July 25, 2025 at 3:49 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
TV title card for “The Voyage of the Mimi”.
July 11, 2025 at 11:28 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
okay look

1. desperation makes for a stinky perfume
2. also i GUARANTEE i can write brittle, unusable gibberish faster than your ozone-gobbling chatbot can
Screenshot of a little begoggled logo next to the phrase “Code 55% faster with GitHub Copilot”.
July 7, 2025 at 6:03 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
A biblically accurate angel, a being comprised of a dizzying panoply of eyes, says “Be not afraid.” A person smoking a cigarette in a black cap and hoodie looks unbothered, and says “OK.” The angel replies, “Really?” The person replies, “I got a lot going on man”.
July 3, 2025 at 4:18 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
threatening energy
Screenshot of a little begoggled logo next to the phrase “Your organization can pay for GitHub Copilot”.
June 26, 2025 at 1:54 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
i have disabled every possible “artificial intelligence” setting in my account

every team or org i work with has disabled every “artificial intelligence” setting in their accounts

and yet,
Screenshot of a “Development” menu from GitHub’s interface. The default menu option says “Code with Copilot Agent Mode”. Underneath the menu, some text reads “Create a branch for this issue or link to a pull request.”
June 23, 2025 at 7:05 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
Screenshot of a PlayStation achievement trophy for the game “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.” The trophy is titled “The Greatest Expedition in History,” and it was awarded for obtaining all other trophies in the game. It was unlocked on June 7 2025 at 9:01am. (Digitally altered meme.) Ben Wyatt, a disheveled-looking character from the show “Parks and Recreation,” says “Do you think a depressed person could make this?” as he holds out my screenshot of getting all the trophies in the video game “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.”
June 19, 2025 at 2:08 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
Screenshot of a newspaper headline reads, “Everyone ls Using A.I. for Everything. Is That Bad?” The article is estimated to take 9 minutes to read. Hayao Miyazaki leans back in a chair with his eyes closed, holding his glasses in one hand as he places both hands on top of his head. He has an unlit cigarette sticking out of his mouth. He looks incredibly tired.
June 16, 2025 at 1:35 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
Current status: bukk.it/theinternet....
Furiosa, a woman with close-shaved hair whose forehead is covered with black grease, glares out the driver’s-side window of the massive truck she’s driving through the desert. Caption reads, “[men yelling indistinctly]”.
June 6, 2025 at 3:11 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
The meme showing two different dogs: the dog on the left is covered with muscles and weirdly sculpted abs; the dog on the right is tiny and shrimpy. Strong dog is labeled “A SINGLE MANDY BROWN ESSAY”; shrimpy dog is labeled “literally everyone else’s blog”.
May 31, 2025 at 4:24 AM
ethanmarcotte.com
i don’t KNOW that this design’s riffing on an old civil rights pin, but i do know that i love the resonance shop.worxprinting.coop/products/wxs...
Photo of a gray t-shirt on a white background. In the middle of the t-shirt is a green ring encircling two differently-colored muppets’ arms, one orange and one blue, each clasping the other in solidarity. Text around the ring reads “SESAME WORKERS UNION, OPEIU Local 153.” Photo of a black-and-white enamel pin, with one white arm and one black arm grasping each other in solidarity. The pin reads “RIGHT ON TOGETHER,” with “PEACE” and “JUSTICE” inset underneath the clasped hands in smaller text.
May 16, 2025 at 2:27 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
A photograph of two students wearing matching school uniforms. One student is standing with their back to the wall while the second student covers the first student’s face with a tuba. The tuba is labeled with the text “capitalism did this”, the student holding the tuba is labeled “me”, and the student against the wall is labeled “everyone i have ever met”.
May 16, 2025 at 1:36 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
Hey! I’m participating in an online “coffee chat” tomorrow (13 May) at 9am PT / 12pm ET about my latest book, YOU DESERVE A TECH UNION. I’ll give a short talk about the book, and then we’ll open things up for questions. It’ll be fun!

RSVP here: www.qrca.org/events/Event...

Hope to see you there!
Five copies of Ethan Marcotte’s book “You Deserve a Tech Union” sit on a wooden surface, stacked in a slightly flared pile. The book has a bright red cover with white lettering, and a black illustrated rose is growing out of the “v” in “Deserve”.
May 12, 2025 at 3:34 PM