Ethan Marcotte
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ethanmarcotte.com
Ethan Marcotte
@ethanmarcotte.com
10K followers 390 following 2.1K posts
designer, writer, roommate to two kittens. here’s my website: https://ethanmarcotte.com/

I think you deserve a union, and I wrote a book about that: https://youdeserveatechunion.com/

hi friend
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ethanmarcotte.com
also: look at these happy snoozing ducks just hanging out on the edge of the ice! good job, ducks
Dozens of ducks hunkered down on the edge of a massive sheet of ice that’s floating in the Charles River. The Boston skyline is just visible in the distance.
January 3, 2026 at 4:20 AM
ethanmarcotte.com
said hi to a river for the first time this year 💜
The sun hangs in a cloud-flecked blue sky above the Charles River, which is partially covered with thin, snowy ice. A dock covered with rows of overturned boats floats in the Charles River. The sun blazes in the sky above, partially eclipsed by a big white smear of a cloud.
January 3, 2026 at 4:19 AM
ethanmarcotte.com
happy new year, pals. let’s all try 💕🎉
Black-and-white selfie. I’m wearing a dark suit and gray tie, and holding my phone in front of my face as I aim it at a bathroom mirror. I’m standing in front of a tiled bathroom wall, with a closed shower curtain with a massive floral print. Two gray-and-white kittens named Olive and Lily curled up together on a gray cat bed. Photo of Boston’s skyline, taken from the Cambridge side of the Charles River. The sky is clear blue and sunny, with one long streak of a cloud visible in the bottom right corner.
January 1, 2026 at 4:10 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
everything about their latest single-page website is a mess, but also

c’mon, man

did your chatbot only have JPGs available that day
Screenshot of a website showing a badly artifacted image set against an orange background. The orange in the image doesn’t match the orange background it rests against. These people want you to think they’re professionals.
December 15, 2025 at 9:47 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
my “not involved or affiliated with DOGE in any way” t-shirt is generating a lot of questions already answered by my t-shirt
Screenshot of an excerpt from techforce.gov reads: “How is Tech Force related to other government technology programs, including ones at GSA or the United States DOGE Service?”
December 15, 2025 at 2:33 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
bukk.it/unseen.jpg
Photograph of two people wearing black, futuristic-looking clothing are leaning back against some boards held up by people wearing entirely green head-to-toe material. The room is entirely green as well, presumably because this shot will be replaced with visual effects for a movie. The two futuristic-looking people are labeled “Cool Tech Companies”; the people in green holding up the boards are labeled “An underseen army of underpaid global workers”.
December 8, 2025 at 3:31 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
I redesigned the book this year, and I’m so happy with the new look. (As are my cats, apparently.)

If you happen to read it, I hope it’s useful to you ❤️📕
Five bright red copies of “You Deserve a Tech Union” are stacked on a gray wooden surface. The stack is flared slightly, so that the corners of the lower books are peeking out from below. A gray-and-white cat named Lily is rubbing her head against the books while I’m trying to photograph them, which is incredibly helpful. A copy of “You Deserve a Tech Union” is spread open on a gray wooden surface, showing a page with a photograph of two cats being digitally tagged as ‘cat’. Olive, one of the cats from the photograph, is sniffing the book while I’m attempting to photograph.
December 5, 2025 at 7:50 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
It is that time of year, so I thought I’d mention that my book YOU DESERVE A TECH UNION is very much a thing you can buy for any tech workers in your life. Or yourself!

You can buy it just about anywhere books are sold—or hey, ask your library to grab a copy! ethanmarcotte.com/books/you-de...
Three bright red copies of the book “You Deserve a Tech Union” are stacked on a gray wooden surface. The stack is flared slightly, so that the corners of the lower books are peeking out from below. A screenshot of two pages from the digital version of “You Deserve a Tech Union”, showing the beginning of Chapter 3, titled “What is a Union? Screenshot of three testimonials, titled “Praise for You Deserve a Tech Union”. Peter Olney, retired organizing director of the ILWU and the co-editor of Labor Power and Strategy, described the book as, “A wonderful back-pocket book, perfect for any tech worker interested in powering up and getting a union.” The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee described the book as “A compelling and galvanizing read — not just for tech workers, but for anyone who is union-curious. ” Nozlee Samadzadeh, a member of the New York Times Tech Guild, said, “You Deserve a Tech Union is a how-to guide, a history lesson, and a manifesto all in one. Ethan Marcotte starts by laying out the case for unionization in tech, and ends with a rallying cry for using our power as workers. I wish we’d had this book as we organized the New York Times Tech Guild.”
December 5, 2025 at 7:48 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
realizing i just did the css version of
Screenshot of a Tumblr post and three comments. The post has a screenshot of a math question that says, “An orchestra of 120 players takes 40 minutes to play Beethoven's 9th Symphony. How long would it take for 60 players to play the symphony? Let P be number of players and T the time playing.” The person who posted the image says, “That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.” The first commenter says, “4800 players, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony Speedrun”. The second commenter says, “its not even music anymore it's just a shockwave that kills you instantly”. The third commenter says, “reblog this to beethoven blast your enemies”.
December 4, 2025 at 5:13 PM
ethanmarcotte.com
hup hyup
Diagram of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, except it’s been retitled “Link’s hierarchy of needs”. The bottom four layers of the pyramid have been colored over with a region labeled “wearing a slutty little outfit”. The topmost level is now labeled “hup hyup”.
November 17, 2025 at 3:18 PM
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