[j_san]

I don't think that far-left was primarily only written because of the tax returns. I followed some links in the article and came to this twitter thread which might explain where that notion comes from: https://x.com/lukerosiak/status/1885523747425399247

(Disclaimer: I don't live in the US and don't want to take any political stance with this)

[janeerie]

This is exactly right. Direct File got thrown into the discussion, but it was not the reason that 18F was getting labelled as far-left.

[djur]

I don't see any evidence that 18F was any more "far-left" than tech workers on average.

[skissane]

The tweet the GP linked – https://x.com/lukerosiak/status/1885523747425399247 – mentioned they wrote a Slack bot to lecture people about using inclusive language.

I don't think that is average for US tech workers. I don't believe the vast majority of US tech firms have such a thing.

I wouldn't call that "far left" myself – although "far left" as used by American conservatives is a pejorative colloquialism whose meaning has shifted from its traditional definition (Trotskyists, Stalinists, Maoists, etc). Not slang I'd use myself but I can understand it.

P.S. If you don't trust a tweet from a right-leaning journalist, here's a page from their own GitHub repo about their bot: https://github.com/18F/charlie/blob/main/InclusionBot.md

[djur]

I have worked at a place with a bot like that. It's one of over a dozen bots in that repository and seems to have been created and maintained by 3 people over the years. I believe 18F peaked at 250 employees.

Some of the terms are genuinely offensive or unprofessional. I'm not sure about some of them, but I'd expect a government agency to show a higher level of sensitivity and professionalism about their language than a private start-up.

I also note that the bot "lectures" people as a private message.

[arp242]

This is like tiny stuff. What fundamentally matters is the main projects they're working on and if they're doing a good job with that or not.

Maybe a new administration want to to change the culture at GSA/18F. Fine, they can do that.

Nuking an entire department and chucking out a significant chunk of work they've done because of a Slack chatbot and a few minor documents/policies is just mental. It's vindictive score-setting and an ideological purge.

[skissane]

> and chucking out a significant chunk of work they've done

It is unclear how much of the actual work they've done is being "chucked out".

18F did work for various federal agencies, and whatever code 18F wrote for its client agencies would still be in possession of those agencies.

What happens to that code going forward – whether it continues to be maintained by other resources, or whether it just gets archived – is going to be an agency-level decision. Probably some will be kept, others will be thrown out – keeping or abolishing 18F is a separate decision from keeping or abolishing the agency-level projects/initiatives 18F was working on. (And even if 18F had survived, probably some of that code would eventually have been thrown out anyway, since government IT projects frequently end up failing and being cancelled, and 18F involvement is no guarantee against that outcome.)

Obviously, if those projects are going to be kept, removing 18F resources is going to cause a delay to the project – but maybe other resources will be found. It also depends on what percentage of the project resources were from 18F. If a project was 18F-heavy, it may take a big hit, if 18F's contribution was smaller, the negative impact might be smaller.

18F was funded out of the Acquisition Services Fund (ASF), managed by the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) within GSA. FAS is legally obligated to spend ASF funds on federal technology modernization projects. Without 18F, FAS will have to find some other mechanism to spend those ASF funds on technology modernization. So, while of course there will be a delay, agencies which were relying on 18F may still end up getting help from GSA TTS for their modernization projects. I wouldn't be surprised if ASF funds were redirected towards DOGE, and DOGE was then tasked with working on those projects.

[thuridas]

So now trying to avoid offensive language in the government is the reason to fire a whole department?

What is going to happen in four years? Is every administration forms to fire each others federal workers?

[remarkEon]

>So now trying to avoid offensive language

Building a bot to harangue people about pronoun usage seems like a giant waste of time and resources to me. Those sorts of cultural preferences are a feature of only a very very small portion of the US political culture. Maybe nuking the whole department was a bit strong, I don't know, but if I worked at a place that had tools like that I'd quit, and I think a lot of other people would too. Which suggests that the overall culture of 18F was far from the mainstream of America. It should reflect the middle, no?

[skissane]

If a government agency has a culture which appears to lean strongly in one political direction, it is unsurprising that when the opposite political persuasion gets into power, the agency becomes a target.

Traditionally how civil servants handle this, is to be aware of the political sensitivities of both sides, and try to avoid language which overly triggers either. But people seem to be forgetting that tradition, or even intentionally discarding it

[djur]

Which government agencies have been targeted by Democrats for being too conservative?

[dashundchen]

Far-left is having some affinity groups at work, hiring people who happen to be queer, and being inclusive to people with disabilities?

The right is deranged with intolerance. All the talk about "free speech" and they can't stand that someone might not think or act like them.

The "anti-woke" crusaders are honestly more unbearable than any social justice warrior type I've met because they will not shut up about it and it colors their whole life.

It's just another flavor of identity politics with in and out groups.

[GenerWork]

>The "anti-woke" crusaders are honestly more unbearable than any social justice warrior type I've met because they will not shut up about it and it colors their whole life.

I'm the complete opposite. Swap "anti-woke" with "social justice warrior" and you have my experience across multiple years, both inside and outside of companies.

[YZF]

As far as I can tell all these groups never shut up and it colors their entire life. Far left and far right is just a circle, the join at the same extreme.

What we need is a center. Just stuff that makes sense. The problem is our "sense" has been under attack we've basically collectively lost it.