A Request to Women Working in Tech

[noahgibbs]

A friend recently said something about which, as Shanna's father, I feel conflicted.

She said that as a woman working in technology, she wouldn't recommend that other women enter the field. She's a system administrator. So, while she's not a computer programmer like myself, she's in a very similar field with mostly similar interpersonal dynamics. That is to say, what she says almost certainly applies to my field if it applies to hers. And as an actual woman working in technology, her experience is going to be significantly more accurate than my from-the-outside impressions.

I'm not going to repeat her reasons here. Rather, I'd be very curious whether other women working in technical fields, especially system administration and/or programming, felt the same way. Anybody care to comment? When you comment, please let me know what you do/did in technology. For some of you, I'll know offhand. For many of you, I'll have forgotten. For anybody who comments, there may be other readers who don't know/remember.

Anonymous comments are turned on here. Technically I *do* log IPs and I don't see a quick way to turn it off just for this post, but you have my word that I won't attempt to match up anybody anonymous here with any specific person. If you're really worried for some reason, there are many fine technical measures to make that tracking ineffective at finding you.

Comments

Oh for crying out loud ...

[(Anonymous)]

I've worked in IT for 25 years; I've been a sysadmin and all other sorts of things during that time (I now run security for a company). I've worked in some really conservative places, and I've seen sexism in action but never let it affect my choice of work. I would absolutely encourage women to enter the field. If you ignore any sign of sexism and bulldoze your way through it, it tends to go away (or the sexists nurse their quiet grudges, which is just fine with me). Don't go looking for it, though, and don't spend every day thinking "OMG, I'm a GIRL!!" Just do your job as best you can and leave your gender at home.

Re: Oh for crying out loud ...

[(Anonymous)]

Personally I didn't find ignoring sexism to EVER bring my salary up to meet that of my less qualified co-workers. At one job where I was a senior sysadmin I made about $30,000 less than a co-worker with no skills and one year of experience.

And bulldozing got tiring. After 10 years of being a female sysadmin, I switched to a pink collar profession where I do the same work for half the money, and I don't need to bulldoze through anything. And I'm not tired of pretending the problem's not there all the time.