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

[skamille.livejournal.com]

I don't have the energy for a long response, but my feelings can be summed up as thus: misogyny is everywhere in American culture, in every profession. Is it worse for women in IT? I would say that it has barely affected me at all, but I have spent my career at very large companies with serious commitments to diversity and decent HR departments.

The place where I feel it most is in the comments on tech-focused blogs and bulletin boards when topics related to women come up. Slashdot is so bad I had to quit the site. HN is pretty much only ok because the topic rarely comes up, but even pg has expressed the kind of juvenile "yuk yuk I prefer when entrepreneurs aren't 'PC'" sentiment that serves to encourage bad behavior and silence criticism of it. He has lost a significant amount of respect in my eyes, and left me very wary of the startup scene in general.

But in the end, It will never get better if women avoid the profession. I would like to believe that most of the men in the field actually do respect women even though, when presented with a totally male frat house working environment, one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. But tech is in my mind one of the areas women need to embrace if we really want to achieve economic equality. It is not a glamorous profession most of the time, it is hard, but it is a profession that you can raise a family on. I would absolutely encourage any young woman I knew to go into tech, although I think the "sys admin" job is a poor choice because that is a dying breed.

[spaghettisquash.livejournal.com]

I recently stopped working at a very large company with PR that suggests they care about diversity in the workplace. I was at "one sexual harassment incident per month" (not all of which I bothered reporting) for most of the 3 years I was there. People in other groups remarked that my experiences were extremely atypical. (I have had only mild sexual harassment at other employers - I think it was more that my colleagues were older and had families.)

I do not actually believe "it is stressful when I need to wonder if my salary adjustment will be affected by [false] rumors of my sexual exploits with management in my group" counts as respect. Slashdot reads like the colleagues I had at that group.

It is hurtful to suggest that someone should enter a toxic relationship. I would not suggest that person should enter a toxic work relationship any more than a toxic romantic relationship.

[skamille.livejournal.com]

So your bad experiences mean that my good experiences are not real, or worth consideration?

[rightkindofme.livejournal.com]

As the mama of the kid being questioned for, I feel your experiences are worth considering. Between Noah's knowledge of the people speaking and what I am getting from what people write and my own personal knowledge I am seeing some interesting patterns in who has the worst experiences. I'm seeing strong indicators of how I should encourage my daughter to grow so she can avoid some problems. This is a big deal to me. :)

[skamille.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to hear it. I wish I knew what if anything beyond random luck caused good outcomes for women in IT, but I do know that no matter what having parents that support you and give you confidence in yourself is a blessing.