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

[vespid-interest.livejournal.com]

[Here via Vito]

My sister and I both work as programmers in a "Casual Game" company. I asked her this question and she says she *would* encourage women to get into tech fields, with full knowledge that they'll be a minority and some things may be harder. But she says it is worth it.
She says the key is to interview the company as much as they interview you. Look at the other women working there to gauge the environment. A single jerk in a position of power can make the place unbearable, but if that isn't the case then things will be fine.

A story I did not know: our floor has the tech people and the floor above us has finance/HR/customer-support/etc. people on it, and she can tell the difference by the hallways just inside the bathrooms. Our floor looks normal but the other floor has pock-marks all over it from women's high-heeled shoes. So in some ways she has more freedom as a woman programmer than if she was in a more traditional "woman's job."

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Our floor looks normal but the other floor has pock-marks all over it from women's high-heeled shoes.

There's nothing not "normal" about women wearing high heels if that's what they choose and enjoy.

[vespid-interest.livejournal.com]

Absolutely! I'm not saying it is abnormal for women to wear high-heels.
I used "floor" two different ways without realizing it. I mean to say that the surface of the bathroom floor on level 1 is evenly flat and unmarked, which I'm calling normal for tiled flooring. But the norms for dressing on the second story are different enough from the first story that the surface of their bathroom floor bears different marks.

I talked to my sister more about this and she doesn't think she is freer in a tech job than an administrative one because she is a woman, but rather because the job itself is less structured. I think a lot of tech jobs are like that though: not customer-facing, and not even really management-facing.