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

Still worth it, but "people skill" development is important

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

Hi. (Here through Vito, like several others). Female and I've worked in various kinds of tech for 18 years. In college I was a computer user consultant and started to do web design, studied physics, comp sci, history and tech theater, did summerstock theater as a tech, had an internship in QA for biomedical development & engineering. Post my BA I worked as a web designer, then went back to school and got a Master's in Systems Design Engineering focused on human-machine systems interface design and cognitive ergonomics, and eventually worked for the last 5 years as a human factors engineer, working with programmers, cognitive psychologists and visual designers, and more recently with engineers who make electromechanical systems. So a lot of different kinds of tech.

I have definitely dealt with sexism - most blatantly in tech theater, but blatant sexism is in some ways easier to deal with. If the question is whether or not you're strong enough to help load and unload a truck, you can prove yourself. Much more difficult to deal with is the more subtle situation of having a manager or supervisor who is male and is uncomfortable with women, especially if they are essentially unaware of their own attitudes and issues. Talking with the women around me, I've discovered things like profs who didn't know how to answer questions posed as being about our own understanding, the way women tended to ask them, but could help us if we focused on questions like what is the next step in doing a problem. I've had managers who assumed that women seeking mentorship in the workplace should logically get it from other women (even though women higher than us in the organization were few), and I've faced more than one case where assumptions about what I had and had not been trained in caused programmers or other technicians to bridle when I've made suggestions. One manager (who was eventually fired) only worsened a situation like that when he shared a complaint I'd made to him with "the guys" without telling me.

That wouldn't prevent me from encouraging women to enter the field. In point of fact, I think we fail to teach all of our children how to deal with being mismanaged and how to establish our place in a complex team; in general our educational system does not prepare people for how to operate within a business environment. We teach that the path to promotion is good performance when often it requires recognizing and negotiating your way out of a situation in which the person evaluating or guiding your performance shouldn't be in charge of you at all.

Above all, I recommend any woman pursuing education in a technical field seek out mentors and professors who excel, and who are rewarding to work with. There are many of them in technical fields.

My experience, btw, is that electromechanical engineers age 30-50 are *less* likely to react to me in a sexist way than computer programmers. The culture is different. Also of note is that I've been working as a military subcontractor for five years, often interviewing soldiers and diplomats to gather systems requirements. Though a couple of times my managers expressed concern about how well I'd be accepted as a woman in that context, I never had any problems from military personnel. Of course, I studied hard on terminology and documentation and can "talk the talk", which no doubt helps, but the service men and women I've interacted with have always been respectful and forthcoming regardless of my gender.

Re: Still worth it, but "people skill" development is important

[rightkindofme.livejournal.com]

I've actually heard from other people that the older engineers, as you say 30-50, are tremendously better as well. It seems that most of the complaints center around younger guys in 'softer' professions and that is interesting to me. I kind of wonder how the intersection of current feminism is hitting younger guys. I am not by any means excusing the behavior, but I wonder why it is getting worse instead of better. I'm really interested in developmental psychology so it's quite a pattern to note. :)