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I knew exactly how she felt

trishkhoo.com

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Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#31

Post by danso »

Had a hard time understanding the OP's point...but mostly because I don't understand what the event was about. Was it advertised explicitly as an IT/engineering event? I guess you could assume that from "Women in IT", but I think it's nice that such an event shows how information technology encompasses a lot of different fields. Even on "Hacker News", there are a good number of articles about marketing and law because geeks realize that being successful is not strictly based on coding skills.

As someone already pointed out, "IT" is a nebulous term. In my day, while at college, it was almost never used to refer to computer engineers, but was more intended for MIS majors, which was considered to be the "computer science of Excel". So it's kind of strange that the OP is calling for more elitism when the event used a term that's extremely vague and inclusive.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#32

Post by seivan »

memset wrote: post #25

I will offer an experience which is the inverse of this! I am a male software engineer who works in fashion (and before this I worked in wine.) I knew nothing about wine when I started, and my fashion sense is prototypically, well, male-software-centric. People in the wine industry are palpably aware that people view it as "hoity-toity". Professionals I've worked with are usually very gracious in explaining what it m…

The problem isn't PM's know jack about code. The problem is the set where a PM would even be required. That means there's a structural flaw in your process.

The idea of having a project manager is ridiculous. People _should_ manage themselves and take ownership of the project. Making the PM useless.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#33

Post by GigabyteCoin »

It's not just the stigma that IT isn't womanly, it's the idea that a young girl... already completely dejected by her peers, is forced to endure classes made up of 100% high school boys.

Unless the teacher is incredible defensive of the girl's position in the class, she will most likely drop it.

I am not surprised there are so few women in IT.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#34

Post by protomyth »

noonespecial wrote: post #2

I'm not sure the author quite understood the seeing Star Wars thing was a super low bar fitness test. Once long ago my new wife asked me why geeks always wear tshirts with obscure references that no one gets. I was slightly put out by the question until I figured it out. They're a uniform. It's how we id the friendlies on the battlefield.

> They're a uniform. It's how we id the friendlies on the battlefield

I'm not sure about that. I think people tend to wear things they feel good about. Sport jerseys, political shirts, or funny t-shirts just make us feel good. Some people feel better when were the in-crowd things, some are our for themselves.

// this is my favorite http://www.openbsd.org/tshirts.html#30 the 4.4 t-shirt

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#35

Post by Pxtl »

jerrya wrote: post #9

I said that’s what happens when we hold events for women in IT when there aren’t that many women in this industry – we tend to broaden the definition of women in IT. I can't really speak to this point, but I am curious, when did computer science and software engineering get rolled into IT? 15 years ago, I would not have said software developers, software engineers, or test engineers were part of IT. IT was that depar…

IT is the industry. Software companies are in the IT industry. However, the actual "IT Guy" sysadmin/tech-support job is a role within the IT industry. I work in IT, but IT is not my role personally, I'm a developer.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#36

Post by apalmer »

jerrya wrote: post #9

I said that’s what happens when we hold events for women in IT when there aren’t that many women in this industry – we tend to broaden the definition of women in IT. I can't really speak to this point, but I am curious, when did computer science and software engineering get rolled into IT? 15 years ago, I would not have said software developers, software engineers, or test engineers were part of IT. IT was that depar…

Outside of Companies who's core competency is related to technology 'IT' means everything that is computer related. Actually its even further, I cant 100% pin it down, but the feeling is its like, if you dont have a CTO or Chief Science Officer or something of that ilk, everyone who reports up to your CIO is considered IT. Try that on, its the closest to what I have seen in my career.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#37

Post by Osmium »

memset wrote: post #25

I will offer an experience which is the inverse of this! I am a male software engineer who works in fashion (and before this I worked in wine.) I knew nothing about wine when I started, and my fashion sense is prototypically, well, male-software-centric. People in the wine industry are palpably aware that people view it as "hoity-toity". Professionals I've worked with are usually very gracious in explaining what it m…

> I occasionally meet people who get this - you know your domain and I know mine, and we can still talk to each other without othering.

This is so true. Many people are all too quick to show off their knowledge at someone else's expense, when instead it could be so much more: an opportunity to share something that will be completely new to that person; to share a passion and give someone a new perspective or idea or experience or whatever and give that person an insight into your domain. That's a wonderful thing and a privilege, and to waste it by instead using the opportunity to "one-up" someone else ("you've never heard of x?! [how stupid can you be?!]") is such a shame.

Relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1053/

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#38

Post by noamsml »

I fundamentally disagree with the idea that consuming cultural artifacts that happen to correlate with liking engineering has anything to do with liking engineering. If you think liking Star Wars is necessary for being an engineer, you're probably missing some pretty good people who just aren't that into Star Wars.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#40

Post by mwfunk »

Lifelong geek here, and I can totally understand the appeal of this story. Reading some of the comments is kinda depressing though. There's no "us" and there's no "them". There are groups of people in the world with similar clusters of interests, and I guess that one of those clusters corresponds to traditionally geeky interests. But sometimes it seems like people internalize the whole us and them thing way too much. I guess it makes social navigation easier but it gets in the way of really understanding people (and yourself) if taken too far.
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