Women are bailing out of IT
womensenews.org
Women are bailing out of IT
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Re: Women are bailing out of IT
#2IME, the presence of women has mostly been a signal that the workplace is healthy. For the most part, women won't put up with the same shit men will to get ahead.
Whenever someone says "women are bailing," I read "working conditions are poor."
Re: Women are bailing out of IT
#3I'd say less than 1% of all programmers I've met/seen have been female. About 50% of the project managers I've known have been female. In about 90%+ of the cases where I've been in a meeting at work with programmers and a project manager, IF there were only 1 female in the room she was the project manager, not a programmer. So, extrapolating... assuming enough other males have experienced approximately the same thing in life, that could account for why they tend to expect any unknown new female they encounter in that situation to be, well, not a programmer, and very probably a manager or project assistant of some kind.
That said, yes, obviously there are female programmers, and yes it sucks if a man assumes a woman can't program solely because of a gender. But from my reading of the OA, I don't think that the particular female programmer in question was necessarily having that particular experience. Instead, she may have just been on the wrong side of statistics. Some of those men may literally have never encountered a female programmer before, period. So for them, it would be like, oh say, walking into a Great Clips to have your hair cut, and you sit down at the hair cutting chair and suddenly a man comes up and starts cutting hair. It would be shocking for me if that happened, at least initially, because based on my own experience 100% of hair cutters at the Great Clips franchise are women, no exceptions so far. But it wouldn't mean that I was discriminating against him, or oppressing or persecuting him in anyway.
Summary: She may have just found herself on the wrong side of statistics. Part of life, move on.
(note: Great Clips is a chain of hair cutting salons in the USA midwest)
Re: Women are bailing out of IT
#4This is a subject that I care about, as my wife is also a software developer and has felt out-of-place in a male-dominated field.
Two things struck me about the linked article.
1: It sounds like her Midwestern co-workers were just assholes, seriously. Having asshole co-workers is a problem for men and women alike. One key distinction is that men don't immediately relate abusive bevahior to gender. I am sure it often really is gender hostility, but sometimes the guy is just a jerk.
Basically: Dear women (and men) in IT. There are jerks out there and there always will be. Sometimes the only option is to get a new job. Sad, but true.
2: I find the idea of a "glass cliff" (i.e. an impossible project set up to make someone fail) really fascinating. It's a form of harassment I've never heard of before. Anyone have stories?
Re: Women are bailing out of IT
#5The report is apparently not online, though you can give them your email address here: http://www.ncwit.org/resources.thefacts.html
[Edit: actually it is, just click "no thanks"]
There's another article here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/06/ncwit-report-...
"The NCWIT report contends that 56% of women in technology companies leave their organizations at the mid-level point (10-20 years) in their careers, a costly loss of talent."
Maybe this is just Silicon Valley bias, but I have to wonder about who stays with the same organization for 10-20 years! I would expect most people to have worked at two or three companies by then. I wonder whether they addressed that?
Re: Women are bailing out of IT
#6I'd say less than 1% of all programmers I've met/seen have been female. About 50% of the project managers I've known have been female. In about 90%+ of the cases where I've been in a meeting at work with programmers and a project manager, IF there were only 1 female in the room she was the project manager, not a programmer. So, extrapolating... assuming enough other males have experienced approximately the same thing…
The article also mentioned her manager suggesting that she play up her feminine side and not let the men think she was smarter than them. That's not being on the wrong side of statistics, that's being on the wrong side of a sexist asshole.
Re: Women are bailing out of IT
#7I'd say less than 1% of all programmers I've met/seen have been female. About 50% of the project managers I've known have been female. In about 90%+ of the cases where I've been in a meeting at work with programmers and a project manager, IF there were only 1 female in the room she was the project manager, not a programmer. So, extrapolating... assuming enough other males have experienced approximately the same thing…
The article also mentioned her manager suggesting that she play up her feminine side and not let the men think she was smarter than them. That's not being on the wrong side of statistics, that's being on the wrong side of a sexist asshole.
Good point. But I'd say maybe. Not necessarily. Maybe he thought he was being helpful or practical. None of us was there so context and nuance are lost. Many programmers/engineers/geeks, especially when younger, tend to be defensive about being Smart (tm). For some, it's part of their personal sense of virility as a man. That may be what the manager was thinking about when he said that.
But agreed, sexism is bad.
Re: Women are bailing out of IT
#8The report is apparently not online, though you can give them your email address here: http://www.ncwit.org/resources.thefacts.html [Edit: actually it is, just click "no thanks"] There's another article here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/06/ncwit-report-... "The NCWIT report contends that 56% of women in technology companies leave their organizations at the mid-level point (10-20 years) in their career…
I read that as 10-20 years since the beginning of their career (i.e., age 30-40 if it's their first career). Makes me wonder whether women are more likely to switch careers (though they say men trend to less risk-aversion), or more likely to take parental leave and not return. I agree that many years at a single tech company would be very surprising, even outside the valley.
Re: Women are bailing out of IT
#9I'd say less than 1% of all programmers I've met/seen have been female. About 50% of the project managers I've known have been female. In about 90%+ of the cases where I've been in a meeting at work with programmers and a project manager, IF there were only 1 female in the room she was the project manager, not a programmer. So, extrapolating... assuming enough other males have experienced approximately the same thing…
Since we weren't there and don't know the person, all sorts of interpretations are plausible, including that the person telling the story got it right. Why do you choose to assume they got it wrong? Sounds like the just-world fallacy to me: http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/07/the-just-world-fallac...
Re: Women are bailing out of IT
#10I'd say less than 1% of all programmers I've met/seen have been female. About 50% of the project managers I've known have been female. In about 90%+ of the cases where I've been in a meeting at work with programmers and a project manager, IF there were only 1 female in the room she was the project manager, not a programmer. So, extrapolating... assuming enough other males have experienced approximately the same thing…
Since we weren't there and don't know the person, all sorts of interpretations are plausible, including that the person telling the story got it right. Why do you choose to assume they got it wrong? Sounds like the just-world fallacy to me: http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/07/the-just-world-fallac...
Neither of us knows exactly what happened, that's true. My comments are based on direct experiences I've had in life, personally, over a large number of years, and from that I'm guessing as to what kinds of factors might be at play here, since we all live in approximately the same world.
I also often put a higher trust level in the findings from my own direct experience, than in what I read in an article on the web somewhere, where it's second-hand and possibly hearsay and probably had a lot of data and nuance filtered out or distorted along the path to being written up. I don't even know if the main woman talked about is even a real person, for example (probably, but who knows) whereas I know I'm real and not bullshitting, so...
Thanks for the link on Just World Fallacy! Yep, heard of that.