Not Enough Women In Computing, Or Too Many Men? 686
itwbennett writes "Do geeks really 'drive girls out of computer science,' as the headline of a LiveScience article contends? Blogger Cameron Laird doesn't think so. In fact, 'I don't think "gender issues in computing" is important enough to merit the attention it gets,' says Laird in a recent post. And maybe the problem isn't that there are too few women in computing, but that there are too many men. 'I'm waiting to read the headline: "Women too smart for careers with computers,"' says Laird, 'where another researcher concludes that only "boys" are stupid enough to go into a field that's globally-fungible, where entry-level salaries are declining, and it's common to think that staying up all night for a company-paid pizza is a good deal.'"
too many everyone (Score:4, Insightful)
I need a job.
My say on this (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's a racist comment.
Re:My say on this (Score:5, Funny)
by Feminist-Mom (816033) Alter Relationship on Thursday December 17, @04:14PM (#30479212)
As a 49 yo grandmother, feminist, and C programmer for 20+ years I feel highly qualified to comment on this. The answer is that in my experience merit alone has been the only factor.
Stop Plagerising poor anon-cowards.
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1482242&cid=30476526 [slashdot.org]
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17, @01:34PM (#30476526)
As a 49 yo grandmother, a feminist, and having had a long career as a C programmer, I find that offensive. Would they have said his father couldn't see it? This is just another racist characterization of women being incompetent with technology.
Re:My say on this (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe she forgot to log in for that comment. Typical blond mistake, if you ask me...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Coming Right Up (Score:5, Funny)
Yep, this one sounds like it might be even as tame as your average climategate discussion.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If there's one thing geeks are good at, it's picking a postition and sticking to it no matter what. No matter what side is taken, the geek can provide solid -- or at least superficially solid -- evidence to support his take and can continue to argue it, indefinitely if so required, regardless of the course of the argument.
When it comes to topics with any level of subjectivity or doubt, geek arguments become farcical. W
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
To return to the topic, my own personal opinion is that the amount of women in computer science has more to do with cultural reasons than biological ones. My undergraduate mathematics course has a gender ratio of about 50/50, and indeed has for several years. Given that computer science is mathematics, I'm then inclined to believe that there are others factors than biology at play.
I think there are two separate and very distinct questions here:
1. Are women avoiding CS solely (or primarily) for cultural reasons ("conditioning")?
2. Is it something that actually needs fixing?
My answer to #1 would be "yes". My answer to #2 is "not by itself". To expand, any discrimination on any factor in learning and employment should definitely be rooted out, and discriminating on gender is no exception. But voluntary choice (even under "conditioning" by the culture we're all raised in) should be respe
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Aha! My tilde cleverly negated your whoosh.
Yeah right (Score:3, Insightful)
It's still a great field with good salary, sane work hours and prospects for advancements. It's just not as compelling as during dot com boom. Women should stop making excuses and go into any good field they like.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Are there really? I don't know of many well-paying tech jobs with "sane work hours", at least the way most fields define the term (40-hour weeks, only weekend/overtime work when there's emergencies, and emergencies don't happen every month).
I have worked on that basis all my working life. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with people in IT is that they don't know how to say NO.
I do know how, and that has ensured a long career while having a fulfilling life outside work.
I dunno about "IT" (Score:3, Informative)
But I write software, and I stay employed all the time, despite my unwillingness to work over 40 hours per week, and despite my insistence on a healthy six figure salary. I have done this for 16 years.
Re:Yeah right (Score:4, Insightful)
More like people should stop trying to make the whole world average. If a particular field has more men in it, who cares?
This just in, there are more female babysitters than males. Oh no, we have a babysitter gender gap!
Why does everything on the planet have to be "fair" in a way that's really not fair at all because it's actually just a contrived view of how "things should be" in some fantasy? And a better question, when are going to stand up to such nonsense and reject the whole premise that the world should be a statistical average reflecting a cross-section of all society?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone knows that a male babysitter would have raped the kids, the family dog and a few inanimate objects before you even got out of your driveway. It should be criminal to even suggest using a male babysitter! </sarcasm>
Re:Yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. You want to look at the last place institutional discrimination is tolerated by society, go ask a man in a 'working with young children' profession.
Re:Yeah right (Score:5, Interesting)
People really need to read up on sexual abuse, (and other forms of child abuse) because it really is a serious problem. But unfounded paranoia about men is not the solution to the problem. If you are are curious about what can be done to prevent abuse, the BSA has some good guidelines (http://olc.scouting.org/info/ypt.html). The only thing I have a problem with is their instructions to contact responsible individuals at the BSA before contacting child protective services. That is obviously intended primarily to maintain a clean image for the BSA, and it's disgraceful that they've suggested/recommended it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are also more women in HR, Payroll and Marketing. These are female dominated areas of business. There's a 50/50 split (roughly) in accounting and similar.
I don't know why people have this unrealistic view of equality meaning "everybody is equally distributed amongst everything", whether it's wealth, skill, or employment.
It's completely unrealistic and when they attempt to achieve these goals through policies (communism, no child left behind, equal opportunity laws, respectively), they fail dismally.
Do
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Your whole approach is typical and exactly why the whole issue is dismissed. As soon as someone says "well hey maybe life isn't fair" you attack the messenger instead of explaining why it should be fair.
I grew up on welfare to a single mom (once a programmer!) and fully "benefited" from being dirt poor in the Appalachians. I have no degree because at 18 I was already raising a kid of my own and simply couldn't. I got into the industry by starting at the bottom, ISP tech support, in 95. 15 years later and th
Re:Blah, blah , blah. (Score:5, Insightful)
And as a woman in a computer discipline, I can say:
1) There can be some vicious treatment sometimes, but it's not terribly often. Most of it is a immature junior-high remark, or getting excluded from a group. I have yet to encounter anything physically threatening, though (unlike my last job, which wasn't computing related). I can tell there are some people who don't know how to react to my presence, or get embarrassed if they technically slip on a PC issue. If the intent is well-meant, or if they're generally polite, I don't take offence.
2) It's up to me to deal with it. In general, acting like a professional, keeping your cool, and politely letting people know where your boundaries are goes a long way. Picking your fights helps too - don't get uppity at the smallest thing - everyone, male or female, has pinches at their workplace. Nasty stuff like a company that hires you to do tech work and instead makes you their coffee bitch gets an immediate vote of new job hunting and my feet out the door ASAP. Actually, something like that happened to a coworker, and it was a big factor to me leaving... I'm not about to argue with several members of an old boys' club. What's the point, for any of us, if I stay there?
The summary basically is: crap happens, deal with it. Get a backbone, treat yourself with self-worth, quit acting like a victim, and you won't be as one.
(My favorite incident was a guy who told me I shouldn't go back to school because it would be difficult, and I was approaching 30, so I had better have children while I can because all women want children when they're around 30, and I'll regret it if I don't. This coming from a fat, balding, divorced, childless middle-aged guy. This could have "scarred me for life", but instead I decide to spend time with people other than him. Problem solved. n.b. - Taking a MCSE & CCNA college program starting in January. I guess I had better drop out now, because of some nasty things four people have said to me in the last few years.)
Re:Yeah right (Score:4, Insightful)
And that's exactly it. Women dont WANT to go into the field, because they dont generally LIKE it.
It's the feminists who are making excuses. On the other hand, I think the majority of women, dont give a damn there are less women "in computing".
and those who do, get a job in the field. Simple, but "un-politically correct".
Oh, the horror.
"Must.. deploy... PC.. mind-reajustment.. field..."
Yes, there are some trashy insensitive guys in CS. but there are in EVERY OTHER field too!
So just get over the fact that there are more guys in computing than women. and go complain about something else. Like how maybe elementary school education is dominated by women.
yes, the pay is poor. But if anyone thinks making the pay equal to the average CS job, would magically even out the numbers.. they're nuts.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I hate to say it, but if the number of women who show interest in and pursue these fields in high school and college is any indication, then bolthole is correct.
There will forever be a disparity in the number of men vs the number of women in this field if there is such a small number of women who show interest in getting into it.
There is nothing stopping a woman from entering college in the CompSci and related fields, yet the disparity is quite large. Thus, if 95 of every hundred college grads is male,
Re:Yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the feminists who are making excuses
I'm not sure I agree with your whole post, but I have to give you props for this quote here. I'm a women in computer engineering and honestly, the place I feel the most uncomfortable is around so-called feminists. In university I avoided the women's center like the plague because every time I went in there with my eng books or wearing an engineering sweater or anything I always got the LOOK and a lecture about how I was just as bad as all the rest of those engineers and why are our songs so disgusting and blah blah blah.
There's sort of a delicious irony about someone claiming they are this huge feminist and then going into women's studies, the MOST un-evenly gender balanced and stereotypically female subject available and then having the gall to give me shit for singing stupid songs and drinking too much beer. You want to fix the gender balance in computer engineering? Well, the computer is right over there, stop doing stupid sociology studies and learn to code.
Re:Yeah right (Score:4, Insightful)
Ditto what Bolthole said. There are female soldiers, sailors, police, electricians, you name it. A programmer has the advantage that they can mostly remain anonymous, if they don't want their bodies and/or personalities put on public display. Anything a man can do, a woman can do, with VERY few exceptions, and often enough, better. That is, IF they just decide to do it.
Truck driving, for instance. It's a tough job, it takes you into some dangerous places, and it is dangerous in and of itself. Women have been driving for YEARS - and fleet controllers will readily tell you that they LIKE women drivers. Their equipment requires much less maintenance than male drivers, and they tend to get into fewer accidents.
Female cops have an advantage over their male counterparts. I got into an altercation in Chicago years ago. This lady cop was trying to calm me down, and put her hand on my upper arm, and chatted away. Some DUDE putting his hands on me would have made me more defensive - but when SHE did that, I started realizing how attractive she was, and LISTENED to her. Sexist? Yeah - but it works, and she knew how to make it work.
Ehhh. Whatever a person wants to do, they just need to get off their ass, and DO IT!!!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's make a deal (Score:3, Funny)
Cue The Moral Outrage (Score:5, Insightful)
Cue the moral outrage for a person promulgating deragatory gender stereotypes.
Wait, it is a woman? Nevermind.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My girlfriend was offered a full scholarship into engineering/computing and turned it down. I went in. She decided to do biology and then med school, she paid it all. Now she makes 4 times what I make.
Yes, I do agree, she made the smart decision. But I choose to defend my decision of engineering/computers with the reasoning: I enjoy what I do, It's my hobby. She cannot do the same, while she enjoys her job, she isn't as enthusiastic about it as I am. She can't break out the knife and do surgery at home. Wel
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If the university you received a CS/CE degree from didn't bother to make sure you learned C or C++ or a similarly low level language to a reasonable degree of competency, taught you what is necessary to write a device driver or other system code, basic assembly language, and how to implement a compiler, (among other things) your degree is probably not worth the paper it is printed on - assuming you want a job in the real world, that is.
This is a *big* problem.
Surgery @ home.... (Score:4, Funny)
Just don't piss her off Mr Bobbit.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
you better turn her into your wife pretty quick.
I don't see a 'successful doctor' (as you put it) hanging onto a nerdy computer guy forever.
Mod parent up. I was in the same situation as this guy. We actually were married, though. Things were great until we graduated and after her residency she started making four times as much as I did. She was being invited by other hot shot doctors to go on yacht "off site meetings", expensive parties, etc. Something about all that made her change in a fundamental way and she started to become a different person. Eventually she started spending more and more time at the hospital (or so she said) until my
Re:Cue The Moral Outrage (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up. I was in the same situation as this guy. We actually were married, though. Things were great until we graduated and after her residency she started making four times as much as I did. She was being invited by other hot shot doctors to go on yacht "off site meetings", expensive parties, etc. Something about all that made her change in a fundamental way and she started to become a different person. Eventually she started spending more and more time at the hospital (or so she said) until my cell phone broke one day and I had to use hers and noticed she had text messages from another docter insinuating that they were screwing after hours. She admitted what had been going on, filed for divorce, and just left without batting an eye, as if I was a complete stranger to her. Of course, she ended up telling the divorce court complete lies "he was abusive and hit me, I have to divorce him" and the court sucked it up and she ended up taking the house and the car, while I was admonished by the judge because "men like you are a bane to our society". Now I can even date normal women anymore because everyone thinks I am some sort of wife beater... It's pretty much ruined my life. I thought she was a different person... She WAS a different person... But that changed :(
Your depressing story seems like a perfect reason to mod grandparent DOWN because his advice is idiotic. Your sibling post said it best. Either don't rush and let her turn into uberbitch when you're not tied to her, or don't rush and it'll happen anyway because she actually loves him. Tying a "successful doctor" around your neck for the sake of doing so is just pointless.
you're mixing up the articles (Score:3, Informative)
A woman named Jeanna Bryner wrote the original article, entitled "Geeks Drive Girls Out of Computer Science" (1st link), which is arguing the fairly standard point, that women are turned away from CS due to a male-dominated geek culture. The reply, from a male blogger named Cameron Laird (2nd link), argues the opposite, that women are too smart to go into computing.
I am seeing it. (Score:5, Insightful)
The items he mentions are part of the reason I am trying to get out of IT.
IT workers are getting smaller and smaller salaries, having to compete with H1-Bs and out-of-country workers, have to deal with job scope creep, idiot managers, and expected to give up any semblance of work/life balance just to keep up.
It has gotten to the point where working in IT just isn't worth it because the positions just aren't respected.
Re:I am seeing it. (Score:4, Insightful)
As for respect, please. management doesn't give a shit about anybody, what makes you so special?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Along a long enough timeline, everything gets commoditized, and IT workers are no exception.
Not true. Some groups form professional organizations and rake in the big bucks by making it difficult for others to join and compete. Lawyers, Doctors, Nurses, Pharmacists, Engineers are a few that have to certified by various professional organizations before one is allowed to practice.
Re:I am seeing it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting point. I guess IT workers, tending towards more libertarian/anarcho-capitalist viewpoints, can't get their shit together then?
It's not the same. (Score:3, Insightful)
Letting H1-Bs into the country works directly against this, regardless of any (often fraudulent) claim that there is a short-term shortage.
We're supposed to be in a market economy - shortages of skills should result in increasing wages and an increased incentive for employers to train staff. Yet whenever the market begins to move in that direction the government starts shipping in the foreigners: which only benefits
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We're still in a market economy, except the market is now the planet. Consequently, the value of skills in transferable jobs has been falling for at least a decade. Don't blame the government for your failure to adapt.
Instead, recognize the trend and invest your self-improvement time in areas that are growing in value. I recommend customization, education and/or cost-benefit analysis in any complex field with long-term growth prospects.
Re:It's not the same. (Score:5, Insightful)
The government is hardly "shipping in the foreigners". Their normal involvement consists of forcibly keeping said foreigners out, which works directly against the market economy by maintaining artificially high prices for labor. On occasion, when they deign to notice a shortage of certain skills, they reduce their interference in the market economy and graciously permit a few more well-qualified foreigners to immigrate.
I'd be the first to admit that their policy as a whole favors certain influential individuals—e.g. shareholders of large corporations—over others, but the solution to that inequality consistent with our market economy is not to further block immigration by refusing H1-Bs, but rather to remove the requirement for H1-Bs entirely, permitting free and open immigration. Naturally this would require that the current welfare system to be significantly reduced in scope, if not eliminated entirely; otherwise the existing citizens would be forced to subsidize the new immigrants' "benefits", a most unjust circumstance. Any nation with open borders, as ours was intended to be, must insist that individuals pay their own way (not counting private, voluntary support, e.g. charity).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You could just have socialized support structures vest over time rather than reducing them entirely.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that what gave the States its huge (but diminishing) lead in science and tech was encouraging immigration. Closing the border is only going to cause all the smart people to aggregate elsewhere.
Re:I am seeing it. (Score:5, Informative)
I agree with you for IT workers. On the other hand, if you've been in IT for a while and have any management ability or the inclination to do consulting, the ability to make a good living still exists. I can't speak for the life of a corporate IT drone, but life in the small / medium business sector is thriving. There are a lot of businesses out there that appreciate the necessity of having a stable IT foundation. With the economic downturn there is more competition for the contracts, but if you're skilled and have a history of success behind you, the work is available. My last employer replaced me with two people when I left in 2006 and he hasn't had to lay any of them off despite the "Greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression".
The greatest change I've seen is the shift to outsourcing and consulting. The ability to have a successful, long term IT career at a single employer is probably further away than it has ever been. But if a person is willing to do contract work, there is work aplenty. Just check dice.com if you don't believe me. I have my resume posted and even though I'm working full time, I still get a couple of calls a month from recruiters who are looking to fill positions.
Oh please... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we get over this whole sexism bullshit already? Who gives a damn if women don't work in IT? If a woman wants to do something in IT, fine. If she doesn't, fine. If you want to look for gender-based discrimination, look elsewhere.
Re:Oh please... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, we know that there is sexism in the workplace in spots, and we know there aren't many women in IT. That is prima facie reason to suspect there may be sexism involved, and to investigate if we're actually interested.
Ideally, this would be examined in a calm, mature way exactly like the typical Slashdot discussion isn't.
Re:Oh please... (Score:4, Insightful)
That is prima facie reason to suspect there may be sexism involved, and to investigate if we're actually interested.
But the original argument isn't playing the sexism card, it's just saying a male dominated environment turns off women. Makes sense, some people don't like the big ole arrow that gets placed on them if they're the only "other" in the room. More so with geek boy culture, which plays up the "can't get laid, fantasize about any with breasts" stereotype. If I hadn't spent my entire life hanging out with boys, I'd also probably be quesy about working in a hard core programming shop. I was watching G4 the other day, and the "booth babes" documentary just so perfectly encapsulated the female perspective on a certain type of geek that's expected to be a programmer. So actually, the lack of females in comp sci may be more do to sexism against males then against females.
What a stupid excuse. (Score:3, Insightful)
"it's just saying a male dominated environment turns off women"
That would have been the situation with most jobs during most of human history.
It is the typical "blame the victim" mentality, putting the onus of improvement on the oppressed part rather than the oppressor. Truly despicable frankly.
Any men worth the name should be doing soul searching instead of trying to find excuses for the unacceptable low amount of women in certain careers.
.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It is the typical "blame the victim" mentality, putting the onus of improvement on the oppressed part rather than the oppressor. Truly despicable frankly.
As a girl in engineering, I really do know how awful it is. I've been the sole girl on a team, told that I'm not a female 'cause I'm useful, lost faith in guys 'cause of the locker room talk, couldn't go to a competition 'cause a prof didn't want to pay for an extra hotel room, and otherwise had my fair share of the drama. I'm first in line to try and recruit more girls in my field, 'cause it's damn lonely sometimes. I was just making the point that it's an environment issue, not active sexism. Hell, when w
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Who gives a damn if women don't work in IT?
Men who work in IT, who should be asking themselves what is so terrible about IT careers that women, who are filling the ranks of doctors and lawyers with wild abandon, won't go near them.
If a job really sucks--especially if it can get you killed--it is done predominantly by men.
We are society that holds the call of "Men last!" to be honourable and good. It is usually phrased as "Everyone who is not a man first!" Or more specifically "Women and children first!"
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I do, it would be nice to see some more ladies at conferences that I can ogle instead of paying attention.
You ogling is what's scaring them off.
Re:Are women pushing men out of nursing? (Score:5, Funny)
I think you'd be surprised at the amount of tail male nurses pull.
Re:Are women pushing men out of nursing? (Score:5, Funny)
No, I wouldn't find that surprising at all. After all, women in computing certainly have a large selection of men to choose from (if that's their gender of preference). Of course, some will say it's quantity over quality...
Or as the saying goes... the odds are good but the goods are odd :)
Re:Are women pushing men out of nursing? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, men just not that interested in being nurses, unless they're gay.
bullshit.
I've got a lot of family members who work various positions in local hospitals, and my sister just went through a medical lab assistant course, and agrees with what I'm saying here.
Saying that men aren't interested is BS, because they're high paying jobs and you spend every class surrounded by ladies. it sounds like a great scam. But when you get there, everyone thinks you're 'just precious' and you end up being the damn bouncer and guy who picks up heavy things in an emergency room, which isn't exactly a job with good promotion potential.
There are a lot of guys who want a stable well paying job with fairly low risk and nice stat holidays. A lot more of them would be getting into the field if there wasn't such a social stigma.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
... if I did want to "look elsewhere" for gender-based discrimination, what better place to look than in a field highly dominated by one sex?
Indeed. It never stops bothering me that strippers, nurses, nannies, and cosmetologists are almost invariably female. And if it wasn't for gay men, our numbers in certain industries would even worse.
The money issue is not as simple as stated (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been taking my 18 year old to tour colleges as he will be pursuing chemical engineering. Engineering starting salaries across the board (chemical, civil, mechanical, and electrical) are between $50 and $70k.
The solution for many comp sci students is to double major comp sci with one of the above "demand" areas, pass the professional engineering exam, and then the money issue is a non issue. Computer skills are now part and parcel of every engineering profession, so getting paid well to do what you love (if you love computers) should not be difficult.
The challenge for people hell-bent on starting their careers as programmers (as opposed to computer engineers) seems to be that starting programmers are not worth as much.
[By the way, the number of girls on his engineering tours seem to be between 10% and 20%. In other words, nothing there is changing. My son's solution to the ratio issue is to attend a large university where there are more female students overall.]
Stupid enough? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does the job pay your bills at an acceptable standard of living?
Are you doing what you are good at?
Are you having fun?
If the answers above are all yes, then who gives a fuck what some researcher thinks.
Garbage men.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Odd we don't see many stories about the global shortage in female garbage collectors. Or janitors. And isn't a little bit 90's to go with the whole "Whoah, those powerful women are just too smart to go into computers! Girl powa!". It's not going to get you laid, I promise. Computers are a good field compared to most regardless of declining salaries or anything else.
Women aren't in computers because they tend not to be interested in it. Whether this is socialization or genetics or some mixture is up for debate, and of course there are exceptions but we see the ratio of men to women in computing because men are interested in or gifted in computing at a ratio higher than women.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
but we see the ratio of men to women in computing because men are interested in or gifted in computing at a ratio higher than women.
Working in computing requires a certain amount of rational and logical thinking as well as the ability to grasp complex abstractions and juggle multiple constructs simultaneously in the short term memory. At the risk of sounding politically incorrect, these traits are much more common in men and even then mostly in particular personality types (not every man is cut out to work in computing either). Finally there is a certain minimum intelligence score required to grasp the complex incantations required for
Considerably? (Score:5, Interesting)
Programmer 84k http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=programmer&l1=new+york
Garbage man 77k http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=garbage+man&l1=new+york
But the garbage man gets overtime and probably union benefits.
>better social prestige.
Only here.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Considerably? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Garbage men.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Or is it just understood that while there's no actual red tape, that life is simply not appealing to most women.
Are you kidding? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a girl. Being on call all day and all night / programming until mentally exhausted / etc. is not something I am willing to do. So yeah, I'm going into teaching. EVEN THOUGH I AM A GEEK. Thanks for telling me what the working conditions were in the field, Slashdot - you made the decision that much simpler.
Just be warned (Score:3, Informative)
Teaching is hard work, low pay, and often very thankless. My mom was a teacher for about 25 years and I really wouldn't wish that on anyone. While it is the sort of thing that certain people thrive in, particularly those that are very caring and have a "Save the world" mentality, I think most skilled people would be better off doing something else. The pay is just not in line with other jobs requiring a master's level of education. Now that might be ok if it were easy work, but it isn't. Teachers have tons
Re:Are you kidding? (Score:5, Insightful)
I complain about all of those things. Except one day I was hit by a realization at 4am while trying to get a workstation to function: "Hey, I could be getting paid for this." See a lot of us in IT do it, despite all of our bitching and moaning, because we really do love it. We love computers, we love technology, we love being the go-to-people whenever anything that goes "BEEP!" with flashy lights isn't working quite right. We wish we got more respect, and we wish we were better compensated. But then again, who doesn't? Who ever says, "Man, I just make TOO MUCH money!" I work on call hours, and yes it does suck. However the fact remains that the first thing I do when I get home is sit down at my computer. I'm still up til 2am (or later) working on computers. The only difference between that and being on call is that we don't have the control we normally do. But we're still doing the same work. We do it because we love it, even though we say we hate it. Its just one of those things we love to hate.
If you're going to get scared away by the negative parts, take a hard look at how you spend your time now. If you're working on computers all the time, and you enjoy making them work, fixing them, etc, then don't run away quite so fast. If you're a programmer, the same point stands. I left the comp sci department in college because the professor demanded we be in the lab 80+ hours a week. I thought he was crazy. Thing is, every programmer I've met spends easily 80 hours a week programming. Sometimes more. I see them literally pull 48 hour shifts, stopping only briefly to take catnaps without leaving their chairs. They do it because its their passion and there's nothing else they'd rather be doing. Its not like they're hourly. The prof was just weeding out the people who weren't really cut out for it, and he saved me a lot of time, energy, and frustration. Hell, maybe a trip to the psych ward too. It comes down to this: if its what you love, you learn to take the bad along with the good. Don't let other people warp your perspective.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks for telling me what the working conditions were in the field, Slashdot - you made the decision that much simpler.
Trusting slashdot for accurate working conditions is a poor idea. Being on call is reserved for IT pros who maintain something 24/7. There's plenty of Computing jobs that don't require such extreme working conditions.
For example, I work for a Fortune 100 company doing software engineering (writing requirements, designs, some coding, maintenance, etc). I work 40 hrs a week and go home. If (for some reason), I have to stay late one day, I leave early on another. Most of the time, I'm not forced to sta
Neither the article or the blog make good points (Score:5, Interesting)
Fortunately their is a comment on the blog that has some interesting insight...
http://www.itworld.com/tictacns [itworld.com]
Not enough Women in Tech
I believe this may be the article that MSNBC was referring to:
http://uwnews.washington.edu/ni/article.asp?articleID=54341 [washington.edu]
"It was brought to my attention in an ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) newsletter.
My opinion is that Tech is a tool, a means to get from point A to point B, like a car. I think women want to be the travelers, using Tech to achieve their goals and using the auto industry analogy, they generally do not want to be the mechanics. When we hear about tech, we usually hear about the techies/mechanics, we do not hear about the many other skills that the tech industry requires to thrive and people tend to not pursue things they are not aware of."
That.
Prior to the tech inovations of computers and the internet, we had cars and trains as the feets of an earlier generation where the people who were most into building and working on hotrods were men, but many mechanics have ladies who loved their vets and mustangs. People who have fascination with trains have mostly seemed to come from men as well, though many woman use them as a means of transportation and wouldn't think twice about hopping on a trolly, light rail or subway, though they don't care about how it works, just that it does. To some degree this affects many sciences...
Perhaps this says somethign more about differences between men and women...
Too many men, too many boys. (Score:5, Funny)
Too many misters, Not enough sisters
Too much time on, too many hands
Not enough ladies, too many mans
Not again (Score:3, Insightful)
If there are less women in IT than men it is because the women want it that way. I think there were at most 5 women in my entire graduating class that were in the CS program. Most women (and to be fair, most people) just see computers as gadgets and expensive toys and don't really care about how they work on the inside. Again, just being honest here, most men get excited when you ask them about their plasma TV, surround sound, network setup, etc but I've never known any women that could be considered technophiles. I'm sure they exist, it just isn't as common.
Another serious problem I've noticed is that there are not enough women working in construction. Living in Houston, I drive by a lot of construction throughout the city on a daily basis and I have never seen a single woman working at a construction site. Talk about a crisis!
I would have hoped... (Score:3, Insightful)
If there aren't as many women in computing ("enough women" is a nonsense term: what's "enough") then it's because women don't want to be in computing.
Required reading for any gender/career story (Score:3)
Another one of these?? (Score:5, Interesting)
How often does this have to be said? Yes, there are more men than women in IT. Why is that? Um, because?
Disclaimer - I'm a woman and I've worked in the IT field for almost 20 years.
Yes, I've found that in general IT is a boy's club. I'm used to being the only woman in the group. And I'm used to the crap that I have to put up with being the only woman. I've been ignored, talked over, dismissed (well, they tried that), and generally excluded. It happens. Grow a pair.
No one is going to go out of their way to make women feel all warm and cozy. So you can't use traditional female tactics to carve out your place. And unfortunately that's what most women fall back on when faced with a difficult situation.
My way of making things tolerable is to take my place on the totem pole relatively early on. I watch the personalities and, sad to say, make the weakest one my bitch. Once I do that then I'm on my way to acceptance. It's how they play, it's how I have to play. YMMV
I've mentored women in IT and it isn't pretty. But if they learn a few tricks they can at least stay long enough to find out if they like the work and can work in the environment.
Re:Another one of these?? (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words, the best advice for your first day in an IT job is the same advice as for your first day in prison.
How does that go over with women at job fairs?
Re:Another one of these?? (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is going to go out of their way to make women feel all warm and cozy.
Noone does it for men either. Men generally treat each other like crap, and all men get ignored, talked over, dismissed etc. until they prove themselves. Women often mistake 'equal treatment' for sexism.
Re:Another one of these?? (Score:4, Informative)
Umm.. yeah, I'm a male in IT and have been for 14 years and I've been ignored, talked over, dismissed, and generally excluded too. Geeks do that. The difference between you and me is that you play games and I say "whatever dickweed" and get on with my job.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't kid yourself - that has nothing, or at least very little, to do with being a woman. Techies do that to each other - whether you're a man or a woman, it's how you're treated. Maybe it's because it's male-dominated, but it applies to everyone. Why should I care what someone thinks, unless they've convinced (or forced) me to respect them?
I think it's similar with men in most every field. Guys don't tend to play games, or screw around, with people t
Women are too smart to bother working (Score:3, Insightful)
Many women are too smart to bother working, that is what men are for. The world works in such a way that women do not need to work, provided they are attractive to enough males. Women are taught this from an early age - hence why women mature socially years earlier than men (on average). Easily 50% of women are "kept" in this way, unless they choose to work or are really ugly or have other deficiencies according to men. From age 18 - 33 or so, women have tremendous power over men based on appearance alone.
OTOH, males are trained from an early age that if you want a woman (and all that entails), you need to have a high paying job, power or both. The better the job, the better the woman you will likely attract. Better can mean all sorts of things - family, status, beauty, smarter, fertile, cute, famous, etc. There's almost zero chance of a man being "kept" although I'll keep trying.
Education or work environment? (Score:3, Insightful)
I admit, my data is a little stale - I graduated HS/College in 95/99.
I work at a defense contractor. There's a little bit of sexism that seems to be primarily from older former military types, where I think it's less that I'm a female programmer than I'm a female programmer working on artillery software. And the one time that I overheard a co-worker who got passed over for promotion in favor of me comment that to get his promotion he would have to change his gender.
In college, I was in the first class of women that they admitted. (It was an all engineering and science university.) To placate people, they accepted additional students equal to the number of women so that no one would whine that they could have gotten in, if it weren't for those girls. The most sexism I had to put up with was actually from my Psych prof, of all people. Other than that, I think the divide was more between the merely-geeky-enough-to-go-there and the ubergeek types. Anyway, they opened up their pool of applicants and the average GPA went up quite a bit.
I was very lucky; we had conversations about this in college, given our environment. I knew someone who's own father didn't want her to go to college because "you'll just get married and waste all that learning". We all had to deal with teasing in high school, etc, but it's difficult to tell if it's the same as what other geeks went through, or worse for women. Personal experiences are difficult to compare.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because like everything else, there is a cult that is dead set to create as many conflicts and divisions wherever they can create them. Also to get attention by creating that conflict (to make more dollars). There will NEVER be an "equal" amount of anything in any situation. This is simply a natural phenomenon, nothing ever stays in balance.
There WAS institutional discrimination in our society. Institutional discrimination has not only been eliminated, but has also been made "illegal". While there may still
Re:Hypocritical (Score:5, Interesting)
Right. That's why I've caught VP's having meetings in men's rooms, to avoid the presence of female members of staff, and why the engineer in my workgroup who got the sex change was _amazed_ at the number of times "she" was both hit on, and technologically ignored, after her transformation.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Right. That's why I've caught VP's having meetings in men's rooms,
And the VPs at my company have meetings in the women's room. Ok, so you're VPs are jackasses, learn to deal. Some people are douche bags, that doesn't mean the entire world is out to keep women from IT jobs. There were 6 women in my electrical engineering class, out of 35 total. None of the guys in class made fun of them any more or less than anyone else. Everyone got railed on for setting of the fire alarm, everyone got applause for finishing that damned transistor radio. What it seems like is that s
Re:Hypocritical (Score:5, Insightful)
When I graduated CS, 75% of the students graduating were male. The CS program has all kinds of incentives, grants, scholarships, programs, and other things to try and get more female students. They consider it a "problem" that needs fixing that its slanted.
Right in front of me was the nursing graduates. 97% female. They have no such programs for males, and nobody considers this a "problem". They consider it a choice of men to not go into nursing.
Oddly, nobody questions that, while people constantly question women in CS. Go around ask them. I work with lots of women all the time, none of them want to be programmers. They're doing what they actually want to do, which is something else.
This isn't a real problem. This is stats not lining up in a way some people think they should, so they create a problem out of it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually there are programs to encourage men to go into nursing. Men don't though, do you know why? Same reason women don't get into computer science: cultural conditioning.
On a subtle and not so subtle level men and women are taught from a very early age that certain things are "boy things" and certain things are "
Do you have children? I do... (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact is, more young boys than girls will treat any kind of toy or stick or whatever they can find as a weapon, and more young girls than boys will treat any kind of toy or stick or whatever they can find as a doll, and I think most people who are parents and truly think about it realize that this happened at an extremely young age for their kids. If there is a "nurture" side to how this works, it is exerted very early and in a round-about way.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There are lots of programs to encourage men to go into nursing. In fact, if you recall that U of Michigan affirmative action supreme court case a few years back, the same bonuses that applied to minority students also applied to male nursing applicants (and poor people, etc). I think these programs get less press, but they're not uncommon.
Re:Men aren’t so dumb... (Score:5, Insightful)
Men and women tend to make different choices; I don't know if it's Nature or Nurture, but smarts or stupidity have very little to do with it.
Re:Men aren’t so dumb... (Score:5, Insightful)
It’s almost like men and women are... well, different!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Men are also more inclined to pretty much give up their personal life to go into higher management, whereas women prefer to forego a career in favour of working part-time.
Because women really deep down just wanna 'make home', while men really deep down just wanna get away from the nagging wife a bit ;) (I keed I keed, mods don't kill me)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Shoveling bits does suck. The software world can however still be very profitable, enjoyable, and rewarding if you are 1) a real innovator and entrepreneur with a sense of your market (and thus get rewarded for turning great ideas into great products or great companies), 2) a brilliant computer scientist (and thus get rewarded for solving the problems that are too hard for other engineers or developers to solve), or 3) first and foremost a domain specialist (and only secondarily a software developer/engine
Re:From a phsychological point of view... (Score:5, Insightful)
Women act more based on emotions and feelings than guys do, whereas guys will act on logic and black & white facts
Nope.
I used to think this 40 years ago, which is about when I started my IT career (with 8 years off to teach physics.)
My observation is that in general, men are much much more likely to get emotional in a business setting when there are differences of opinion. The way that they express emotion, from raised voices, blustering, filibustering to even stomping out of the room are somehow found to be socially acceptable. Men are the first to start emoting and are often the only ones. I've found that it is quite rare for a female to express emotion while in a business/professional setting and usually only after extreme provocation. On the other hand, it's almost a matter of course for men, especially those in or seeking to be management.
Is there anyone who is not aware that that raising your voice, shaking your head, pointing fingers, crossing arms etc are expressions of emotional behaviors?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Your reasoning is speculative, and argued against by the existence of matriarchal societies in the past. Regardless, you're arguing contingencies--the fact that our society happens to descend from patriarchal societies says nothing about whether we should remain patriarchal, or view our status quo as somehow not worth challenging.
You mention programming as a male-dominated profession due to an evolutionary trait; I'll counter with medicine, specifically doctors. A hundred years ago, female doctors were un
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Boys grow up with computer games
I got into comp sci because I wanted to code better options into my Barbie fashion designer games, but my brother took a poli-sci route even though he played way more games then I did. In the past 20 or so years, there have been a steady slew of video games for girls, and we're still seeing the gender disparities.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's possible to be a day-job geek who never plays video games, doesn't own an iphone, and doesn't read xkcd, yet still thrive in high-tech.
What the hell does any of that have to do with being a sneering, arrogant, sexually inept bully?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually from what I've seen, it's the rigor of the academic program that tends to drive away female students (i.e. they're not capable in either math/logic, or programming, or both). And I'm saying this as a female computer science undergraduate observing my fellow peers. I'm not in it for the money; I'm in this field because (a) I like computer science and (b) I'm good at it.
Being driven away from a field purely because of the fact that it's "too geeky" is too generic of an excuse to explain this disparit
Re:Am I the only female on Slashdot? (Score:5, Interesting)
Females tend to help each other to feel good.
Go ahead and take this with a grain of salt, since this is only one person's experience.
Here is the timeline of my experience in basic training in the air force (not too long ago):
-Put your bag down! Pick your bag up! (equal response)
-Goddammit you need ta march with yer feet hitting the same beat HUP TWO TREE FOR (women win by miles)
-You need ta help your bunkmate get 'is SHIT TOGETHER! (men win by a landslide, as the sister flight is already getting into micropolitics)
-I want your shirts aligned to the micrometer and I want your marching to be in step to the yottasecond! (by this time, the women are falling into factions)
-Graduation is tomorrow, don't f*&^ing embarrass me! (and by now, the women have split into camps while the men have unified)
I agree with what you said up until about 3 weeks into a project. After that, the men catch up on the unified front level and the women fall behind because of the clique thing. I'm not going to say that one side is better since both genders have their strengths, but ask any drill instructor: Women hate each other by the end of boot, and men create life-long bonds. That's generalization but one that fits 90%+ of the people I've known.
-b