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Come back in 20 years after you've worked at several companies and let me know how many I.T. ladies you've met.
You said you've never encountered that situation. I countered it. No need to be offended. You have your experience, I have mine. Does your experience count and mine doesn't? Going forward into the next 20 years, I definitely expect more women to join the field. Again, I completely support women in technology.
There are hundreds of credible sources if you open up your eyes and look.
I personally know ten women in I.T. and over a hundred men. In my observation, the women could often do more than they were allowed to do. When brought into meetings, I've seen one of them mention something important, only to immediately be dismissed by their superior, until someone higher than him chimes up and asks to hear more. Even some of the men in I.T. have told me that women are disrespected in their field, which they've said either a) discourages young women from pursuing it as a career, or b) drives out those who are in the field.
You want to hop on the bandwagon of someone stating emphatically that women who get promoted in tech companies are all about power, are clueless about tech, and are all about manipulating men, go ahead, but that means you have zero credibility to most of us.
At a high level, the whole industry is not too conducive to things that might take place during a woman's career (like being pregnant and taking leave). Sure, there are stay at home dads out there, dads who take paternity leave, and men who like to leave at 4:30 to pick up the kids from day care, but the majority of people who fill these roles are women, and will probably always be women because women are the only ones who can bear children, whether the dad sticks around or not.
Women are probably more likely to take longer periods off from work (or just leave entirely for years) than men. Tech is not a good field for people who leave it then try to get back in.
Not even going to get into what kind of American woman has the patience to deal with being inferior to men from some of the cultures that seem to have a heavy H-1B presence. If Hillary was really looking for barriers to entry for women, this would be the first. But she can't say that, obviously.
You said you've never encountered that situation. I countered it. No need to be offended. You have your experience, I have mine. Does your experience count and mine doesn't? Going forward into the next 20 years, I definitely expect more women to join the field. Again, I completely support women in technology.
I'm not offended. 20 years vs. 2 months. And there are fewer women in I.T. now than 20 years ago, not more. Google it.
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Originally Posted by MPowering1
I personally know ten women in I.T. and over a hundred men. In my observation, the women could often do more than they were allowed to do. When brought into meetings, I've seen one of them mention something important, only to immediately be dismissed by their superior, until someone higher than him chimes up and asks to hear more. Even some of the men in I.T. have told me that women are disrespected in their field, which they've said either a) discourages young women from pursuing it as a career, or b) drives out those who are in the field.
You want to hop on the bandwagon of someone stating emphatically that women who get promoted in tech companies are all about power, are clueless about tech, and are all about manipulating men, go ahead, but that means you have zero credibility to most of us.
Grace Hopper must be rolling in her grave.
I encounter that on a regular basis. I made a point in a meeting a couple of months ago and it was immediately dismissed by my boss. A male coworker said exactly the same thing last week (taking credit for it too) and my boss was immediately on board with what he said.
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Originally Posted by 43north87west
At a high level, the whole industry is not too conducive to things that might take place during a woman's career (like being pregnant and taking leave). Sure, there are stay at home dads out there, dads who take paternity leave, and men who like to leave at 4:30 to pick up the kids from day care, but the majority of people who fill these roles are women, and will probably always be women because women are the only ones who can bear children, whether the dad sticks around or not.
Women are probably more likely to take longer periods off from work (or just leave entirely for years) than men. Tech is not a good field for people who leave it then try to get back in.
Not even going to get into what kind of American woman has the patience to deal with being inferior to men from some of the cultures that seem to have a heavy H-1B presence. If Hillary was really looking for barriers to entry for women, this would be the first. But she can't say that, obviously.
I've never had children. Have never taken extended leave. I rarely even take sick days.
And yes, Hillary should absolutely mention the H1B program. That's one of the biggest obstacles for women in I.T. these days. Working for most Indian men is hell on Earth. I've done it before. Will never do it again.
Another problem I see is that many female tech workers don't have the pedigree. They excelled during college but in a tech job you have to keep up with the industry. You can't expect the job to give you training for everything.
Then what can people expect their job to train them in? Of course you have to keep up with the industry, but does that mean a company is going to adopt everything in the industry?
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Originally Posted by vision33r
I worked with a female co-worker that expects to get trained on every new product or process we have. She is lucky to have received training but she just never gets it. The skillsets required at many tech jobs today is enormously difficult when management is clueless and they expect the workers to pick it up without training. The American way today is to give their workers "Cliff notes" about a new product and have them call the product support for free training.
At least some companies offer "Cliff Notes." Documentation is a way to learn about products or processes in the company, and then there's marketing. But without training, how do you expect people to learn about the business? Right here you aren't really making a complaint about women, but a complaint about the way companies operate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vision33r
In many dev ops groups, it has become more difficult for Proj managers to get projects done when women often take more sick days than men do or family leave and they have every right to do so. However, in the neverending demand to get things done quickly. Companies resort to hiring temps and contractors to come in and do the work. In the end, those women that haven't accomplished very much due to their family circumstances gets pushed down or weeded out.
You are speaking from your experience and observations. So let me speak from mine. Since I've started at my job, the two male supervisors have taken more time off than the female manager has in the course of a few months. My own supervisor has dried through his vacation to attend to family leave or sick days.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vision33r
I was once in a group of 4 with 1 female who is pretty good at her application development work. We were all in crunch mode to deliver some deadlines but for some reason she's always able to get out of collaborative work and leave all the heavy lifting to the guys and avoid responsibility. It seems a lot of IT depts have this double-standard where the male IT workers have to perform the heavy lifting and the female counterparts are allowed to leave at 5pm and not participate.
These are my personal experiences at various IT depts big and small. If politicians like Hillary talks about fixing the problem with these divisive vote buying talk, it's not gonna work for me.
No, it sounds like your team has an issue with project management, time management, and expectations. Your complaints haven't really pointed out why women can't make it in tech. It's just pointed out all of the issues in tech with project management, management, and delegating responsibilities.
It's not that they can't make it there are better opportunities for women in HR, and other fields which require less effort. Honestly the same can be said for men too.
Then what can people expect their job to train them in? Of course you have to keep up with the industry, but does that mean a company is going to adopt everything in the industry?
At least some companies offer "Cliff Notes." Documentation is a way to learn about products or processes in the company, and then there's marketing. But without training, how do you expect people to learn about the business? Right here you aren't really making a complaint about women, but a complaint about the way companies operate.
I hear ya, unfortunately the way the tech industry operates these days if you don't have anything new, refreshing, exciting to share then you are deemed clueless sheep regardless male/female. Female gets written off as being technical 1st.
Quote:
You are speaking from your experience and observations. So let me speak from mine. Since I've started at my job, the two male supervisors have taken more time off than the female manager has in the course of a few months. My own supervisor has dried through his vacation to attend to family leave or sick days.
I'm pretty sure it happens, we can all cherry picked situations and I be first to admit that I've taken more days than some because I believe in taking all my vac days. However, the difference is that I don't strategically take days off to avoid projects. I take mine when there's less going on yet I'm still disturbed on my days off.
Quote:
No, it sounds like your team has an issue with project management, time management, and expectations. Your complaints haven't really pointed out why women can't make it in tech. It's just pointed out all of the issues in tech with project management, management, and delegating responsibilities.
My points are observations from some of the biggest companies that I am sure that you have done business with or as a customer of. They run our financial system and they are your big region hospital.
I didn't come in here to target women in IT, I came here to share some observations that relates to why the numbers speak for themselves.
At a high level, the whole industry is not too conducive to things that might take place during a woman's career (like being pregnant and taking leave). Sure, there are stay at home dads out there, dads who take paternity leave, and men who like to leave at 4:30 to pick up the kids from day care, but the majority of people who fill these roles are women, and will probably always be women because women are the only ones who can bear children, whether the dad sticks around or not.
Women are probably more likely to take longer periods off from work (or just leave entirely for years) than men. Tech is not a good field for people who leave it then try to get back in.
Not even going to get into what kind of American woman has the patience to deal with being inferior to men from some of the cultures that seem to have a heavy H-1B presence. If Hillary was really looking for barriers to entry for women, this would be the first. But she can't say that, obviously.
You have some very good examples that I can point out where women gets weeded out of some IT dept. Take an early 30 female developer that does Java/Web/App automation stuff and she takes 6 weeks+ off for maturity leave. She's been with the firm for 8 years started as an intern.
The firm was in the midst of launching new Business app that needed her expertise so they end up hiring some temps to cover for her for 2 months. The boss end up liking the new temps and decides to offer full-time job to one of the temps. The female developer returns to the job and gets less work as she is given time to adjust. She doesn't get any new project for the rest of the year. Then after x-mas she is transferred to another dept which only does project management and no more IT work. She has no experience in project management and she is given internal courses to do so. But in 4 months she was given pink slips for not meeting firm performance standards.
I was later told that summer, after 2 months she was brought back as a consultant because she used to code for a HR app that nobody had documentation of. She got a 6 month contract to hand off the work but was paid nearly a one year full-time salary.
After she left she went into the real estate business and became a mortgage under-writer and did very well so I was happy for her.
I have been doing this for almost 20 years and in several different countries. I have never...ever...EVER...seen any I.T. department managed predominantly by women. I have never seen a single team that was predominantly female.
I think you need to get out of I.T.
You are part of the problem.
I hope for your coworkers' sake that you are never promoted into management. With your attitude, you don't deserve it.
Sorry to hear about your experiences. I've worked at 2 sites that are women ran and managed. One is a mid-size ad-agency in the early 90s, they published some of the teeny boppy magazines. Men at that IT dept does all the heavy lifting such as running cables, handling all of the Macs and PCs there, and women there managed all of the operations and does email, still remember the Lotus Notes admin was a blonde hottie.
Another female dominant IT dept was a web startup. Both the founders were gay, one is a lesbian and the other is male. The lesbian managed all of the accounting, HR, and IT. The gay guy does all of the business and marketing. I actually preferred working for the lesbian because the gay guy treated me like dirt for being the few straight guys there. My experience is that lesbians are typically very reasonable to work with but gay guys are not. They can be unpredictable and unreasonable, many decisions were made purely based on marketed ideas and not any testing to confirm anything before decision time.
Probably the worst male/female IT work ratio has to be in financial institutions. I've seen 85-90% male while female management was even worse. Look at Apple, they're they perfect example of American tech company with their corporate demographics.
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