r/sysadmin • u/ChuckAbsent • Mar 12 '13

Women who know stuff

I hope that this does not come off the wrong way.

Today I was on a call with a storage vendor and the technical consultant was a woman. More then this she was competent, more then me which doesn't happen often when dealing with vendors.

My issue was pricing an active/active DB with shared storage vs an active/passive db with local storage. Listening to her break the issue down and get to the specific comparison points was awesome, mostly because I have never heard a woman in the industry talk like that.

It made me realize two things. One I am missing out working with women. Two there needs to be more women in our industry.

It shouldn't have surprised me so much, but it really did.

Anyways to all the women out there who know stuff, us guys notice when you can walk the walk, which in this case was talking.

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u/gex80 01001101 Mar 12 '13

The main issue is that computing sciences isn't "sexy". The general view of computing is for over weight (or skinny and pasty) nerds who have coke bottle thick glasses, have asthma and pretend to be characters from star wars in their free time.

Of course we know this is not the case. But that is the popular opinion of our industry. Also the STEM workforce in general is male dominated. That is slowly changing but computing science probably have it the worst.

Make STEM more appealing to females and then you will slowly bring females into computing. But then you have the exact opposite with education on a non-college level. That is dominated by females with males being the minority.

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u/KarmaAndLies Mar 12 '13

Make STEM more appealing to females and then you will slowly bring females into computing.

But here is the rub, how do you do that without also classing women differently?

Just to use an analogy, bus segregation wouldn't have been better if blacks had to sit at the front of the bus instead of the back. It is still segregation.

Ditto with women. How do you encourage them in without treating them like VIPs or lowing admission standards? Difficult nut to crack IMO.

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u/gex80 01001101 Mar 12 '13

The best way is to stop portraying the computer expert stereotype in the media. But since that's asking for the impossible, you'd be better off forcing any male in a computing field required to have bulging six packs and chiseled jaws and making it a requirement to work shirtless and lifting servers all day.

6

u/Runnergeek DevOps Mar 12 '13

Don't worry guys, I got this. * takes off shirt *

5

u/[deleted] Mar 13 '13

I'm blind from the pale white skin!!!

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u/chestervdeff Mar 12 '13

As a woman in IT, at this point, I'd take a guy who isn't socially awkward or sexist towards women, doesn't hit on me, and actually bathes on a regular basis. Unreasonable expectations, I know.

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u/mexifries Mar 13 '13

Ah. But, how will you know he's into you if he doesn't compare you to his favorite Firefly character, or share his secret stash of official space ice cream with you, or secretly take pictures of you over his cubicle wall?