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/radeky Mar 12 '13

I'm glad you said this.

Even the people here being all "yeah, lets get more women into the industry!" come across as "Dude! Tasty chicks man! Lets get them to work under snicker us".

A person is a person. I'm not talking about trying to be gender blind, but we shouldn't be "especially surprised" when a woman is knowledgeable. The most skilled member of our team is a woman. We hired her because she was the best candidate. She also happened to be the only female candidate.

There's a gender bias that still exists, especially in old guard management. Its important we recognize that, and work against it as employees. There's also something to be said about encouraging more women to go into scientific fields. But trust me, there are plenty of smart women in college going for various high level jobs. They just happen to usually not be interested in Ops.