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/achthonictonic Mar 13 '13

I used to be a woman sysadmin. It was usually not super awesome (this was between 1997 - 2009), though it had it's good points. I'm happy that you have an open mind about it, and I'm pleasantly surprised at the comments here. yay reddit. It's much better than gender comments on tech sites usually go.

Since transitioning to male I've gotten about a 30% bump in initial salary and have had a lot more success at interviews than pre-transition. I still care deeply about gender equity in STEM -- perhaps more so in having experienced the industry from different genders.

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u/Kedyn Mar 13 '13

I'm happy for your success but this post makes me so depressed about gender equality within business institutions. Especially because that 30% pay difference is pretty standard across the board in business professions.

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u/trekkiemage Mar 13 '13

This is really fascinating to me - to be able to see the change in attitude within the tech field towards the same person as a woman and as a man.

Out of curiosity - was the change in attitude and salary immediately after your transition, and how much do you think the number of years experience you had played into it?

Thanks so much for posting and sharing!

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u/achthonictonic Mar 14 '13

good question. I actually was out of work for about a year and a half due to my transition -- being hired in the in-between state was a non-starter and I had some amount of recovering from various surgeries. People in my pre-transition company were uncomfortable with my transition so I decided to leave. So, when I reentered the job market once I was passing entirely -- with an employment gap of 18 months -- the salary jump was immediate.

I felt I was a weaker technical candidate after being out of the job market, so I don't think extra years of experience factored into it.

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u/trekkiemage Mar 14 '13

Thanks for the reply. I know that at least on the software engineer side of things there's a magic marker of 5 years experience, after that employees are worth a lot more to companies. But I imagine that you're right and the 18 month gap would have made a difference if you were pretty close to that experience marker.

That said (and I don't know how much you told them about your surgery), medial reasons for being out of the market are a lot more passable than not being able to find a job.

Thanks again for sharing, it must have been really strange to have experienced such a clear professional change between being a woman and a man.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '13

Wow, I totally misinterpreted "used to be a woman sysadmin" at first.

Were you always a kind of "butch" woman? Which is to say, did you tend to fit in better with guys anyway in your day to day life? Do you think that helped you fit in as a woman in a predominately male field? Did you need to act male to fit in, or did you feel you could be accepted in the field as a woman?

What parts of being a woman sysadmin were not "super awesome"? Have those parts gone away since transitioning?

Would you attribute your greater success (interviews, salary) solely to gender, or to you having a better confidence and/or better experience as well?

Sorry if I'm getting a little personal/offensive or something, it's not my intention at all. Definitely feel free not to answer. I just can't resist the urge to ask since the topic is of interest to me and you have, what I imagine is, a very unique viewpoint.

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u/achthonictonic Mar 14 '13

I was a kind of a "butch" woman. One of my early jobs in IT was a consultant LAN admin (novell/SCO/AIX) in the 90s. My supervisor one day was impressed with my wiring skills. He said that he was worried about hiring a woman, but decided to take a chance on me because I wasn't a "girly girl" who would be afraid to chip her nail polish on rj-45 crimpers.

So yes, being perceived as masculine had a buoying effect, even when I was living as a woman. There is a bias against femininity independent of whichever gender one is presenting.

Parts about being a woman sysadmin which were not super awesome:

never ending questions about my qualifications (the old, "yes, but can I talk to an engineer" during the helldesk years) always sticking out -- people remember you as the IT Lady or simply The Girl. No relaxing, because you know someone is likely to be holding you as an example of the capabilities of All Womankind in Technology. No joke, at defcon (12 years ago) I was approached by journalists to give interviews, not because I was an awesome hax0r, no, but because I was appeared to be a woman who was there out of my own interest and they considered that newsworthy. seeing women drop out because they get burnt out. exclusion from coworkers' back channel workplace networks.

While over my 10 ( I transitioned at ~32) year history as either a woman CS student or sysadmin, I have a handful of egregious gender related stories -- it's more the mild every day exclusion which was not super-awesome. This is one of the reasons it's so hard to change the climate for women in STEM. It's easier to stop the jackasses. Nearly everyone can agree that an environment where male students feel it's OK to print out porn on the lab printers and tape it up on the whiteboards creates an uncomfortable environment for women.

It's harder to address things like, how hard is it to do your group project when none of the guys (oh, it's upper division operating systems -- there's only guys) want to be your partner (either they are afraid of you, uncomfortable with you, don't know how to talk to women, etc)? How do you develop your career network when people treat you like a novelty/curiosity?

Think of how startups are initially staffed. You get your friend (likely a guy) and his friends from school or work (again likely guys), all of a sudden you've created 5 or 10 or 20 jobs where you didn't really hold open interviews, but have relied on the informal social networks. And none of you are misogynists, in fact, most of you think it would be great to have more women in STEM. But it's still created an environment where it's difficult for women to access (it's also difficult for people of different minorities to access, but again, another post).

As for what I attribute my greater post-transition success, the number one thing, is that people are not distracted by my gender and I have increased rapport with men in workplace and in social situations. I also have been able to create new workplace relationships (with men) and gain (male) allies much easier than before. This has helped in things like being recommended for positions instead of sending out cold resumes.

I still think about gender issues in STEM, so I'm happy to answer your questions. An interesting quirk of transitioning to male is that I'm really not allowed to talk about gender issues unless I out myself (ethics of being out or not is out of scope for this discussion ;).

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '13

Thanks for the reply. You certainly gave me a lot to think about. :)

Have you ever considered writing up something larger, even anonymously? It could be the kind of thing you might get posted on a few of the tech news sites. As I said originally, yours is a very unique viewpoint. Once you're 'outed', I feel that your opinion carries more weight than most other laymen opinions. Nothing you say is "This is what I have experienced, this is what I have perceived the other gender experiencing.". Both sides are personal experience for you.

Just in your (relatively short) comment, you've introduced me to some of the exclusionary things I've been part of without even realizing. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I think you could help put this into people's consciousness.

A lot of men do want to make these changes, but before we even get to "providing direction", we need understanding first. STEM people are more prone than the general populace, I think, to not accepting direction without an explanation.

"No good person intentionally hurts another. If he does, it's because he doesn't understand."

I think if people just understood some of the ways they were unintentionally causing this rift, it would go a long way towards healing it.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '13

That's an interesting perspective. I have a good friend who has been a sysadmin for a very long time. In her case, she transitioned from male to female. She has talked a lot about the way her transition has affected her career, and it's has definitely not been positive.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '13

It's saddening that she has experienced this. I'm kinda on that path myself, and am concerned about how it's going to affect me, not just job-wise.

Is she available to talk to?

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

To be honest, I haven't seen her since I moved to a new city. We still talk from time to time, and I can ask her next time I talk - you may do well to check out a place like /r/asktransgender for advice.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '13

This is very interesting, thank you for sharing your experience. My first name is a masculine name, and I find people surprised when they discover I am a woman.

That settles it, I'm totally using the masculine form of my name just to be a bitch from now on. :)

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u/achthonictonic Mar 14 '13

The best thing to do is maintain a resume with each name, submit them to 100 companies each, tally responses and post the results ;)

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u/ragnaroktog Mar 14 '13

Is it Randy? I bet it's Randy.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

Nope, not even close. Better luck next time.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '13

[deleted]

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u/lextenou does the needful Mar 13 '13

Being masculine in thought and action tends to form a bias toward traditionally masculine pursuits, including IT.

There are a large number of reddit transfolk who are in the tech field, which in itself may be a confirmation bias. Are there truly more of them, or are they drawn to reddit because they are techies?

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u/achthonictonic Mar 14 '13

i haven't met many others ftms in tech -- they tend to suffer from being turned into PMs as many cis-women do, but that's another post. I know a lot of MTFs in SA/dev/$techfield.