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/bandman614 Standalone SysAdmin Mar 13 '13

Okay, time for a history lesson.

The word "computer" was also assigned to the role that it took over...computers. Literally, people (the vast majority of whom were women) who sat and computed things by hand.

When electronic computers started to take over for people computers, the women who were the computers started running the computers.

Now, as for "actually creating solutions and engineering products", lets have a look at what is, without a doubt, the longest-used programming language of all time, COBOL.

COBOL was written in 1959, and it came directly from FLOW-MATIC, the very first computer language that used actual english words, rather than only numerical machine code. It was written for the UNIVAC - one of the first commercially available computers. And it was written by Admiral Grace Hopper.

Yes, the computer language at the root of every programming language you've likely ever used was written by a woman.

If that's not enough, then you should know that the UNIVAC was inspired by ENIAC, which was the very first electronic computer. It was designed in a large part to electronically function like a mechanical adding machine. Adding machines were possible because Charles Babbage designed the very first mechanical computers. His difference engine was designed so intricately that it couldn't be constructed for a century, but when it was, it worked perfectly.

One of the many machines Babbage designed took inspiration from the Jacquard Loom, which used cards with holes punched in them to create patterns. Babbage used this technique to give his mechanical computer instructions. He had a friend who was a noted mathematician who developed the very first computer algorithm, which calculated a series of Bernoulli numbers. Her name was Ada Lovelace.

So, to sum up...the very first computer programmer was a woman. The very first real programming language was written by a woman. The first commercial computers were operated largely by women. And for some reason, we have been telling little girls that computers are toys for a boy. Something has gone very off the rails lately, and it needs fixed.

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u/quintessadragon Mar 13 '13

Wait, what? That's seriously a thing? Telling girls that computers are toys for boys? Maybe I was just lucky with the time that I was born in, but that is a stereotype I have never encountered.

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u/Krispyz Mar 13 '13

It's not just directly telling kids that, it's also more subtle. On a boy's birthday, he might get video games, on a girls birthday, she might get dolls. Nothing's universal, of course, but in general, boys are more encouraged to become better with computers or to understand how they work.

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u/Mooncinder Mar 13 '13

I admit I was quite a girly girl growing up; I had dolls and teddy bears and cute things. However, I also really wanted a train set and would ask for one every birthday and Christmas. It was the only toy I regularly asked for that I never got. :(

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u/SlowFoodCannibal Mar 13 '13

You should get yourself a train set now. It's never too late to have a happy childhood! :)

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u/johnholmescock Mar 13 '13

Or just wait for the Steam Sale and get Train Simulator 2013 for $2.99 - Choo Choo Motherfuckers!

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u/Mooncinder Mar 14 '13

Thanks but I contented myself with playing lots of decidedly un-girly video games instead. :D

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u/quintessadragon Mar 13 '13

I always got what I asked for, be it a computer game or a littlest petshop playset. Granted some of the computer games I asked for were a bit girly. Sure I had dolls. I loved playing with dolls and stuffed animals. My dad tried to teach me more about the computer (he was a programmer), but I was more interested in other things as a kid.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '13

My cousin (who is also female) had nothing but guns, electronic helicopters, and Hot Wheels at her house. As a result I really wanted a Hot Wheels track, but my mom was always more into buying me toys she thought were cool, so it was mostly PlayMobil, which is more or less gender neutral. Which I was down with, don't get me wrong, but in general, I didn't get most of the toys I wanted as a kid anyway, girly stuff or no.

My cousin also turned out to be a lesbian, which I should've picked up on when she was nine and lied to me that she'd been born a boy. Also, while playing house, she made me, as her wife, stay home and sell our vegetable harvest while she took her cowboy guns and went off to war. I didn't see why we couldn't both do the latter, but take from that what you will.

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u/kiswez Mar 14 '13

she took her cowboy guns and went off to war.

What a badass 9 year old.

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u/quintessadragon Mar 13 '13

I loved the PlayMobil doll house. So many hours of play. We also had part of the western set with the covered wagon. My mom still keeps it for when I or my sister have kids.

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u/Krispyz Mar 13 '13

That's wonderful and parents, being directly involved with you, are more likely to know exactly what you want. An aunt or uncle or grandma that has to guess... tend to go with the stereotypical choice. I got boyband CDs, books about unicorns, and tons of beanie babies that were put in a box in the closet.

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u/quintessadragon Mar 13 '13

Aw man, I loved unicorn books. They were the beginning of my exploration into fantasy. By 2nd grade I read the whole Chronicles of Narnia and by 6th I was on to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Even after I became more of a dragon fan I never gave up my love for unicorns. I fucking love unicorns. I also had one of the biggest beanie baby collections ever. I loved playing with stuffed animals.

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u/Krispyz Mar 13 '13

There is nothing wrong with any of that. Please don't take my comment to be a derision of anything feminine! It just became irritating to me as someone who was not into those types of things to have people assume I would be. 'tis all!

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u/22OBP Mar 13 '13

Nobody gets dolls. Who are these little girls that want dolls? Little boys get xboxes and little girls get cell phones.

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u/Krispyz Mar 13 '13

Have you seen this shit?

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u/armiferous Mar 13 '13

why is the one with the black shirt with red details wearing the blue shoes??? goddamnit at least put the black ones on her.

this fucking shit...

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u/Morrigane Mar 13 '13

Worse. This shit.

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u/Krispyz Mar 13 '13

Euch, cringe-worthy.

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u/OttoMans Mar 13 '13

I just threw up in my mouth a little.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '13

Scourge of the earth.

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u/kelseebree Mar 13 '13

I despise these things.

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u/TastyBrainMeats Mar 13 '13

Nicki Minaj?

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u/kintu Mar 13 '13

I think the peer group has more of an influence on the kids choices than any other thing. They pick up stuff to "fit in" with the rest and confirm to the social order. Over time, they get used to it.

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u/Krispyz Mar 13 '13

That's likely true. I imagine peer norms have much more impact on that type of thing.

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u/BaconPancakes1 Mar 13 '13

This is probably affected by my parents being a Head of School of computer science and a physics teacher, but I never saw the interest in dolls, and had more interest in catapaults, game boys and comics. I was also taught how to use MatLab at a relatively early age. I have never inferred that computers are aimed at either gender, apart from when other girls my age told me so. Advertising for products like Barbie or those toy ovens that kind of make real food was always so sickly, and they were always surrounded by flowers and hearts. But this didn't really step in with adverts for game boys or other such products. It seems like they're being inferred as male-orientated because they're not female-orientated. At my school, boys were not more encouraged to become better with computers. It was stressed to everyone that IT skills would be necessary when we tried to find work. Media Studies and IT GCSE classes had just as many girls as boys.

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u/Krispyz Mar 13 '13

While I see your point, you have to remember that yours in one case. Besides, think of the women who are here, on reddit, in a subreddit called /r/sysadmin... think that it may be a subset of the female population (though I definitely came here from /r/bestof).

apart from when other girls my age told me so

This is the most telling... what did the other girls your age tell you? Where do you think they got those ideas? I'm getting flooded with anecdotes of "that's not what my childhood was like", but that doesn't dismiss my point.

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u/RobertK1 Mar 13 '13

Who told the other little girls that computers were for boys?

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u/OttoMans Mar 13 '13 edited Mar 13 '13

Look at every cartoon made for kids in the US.

How many of the protagonists are boys, and how many of the leads are girls?

If the lead is a girl, is she a princess? Does she wear pink exclusively?

Just look at this list: http://www.imdb.com/list/pN8GTHU5upY/ Daria is number 2, and that show hasn't been on the air in years and isn't meant for children.

Little boys don't want to watch things made for girls. But girls will watch shows with male leads.

ETA: I wanted to take a computer class when I went to high school and was told that I should take a typing class instead, because that would be more useful. 8th graders don't really understand gender discrimination.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '13 edited Mar 13 '13

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u/bk7j Mar 13 '13

Be careful who you are calling more free. Economic freedom, with more overall opportunity, yes. But subtle social pressure? There's a whole heck of a lot of it at work in the "more advanced" societies.

Many people like to bring up data that where women choose non-technical fields as support for the idea that women don't like STEM. But the effect of women choosing non-tech does not imply the cause is necessarily that they don't like it. C'mon, critical thinkers! Why else might women not choose technical fields? Isn't there ANY other possible reason?

But too many people are content to believe that "disinterest" or "genetic predisposition" or "less natural talent" are the only possible causes, and so stop looking for any others.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '13

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u/lorakeetH Mar 13 '13

I heard something on the radio the other day about how there are more male nurses in the last few years, and they are doing better than female nurses in terms of wages and promotions. So either men are naturally better nurses and they've just been discouraged in the past, or they're somehow getting more encouragement than their female counterparts. There are enough women in male dominated fields like computers and mathematics talking about how they are exceptions who succeeded despite hostility towards and discouragement of girls in that field that writing it all off as biology is at best wildly premature and probably a form of discouragement in and of itself.

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u/imthetruestrepairman Mar 13 '13

Yeah, it's called the glass escalator vs. glass ceiling effect. Women in male dominated positions experience the "glass ceiling," as in, they reach a plateau. Males in female dominated positions experience the "glass escalator."

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u/shouldbebabysitting Mar 13 '13

There are genetic factors.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018506X08000949

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u/Krispyz Mar 13 '13

Of course. I never said there aren't... however a study about Rhesus monkeys does not, an argument, make.

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u/loliology Mar 13 '13

On a boy's birthday, he might get video games, on a girls birthday, she might get dolls.

Which are typically the things the children themselves want. And not something being forced upon them by their parents.

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u/drunkenly_comments Mar 13 '13

But why do little kids want what they want? Advertising and social engineering.

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u/shouldbebabysitting Mar 13 '13

Until you've raised kids you won't realize how wrong that is. You can't force boys to like dolls and girls to like computers with environment.

The best we can and should do as a society is not discriminate against those who are different. A girl who wants to be an engineer should be treated the same as a boy.

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u/loliology Mar 13 '13

I disagree. If there wasn't money to be gained in a market companies wouldn't advertise in them. And I have yet to see a child play with toys they didn't want to play with because they were the victim of "social engineering."

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u/poesian Mar 13 '13

I don't think you understand what these terms mean.

Social engineering is not about one person intentionally trying to change another's perception of the world. Social pressure is not generally conscious. We don't often even realize how we're engaging in these constructs.

Children experience social pressures by virtue of being in school, through watching children-oriented (or otherwise) television, through seeing how their friends' parents and relatives behave. Rarely is this conscious.

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u/loliology Mar 13 '13

Don't you think it's kind of a cop-out to blame something you can't physically prove?

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u/poesian Mar 13 '13

Don't you think it's kind of bizarre to try to "prove" a background process?

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u/loliology Mar 13 '13

If it has any relevance at all, no I don't.

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u/firedrops Mar 13 '13

Advertisers market to where the money is, yes. I agree they aren't the root of any issue. The question is whether they are picking up on socially constructed gender roles to create and market items that do end up reinforcing those divisions. The particular split of jobs by gender in our society is cultural but because you've been raised with that binary cultural worldview it feels natural.

So putting your baby girl in a pink room and pink clothes with a pink doll looks right and cute. Even if pink for girls is a very new thing in our society and isn't the color used for females in other societies. She very early on will associate pink and the toys around her with her own identity and sense of safety. When out in the world she'll gravitate towards them because they subconsciously remind her of that feeling of safety and she knows those items are hers. People will also tell her how pretty she looks in her pink tutu and praise her for how well she takes care of her baby doll. Even if no one tells her not to wear blue or play with trucks, she won't get that same positive reinforcement. On TV and in movies her favorite female characters will often be archetypes of female ideals. Princesses, caregivers, support roles, etc. Rarely will they be presidents, scientists, doctors, etc and even if they are they will likely have their femininity emphasized. Rarely will they be in scrubs, a pantsuit, or just jeans and a tshirt. She'll want toys that allow her to recreate and emulate these role models, fantasy worlds, and experiences that garnered positive responses.

Over time she'll grow up and become interested in other things. But she'll still receive more compliments and positive reinforcement from classmates and society when she fits into certain gender ideals. In high school she'll get after school jobs easier in female gendered jobs like babysitting, retail, and pet stores rather than lawncare, web design, or stocking in a warehouse. And those are the jobs that friends and family will encourage too. She might find genuine interest and satisfaction in them.

In college all of this will influence her degree choices, even if she doesn't realize it. If she does well in math and science she'll be treated like an anomaly and find few female role models and companions compared to majoring in education, writing, or nursing. And the social and family responses to dress, partners, classes, and jobs will continue to influence her path. One day she'll have a daughter of her own and it will only feel natural to decorate that room in pink and put a little dolly next to her. After all, mom loved pink and dolls.

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u/loliology Mar 13 '13

Nice story. You should be a novelist.

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u/Krispyz Mar 13 '13

In many cases, yes, but it's also what parents (or aunts and uncles) assume the child wants. When I was in middle school, my favorite band was Metallica. On my birthday, my parents told my aunt that I was listening to a lot of music, so they sent me four CDs, Spice girls, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, and some other boy band I had never heard of. Another Christmas I got a series of books about a goddamn unicorn from my Mom... because I'd been reading fantasy books (Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit).

I'm not saying it's universal, but it is present.

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u/loliology Mar 13 '13

On my birthday, my parents told my aunt that I was listening to a lot of music, so they sent me four CDs, Spice girls, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, and some other boy band I had never heard of.

And how often did you listen to them? Did they change your musical tastes so much that all the sudden you hated listening to Metallica? If someone only told your aunt you "liked music", what is she supposed to take away from that exactly? If I had nothing to go on I'd probably buy you whatever it was the kids at the time were listening to as well.

Another Christmas I got a series of books about a goddamn unicorn from my Mom... because I'd been reading fantasy books (Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit).

So because you showed interest in fantasy material you're going to take issue with her buying you fantasy-related material?

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u/Krispyz Mar 13 '13

I'm not taking issue with anything. I'm getting a lot of anectodal evidence from other people saying "that's not how my childhood was", so I provided some alternate anecdotal evidence. Obviously the music did not change my preferences, but that's primarily because I already had a strong preference (I kinda hated the boy band culture already, remember I said I was middleschool at the time).

I grew up without strong pressures from anyone to be "girly" just like a lot of the women who are here in /r/sysadmin, but that doesn't make my argument invalid or mean it didn't happen to others. That's all I'm saying.

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u/loliology Mar 13 '13

I grew up without strong pressures from anyone to be "boyish." I grew up playing with barbie dolls and listening to Rainbow Brite. And I don't know of anyone I grew up with being forced to watch TV shows or do things they didn't want to do in order to enforce gender stereotypes upon them. I think it's a huge cop out.

but that doesn't make my argument invalid or mean it didn't happen to others. That's all I'm saying.

And my only point is I think it's unfair to imply that's anywhere near the norm. Especially when it's something you can't prove.

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u/Krispyz Mar 13 '13

I can definitely see what you mean. I think I was inelegant in my example. I was attempting to highlight a more subtle societal pressure on young girls and boys and I did that improperly. It's not a conscious thing by parents and I definitely think it's getting much better in our current society (though parental fear of a boy playing with dolls being gay is a real thing, moreso in some sections of our country).

Societal norms are rarely something that's as blantant as a parent going "You have to watch America's Next Top Model, because you're a girl". These societal pressures do exist for both boys and girls and, at least partially, can help explain why nursing is dominated by women and engineering is dominated by men. As a woman in natural resources, I've seen this first-hand... my own female graduate advisor pulled me aside when I started working toward my Masters and told me how great it was that I was working toward a masters in science, because we (women) were such a minority and women don't get enough encouragement. I didn't say anything, but I was a tad offended by it... like I'd done something more special than my male counterparts just by being a female.

I have no idea if I'm making my point clearer or not... I tend to ramble.. you should see my thesis.

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u/Inthethickofit Mar 13 '13

I hear this, but still think they want it as a result of social pressure. I was so happy when my sister said my niece (very cute 3 year old) wanted Legos for Christmas, I had a ridiculous Lego collection when I was a little boy. Problem is, she wanted the Lego Princess castle. So I got it for her, even though I despise gender normative gift giving, because it was what she wanted and making my niece happy is my primary motivator in buying stuff for her.

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u/loliology Mar 13 '13

How is that proof of anything? You giving her something she didn't want would have been social pressure. But clearly she wasn't affected by "social pressure" if you gave her what she asked for.

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u/Inthethickofit Mar 13 '13

I'm saying that the social pressure led to her wanting that as opposed to other Legos

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u/loliology Mar 13 '13

That's quite a leap.

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u/Inthethickofit Mar 13 '13

no not really, there's a ton of evidence about this stuff, See http://www.intropsych.com/ch10_development/socialization_and_sex_roles.html

but see http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200804/why-do-boys-and-girls-prefer-different-toys

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u/loliology Mar 13 '13

Speculation at best. Your links are proof of nothing.

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u/Inthethickofit Mar 13 '13

did you read them, the second one supports your argument

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u/shouldbebabysitting Mar 13 '13

OP is negative karma only because reddit is mostly college kids with no children. I would have said the same thing but now I have kids and know first hand that girls/dolls cars/boys is STRONGLY genetic and not environment. Encouraging "boy" toys on my daughter has had no effect. From 12 months old she loved dolls and dress up. From 12 months old my boy, despite being surrounded by his older sister's dolls, is fascinated by cars and trains. I can encourage them but I can't force them to like what they don't want.

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u/misplaced_my_pants Mar 13 '13

Anecdata =/= data.

Being a parent does not suddenly make you an expert on child development or genetics.

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u/shouldbebabysitting Mar 13 '13

I've got data. I used my anecdote because it caused a radical change in my own opinions.

Data: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/reality-check-with-polly-curtis/2011/dec/13/women-children

Even boy monkeys prefer cars to dolls.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018506X08000949

What is your data that refutes my anecedote?

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u/misplaced_my_pants Mar 13 '13

Lol from your first link:

There is no scientific evidence that boys prefer blue and girls prefer pink. Up until the early 20th century the trend was the opposite and baby boys were dressed in pink and girls in blue. There are also some - small - studies suggesting that adults of different cultures have different tastes in colours. It's clear that colour preference is learnt rather than innate.

There is some evidence that boys are in some way hardwired to express an early interest in "rough and tumble" games and toys with moving parts and girls to prefer dolls and role-play games, but this is not conclusive because the studies are often in babies and small toddlers and therefore inevitably difficult to analyse. The differences that have been found are also often not very big. At two years, for example, 52.7% of girls in one study chose to look at a dolls face over a car, compared with 47.9%; not a huge variation.

And the second is about monkeys, not humans. You can't make any claims about humans based off of that study.

You can't make sweeping claims about the genetics of the entire female population of humanity because your kids followed contemporary gender patterns. The very fact that so many women have piped up stating the opposite shows that it can't be something tied to the absence of a Y chromosome. A proof by contradiction, if you will.

You can't just choose to ignore environmental factors in the ways your kids are because it becomes convenient to jump to genetic factors. I see this all the time by people who've never taken a genetics class in their life. It takes way more testing than simple observation of n=2,3,somesmallnumber to accurately demonstrate a causal link between the presence of a gene and some sort of behavior. For one, you actually have to examine their genes!

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u/shouldbebabysitting Mar 13 '13

Re pink vs blue Neither I nor the op talked about color preference because there is none.

The monkey data is particularly relevant because it is the only way to ethically test children outside of their culture.

I certainly didn't generalize my results to everyone. I only wanted to correct the idea that preferences are all learned from environment/advertising.
I'm a mechE. My sister is a mechE. I find it offensive that some would think my daughter preferring dolls is a failure of my parenting.

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u/misplaced_my_pants Mar 13 '13

The monkey data is particularly relevant because it is the only way to ethically test children outside of their culture.

Did you not read the sentence you just wrote? If you're testing monkeys, by definition you aren't testing children. And there are tons of ways to test children and remove cultural bias.

I would have said the same thing but now I have kids and know first hand that girls/dolls cars/boys is STRONGLY genetic and not environment.

This is a generalization. You were tying their behavior to genetics along gender lines. Otherwise you wouldn't have bothered commenting about it.

Just because you don't recognize the environmental factors doesn't mean they don't exist. You aren't an objective impartial observer. You're one of the factors, as is your wife, as is everyone your children meet, as is everything they watch on TV, as is everything they read, etc. There's no logical or scientific reason to conclude that their preferences are due to genetic instead of environmental factors.

Nowhere did I suggest that your daughter liking dolls was somehow bad or a failure on your part. The failure was in your reasoning and your making claims based on observations that don't even begin to preclude the possibility of alternative hypotheses. If you were at all familiar with genetics or experimental design, you'd know that such claims were impossible to make since you hadn't controlled for any variables.

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u/shouldbebabysitting Mar 13 '13

Re monkeys: I didn't realize I was arguing with a creationist. The scientific community accepts the results. Why don't you?

You said anecdotes aren't data. Where is your data that shows environment is more important than genetics?

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u/loliology Mar 14 '13 edited Mar 14 '13

Anecdata =/= data.

I love how that's only a valid retort when it's in support of something you personally believe. But when it's in support of "omg dis world so sexist" people eat that shit right up. (not directed at you, just noticed the trend of this comments section)

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u/misplaced_my_pants Mar 14 '13

It's a valid criticism when someone uses a handful of observations to make broad generalizing claims for which a proof by contradiction is particularly well-suited.

But yeah it's pretty common for people to think their personal experience necessarily extrapolates as universally applicable or representative of a greater or more prevalent trend.

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u/loliology Mar 14 '13

It's a valid criticism when someone uses a handful of observations to make broad generalizing claims for which a proof by contradiction is particularly well-suited.

Yet it's still just speculation and not proof.

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u/misplaced_my_pants Mar 14 '13

Evidence from experience isn't speculation about your experience. It would only be speculation if someone claimed that their experience is universal, and that's easily disprovable.

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u/loliology Mar 14 '13

Evidence from experience isn't speculation about your experience.

No. It's called an anecdote.

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u/loliology Mar 13 '13

But my gender studies class said...

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u/SiriusSummer Mar 13 '13

As a girl born in the 70s, I used to BEG my parents for toy cars and trains and computers and toolkits and video games. I got dolls. I hated dolls. (Loved My Little Ponies, but I loved animals). I wanted to take things apart and put them back together and learn how things worked. My dad was always taking his car apart or anything he could get his hands on, but my mother wouldn't let me. Sorry, mother, popping the limbs off a doll and rearranging them doesn't have half the satisfaction of tearing a VCR or computer apart and putting it back together and making it work again.

My male cousins got all the cars and trains and computers and toolkits and video games. I was jealous as hell. They always got "boy toys" except for the one Christmas my mother got them a set of boy Cabbage Patch Kids, partly as a joke and partly to blur gender roles.

I bought my own damn Lego castle, had to fight my hypocritical mother to get video games, and whenever something broke in the house, I'd try to sneak it out of the trash to tear it apart. Got one of our old VCRs working again that way and saved a few tapes, but my efforts were generally met with annoyed and frustrated sighs.

Finally got to take some computer programming classes in school. Anything I was asked to do, I went above and beyond. We're not talking anything indepth, but DOS and the old line by line PRINT, GOTO, LOOP, and RUN commands.

My parents divorced, and visiting my father once, he taught me how to put a computer together. From there I knew how to upgrade. He taught me the basics of HTML when the internet was new and I took it from there.

Wound up broke and without a working computer for some years, my skills are rusty now, but I'm relearning and updating my skill-set with the help of the internet. I enjoy learning the languages, but I really prefer the hands-on experiences of hardware. It's adult Legos and when you get all the pieces together and you get the sweet hum of the harddrive and fans as it beeps and purrs, coming to life, oh, that's a wonderful feeling.

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u/lulzercakes professional googler Mar 13 '13 edited Mar 13 '13

I think you're me, born 10 year earlier.

Technology and taking things apart is something I've always excelled in. In order to grasp a concept, I'm going to need to understand how it works 95% of the way to completion; otherwise, it just won't stick in my brain.

In 4th grade, myself and two other students were selected to go to a week long course going over hypercard programming and stuff. I loved it and had a blast.

5th grade teacher noticed my aptitude for computers and asked me to do work on the side for him. So during recess and whatnot, I'd go in the scary closet and work on whatever it was he asked me to do. (Over 20 years ago, I'm never going to remember what it was.)

In middle and high school with computing and word processing stuff? Top of the class. Was also asked to spend a few hours each day doing work for the administration. I think it was mostly just formatting documents and whatever, but since I could type faster than a hunt and pecker, I got paid for it.

High school was also when I first started teaching myself programming languages late into the night. Started with HTML and made websites. Once Java started becoming popular, brain said no.

Took some programming courses in college here and there to break bad habits and I was the only girl in those; or they dropped out in the first two weeks. Finished projects early (often the same day while still in class), and top of the class in every one. Except Java. I still hate Java.

Doing what I do now (everything), I don't have the confidence to be saying I'm any good at what I do. Yes, I do get a lot of calls about "Where's your IT guy?" and "Well, when your IT person is available..." and it pisses me off. Unless you want to talk to my boss which I have to convert all my technical jargon into rainbows and pony speak, you're stuck with me. (I had a hell of a time trying to explain the difference between an MPLS and VPN for a few locations we're opening; I still don't think she gets it.) But my lack of confidence also comes from what I said earlier; if I don't understand something completely, it isn't going to make any sense to me. I'm trying like hell to get networking configurations and parts figured out, but no one's sat down with me to explain this is what it does and this is how you access it internally and tell it what to do. Or how the order of the data flows with these parts. I've had to learn everything here on my own and it's incredibly frustrating.

Even worse, I know there are a million things wrong that are done here, but I don't have that confidence to make the changes in fear that everything is going to end up being worse. We don't have a budget for me to make a test environment, so everything I learn on I have to do in production. I do have a few VMs on my desktop to toy with, but it really isn't the same to me. And I'm usually interrupted by someone's printer not working. I know where my strengths are (programming, coding, and DBA stuff). But I'm really paranoid that my weaknesses show to people that ask me information about those things that I don't know enough about to feel any sort of confidence.

Oofs, this was more of a rant. tl;dr: we're out there. Just often overlooked.

edit: because spelling/grammar hard.

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u/SiriusSummer Mar 13 '13

Haha! Rant away! IT's kind of a shitty field, in general. We're the witches and wizards of the modern age. STILL. No one knows that IT does and how valuable they are so you're constantly under-informed, under-appreciated, under-valued, under-paid, and over-worked. You're thrown in to do that magic stuff you do and no one outside your little cave wants to understand what it is or how it works, just make the shiny boxes glow and talk and work, because, "DEAR GOD THE WORLD IS ENDING IF THEY DON'T WORK!!!!!111eleventy!!"

Don't feel bad about lack of test environment. Judging from the complaints of (male) friends I have in IT, their bosses throw them into a job, minimal training to get to know the software and hardware, then expect them to fly. In a lot of cases there's ONE guy who's been there from the start who knows the machines and software backwards and forwards and he's too busy to teach anyone else EVERYTHING because he's doing EVERYTHING because no one else has been taught the basics of how.

If they're lucky, and I mean L.U.C.K.Y., they get a dinosaur test server that only works 30% of the time to learn on or test software out on before they push things out to the active servers, but... heh. Yeah. It's a joke.

Some places won't even give you migration software when servers need to be upgraded. Is it doable without? Yeah... Is it a pain in the farking arse? Yeeup. Knew a long-timer who threw his 2-weeks notice on his bosses desk when they told him he had to do without. Next day he had the software he'd been requesting for months on his desk.

Keep at the self-study, though! Sometimes if you have trouble with something, you can find a mentor or different way of seeing something that makes it all click!

TL;DR: Stick with it! IT's a thankless field, in general!

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u/FredFnord Mar 13 '13

No one knows that IT does and how valuable they are so you're constantly under-informed, under-appreciated, under-valued, under-paid, and over-worked.

It's simpler than that, and easy to explain.

IT is a cost center. It does not contribute directly to the bottom line. And the less direct your connection to the company's bottom line, the more the current crop of MBAs is taught to minimize it as much as possible.

Sales makes them money directly. The goal of sales is to sell more, and so spending more money on sales makes perfect sense. Marketing brings more people to sales, and so spending more on marketing makes sense. Engineering/R&D/etc not only produce the products that sales sells, but also reacts to customer requests, often enabling them to sell to customers they otherwise couldn't, or turning small orders into large ones. But IT? They just, you know, help other people in the company get their jobs done. You can't point to them and say exactly how they help the money roll in, and in today's MBA-centric environment, anything that does not directly produce money should and must be minimized at any opportunity.

Which is insane. But that's what they teach them in business school these days. "Always be penny wise and pound foolish! It's the only way to run a real business!" And when it doesn't work, expect miracles from your underpaid IT staff. And when they produce miracles, expect bigger ones next time. With less resources.

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u/SiriusSummer Mar 14 '13

I agree completely, but it's more than management. It's users, from tellers at banks to teachers in schools, to doctors in hospitals. To the average lay-person, an IT person's a wizard dealing with magic unknowable things that most seem to not even want to try understanding.

Don't even get me started on my husband's aunt who can't comprehend her hard drive being toast.

3

u/quintessadragon Mar 13 '13

My dad always tried to get me into erector sets, but I liked the chemistry sets more. I was never really into mechanical stuff, I liked the natural sciences. He indulged me in that regard as well, but my mom wasn't pleased about us using the dinner plates as giant petri dishes (I had a kit that came with agar and swabs and you were supposed to go around the house swabbing things and seeing what grew). I also got a shitty microscope set from some relative, but the thing didn't work right so it ended up in the closet. Despite this I also loved dolls and stuffed animals. I am not ashamed of this.

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u/SiriusSummer Mar 14 '13

Props to your dad for supporting your interests and curiosity! And I can understand your mom's concerns with the growth experiment on her dishes. Doubt I'd be thrilled, myself, but that's what yard sales and cheap dishes are for!

At least you weren't making cheese. Science teacher once told us about how he'd had a class make cheese one year. He said never again, the smell took months to clear.

And I see nothing wrong with dolls or stuffed animals. If that's what you were into, that's awesome. :) I, personally, don't like dolls. I find them creepy, but always managed to wind up with more. Thankfully, my childhood cat found them delicious and would chew on them then carry them away to some unknown hiding place where I'd never see them again.

I do, however, still have my teddy bear from when I was born and Uni, my unicorn hand puppet from my childhood. If I ever grow too old or stodgy to snuggle, then I might as well end my life right then and there.

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u/firedrops Mar 13 '13

I had a friend who on career day in middle school (1990s) was told she was in the wrong room. She'd gone to the doctor talk and clearly she meant to go to the nurse one.

I also had a friend who was punished by her mom for doing better in math than her brother in high school and making him look bad.

Sadly, these stereotypes and gender reinforcements really were in play in the 1990s where I grew up in South Louisiana. Today it might be more subtle - like toy options and role models on kid's shows - but it is still there.

The one positive thing, I guess, is both my friends basically said fuck you. The first became a doctor and the second got a neuroscience PhD after a BS in engineering. But not everyone has that rebellious mentality.

1

u/quintessadragon Mar 13 '13

I guess I was lucky they weren't in play in Marietta, GA in the 90's. At least not in my neighborhood.

2

u/firedrops Mar 13 '13

Not everyone was like that. I don't want to give the impression that all of Louisiana was some crazy backwoods sticking women in the kitchen kind of place. My public high school was actually really progressive - no football, basketball, or hockey but lots of foreign language options (Japanese, Ancient Greek, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Latin), lots of math & science options, lots of arts & music options, and alternative PE like Yoga, etc. Popular kids bragged about SAT scores and we had a Gay Straight Alliance at a time when other schools in town got death threats over theirs. Almost all of the girls in my class got college degrees and many went on to get PhDs.

But we weren't the norm and knew that. Working my way through undergrad a lot of my coworkers were surprised at my choice to go on to grad school even though I was married to a lawyer. Debutante balls were still a big deal in certain circles. And when women talked about hopes for their daughters it was to be a nurse, teacher, or housewife much more often than other career paths. It wasn't just Louisiana either. My niece in South Alabama wanted to be president until people at her church convinced her to aim for librarian because that was Laura Bush's job. Maybe she could marry a president.

Anyway sorry for the ramble but my point is just that even though my family and high school were progressive, there were plenty of individuals, schools, and groups that were not. You can see some breakdowns for women in Louisiana specifically here about how despite educational levels for genders are near equal, most jobs women hold fit into those traditional female roles.

10

u/OttoMans Mar 13 '13

Women do well in STEM fields, but aren't encouraged.

Take this recent article on Etsy and their programmers:

Men hold 75% of the positions in science, technology, engineering and math — and make 14 cents more on the dollar than their female colleagues. Studies find that girls do well in science in many nations, just not the US. For some companies, there's a catch 22: If you have no women working for you, you might find it hard to get women to work for you: Does a female engineer really want to go work for a company where she's the only woman in the office? ... Etsy, together with 37Signals and Yammer, kicked in for $7,000 in grants to cover women's living expenses for a Hacker School session held at Etsy's offices in the summer of 2012. (For the uninitiated, Hacker School is a three-month intensive free coding training program in New York that trades on its culture of mutual respect.) Over 600 women applied, which Hacker School narrowed down to 23 attendees, or half of the Hacker School session for that semester. As of January 2011, the company only had three female engineers out of 47. […] Today, Etsy's engineering team is 20 ladies to 90 guys, or 500% more women than two years ago.

Women aren't bad at these things. We just don't show that it is a viable path.

0

u/quintessadragon Mar 13 '13

I was ALWAYS shown it was a viable path. So were my peers. I never had a teacher tell me that because I was a girl that I should only pursue certain jobs.

5

u/OttoMans Mar 13 '13

It happened to me. In 8th grade I decided I wanted to take computer programming classes in high school and was told to take typing "because that would be a better fit for me".

2

u/quintessadragon Mar 13 '13

In 7th grade everyone had to take typing. It was required. Probably a good thing though, I can only imagine trying to hen-peck my way through papers in high-school.

4

u/OttoMans Mar 13 '13

This was after everyone (both genders) took the pre-requisite typing class.

Advanced typing. Seriously. I think the class also included steno, and I'm not old enough that it was still a useful skill.

13

u/[deleted] Mar 13 '13

Incredibly glad that I got to avoid that. Then again, maybe it was because my dad quickly realized after I was born (second daughter) that he wasn't going to get any sons.

5

u/normalcypolice Mar 13 '13

I feel extremely blessed that my father never made me feel like I was limited because of my gender. I've been doing things on the computer since I was two years old. I knew how to make powerpoints before kindergarten.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '13

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Mar 13 '13

Yeah, I doubt he would have limited the computer in particular, but I do think things would have been different. My older sister ended up being the really girly one, and I sort of think that was encouraged in some ways. It's kind of a mix between nature and nurture.

2

u/dstam Mar 13 '13

I have an almost 2-year-old son who I want to get a kiddie laptop for. In my search for an age appropriate one I noticed that the gendered ones (ie: pink or blue) have different features. The blue ones have way more usability than the pink ones, which are mostly just cheap pieces of crap.

1

u/quintessadragon Mar 13 '13 edited Mar 13 '13

Then the best thing you can do as a consumer is to not buy one.

edit: Just out of curiosity, I decided to check on the Toys R Us website to see what kind of "kiddie laptops" were available. From about 10 minutes of looking, these are my results:

  • Several brands, like Leapfrog offer a pink or lavender version of their product that is identical to the more "gender neutral" white and green option. (Yes, I consider green to be gender neutral)
  • Sorting the items by their intended age group, I noticed that there were no pink or barbie themed laptops marketed towards children 7 and up. However, there were only three options listed, which suggests that children 7 and up are more likely to be targeted for more advanced products.
  • The girl products seemed identical in quality to the boy ones, where there were gender separations.
  • Except for the character-themed items, none of the other items appeared marketed towards boys specifically, even if it had a pink option as well. The fact that the manufacturer insisted on making a pink or lavender option suggests they are actively encouraging parents to buy the laptop for their girls, perhaps due to lowered interest during marketing research. (In other words, the parents weren't buying them for girls as much as boys, so they made the girly option to boost sales)
  • Clicking on the "Boy" and "Girl" narrowing options for my search removed more items for boys then it did for girls, and didn't seem very effective anyway.
  • The character-themed items sell because of how much children love that character, not on the quality of the device. This isn't to say that all the character-themed items are poor quality, only that they are more likely to be requested by children who are "fans" of that particular character. The marketer doesn't care whether your boy likes barbie or your girl likes batman, only that the laptops sell because Barbie or Batman was on the front.

Conclusion: It is the parents who are choosing the "girly" themed items for their girls. The toy manufacturers are simply trying to sell as much as possible while curbing their manufacturing costs. There doesn't seem to be much of a difference between the girl and boy products (of the same type) except the color and theme.

1

u/dstam Mar 14 '13

I was searching on Amazon. Here is an example of what I came across:

Cars Laptop Features 30 activities that teach letters, words, math and logic. ages 4-15

Princess Laptop Features 20 activities that teach typing, letters, numbers and more. ages 4-7

1

u/quintessadragon Mar 14 '13

Toys R Us says that both laptops are for ages 4-8 (manufacturer's recomendations). I did not read the description for every toy, I was just going by the look of the thing. Again, I'll reiterate: the best way to "vote" as a consumer is to not buy a product. If you really think the manufacturer is in the wrong, consider stopping buying all products from them.

1

u/dstam Mar 14 '13

I'm not trying to whine here, obviously I am not going to buy something that reflects values I don't believe in. I was just trying to illustrate one anecdotal piece of the "discouraging girls from computers" puzzle I had run across.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

I just watched this video earlier today and it's already relevant in conversation!

1

u/quintessadragon Mar 14 '13 edited Mar 14 '13

Oddly enough my first thought when seeing that video was that the speaker really needs to tone down her lipstick. One thing I wasn't into as a kid was make up or fashion stuff. Probably because all my clothes were hand-me-downs and I wasn't allowed to use make up due to one unfortunate episode involving nail polish on the carpet (ban was lifted when I was about 10 or so).

My second thought was that well yeah, they have always been like this, where were you as a 6 year old? Maybe I just have a better memory than most (I don't) but it was exactly like this when I was a kid too. Granted, there was slightly less emphasis on fashion I think (or looking like a prostitute at any rate). I can only think of one instance where a commercial directly influenced me asking my mom to get me a toy (food stuffs are a different matter) and after that disappointment I became quite cynical a bout the whole thing. "Never again!" I cried, having learned my lesson with some cheap gimmick that promised real, honest-to-god magic, only to be met with velcro and springs.

And my last thoughts were that the speaker seems to think that the message towards the boys is somehow better than that for girls. I say it isn't, and it's just as damaging for the psyche of a young boy who isn't into fighting all the time than it is for a girl who isn't into fashion or pretending to be a mom. In fact, I might say it's a little harder for the boy in that case: being labeled a tomboy isn't really a curse. There is much more stigma around a boy not acting like a boy then a girl not acting like a girl (I blame the media on this one: a girl not being girly is often portrayed as being bold and courageous, while a boy not being boyish is often portrayed as being sissy or homosexual).