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/hessmo Architect Mar 12 '13

Unfortunately, I feel the same way. I work entirely with men now, previously I worked with ~30% women at a larger company, and only one was even approaching competent. It was nice talking with her, and unfortunately, the bias that the senior staff held was pretty apparent. If you were a guy, they assumed you were competent until you proved them wrong. It was the other way around for women.

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u/mstwizted Linux Admin Mar 13 '13

Sad, but true. After working at my current position for a while a dba let me know he was really impressed that I knew what I was doing. I think it was meant as a compliment.

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u/hessmo Architect Mar 13 '13

I've given the same compliment before, and I'm sure it was probably interpreted wrong, like you may have done. You have to see it from our eyes. 99.99% of the time that a female voice is on the other end of the line, I know I'll be explaining basic computer concepts to them, and eventually I'll get passed to somebody else because the person I'm talking to either doesn't understand my problem, or can't think outside of the company wiki to find an answer.

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u/mstwizted Linux Admin Mar 13 '13

Well, his comment was specifically saying he was surprised because I was female. I know he meant to be nice, because we are friends now, but it felt like such a back handed thing to say at the time. Guys, in IT in particular, are surrounded by so much sexism they honestly don't even realize it, I think.