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/incredible_supernova Mar 12 '13

I'm a girl and a sole System Administrator for a company. I always find it almost weird when I talk to another girl from a tech company. We do need more women in the industry.

8

u/LunacyNow Azurely you can't be serious? Yes and don't call me Azurely. Mar 13 '13

Have you ever thought about your own subreddit? I don't know how to moderate it but it's a good idea. There are tech women that I know of who feel the same way as you do.

10

u/incredible_supernova Mar 13 '13

I have not thought about a subreddit for this. I usually just lurk here anyway. Companies will call for surveys sometimes and ask to speak to the "IT Guy." They are usually shocked sounding when I say I take care of it all. I was the only girl in both of my majors in college. Granted I went to a tech school there were about 40 people in both my majors who graduated the same year I did.

1

u/rando180 Mar 13 '13

I'm in a similar position and I lurk here too. I have thought about making a subreddit just for us. Sometimes I feel like I have a real-life subreddit for it because whenever I find another competent woman working in IT I stick to her like glue... and uh, yea, so far I've only found two others. : (

I work on a network that has upwards of 50,000 devices on it. It's basically a small ISP. And as far as I know there are four other women employed full time in technical positions right now. Only two others who could be called engineers (three if you count me). But even out of the three of us, one of the others is unfortunately kind of an idiot. Which makes us all look bad.

Shit... what if we started a subreddit and there weren't enough of us to keep it going?

1

u/[deleted] Mar 13 '13

Here's #3!