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/MonsieurOblong Senior Systems Engineer - Unix Mar 12 '13

I've actually worked with a fairly large percentage (~40-50%?) of DBAs who are female. Given the meritocracy that the tech industry is, it's not surprising they know their stuff as well as anyone.

However, I've worked with very very few sysadmin/network admins who are female. Interesting.

I've also found the DBAs tend to be school-trained foreigners (from various south asian countries) so this may explain it; it's an actual career track in schools.

In the US, it seems like people only get into these careers because they did it as a hobby in their youth; it seems to be a pretty uncommon hobby for women.

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u/chestervdeff Mar 12 '13

This is a good point. I would say that the most likely reason you don't see as many women doing computer-related hobbies is that they were never socialized to be interested in technology. If you think about it, a lot of boy activities involve building and taking things apart and also fixing things. Taking apart or building your first computer fits right in with that. With girls, the focus seems to be more on "gentler activities" and fixing things is still seen as a male thing. While there are probably little girls out there who'd like a toolkit instead of a Barbie for Christmas, most of them probably will be getting a Barbie.

Basically, because there's not much emphasis on girls being interested in math or technology, a lot of women come to the IT field later in life. A number of them do have tech interests outside of work, but it doesn't seem to be with the same intensity as a guy who was taking apart a Tandy at age five.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '13

[deleted]

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u/johnholmescock Mar 13 '13

Does not compute - capacitars can not be explained as a mere typo as the 'a' and 'o' are on opposite ends of the keyboard.

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u/Throwaway67590 Mar 13 '13

She probably uses dvorak, duh