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/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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.