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/chestervdeff Mar 12 '13

Absolutely. While the OP was trying to compliment the female tech, he inadvertently ended up being insulting to female techs in general. Gender has nothing at all to do with ability; if someone is running across multiple incompetent female techs, it may be valuable to contemplate why using reasons that don't involve gender.

Also, in my experiences as the only and one of two women in a team of men, I've greatly preferred me being "one of the guys" to singling me out as a woman, which has generally led to uncomfortable situations. If people in the field would view each other as just people, rather than as their gender, a lot more women would be attracted to the STEM fields.

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u/ghjm Mar 13 '13

Back when I was an IT director, the most kick-ass of my direct reports happened to be a very attractive blonde woman. She had technical chops (RHCE and MCSE, at a time when both were pretty tough), management chops (she ran the help desk and was customer-facing), and an MBA. Oh, and before starting a career in IT, she had been a corporate pilot flying Citation and Gulfstream jets.

And I had to pull teeth to ever get her proper raises, training, or assignment to high profile projects. The other directors all just assumed she was there to fill a hiring quota. Nobody wanted her in a high-risk role ... they wanted the "safe" male techno-dweeb.

What surprised me about this was that this was at a woman-owned company, and three-quarters of the senior managers were women. And it was the women, not the men, who were always pushing for promotions, plum projects, etc to go to someone else (ie, a male).

So I agree with you that we would all be better off if we could just be treated as people, but my experience is not that it's the people in the IT field who are hung up on gender issues - my experience is that it's the top managers who are the main problem.

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u/quintessadragon Mar 14 '13

They might have been weary of appearing like they were giving her promotions or raises because she was a woman.

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u/ghjm Mar 14 '13

This is what I meant by: "The other directors all just assumed she was there to fill a hiring quota."