Cad
scientia potentia est
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I guess. I remember what my first few jobs were like but it was admittedly a long time ago.
What do you do?
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
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Noodleface
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Brahma
Obi-Bro Kenobi-X
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Lexington/Bedford/Burlington?
Now the small startups are headed toward the wharf.
Frenzied Wombat
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I'll be the first to admit that getting a decent IT position as a woman is tougher than other fields for the following reasons:
1) There are very few women to pick from
2) Those that you can pick from are usually "paper skilled" or "niche skilled" only. In other words they weren't the types building PC's when they were 13 that have a passion for IT, but instead just decided one day that they need a career, said "oh IT pays well", and signed up for ITT tech or some other shitty IT school.
3) Women can't/won't lift heavy shit, which is sometimes part of the job
4) Women are less likely to be willing/able to work crazy hours or be able to respond to a 3am page that a server is down
5) Most IT department's are "boy's clubs" that are used to communicating with each other like groups of men typically do. You bring a woman on board and you now have to behave.
6) From an evaluation/criticism standpoint, women are just generally a lot harder to deal with. I know male managers that give satisfactory performance reviews to sub-standard female employees just because they're not willing to deal with the drama/crying.
Of course most of all this admittedly goes out the window if she's hot and comes into the interview talking about how she hand-built her own 486 ten years ago and has her own Exchange cluster running at home, but in my twenty years experience I've never met such a unicorn.
1) There are very few women to pick from
2) Those that you can pick from are usually "paper skilled" or "niche skilled" only. In other words they weren't the types building PC's when they were 13 that have a passion for IT, but instead just decided one day that they need a career, said "oh IT pays well", and signed up for ITT tech or some other shitty IT school.
3) Women can't/won't lift heavy shit, which is sometimes part of the job
4) Women are less likely to be willing/able to work crazy hours or be able to respond to a 3am page that a server is down
5) Most IT department's are "boy's clubs" that are used to communicating with each other like groups of men typically do. You bring a woman on board and you now have to behave.
6) From an evaluation/criticism standpoint, women are just generally a lot harder to deal with. I know male managers that give satisfactory performance reviews to sub-standard female employees just because they're not willing to deal with the drama/crying.
Of course most of all this admittedly goes out the window if she's hot and comes into the interview talking about how she hand-built her own 486 ten years ago and has her own Exchange cluster running at home, but in my twenty years experience I've never met such a unicorn.
I honestly can't tell if Wombat's post is satire. The worst part is I don't think it's satire.
Frenzied Wombat
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Love it or hate it, it's an observation based on 20 years of working in IT across five different companies with hundreds of IT co-workers and employees.
Mist
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1) Okay.
2) I built my first PC when I was 13 and I had 6 years of IT experience before I went back to college because I was sick of IT. But this does explain how I went from resume to interview in 3 hours, and hiring letter in my inbox an hour after the interview. #UnicornsAreReal.
3) A large part of those 6 years of experience was academic computer lab deployments, so fuck off. Monitors were pretty fucking heavy in the 90s.
4) The largest part of my job is monitoring alarms for our customers, attempting to access and fix/triage/DR rollover remotely, or institute some other workaround, and if I can't, sending that 3am email or page or phone call, and then finding a technician who will get there ASAP.
5) Our company decided to just throw all the tier 1 customer service people and all the tier 1 and 2 technical people into the same smelly, windowless cubicle farm. All the women have since just given up on expecting the men to behave, and the room smells like pizza and socks.
6) I'll give you that. Because of how the calendar fell, my first annual review came up within the first 90 days of my job, and I almost quit when my supervisor gave me an average of 2.5s out of 4. But that was because he decided to grade me on the same rubric as everyone else on the team. My supervisor was also disappointed that my customer service skills are lackluster compared to the two other women on my shift, even though my technical skills are better than all but one of the men. That's what you get for hiring someone with a speech impediment to work in what is, at the most basic level, a call center.
2) I built my first PC when I was 13 and I had 6 years of IT experience before I went back to college because I was sick of IT. But this does explain how I went from resume to interview in 3 hours, and hiring letter in my inbox an hour after the interview. #UnicornsAreReal.
3) A large part of those 6 years of experience was academic computer lab deployments, so fuck off. Monitors were pretty fucking heavy in the 90s.
4) The largest part of my job is monitoring alarms for our customers, attempting to access and fix/triage/DR rollover remotely, or institute some other workaround, and if I can't, sending that 3am email or page or phone call, and then finding a technician who will get there ASAP.
5) Our company decided to just throw all the tier 1 customer service people and all the tier 1 and 2 technical people into the same smelly, windowless cubicle farm. All the women have since just given up on expecting the men to behave, and the room smells like pizza and socks.
6) I'll give you that. Because of how the calendar fell, my first annual review came up within the first 90 days of my job, and I almost quit when my supervisor gave me an average of 2.5s out of 4. But that was because he decided to grade me on the same rubric as everyone else on the team. My supervisor was also disappointed that my customer service skills are lackluster compared to the two other women on my shift, even though my technical skills are better than all but one of the men. That's what you get for hiring someone with a speech impediment to work in what is, at the most basic level, a call center.
Cad
scientia potentia est
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chaos
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idk, that has never been my experience. Everywhere I have worked has always been primarily male, of course. The whole industry is. But I have never seen or heard a woman get turned down.
our problem is always finding people, not turning people away. Especially not for dumb shit.
I really don't know what the market is like up in RI but everything about this sounds wrong. Seriously, we sometimes go months without filling spots because it is so hard to find IT people. Especially people who know wtf they are doing.
our problem is always finding people, not turning people away. Especially not for dumb shit.
I really don't know what the market is like up in RI but everything about this sounds wrong. Seriously, we sometimes go months without filling spots because it is so hard to find IT people. Especially people who know wtf they are doing.
Frenzied Wombat
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Where did you see me accusing you of fitting the "standard IT female" profile? I already know full well based on your postings that you built PC's when you were a teen, have real IT experience, and weren't churned out of some IT technical school.
I was just stating that women have it tougher than guys in the IT world for the reasons I provided, not that you "fit" that mold.
Trust me, if some cool chick sauntered in for an interview that talked about her *true* love for IT and didn't act like an emotional flower that would end up in HR complaining that one of my other staff said something sexist, I'd hire her in a heartbeat. But the reality is when I need to fill a position, maybe 10% of the resumes are female, and most are dogshit.
Noodleface
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Cad
scientia potentia est
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This is typical of Mist though. She's utterly superior to everyone in every way... except she can't get a decent job, can't move away from her mom, can't handle a relationship, etc... but when pushed on details, will brag how superior she is. So then when we act baffled that she's so superior yet gets such shit results, she'll claim it's all factors beyond her control, location, this one smarmy boss, cheap corporations, etc...
It's not the first time this has happened.
Mist
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I keep applying, but my search radius is fairly small and all the jobs in that search radius pay around the same rate. I will have more flexibility once I actually have my MS in hand and don't have to be close to the university. The university still hasn't figured out that I'm working this job while juggling the teaching requirements for my fellowship grant.
I'm going to keep applying for jobs, but I really don't want to continue working in IT unless its academic/education related IT. This private sector, squeeze-every-last-drop-of-labor-out-of-your-employees-until-they-burn-out shit is poop.
Mist
REEEEeyore
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I'm not going to disagree that I have a bunch of issues holding me back. I have a speech impediment and it gives me lots of anxiety about interviews, among many other issues. I don't have any IT certs. I really don't want to move far away from my mom until the house is paid off, and I'd definitely like to be as close as possible in case she needs emergency care. My people-skills still suck, and I feel this puts me at a disadvantage because employers look at women in IT and assume they have people-skills that counterbalance their lack of technical skills. There are definitely things I'm good at, but I certainly don't pretend to be superior 'in every way.'
My first boss at my internship had one of the worst stutters you've ever heard but he was also really smart and extremely nice. He didn't let it hold him back. You can succeed, especially in the IT field, with almost any physical disability.
chaos
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Certs are super easy to get and worth every penny. The catasses will tell you they are a waste of time, and that's true when you get to a certain level of the game. Any fool with a dick (or feminine substitute) can get a CCNA or CEH or MSwhateveritisnow. Do that, get job, collect loot.
edit: i don't mean to disparage certs or people who get them. They just really aren't difficult. You already like IT, it isn't like you have to cram about 18th century composers or something. Think or the certs as goals, you like X, you get a cert in X, so you have to master Y about X. Then you get a piece of paper that lets you do X for a living, anxiety or no.
edit: i don't mean to disparage certs or people who get them. They just really aren't difficult. You already like IT, it isn't like you have to cram about 18th century composers or something. Think or the certs as goals, you like X, you get a cert in X, so you have to master Y about X. Then you get a piece of paper that lets you do X for a living, anxiety or no.
Guarantee Mist's negative whiney personality is a self fulfilling prophecy. When someone is this negative to strangers about a job i can't imagine the coworker discussions. I'd throw her under the bus in every sense of the phrase if i had to listen to downer shit 8 hours a day
Frenzied Wombat
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Working IT in the academic/education arena blows. Pay is literally at the bottom of the industry spectrum, and you're treated like shit, especially if you're working for a public institution. You want to target small/medium businesses with maybe max 10-15 people in IT, preferably in the financial services or legal industries. Once you get XP in one of those fields, you immediately become super attractive to other companies in those industries. For instance, once you have E-discovery platforms and processes down to an art, every lawfirm will put your resume at the top of the pile.