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Women Are Fleeing IT Jobs
Lucas123 writes "An alarming number of women are currently abandoning IT jobs that require workers to be on-call at all hours, according to a story in Computerworld. One study cited in the article states that by 2012, 40% of women now working in IT will leave for careers with more flexible hours. 'I think women in that regard are at a real disadvantage,' said Dot Brunette, network and storage manager at Meijer Inc., a Grand Rapids, Mich.-based retailer and a 30-year IT veteran. She noted that companies can fail to attract female workers, or see them leave key IT jobs, because they fail to provide day care at work, or work-at-home options for someone who leaves to have a child.'"
'I think women in that regard are at a real disadvantage,' said Dot Brunette, network and storage manager at Meijer Inc., a Grand Rapids, Mich.-based retailer and a 30-year IT veteran.
What a stupid name. Too bad she didn't get married to Jeff Matrix instead.
GMD
watch this
Why would companies want to attract people who aren't willing to accept the conditions of the job? If men in the same job are expected to be on call out of work hours, why should women get a free pass?
I thought we were supposed to have sexual equality, not special treatment for women.
The cynic in me says "Why would they care? They'll just outsource a lot of those jobs anyway."
The other side of me says "I hope not" since I'm trying to find helpdesk work in a certain area so I can make a move, for personal reasons, later this year.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Dot Brunette? Seriously?
Sounds like a veiled reference to Marlo Thomas. "Hey look! It's dot brunette again!"
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I am not a woman. And frankly, I would LOVE to flee my IT jobs, ESPECIALLY because of the whole being on-call 24 hours, and all the after-hours work, etc. Yeah, I can move into Management, but at the price of selling even MORE bits of my life away. Honestly, if I had ANY skills other than the pretty small niche of IT I'm in, I'd be fleeing, too.
You ask me, women are fleeing IT because they're SMARTER.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
I hope you live in a state with either extremely-strict, or completely-nonexistent, gun-control laws.
I tend to wonder if this has more to do with women having higher employment standards than men do--I know in my current employer, it's consistently more difficult to find women willing to work night shifts than it is men.
And FWIW, I got an assoc and had a couple calls for a networking tech positions.... part-time hours, and on call at times--like evenings and weekends.
Ummm,,,,,, no thanks.
Stuck trying to live off an $8/hr job with no way to even well consider a second job? Nope, forget it.
I never did get a tech job. It was kinda a bummer at the time, but nowadays I don't worry about it that much.
~
WTF does gun control have to do with it? /b/ is down, and all is darkness.
What happened to all those jobs in which you can work at home with? The training that is supposed to support via phone/internet is supposedly right down this type of work. Its not like the boss has to look over your shoulder all the time. Furthermore all e-mails and other work is easily documented isn't it?
Fraklin Com
she could register mrs.com
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Women and men are different, we just think different and enjoy different things. Men tend to enjoy playing with the latest and greatest toys, and IT lends itself to playing with the latest and greatest toys. I really don't see that in most women. That's not to say that many women in IT don't enjoy the work, but something tells me lots of women in IT got into the field in the late 90's when any joe schmoe (or in this case jane schmoe) in IT could make money. Now that there's not quite as much money flowing, there's much less of an incentive to stay in a career they weren't enjoying to begin with.
Download free e-books, lectures, and tutorials at bookgoldmine.com
bad for us :(
You WOULD hope that you statist!
So the problem is that women in IT are on call at all hours, which means that cellphones have a lot to do with this. But it goes deeper than that: cellphones are also causing honeybees to disappear. Notice a pattern here?
These women are obviously going wherever the honeybees went: obviously, a peaceful cellphone-free land, populated with women and bees, a land of milk and honey, one might say.
I am not a sexist
Indeed. You are a moron.
...in IT jobs who've never seen a woman naked outside of an LCD screen.
I am in IT and I have to take on call. We rotate it. But we also get an extra bump when we are on call - whether we get called in or not. But sometimes we end up spending all night and all weekend having to fix stuff and that does get real old really fast. I had to miss my fiancee's sister's birthday because I was on call and got called in.
Now, management sees the on call pay as an expense they would like to cut. When/if they cut it, I think the on call response is going to get a lot worse. A lot worse.
"Oh, a double-disk failure? Darn..."
So, if we have a deficit of women in IT, how about we just give the H1-B's to women?
You do not see a whole lot of women in the construction business either. Not stereotyping but women don't fight for jobs they don't care anything about. I would LOVE to see at least 50% women mixed in at every job stratum but face it..there are some jobs women don't give a shit about and would rather fight for other lucrative positions.
I don't see an overwhelming majority of women fight for selective service either for that matter.
Seriously.
Leaving unrewarding jobs where they are treated like dirt at any hour of the day or night?
Sounds to me like women are just less willing to deal with the generally poor quality of the job and its compensation than men are.
(Never going back into IT. More money in better jobs with better hours and more respect.)
In other news, scientists finally prove women smarter than men. Film at eleven.
What kind of IT work require 24 hour on-call?
Women have the world by the balls.
In our sexist society (biased towards the female gender), they've never had it easier. They enjoy freedom of choice in the job market, or can opt to stay at home and raise children (or do both). They are perfectly free to use marriage and divorce as businesses, enriching their personal fortunes by doing nothing more than providing sex. They are allowed to manipulate men with sex and tears to get whatever they want. They have been granted permission to usurp traditional male jobs yet still -- with bold-faced hypocrisy -- expect men to finance their social lives. They can choose to serve in the military without fear of losing their lives in combat. They expect to be able to denigrate the male gender and treat men like emotional punching bags without protest. They force men to endure "sensitivity training" to pressure them into becoming more like women.
In short, they are pampered, coddled to, and told that they deserve everything without any implication or obligation of giving anything in return.
what women want
Modern women demand all the privileges afforded their sisters in bygone eras, yet still insist on the freedoms granted by a liberated society. In other words, they want to have their cake and eat it, too; they want equal rights until the check comes.
At the heart of this mess is so-called "feminism." The post-war culture of the 1950s and '60s spawned an affluent, egocentric culture of "consciousness-raising" and liberation, spurred on by such seminal feminists as Betty Friedan (who saw the traditional wife and homemaker as a prisoner chained to the stove, hobbled by men from achieving success in the business world).
Almost overnight women wanted to work and go to college; they decided their husbands should help with cooking, cleaning and child care. Liberated women lobbied for gender equality: equal pay for equal work, equal educational and career opportunities and equal treatment under the law.
They no longer wanted to be seen by men as "sex objects," but instead as individuals independent of their gender; persons in their own right.
On the surface, this was all well and good. In a modern society, women should be treated with equality; they should be allowed to pursue whatever course they choose.
But feminism made one crucial mistake -- it failed to take into account the fundamentally self-serving nature of the female gender. For the average woman, "feminism" shortly became nothing more than a convenient excuse for getting what she wanted (usually from a man's hard work). Women began expecting to have things handed to them on a plate just because they were born female.
The battle cry of "feminism" abruptly changed from "equal pay for equal work" to "you go, girl -- you deserve it" (no matter how you get it). Suddenly it was all about "me, me, me" -- the self-indulgent bawl of a spoiled brat.
And this is exactly the problem. Modern women have demanded -- and won -- equal rights and equal pay. But they're too greedy, too materialistic, too self-absorbed, too immature, and too accustomed to using men to do anything with these rights but shoot themselves in the foot with them.
It's all come too easily for them, and, like children who have been handed everything on a plate, they've matured into abusing their privilege and demanding more and more and more.
from the mouth of a feminist
Feminist author Susan Maushart (What Women Want Next) writes: "Now that women have been more or less successfully mainstreamed, the achievement feels unexpectedly hollow. For one thing, we are tired. If doing what men do on top of what women have always done is Having It All, most of us have decided we'd prefer a smaller portion."
Feminism has fizzled; it's crumbled under the weight of its own shaky foundations. So does this mean that women should go back to the kitchen? Is this where they belong, forever chained to the stove and the bedpost?
The answer -- fundamentally -- is "no." But a very cautious "no."
Alexander Boot, a Russian by birth, left for the West in the 1970s, only to discover that the West he was seeking was no longer there. This led him to write the book How the West Was Lost. I disagree with his criticism of post-Enlightenment civilization in general. Still, he is articulate and original, which makes him worth reading.
Boot believes that democracy, or in the words of Abraham Lincoln, the government of the people, by the people and for the people, has been replaced by glossocracy, the government of the word, by the word and for the word.
Modern glossocracy can be traced back at least to the slogan of the French Revolution, "Freedom, equality, brotherhood." As it later turned out, this meant mass terror, martial law and authoritarian rule. According to Boot, the more meaningless the word, the more useful it is for glossocrats. The impulse behind Political Correctness consists of twisting the language we use, enforcing new words or changing the meaning of old ones, turning them into "weapons of crowd control" by demonizing those who fail to comply with the new definitions:
"Like the Russian intelligentsia of yesteryear, the glossocratic intelligentsia of today's West is busily uprooting the last remaining vestiges of Westernness. The press is one gardening implement they use; education is another."
One example of how language is power is given in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll:
Humpty Dumpty"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.' 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean different things.' 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'"
According to Boot, glossocracy depends upon a long-term investment in ignorance: "A semi-literate population is a soft touch for glossocratic Humpty Dumpties insisting that words mean whatever they want them to mean."
As I've said before, Political Correctness was pioneered by feminists, including the totalitarian changing of the language to make it more gender-neutral and less "oppressive." Those who successfully manage to enforce their definition of words win the ideological contest.
The New TotalitariansThere was an interesting book called The New Totalitarians written by British historian Roland Huntford about Sweden in the early 1970s. It is especially noteworthy how the Socialist government deliberately broke down the nuclear family. This was presented as liberation from the oppression of women, but was in reality about tearing down the religious fabric of society and eliminating the Church and Judeo-Christian thinking as ideological competitors.
It was also about increasing state control over all citizens by breaking down a rival institution that obstructed the uninhibited state indoctrination of children. Besides, the state could foment animosity between men and women and step in as an arbitrator, thus further enhancing its powers. During the past few elections in Sweden, there has been virtually no debate about mass immigration, but a passionate debate about "gender equality" in which almost all contestants call themselves feminists, and only debate which ways to implement absolute equality between the sexes.
- - - - - - - - - -
Mr. Huntford demonstrated how, when it was decided that a woman's place was not at home but out at work, there was a rapid change in the language. Page 301:
"The customary Swedish for housewife is husmor, which is honourable; it was replaced by the neologism hemmafru, literally 'the-wife-who-stays-at-home', which is derogatory. Within a few months, the mass media were able to kill the old and substitute the new term. By the end of 1969, it was almost impossible in everyday conversation to mention the state of housewife without appearing to condemn or to sneer. Swedish had been changed under the eyes and ears of the Swedes. Husmor had been discredited; the only way out was to use hemmafru ironically. Connecte
Surely you mean femme and butch personalities.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C1 bottles of beer on the wall. Take one down, pass it round... Oh, umm...
It was unfortunate that you had to re-work the code of your colleague - but incompetence knows no gender bounds.
I have worked with women in IT who were dedicated, technically adept, and most importantly, customer-focused. Mind you, this was at a nuclear power plant, which is a machine that is continuously operating for up to two years, and this places some serious demand for IT support (yes, it was/is an MS-based house, but that's another issue). Approaching it from a cultural standpoint, operators (mostly male) are required to have the utmost confidence that they can handle the beast at all times, and this often manifested itself as massive chips on shoulders, and demands of flawless execution on just about anything. Having women in IT 'gentled' the testosterone-charged atmosphere, and that helped just getting the job done. In comparison, the IT departments at other plants in the fleet were male-dominated, and for some reason were a lot less effective. Could have been a competence issue - but IMHO, it was cultural.
Finally, regarding the quest for a prospective partner: I believe it unwise to date someone at work. Think in terms of consequences if things go awry.
Science never settles, never rests.
Because civilization depends on having children. How many new workers entering the workforce will you have in 20 years? Well it depends on how many kids are born today. Workers, citizens, et al, have a 20 year pipeline. And yes we can import immigrants but how many? And can we assimilate them?
You bitch about offshoring and H1-B visas. Well the solution is to have more kids. The ideal solution would have been to have more kids 20 years ago.
Demographics is destiny. If you don't reproduce your world view won't be around when you are not.
The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birthrate to sustain it. Post-Christian hyperrationalism is, in the objective sense, a lot less rational than Catholicism or Mormonism. Indeed, in its reliance on immigration to ensure its future, the European Union has adopted a 21st-century variation on the strategy of the Shakers, who were forbidden from reproducing and thus could increase their numbers only by conversion. The problem is that secondary-impulse societies mistake their weaknesses for strengths--or, at any rate, virtues--and that's why they're proving so feeble at dealing with a primal force like Islam.
What's the better bet? A globalization that exports cheeseburgers and pop songs or a globalization that exports the fiercest aspects of its culture? When it comes to forecasting the future, the birthrate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2006, it's hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2026 (or 2033, or 2037, or whenever they get around to finishing their Anger Management and Queer Studies degrees). And the hard data on babies around the Western world is that they're running out a lot faster than the oil is. "Replacement" fertility rate--i.e., the number you need for merely a stable population, not getting any bigger, not getting any smaller--is 2.1 babies per woman. Some countries are well above that: the global fertility leader, Somalia, is 6.91, Niger 6.83, Afghanistan 6.78, Yemen 6.75. Notice what those nations have in common?
Scroll way down to the bottom of the Hot One Hundred top breeders and you'll eventually find the United States, hovering just at replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman. Ireland is 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada's fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. That's to say, Spain's population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy's population will have fallen by 22%, Bulgaria's by 36%, Estonia's by 52%. In America, demographic trends suggest that the blue states ought to apply for honorary membership of the EU: In the 2004 election, John Kerry won the 16 with the lowest birthrates; George W. Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest. By 2050, there will be 100 million fewer Europeans, 100 million more Americans--and mostly red-state Americans.
As fertility shrivels, societies get older--and Japan and much of Europe are set to get older than any functioning societies have ever been. And we know what comes after old age. These countries are going out of business--unless they can find the will to change their ways. Is that likely? I don't think so. If you look at European election results--most recently in Germany--it's hard not to conclude that, while voters are unhappy with their political establishments, they're unhappy mainly because they resent being asked to reconsider their government benefits and, no matter how unaffordable they may be a generation down the road, they have no intention of seriously reconsidering them. The Scottish executive recently backed down from a proposal to raise the retirement age of Scottish public workers. It's presently 60, which is nice but unaffordable. But the reaction of the average Scots worker is that that's somebody else's problem. The average German worker now puts in 22% fewer hours
To motivate their male counterparts. Girl: darling... please do it for me Boy: yes my dear..I'll do all the work with day in and night out and on weekends we will go somewhere. They hire 1 woman per 4 men..so that the competition is healthy.
To quote Philip Greenspun:
"Pursuing science as a career seems so irrational that one wonders why any young American would do it. Yet we do find some young Americans starting out in the sciences and they are mostly men... A lot more men than women choose to do seemingly irrational things such as become petty criminals, fly homebuilt helicopters, play video games, and keep tropical fish as pets (98 percent of the attendees at the American Cichlid Association convention that I last attended were male). Should we be surprised that it is mostly men who spend 10 years banging their heads against an equation-filled blackboard in hopes of landing a $35,000/year post-doc job?
Having been both a student and teacher at MIT, my personal explanation for men going into science is the following:
1. young men strive to achieve high status among their peer group
2. men tend to lack perspective and are unable to step back and ask the question "is this peer group worth impressing?"
It is the guys with the poorest social skills who are least likely to talk to adults and find out what the salary and working conditions are like in different occupations. It is mostly guys with rather poor social skills whom one meets in the university science halls...
What about women? Don't they want to impress their peers? Yes, but they are more discriminating about choosing those peers. I've taught a fair number of women students in electrical engineering and computer science classes over the years. I can give you a list of the ones who had the best heads on their shoulders and were the most thoughtful about planning out the rest of their lives. Their names are on files in my "medical school recommendations" directory."
- Women in Science
Tweet, tweet.
I someone wants to leave their job to have a kid, that was a choice. If the job is more important than having a kid, dont have kids.
If the kid is more important and you want to stay home with it, dont complain about it
I fail to see the logic in providing child care at work. Sure its nice if the employer does it but require it.....
So men and women are different and should be treated accordingly right? But also be treated equally? So we should embrace diversity while simultaneously demanding equality? I guess that's why there are rarely 'deadbeat moms' in the news or 'crack-whore dads'.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
But in all honesty, my computer work was 24 hours before the Internet, too. It was just called a "BBS" and I didn't get paid for it.
What is the big f'ing deal with the whole "lack of women in the IT industry" fad? Why doesn't the hair salon industry get this much publicity for it's lack of men working in it? Seriously, it's stupid. Women do what they're good at, and men do the same. Everyone meets in the middle eventually in executive and management land.
A number of my friends with children are looking to get out of the drudgery of abandoning their families for 60% of their waking hours.
These are the people working a 55 hour week in a "9 to 5" job, with an hour of commuting each way. They are typically engineers or other professionals working in jobs where technology companies demand that the product be in the market yesterday. Their (ex) colleagues have been "downsized" and the company is too tight to employ replacements or there just aren't the qualified people out there. Consequently they are each doing one and a half jobs. Flexible hours policy is "We don't mind what hours you work as long as the job gets done", which translates to "55 hours".
These friends are figuring out that they are missing out on being part of their family growing up while earning 2-3 time the average wage. Often they are concluding that they are better to move to a part time job, earn a little above an average wage and be part of the family growing up. If the change requires a change of employer or profession then they are prepared to do it. When pushed the better employers realise that they are better to have a part time expert than no expert.
I had a similar experience with over-emotional female co-workers. I worked as part of a team developing the back end for a major online store. In that team there were three developers, myself and two women. One of these women was constantly making private calls about her abusive boyfriend and constantly missed deadlines (if the guy was such a jerk why didn't she leave him? that would have been the logical thing to do). The other would meet deadlines about 50% of the time, but her coding style was very confrontational, using K&R-style indentation deliberately in contravention of the coding standards and using multiple inheritance injudiciously.
I ended up taking up the slack, doing loads of extra hours and re-working these two women's code and as a result suffered a severe case of burnout.
I now make a point of not working on any programming projects where there are a significant number of women involved. It's simply not worth sacrificing my health for.
although I am not a woman. :)
I was sick and tired of having to be available 24/7. So now I got a another job and my income is down by 20% but it is worth it. It wasn't good for my health either.
If you don't like IT, go into nursing. You'll be just as overworked except the gender ratio is opposite.
Who gives a flying fuck in the end? Do the job that interests you and move on.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
'Well, by you logic, if your a gay guy. you probably think on an emotional level too and are inferior, so you shouldn't be in IT either.'
If that were the case then he would be saying those who think on an emotional rather than cold logical level are inferior. And he's right. He's also sexist, not all women (or gay men) think on an emotional level. The ones who do are inferior along with all the straight men who do so.
If you don't think you will find equal proportions of cold logic and warm emotion among straight men, gay men, and women then YOU must be the sexist... or maybe, just maybe, there can both be exceptions AND stereotypes can sometimes coincide with mean averages.
Now for the next great mystery that plagues mankind. Why is it that a black man will laugh with you if you make a crack about him liking KFC when not all black men like KFC? Why will that same black man get angry if you say that blacks have nappy hair when the lack of oil and frizziness it is a genetic trait that is an undisputed part of the definition of the black race?
For the record I am a young white male with a solid heinz 57 of European ancestry. That means I am a minority. I am the only race/gender/background combination that isn't allowed to talk about ANYONE. Its even racist if I refer to MY OWN RACE/GENDER. Yet somehow, all other races/genders are allowed to make fun of my race/gender all day long. I'm also broke, I want all that economic advantage they use to justify hiring a minority (which consists of EVERY other group/gender) over me.
Most people seem to think there are only single mothers out there. I'm a single dad (2 preteen daughters) and it can be quite challenging at times. Not just the flexible hours or being on call -- when the kids get sick I'm just expected to be in 2 places at once. And I don't mind being called at 3AM and telecommuting at all (I'd do it everyday if they wanted me to), but finding a babysitter at 3AM is just not an option.
One just has to find the job with a more flexible schedule... It's a bit harder to find, but there are some out there.
> Look, you're hired to do a job. If you can't or won't do it, find a different job...
;)
Exactly. Even Zonk got this one right when he picked the Dept for this article. This IS the Free Market in action. Women are putting different priorities on the work/family problem and coming up with different choices. I thought that was what we all wanted, freedom to choose our own course through life. Women are DIFFERENT, guess some people are just noticing that isn't just a case of some people having boobies and some not. I say whatever works for them, regardless if HR people have nightmares because it is messing with their quotas. (That they don't have of course.)
The suggested 'solution', grossly inflating the compensation packages and reducing the job description for a position based on gender, should be seen as a condescending insult. But of course it won't. In fact it is exactly what will be done because it is ALL about the numbers.
Just another anchor large operations get to carry around in the global marketplace to satisfy PC stupidity. In a way it is their own fault because large corporations love to use the power of the State to keep competitors small, problem is a government big enough for that is also big enough to be used for PC silliness by OTHER special interests. Won't matter though, small nimble upstarts continually chew up and recycle old stale corps.... and become new megacorps who beat down thier competition with similar tactics, become old and lumbering, repeat.
[yes, if I don't get modded troll for what follows I'll be disappointed]
Of course what is really throwing the sand in the vaginas of the feminists is how this represents yet another sign of the total failure of their philosophy. They had a dream. Men and women were interchangable units, not just equal but identical in ability, ambition and goals... if only they could deprogram women from their incorrect notions.. and convince them that their only unique role in propagating the species was childbirth.
And for a generation it almost worked. Women bought the pitch and entered the workforce and the professions with a will, many forgoing children entirely and the rest tossing their kids into daycare (or buying a nanny for the upperclass feminist leaders) as soon as they recovered from delivery enough to work again. And it was working! The glass ceiling was only a speed bump, another generation and total victory was in sight.
Then something unexpected happened. Those abandoned kids grew up. Disfunctional in ways never seen, but apparently not willing to repeat the mistakes of their parents. Looking at THEIR offspring it is apparent that most haven't a clue HOW to parent, but they are trying. In a world gone stark raving mad, still bent on destroying the notions that make a traditional family impossible by law, policy, custom and culture more and more of em seem determined to try. Guess it is now the counter culture thing to do? Being 'normal' is now an act of rebellion?
Democrat delenda est
what, supper and dinner, but no lunch?
Utility companies need to have staffing for 3 shifts and pay overtime when they call extra people in for emergencies. IT techs just suck it up. Guess who's unionized?
Working god awful hours was fine 10 years ago when they were shoveling money at people. But between a decade of wage stagnation, job cuts and off shoring, what is the goddamn point any more? Who needs it? Regardless of what automation tools they give you the support ratios keep climbing anyhow. They demand 10% 'efficiency' off the top automatically year over year before they even mention 'cost challenge'. Turnover is way way up and anyone who sticks around for 4 years will have trained several generations of people.
I saw an article by a woman talking about why women are paid less than men. She figures it is because women go for the quality of life jobs while men go for the money. Women will take lower paying jobs with higher job satisfaction, better hours, etc. while men will kill themselves for the big buck.
No surprise that women are leaving IT when the jobs suck more and more.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Im not being funny, i genuinely find it surprising to find out that there are women in IT. I spent 5 years in the business without encountering a single one.
Umm...black isn't a race, or an ethnicity, it's simply a categorization racists use to put "them" in another group from "us". So as long as we have people saying shit like "it is a genetic trait that is an undisputed part of the definition of the black race", we have people who miscategorize race and ethnicity via their own beliefs. And unless you spent today applying for jobs, stop complaining about economic advantages for hiring.
As Dave Chappelle said "Get a job, Grouch!"
An alarming number of women are currently abandoning IT jobs that require workers to be on-call at all hours
Smart women! I think the men should follow their lead.
Women are refusing to burn themselves out. That might appear to be a very short-term disadvantage, but if there's any difference, it's only that the men in IT are a few years behind. By 2009, the men who aren't quitting now will either be dead (or disabled), will have left the industry, or will have demanded proper treatment.
I quit my last job two months ago, when I realised that charging more money (doubletime? Tripletime? Travel expenses?) for overtime wasn't making it go away, and I hadn't had a weekend in three months. I'm now getting paid about $15k less for more complex work, and am much happier. And I'm still in IT.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
This was my fault. I'll take more showers.
Don't blame me -- I voted for Roslin.
This is the sort of thing unions were created to fix. Crunch time means crunch pay.
Sysadmins need something like the IATSE Hollywood Basic Agreement, which covers most people working on a movie shoot other than the actors. When film productions go into crunch mode, pay goes through the roof. There's overtime. There's double overtime when hours per day go up. Emergency calls in the middle of the night carry a minimum of 4 hours of pay at double the normal rate, plus there's pay for being on-call.
Which is why producers and studios spend time on doing good film scheduling. When management screws up, management pays the bills.
I have no children. I will never have children. In fact, I am unable to have biological children. This is fine with me, because I do not like children. That I have no children does not make me lonely. I prefer adult company, thank you very much.
Think you have a hard time? A friend of mine complained that being a Jewish African American White made it impossible to find a job anywhere except in New York...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
If women want freedom and equal rights, then they have to grow up. Equality does not mean self-entitlement, and liberation cannot be just a convenient excuse for unbridled narcissism. Men and women should be equal partners in this world, but such a lofty goal can only be achieved if women start acting like equal partners -- that is, giving instead of constantly demanding and taking.
Although I don't necessary agree with many of your premises, nor your conclusion, I do agree with that particular statement (well, not the generalization that all women today are necessarily "constantly demanding and taking," and I think the tone is a bit strident -- did you just get out of a bad divorce or something?).
I think the people who get screwed worse than just about anyone, under our current system, are the women who really want to compete on a level playing field; either they get hobbled, or they get tossed crutches they don't need and don't want (and which cause them to be discriminated against).
An easy example of this is with child-care policies at work. Some workplaces have very biased policies surrounding parenting; they have maternity leave without any corresponding paternity or adoption leave, etc. What this does is make women, in general, much less attractive employees to lower and middle management. If you're taking on someone into a management or competitive career track (think junior partners in big law firms), who are you going to pick: the male employee, who's going to work his ass off, and then work his ass off some more, or the female employee, who's going to work her ass off, but then quite possibly go take six or nine months off to have a kid, and then only want to come back on a reduced schedule? It's a no-brainer, and this is why there's a culture of discrimination in many of those workplaces.
The people who this really hurts, though, are the women who aren't interested in having children, and aren't going to ever exercise their maternity leave, and are going to work the same 60-hour weeks for as many years as their male counterpart would, and not expect any quarter on account of sex. They really get hosed, because they get discriminated against without any good reason, due the cultural stereotype that all women want to be nurturing mother-figures, when there are definitely women out there who have zero interest in it.
I've met a lot of aggressive, careerist women in my life, and a whole lot of them are pretty bitter that they always get pigeonholed in the "so when are you going to get pregnant?" box. Conversely, I've met a few men who are pretty clearly looking to be primary caregivers and bitter about the flack they get for asking for child-care and leave, or for not being as aggressively career-oriented as others around them. So it cuts both ways.
I think there are really two fair solutions: you can make all policies gender-neutral, and encourage male employees to take the same sort of leave, when they're adopting or their partner is pregnant, that a female employee would take for a pregnancy, so that in hiring or placing people, managers can't just assume that "male employee = no leave" and "female employee = leave" (although if you have more female employees taking leave, then you'll still have discrimination). Or, you pick some sort of well-known, performance-based metric to do your advancement/firing based on, tell people they can take as much leave as they want, whenever they want, but if their performance suffers too badly, they'll get canned, and let the pieces fall where they may. Since I think the latter plan is probably illegal in the U.S. and other "pro-family" countries, I think we're stuck with the former.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacr e
Maybe this will help you understand his logic.
In the company I work for at least, Management is always in the trenches right along with those of us who are on call. I've been on many a conference call at 3am with my boss, his boss, and sometimes even the their collective boss. As for why women are leaving these type of jobs, I think a lot of women are fleeing jobs like these because it is very, very stressful for the unprepared.
Let's be honest here, Women don't want to be in IT. I've never seen an normal IT room that says "we don't want women". The only time someone would say that is because they swear a lot and that can be handled by a woman who's welcome to that.
The fact is that IT isn't "easy". It's the same reason you don't see many female stock traders (there's some, but not many). The simple fact is there's a commitment to the industry that must be made. Not just the time to learn the trade but when they understand there's late nights and long hours, as well as the dreaded crunch. I see "old timers" (5-10 years) in the game industry who just say "I can't do this any more". Imagine not only being in the industry that long but also dealing with the biological clock.
That doesn't mean IT shouldn't have woman, that just means that instead of worrying about how to attract women to the industry ask "do women want to be in the industry?" The answer seems to be no. Why are we trying to force women into roles they don't want? Or is there something in the industry that doesn't attract normal people but the people in the industry are already accepting of it, if so identifying that would be worthy, but this big question "how do we get more female programmers" isn't helping anyone.
I work the hours I want to and will have nothing to do with a cell phone. You're all a bunch of suckers and you fuck up the curve for everyone else with what you are willing to accept. Assholes, don't cry about how hard you have to work - be a man. Especially since you perpetuate an attitude that makes it your own fault, constantly lip servicing what a hard worker you are and how tough you got it.
It really frightens me that the tone of the article depicts all IT related women as doting career moms who are only waiting for an easy out to go home and take care of Father Jr. This backslide into 1950s pre-feminist movement status scares me. Why can't the IT dad have to worry about day-care and being on call 24 hours a day because he has to take care of his children too? Why have we set up yet another situation for detached parenting that falls prey to the same social normality that we've been trying to eradicate for decades to pave the way for something far more beneficial - a well rounded parental structure that depicts both parties as nurturing. I'm male, and I'm all for women's rights and the advancement of the sex and gender - and this article seems to paint a very different picture - one that I'm not sure most professional, career-driven IT women would agree with. What scares me is that no one else in this discussion has really grazed this aspect of the topic.
I disagree that you need to constantly expand your population to stay competitive. Historically, that's been true, but that's really driven by the number of manual-labor jobs that were around.
If you can decrease your population while maintaining or increasing economic output, then you can continue to increase real per-capita GDP, and continue to raise living standards, which is what pretty much everyone wants. People don't care that much about per-capita GDP per se, what they want is to know that their standard of living is going up and up, relative to their parents, or 20 years ago, etc.
I think the long-term solution in the U.S. isn't to "encourage" people to have children -- people who really want to have children are going to have them regardless of the outside incentives you provide, and the people with that level of commitment are really the only ones you want having kids in the first place; it's not healthy for society to encourage people to pop out a few so they can collect a cheque from the government each week -- the solution is to stabilize the population at or slightly below the replacement rate, and make sure we're innovating enough to keep per-capita GDP on an upward march. Immigration policies should be tailored to only bring in the best and brightest, and predominantly from countries where there is a culture and history of secularism and democracy (because importing a lot of people who think that a non-secular government is just grand is going to cause some serious social problems here, like serious KKK-type problems).
The growth that has driven the U.S. throughout the 19th and 20th century just isn't sustainable, politically or ecologically. We need to stop trying to expand, and start looking to consolidate our gains; we're going to have to make some pretty severe choices, because we're not going to be able to play the Social Security shell game anymore (because S.S. relies on there being a bigger pool of workers down the road to pay you back what's being taken from you now, to give to people whose benefits are due today; without expansion it collapses). Fixing some of the things that were put together in the early part of last century, without much thought for their long-term sustainability, is going to be painful. But the sooner we fix -- and by "fix," I mean "dismantle," at least in their current form -- them, the better.
Of course, if you look at where this goes, you end up with a relatively small U.S. population controlling a huge amount of the world's wealth and resources. But that's kind of the point: if every couple has only one child, and puts behind that child the combined resources of two people, they have a lot more going for them than a child in a society where each couple has three, four, or eight children. In the very long run, it might be militarily unsustainable for the U.S. to stay on top with a very small population, but I think you'd be talking about many generations -- terrorism might become a real problem, since being a nation of 'golden children' isn't going to help our image any, but we'd still have a planet-annihilating nuclear arsenal squirreled away; it would really just mean the end of aggressive "force projection" and foreign adventuring.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Sorry women but Ive heard enough. SUCK IT UP AND SHUT UP. I bust my balls 12 hours a day and what do I get? Nothing but the salary Im owed. I get to spend all of my salary buying YOU meals and YOU drinks so I can get YOUR attention MAYBE. Sexist? Only as sexist as your continued demands for special treatment. You wanted equality. You got it. Now deal with it and break a sweat like every man out there has to, and thank your lucky stars at the end of the day, if you show a guy a little cleavage and make no kinds of promises you can still get a free meal and drinks out of it and still end up having way better days than any of us ever will.
More jobs for me!!!
How selfish. More jobs for all Slashdotters!
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
Comment removed based on user account deletion
http://niniane.org/gds.html
Andrew: Last Halloween I was a pilot, and I had eight stewardesses with me.
Me: Wow! How did you manage that?
Andrew: It was me. It didn't take very long.
Me: Was Jennifer jealous?
Andrew: Yeah! It was right before we started dating.
Me: Did she do anything to make you jealous?
Andrew: [thinks for a while] Yeah, actually, she met some guy at a wedding and told me about it. She called me up at 3 in the morning!
Ben: Anyone who calls you at 3 in the morning is into you.
John: Except to say 'You're a bastard; I hate you.'
Ben: Or 'The content ad mixer is down.'
An excellent point.
The article was from the point of view of managers who say they want to hire more women to diversify their teams. However they are finding it difficult to find women willing to "just suck it up" as you so aptly put it. Too bad for them. I guess something will have to change: either they can shit-can the diversity, or they will have to give up the whole "Do more with less/let's grind 'em into the ground" mentality of business IT.
My first thought when I read the headline was "Once again, we see that women are much smarter than men."
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
Your dad sounds like a nice guy.
Hope he didn't let his crotchfruit crawl around the goddamned restaraunt like a fucking animal.
Women should stay at home and look after their families!
You're gonna go out to work and then have to spend that money hiring someone to look after your kids?!? How stupid is that???
You're using her as bait, Master!
More work opportunities for the rest of us.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
6 billion people alive on the planet, more than the combined total of all who have died, and yet you think we're going to run out.
Ignorance like that doesn't just happen. You must have worked very hard at it.
Maybe they have just figured out that the pager on their belt (in purse) is just an electronic leash.
If you are insecure in your skills, you will work 80 hours a week. Because you are insecure, your employer is taking advantage of you, demanding "long, inflexible hours."
Don't we somehow have the power to send the message to IT Management that they need us more than we need them? Regardless of what's between our legs?
Oh come on, a lot of psychological data leads to the point that women ARE inferior in a logistics standpoint, while men are inferior in an emotional standpoint. Men and women ARE different, and each have their advantages and disadvantages. However, I do disagree that all women are bad developers. The good ones are just hard to find :-)
I agree! It is about time that we further differentiate ourselves into sub-sub-groups of a ./ superiority lifechoice.
Please, won't someone think of the childrenfree!Best Free Utilities for Windows
Where da whITe women at?
Lunch is had with coworkers at the strip club.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
If it can't accommodate someone being out of the office for a few weeks due to injury, how would it accommodate one being out for months on maternity leave?
is the title of the fucking article not "women are fleeing IT jobs?"? that's the fucking point, numbnuts.
Oh where are my mod points when I need them!
Hell yea women are less willing to put up with bullshit and we men should be too.
What the industry has been turning into is ridiculous. We have these young kids thinking all this is normal and they are turning into managers who think this is normal. Meanwhile I have seen software turn into bigger and bigger pieces of complex garbage whipped out in half the required time demanding more and more of people's lives. It is not right.
I had thought the women were leaving because the nerdy pick-up lines are _that_ horrible. I suppose I will have to think of better metaphors than hard drives and computer racks.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
After my brief foray in the IT world, I describe the computer industry as an industry which makes used car sales look like an honest profession. Few other industries are as heavily subsidized by the charity of their staff as IT, and if it were not for the fact a lot of well trained people from all over the world want to live in North America, well, let's just say we might need a lot more free software just to keep us in iPods and Alligator shirts. (In case you are wondering, I live in Canada, so I can't speak to the situation in the U.S. with any authority)
I will know the industry has cleaned up it's act when our businesses are able to hire ... wait for it ... a second shift!
Sorry. Feeling a bit revolutionary this evening.
Anyway, venting aside, I suspect the the higher pressures women face with the added burden of kids and family life ... which many men are still sadly unwilling to assist with to any meaningful degree ... they simply do not have the luxury of martyring themselves for the sake of a slightly less buggy productivity suite.
Maybe the parent should have been titled "Men still haven't figured out how the IT industry screws them over" ... although I suppose it's not as catchy.
In B.C., our fascism is green.
"An alarming number of women are currently abandoning IT jobs that require workers to be on-call at all hours,"
;). After all, how many people actually like such jobs? And how much do such jobs pay? So to me it's a good sign that women are finding better things to do with their lives than being "on call" just to make the 1-2% rich (who own 50% of the wealth) richer.
;)
I think it's only alarming if the number is zero
And what's with everyone trying to encourage women to move into IT, when:
1) Most women aren't interested in the first place
2) The jobs aren't valued highly by Management and tend to get outsourced.
3) The jobs aren't that _wonderful_ in terms of pay, security etc. (They're ok if you actually like IT stuff a lot, but see 1) )
4) An "alarming number" are moving out.
From the article:
"I had a 14-year-old daughter that I didn't want to leave alone at 3 a.m.,".
Oh wow, an alarming number of women have got their priorities right?
Compare this with:
"I have to babysit these flaky 24/7 app servers at 3 am"
It better be something like a wonderful charity's donation server at say "tsunami time" for you to have a greater chance of being proud of doing that at the end of your life, when you choose to do that instead of being able to have normal hours and thus spend more time with your kids (and try to brainwash them before MTV etc do).
Whereas if it's just to make a bunch of Machiavellian rich guys richer and more powerful, you better know what you are doing and why.
IT jobs that require workers to be on-call at all hours
:P
Yeah, and you wonder about that, cause I don't. I would also run from such a job. Well, to be honest, I probably wouldn't, cause I wouldn't take such a job in the first place. Additionally, "IT jobs", could you be broader than that ?
IT is very much a culture and it consumes a lot of time
Ahm... ok, how very much interesting. Uhmm... and I thought dumbly very well-paing job worth doing consumes a lot of time. Is it a culture ? Well, if you insist on that...
Anyway, where's the point ? People _should_ try to find a job that best possibly suits their expectations. Yes, it's a somewhat utopian dream, but hey, if you don't even try... People don't take jobs for life these days, workforce is in constant change and flow. Maybe those who have jobs that don't consume a lot of time and have time to care, do care, but otherwise, what's the news in that ? Oh, it's because they talk about women ? Well, I also would like to work among more women, if that's the point, still, just because some women prefer more flexible work hours that doesn't make it something sensational.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
perhaps it has to do with the female lack of spatial and logical reasoning...or i could be wrong in this liberal leftist society that shuns any truly open-minded ideas in the guise of open-mindedness......
Oi, show some respect. I read the entire grandparent post and your post is an insult to animals.
Amen! IT has never been a stable career, and thus is not "family friendly". Technology changes too often, creating boom-bust cycles, the need to move to different cities, and now the threat of globalization. IT is best for bohemians.
Table-ized A.I.
There's no caste system that holds people to a given role by dint of birth. With minimal exceptions for those who have the money to actually start the companies, the wealth of the family you're born in to doesn't seem to preclude management.
If there's no external force keeping people in roles, supply and demand based equilibrium takes over. If the rewards of management minus the costs of getting there and staying there are really that much better than the onerous existence of the poor, slavish techs, why the hell aren't the techs ditching it for the relatively easily accessible easy life?
Even if we accept the hypothesis that you're a masochistic martyr, determined to stay on and suffer, no matter how unjust, if one set of benefits clearly outweighed the other, wouldn't we see a massive shift of people from IT to management?
We saw it in to IT when the dotcom bubble made it hugely profitable. We saw it out of IT when the bubble burst. If equilibrium works every other time, it's curious it doesn't work this time.
Or, as an alternative hypothesis: Management has some rewards, some costs. Non managerial tech jobs have some rewards, some costs. The rewards are different: Managers get to go to golf courses, techs don't have to suck up to people they don't like as much, don't have to worry about ensuring people get to keep their jobs, avoid overtime exemption (if the law's applied correctly), etc. That people aren't surging from one to the other as the equilibrium rights itself implies that, while different, it is actually fair.
Of course, it's still human nature to bitch. Everyone else is always a worse driver, other people always take more advantage at work... It's amazing how 95% of individuals are a better person than 95% of other individuals.
'Umm...black isn't a race, or an ethnicity, it's simply a categorization racists use to put "them" in another group from "us".'
Perhaps you are behind the times, black is the current politically correct term. African-American is out.
As far as categorizations go, race IS an arbitrary categorization. There really is no such thing as a race so the definitions for races are moving lines. Lets see, let me make one up. Okay, how about fair-skinned, red-heads with freckles. We will call them 'reds' or Irish-Americans since some of them know they have Irish ancestors. Lets give them a culture too, they feel they were oppressed because everyone called their ancestors potatoheads when they came over after the potato famine. We shall forget that half the reds migrated after the potato famine because they choose to join in with the other reds.
Of course, now we need to see how many colleges admit reds in relation to 'others'. If a college admitted significantly more 'others' it couldn't merely be chance or unrelated factors, the school is clearly prejudiced against reds. What if there are fewer executive reds? What if those executive reds on average make less money than 'others'? What if these statistics don't show anything at all because there is no valid reason to single out reds in the first place and no particular reason to think that a random sample of people would perform comparably to the rest of the population?
Races do not exist, there is no such thing. Therefore, there is no correct or incorrect definition of a race, there is no racist or non-racist definition. If you want to get technical, anyone who has ever referred to race is a racist since races are not valid groupings to begin with.
'And unless you spent today applying for jobs, stop complaining about economic advantages for hiring.'
Why shouldn't I (and everyone else classified the same way as me) complain about being selected based upon meaningless physical traits to be singled out and given a disadvantage when it comes time to go to college, get a job, receive funding to start a business, receive grants to go to school, receive government funding for... anything?
I work in the IT department of a large utility company (government really) in Kuwait, we have around 35 employees, of whom 5 are men, the rest are woman. Just by being a woman, you are granted to so many privilges that I developed pussy envy. They can come 30 mins AFTER official work hours and leave 30 mins BEFORE it's done (8 AM - 2 PM, how hard can that be?). There are a couple of woman engineers that I rare see in the department because the keep getting pregnant (= 3 months full salary, 3 months half salary).
It's absolutely impossible to tell them to stay after ours (against tradition!) , and it's impossible to tell them to go to locations. In short, we can never depend on them, most of them (including men too) take too many sick leaves per year that none can accomplish a single project.
The end result is that work "real" work is accomplished by own 5 or 6 people, most of whom are men. Mind you, there are VERY active and sincere female computer engineers (actually, just 2 in my case), and there are very lazy men (some I don't see them for months at a time). But I can't believe how much leeway is given to women. The management can't do shit about it since this is how things work in a 3rd world country with too much money to spare. Nevertheless, I bet working here is the most relaxed anywhere in the world.
This illustrating that the reason for overpopulation is peoples' fear of a miserable old age. A fine reason to burden the planet with 7 addition replacement units for yourself and your wife.
What is the woman are planning to change jobs because they are going to start a family? That's logical, and happens in many industries. The study would be interesting if was about falling female participation in CS degrees etc.
Do you even know the definition of filial?
So those seven children of your grandfather's are his children? I never would have guessed.
Jobs can't adept themselves to the people, some jobs require stuff that womans may not be able to give because they want to remain woman.
I reacted to this:
"She noted that companies can fail to attract female workers, or see them leave key IT jobs because they fail to provide day care at work, or work-at-home options for someone who leaves to have a child."
Is she blaiming the work places for the lack of interest in IT women have? It's not like everything in this world can be sunshine and candy. =P
I think the point was, the having or not having child should not have any bearing on how long you stay at work, when you get holiday, and how often yu can stay home for private reason without warning first. Let me get my own example :
Somebody at work told me that they were overworked and they had 4 children so I should let them have some slack. WTF. If you can't do the job w3ith the number of hours, then get a job with less hours or half time.
Another example : on a previous job I was asked "nicely" (sarcasm) when making the holiday plan, to leave the month of july and august to people with children (and to be relegated to june and september).
Also some people just have to say "my children were ill" and so no question asked they can get late.
I am exagerating a bit, but not too much. The bottom line is that parents and women in particular are IMHO given too often a free pass over childless/male worker. This is not exactly the definition of equality I have in mind.
Well, that's a lovely story.
I think it's quite irresponsible to promote the idea of having 7-10 children, though. The planet is already overpopulated, and 2 is enough. Quite apart from the fact that you need to find a woman who wants to have unprotected sex with you shortly after childbirth, 6 or more times. Not everyone is so lucky.
</bitter>
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
So you work really long hours, perhaps spend a couple of hours commuting, then some extra hours socializing with other members of the big company you work for...where does that put you? the biggest part of your day is the company; if this company suddenly disappeared, where would that leave you? do you have a life outside of it?
The point of this is that big companies today are like mini-countries: they don't only offer social security (at least in USA), they also offer entertainment, socializing, and a way of thinking. And the ultimate purpose of all that is to allow the CEO to have $1,000,000,000 in the bank, a yacht, several houses in the best resort all over the globe, and a collection of cars.
I prefer the other model: I work my ass off for 8 hours, with a 10-minute break for launch and for visiting the bathroom, but that's about it. The rest of the day is mine, and mine alone.
The purpose of life is not to impress the others. It's more important to leave something meaningful behind, and the field of science is a good candidate for that. Under this perspective, are females really more clever? in the long run, what is more important? to leave your stub in history in the field of science, potentially helping future generations or live an ultra-rich life where everyone envies you for your wealth but you are long forgotten once you pass away?
Of course not all men want that. There is a good percentage of men that their only interest is the latest sports car, impress their buddies, get to bed with a hot model (not because they particularly enjoy it, but because they will impress their buddies), or get insane amounts of money (in order to impress their buddies and society; and to feel powerful).
It doesn't actually have to be the same woman each time. You don't have to wait for one to give birth before impregnating the next one either. I guess you left school before they started sex education?
I work for a rather large and well known company, and quite a while ago management realised that men drastically outnumbered women in their IT department (as in, 3 women for every 50 guys or so). They made it company policy to hire more women, to the point where they appointed a manager specifically because she was the only female to apply for the position, even though the person in question had no formal IT qualifications, no IT experience and was coming from a retail sales background. Shortly afterwards the company did had a recruitment drive, and hired approx 20 additional people, of which 6 were female. Four months later, 3 out of 14 guys have quit, and 4 out of 6 women have left. Whereas males tend to be more willing to sacrifice a work/life balance, women are less tolerant and simply look for something better when they wake up one day and realise that work IS their life. My work environment is very demmanding, with the company openly admitting that they expect people to burn-out within 2 years. Long hours, at weird times (the joys of 24/7 operation), lack of sleep resulting in poor health and a struggle to maintain any sort of social life. If you talk to literally anyone within my business area, they will all say the same thing "I'm here because the pay is good and because the company name will look good on my resume". We've all long accepted that this job is just a step up the ladder, and 1-2years of struggle will be worth the payoff in the end (if we can hold out). Women tend to be less willing to make such huge sacrifices for something that may or may not provide significant benefits a few years down the track. In one respect this makes them smarter than men, and in another, not quite so smart. It all depends on your perspective. The IT industry as a whole needs to take a step back and seriously re-examine how it runs its day to day business. I think it's pretty much agreed across the board that IT is very stressfull, requires at times extremely long hours, hard work and in a large percentage of cases, the willingness to sacrifice your own quality of life/lifestyle for your job. Companies would rather have one person absolutely flat-out the entire day, than two people working at a comfortable pace (and staying in the company for a number of years). After all, if the person burns out, they aren't cut out for the industry and there's plenty of people willing to replace them...right?
I don't understand.
...
If someone wants to go into IT, he or she goes into IT.
If someone doesn't want to go into IT, he or she doesn't go into IT.
If someone wants to raise a family instead of working,
Why must there be an "effort" to "attract women" to IT when they already can decide for themselves?
This isn't like one of those Muslim countries where everything is sexist and women have no rights.
Anyone can go into any job they choose, regardless of gender.
Women are leaving IT because they have the option. Men do not. That is just the way the job market is today. If I weren't a white man, I'd have it made.
I cannot agree more to that. My peers and neighbors are not my friends, they are perpetuating the past. And, the company referred to in the header has a lousy reputation among the past and present IT workers I have met.
The discrimination implied by the article is against men.
As the primary care taker for my two young girls, and as the IT Manager in a small-medium sized business, I am very happy to be working in a company where my manager, the VP of Ops, has no problem with me leaving because my kids' day care is closing.
Men can be parents too. Those who don't believe so should try it some time while they still can. I hate to say Thinkofthechildren here, but this one is legit. And if that phrase turns you off, try thinking of yourselves instead.
"I think that this guy is overlooking a few things to make an anti-male statement. "
And you're overlooking something to make an anti-jock comment.* Sounds like your no better than the OP. Jocks can get into sports for the same reason you got into IT. They're good at it and they like doing it. To impress others is a side-benefit.
*Oh right, anti-women too.
"Which is why producers and studios spend time on doing good film scheduling. When management screws up, management pays the bills."
And then we get to listen to slashdot complain about the high cost of movies (theater, DVD, etc).
The Company is the mother.
It's a monoculture, really.
Its even racist if I refer to MY OWN RACE/GENDER.
No, it's not. It's racist to assume that while ISN'T a race, that whiteness does NOT immediately provide privilege. Please, by all means continue to refer to yourself as white and a member of the white race.
I'm also broke, I want all that economic advantage they use to justify hiring a minority (which consists of EVERY other group/gender) over me.
Sorry, white males have insisted for centuries that they lived in a merit-based society that justified their disproportionate social and economic power. Now their white male descendants have to pay the piper. I was broke too once. But I do not blame the black or female students just out of college for it, because unlike them I've still got more access to better-paying jobs than they do.
Anecdote: I knew two people right out of college who got their first real jobs at Fortune-10 companies. After four years, one of them had purchased a car, a truck, a house, and eliminated almost 70% of his college debt. The other purchased a car, a townhouse, a wedding, and put about $130,000 in the bank. One was white with an MIS degree, one was black with a CS degree, both were similarly skilled, with the white one having the "easier" and supposedly less valuable degree. However, the white one got "set" for life because he "fit in" to the culture of his company so well that they gave him a once-in-a-lifetime type opportunity to save about $200,000 in three years. The white one is now a manager at age 30, the black one is a senior developer at age 31. The plural of anecdote is not data, yet I cannot imagine ANY similar circumstances that the black developer could have similarly benefitted from.
Or people with children?? I am male, with no children, but I would love to have a telecommuting job. With flexible hours. It's almost enough to make me consider taking up farming.
Ever think that not all women are interested in "eradicating" the traditional roles of mothers?
The reality that I see among women my age is that a lot of them are choosing to prioritize their families and children over what the old-line feminist movement might consider important. And what's wrong with that? It's a choice, and if you don't like it, don't follow their example in your family. It's not some sort of societal crisis that women are making decisions that you don't personally agree with.
>> I'm male, and I'm all for women's rights and the advancement of the sex and gender -
Me too and I agree, except for the advancement of women's rights (only). I think this is also about men's rights but that never seems to get discussed.
Why should I work hard so low-buck chumps can get 'Child Tax Crdits' and 'Earned Income Credits' to finance their spawn? Your child, your problem. We have plenty of immigrants who don't make ridiculous child-related demands on society like native americans do. They're willing to live a lesser lifestyle to have their children. You're pricing yourself out of the market.
Blar.
Stockholm's syndrome variant.
It's amazing what we can persuade ourselves we agree with/enjoy/approve just because we get trapped and there's no moral way out.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
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Yes, there is such a concept as "filial responsibility" or "filial duty" and I am well aware of that.
But "filial" refers to the relationship. "filial duty" means "the duty of a child [to its parent]". Notice how filial describes the duty, not the child.
To describe children as filial is redundant and stupid. Children are implicitly filial.
The article makes no point that women are not allowed to work in the IT field. It makes the point that many women don't like the hours and requirements of working in the IT field. In any profession, there are sacrifices that a person makes to further his or her career. It just so happens that the IT field requires sacrifices on a level unheard of outside of the medical field.
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Newsflash: Women, men, and different races have very common genetic differences. Sure there are variances, but making a statement based on genetics or history is not completely wrong. I'm of the opinion that we should celebrate and embrace our differences.
Women, it seems, tend to be more emotional creatures. While men, it seems, tend to focus more logic based creatures.
In regard to "blacks liking KFC", I believe there is a historical cultural reason for that. I'd imagine the majority of the black population in the US is descendant from former slaves. I am also under the understanding that fried chicken was highly popular in the southern states. Given much of the population of the southern states was black slaves, it stands to reason that they ate fried chicken often; which would be passed down culturally through the generations.
One of the key aspects of sexism or racism is to discriminate, hate, or distinguish superiority or inferiority. Using historical and/or scientific observation to identify common traits is not sexism or racism in and of itself; so stop implying it is.
Yes, I am a smart ass; it's better than the alternative.
I'm a guy and I'm fleeing those jobs too. Fuck those companies. You can actually find an IT job where you can work reasonable hours, it just takes a little looking. I'm more than willing to put in overtime for my company occasionally if they ask, but I'm not going to work 60 or 80 hour weeks for them for months on end because they're too cheap to hire another person.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
No, you're entirely right - it's all about choice, but the way this article is depicting women it reinforces the lack of choice that women have. It's setting them into the mentality that their *only* option is to go home and care for the family, and that's why they have to give up their career. I'm with you - if you want to take care of your family at home, then more power to you, but let people truly have a choice.
If women don't want IT jobs that require you to be on call literally every moment of the day, everyday, all year without some assistance, I think they're pretty smart.
Yeah, yeah, "global economy means new requirements for business", "give the client their value's worth", etc... bullshit.
America has one of the most -if not the most- unhealthy work ethic in world. The IT and web-tech fields reign as king among the most grueling professional jobs out there. When I was working contracts for several years, the vast majority of the companies burn out their employees within two years. I worked with a lot of permanent employees getting paid 45K a year in the Detroit area to work 14-16 hours a day M-F and at least 20 hours over the weekend with no overtime pay. And this was for a web design firm. For myself and most of the people I've worked with, no amount of perks can account for giving your life to your company. Loyalty is one thing; indentured servitude is quite another.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
Yeah, I've known people with similar experiences; actually I had an acquaintance who only managed to get a hysterectomy by telling everyone involved that she was a lesbian, and cutting her hair short and wearing masculine clothes. Without doing that, she couldn't get any doctor to take her at her word that she didn't want to get pregnant. But by claiming to be and looking like a stereotypical lesbian, she found some progressive clinic that would do it. Truly bizarre, but I've been led to believe that such things are pretty typical/widespread, either because most physicians are inherently very biased about women, or they're afraid somehow of being sued later (I think the latter is the excuse used for the former).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Women won't do crappy work, like physical labor and clearly working shitty hours. It is their fault they have crappier pay. It has nothing to do with descrimination. And because men are willing to do things like relocate and work crappy hours, it makes more sense there are more men in upper management. I have an aunt that relocated and travels alot for her job, she is moving up fast.
Anything more than 40hrs a week is unacceptable to me. Sorry I'm not a workaholic. And before WW2, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, America was thinking of making the work week to 30-35hrs a week.
the fatal flaw in your argument is that you assume everyone else is a narcissist like yourself. this isn't true. i have a kid and he's one of the most important and cherished things in my life.
I prefer to argue with actual people, myself, but... /.
"The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birthrate to sustain it."
bud, this is
Society doesn't need a religious-society birthrate, we need R&D into robotics. Technology and the application of reason is the solution, not more idiots to waste precious resources, and break beer bottles everywhere. South Korea and Japan are already ahead of the curve here(funny; these two have some of the greyest populations of all countries). You are expecting to find liberals here, but have instead found technoprogressives(well, some of us, anyway).
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Thank you for expressing the same insight I had!
Let's see... hey little girl do you want a job that:
I mean come on, I tagged the main article as "duh" because it's obvious to me why women are leaving. What would have been interesting is an article that started out "Why aren't men leaving tech. jobs?" Now there's a psychology paper waiting to be written.
For my CS students: You have desirable skills and are valuable in a broad range of industries. There are jobs that don't have the above expectations/values. Choose those jobs and do not settle for the type of job I described in the above list. Change jobs immediately if they turn into that sort of shit. It makes a world of difference in your happiness, your health and all other aspects of life in general.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
You would solve both overpopulation and spreading ones ideas via adoption, but otherwise you seem to have thought things through.
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Programmers who are happy are productive. Programmers who work reasonable hours are healthy.
At my company, lots of women leave after a relatively short time (a couple months to a couple years). They're also some of the better programmers we've ever had, and we're sorry to see them leave.
The men tend to tough it out. Several of them have ended up in the hospital with heart trouble; I suspect sitting in front of a computer drinking energy drinks for 18 hours a day isn't helping their health. Then they burn up and leave anyway. Or stick around but are so drained and jaded that they don't do any real work.
Based on what I've seen at this company, I'd rather have more women than burned-out unhealthy men. If you treat people OK, they'll be around for the long-haul, and low turnover is good for business. Besides, this isn't special treatment: it's humane treatment. They say "you train people how to treat you"; men in IT jobs are really good at training people to treat them like shit at work. We *should* be equal, not by treating women worse, but by treating men better.
(Interestingly, even though they tell us to work long hard hours, I don't know that anybody was ever fired for working a normal 40-hour week, like I do.)
... but I think, if women are running from such jobs, they shouldn't have taken those jobs in the first place OR should have thought about not having kids when pursuing said career.
For either male or female it's unreasonable to sit in the 24/7 support cycle AND have an 8 hour job AND try to start a family with kids and all. The males can afford it better, although it's not healthy for personal or family life, females are meant to have the children and thus have to nurture and feed them. So do fathers but they are not as involved in that process as are the mothers (both biologically and psychologically).
I think it would be a courtesy to the kids for businesses and schools not to offer child daycare at all and cut females (and responsible fathers) with children off from responsibilities which suck a lot of energy that should be spent towards the kids like 24/7 on-call. That you get paid less because you don't have 2 hours extra overtime is something that you calculate before you decide to stop birth control. On the other hand, flex-hours and remote offices should become more common and accepted (younger management starts to understand it) than it is now, that would relieve a burden from families and improve work performance at the same time.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Also, this whole topic is predicated on the belief that there are no single fathers out there trying to raise their kids. Fewer of them to be sure, but they are out there.
Actually there are more and more Stay at home dads. My brother-in-law is one. While my sister works in her office where she and some of her friends started an accounting business, she's a CPA, he stays home taking care of their 3 year old daughter. He may be working from home now, I don't know if he still does, but he used to work from home as a day trader.
FalconShould there be a Law?
men are often charged more for essential services than women.
good examples are auto, health, and life insurance, among other things.
the difference is often more than the documented difference between mens and womens wages.
if women were paid the same nominally they would end up with more real income than men for the same job.
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I work in a bank environment and it isn't just women leaving the 24x7 on call environments, its men too. Mainly in our case it is due to idiot users that find it easier to call the on call tech all night long to do the parts of their job that they have been taught at least a hundred times before. I completely dread the weeks that my I'm on call. I already have to be in early, about 7 a.m. work until 4 p.m. which gives me an hour to get home before on call starts. At that point I may or may not get calls until about midnight, then wake up at 6-ish to do it again. Most of the calls that I get are routine things that happen every day, but for some reason the operator can't remember what to do, goes into panic mode and runs to the phone instead of asking one of the 10 other operators. There is nothing worst than getting that call after midnight, sleepily remote into the person's system and walk them through what they need to do, only to hear "oh yeah...I can do that can't I?" Companies really need to address 24x7 environments and better compensate their on call operators for the crappy hours that we end up working, and the life we need to give up. I didn't realize how much of a life I actually had until I started working on call and can't do the things I like to do anymore.
Meh: it depends on the circumstance entirely. Think of it this way -- you spend around 1/2 of your waking life at work. There's a good chance that you'll meet a compatible person there, especially if you're working at the right place. Should you write a potential lover/partner off just because she happens to work at the same place as you do?
Besides, it's generally easier to find a new job if things go awry than the right partner if you pass up someone who's really cool.
-b.
If you're taking on someone into a management or competitive career track (think junior partners in big law firms), who are you going to pick: the male employee, who's going to work his ass off, and then work his ass off some more, or the female employee, who's going to work her ass off, but then quite possibly go take six or nine months off to have a kid, and then only want to come back on a reduced schedule? It's a no-brainer, and this is why there's a culture of discrimination in many of those workplaces.
Several years ago my sister started an accounting business with some friends of hers. Then three years ago she gave birth to her daughter. She worked until the day she delivered then went back to work within days. While her husband stays home taking care of their daughter she puts in 50+ hours a week in the office, works from home, and runs a talk radio show she owns.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I am from Mexico and we have plenty of vacations. First, we have the government vacations (christmass, new year, some national days here and there), then we have the odd day and then by law you have 1 week (first year), 2 weeks(2snd year) 3 years(3rd year) and 4 years(4th year) or smoething similar.
Of course, if you are a teacher or work in the government you will get *more* vacations, oh, and you have the Semana Santa (easter) vacation, Jueves Santo and Viernes Santo.
Sorry pal, you are screwed =oP
cheers,
Pacho Sombrero
(a bit drunk, sorry)
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I think the real point was that a lot of people have children for the wrong reasons.
They were outsourced to India.
you forget a compensation for this "design flaw", and it's been in action in the US for at least 3/4 of a century now:
secular social-democratic members of society abhor and avoid war, while religious-society members charge gung ho into the maelstrom, pairing down their numbers.
it's been a traditional cycle throughout history:
secular and open minded people give rise to and maintain a society.
that society allows everyone.. including the irrational.. to reproduce.
the irrational, being irrational, have higher birthrate because they dont think about the consequences of rutting constantly.
before the days of osha, this used to be countered (most of the time) by the irrational reaching the pearly gates with stories like "had the walkman on, didnt hear the train".
nowadays, we have safety regulations, thus to the irrational taking over, but a new force has arisen to counter this.
once the irrational take over they begin provoking wars based on their irrationality, and killing each other until rationality takes hold again in respective nations.
unfortunately, this "cancellation process" was rather destructive a little over 1500 years ago, leading to a very dark time for western civ, but usually (like earthquakes) it happens more gradually with less intensity.
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Unfortunately I won't get that life of luxury from the social structures, as the money is being wasted on unprepared parents and their spawn.
I actually kind of feel sorry for you if this is truly your outlook on life. It seems rather selfish and it unfortunately reinforces the stereotype that those who choose to not have children are selfish. The selfish, resentful tone in your posts really is a bit depressing. You are working hard so that you can live a "retired life of luxury" and seem bitter that your hard-gotten earnings must be spent to support freeloading "unprepared parents and their spawn". You don't seem to have any respect for the fact that parents of today are building the society of tomorrow. We can't ALL live childless "retired lives of luxury" or the human race would head towards a miserable extinction.
I haven't seen anything at all in your posts that gives insight into what kind of legacy you would like to leave behind once your earthly existence ends. What kind of lasting contributions, memories, achievements would you like to leave this world that could out-survive you? Do you really think of life's purpose is merely to acquire the most "stuff" and live a life of luxury, and that supporting child-rearing people is some kind of inconvenient challenge against that goal? I know a lot of childless adults that don't think that way and accept without any problems at all that parents have to get their kids to school in the morning or get away from work early to do parent-teacher interviews or telecommute if they have to stay home to care for a kid home sick from school.
The childfree have got to pay for the childed's ongoing existence.
Of course you have to. It is kind of a moral obligation don't you think? SOMEONE has to raise the kids that'll eventually grow into the young adults that will build your mansion, tend to your yard and pool, cook your food, provide your security, change your depends when you get REALLY old...as you live your "retired life in luxury" right? Do you not feel that you should maybe help those "childed people" do that? Or perhaps you feel that robots will be invented that can do it all for you with out the messy inconvenience of having to make these disease-ridden flesh-loaves and grow them into annoying people that have to talk to you and eat and live somewhere and maybe even make more of those ghastly babies?
Just who's freeloading and who's pulling the cart? Simple answer : You were factually incorrect in your post.
I'm still not convinced of who is freeloading here--it certainly isn't simple for me and I know far too little about you or the parents you seem to resent. Even if someone works 80 hours a week to fill in for those parents who dare to avoid overtime so they can see their kids grow up, and pull in an impressive wage and make their employer's shareholders rich too...I can't help but think there has to be some degree of freeloading there in many cases. Prepared or not, parents are doing an important job--they are creating more people...and ultimately there is little more important than that for ensuring the continuity of society. What are YOU doing towards that end, besides grudgingly making mandatory financial and professional contributions? Do you help produce our food? Do you help build houses for people to live in? Do you help sick and injured people heal? Do you help educate young people? If you do, that's great! Just remember to keep into perspective that it all starts with *people*, and all people do start off as children you know.
Don't feel too bad though--society at large has lost perspective...those who care for children are in the same company as teachers, farmers, nurses, and many others that are far too under-appreciated and underpaid considering the importance of their contribution to society.
I prefer model #3 -- I'm freelance, work around 6 hr a day on average for small companies/startups, and bill 2-3x as much for my services as I would get if I were working as an employee.
Not having worked in more than 10 years, I'm on disability but want to start working again ASAP, and because of my disability the only way I think I'll be able to work is if I freelance or start my own business, become selfemployed. Even if I wanted to, I don't think I would be able to work fulltime at least not without a lot of assistance to start with.
FalconShould there be a Law?
my how hyppocritical you are, comming from a political position with pundits like bill "STFU" oreilly, whose debate technique consists of shouting people down, and fox news, which apparently operates under the strategy of "speak a lie long enough and everyone will think its true". I think its time for you to actually read "lies and the lying liars who tell them" instead of WSJ's reviews of the book.
I'll give you rational liberal arguments against conservatism major point by major point:
1 - reaganomics, also known as "supply side" economics.
any economic policy which benefits companies or owners at the expense of their workers ignores two important economic concepts(which are not stressed enough in econ curriculi). The first is moral hazard. Conservatives call liberals "blind idealists" but ignore the fact theyre giving huge financial gains to the wealthy and idealistically counting on them to pass that along instead of hording it in their own circles (these people make more than they can ever spend.. giving more to them simply drains that cash from the economy). Moral hazard asserts, and correctly so, that given the opportunity to abuse someone's trust with little to no consequence, a party will.
The second is the GDP equation. The most important factor to economic expansion in that equation is consumption, because once you boil it down it's only consumption which contributes to profit. When you try to "boost" the economy by adopting these policies you attack consumption by pushing wages through the floor, and in the process attack your own long term profits. Thus the reason why every time reaganomics is put into effect a recession follows shortly (a couple years) upon it.
2 - smaller government.
we had a smaller government for about 170 years before basic safety nets and proper labor standards were put in place. The result of complete government nonintervention was a horrible standard of living(median housing didnt have insulation or indoor plumbing), gilded age political machines, and eventually horrific depression. The provision of basic safety nets and labor standards gave rise to and keeps preserved the most important factor to economic growth and a healthy democratic state, a large and stable middle class (who have both money to consume and free time in which to spend it on things like education). Additionally, it reduces the disincentives for those who might otherwise not risk starting a company for fear of becomming one of the statistical 2/3 entrepreneurial failure.
Granted, it's being abused (by both government and the public), but the solution is not to toss it out. When your computer gets infected with spyware, you fix it, you don't just reject technology and go mennenite.
as for pork.. i think both parties can get behind elimination of pork.
3 - religion.
contrary to popular conservative belief, spirituality does not require religion, nor does morality. religion should not be enforced by or even endorsed by the state, it should be treated like eating habits.. that is accomodated as is necessary and otherwise left alone. most importantly it should be divorced from all state actions. the government is not a person, it is a mechanism for governing the nation, and unlike their human counterparts machines do not worship god.
4 - "family values"
in a nation premised around the idea of every individual's right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", no amount of legislation or government action will magically make those you consider "amoral" change their way of life. this thought brings us to...
5 - foreign policy.
republican approaches to foreign policy are the real reason our government is so huge and expensive. military spending, even for wwII, was breaking even within a few years of a war's end, and part of this was because we only went to war when we actually were threatened, rather than just paran
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The planet is already overpopulated, and 2 is enough.
Actually the replacement, or fertility, rate is more like 2.6 children per couple. Some countries, like Sweden and the USA, are seeing a drop in native born citizens and the only way they can maintain the same level of population is by allowing more and more immigrants to settle in the country. Even the two most populous nations in the world, China and India, are seeing their populations leveling off. Though I don't have a link, I think some were in The Economist , I've read of studies that showed within a generation there will be fewer people in China supporting more old people there.
The best way to control the amount of people there are is to increase both education and equality. As the educational level improves the people are able to get better paying jobs and equality allows females not to only get an education but also get a ob outside the home. And as income raises people have fewer children.
FalconShould there be a Law?
"One study cited in the article states that by 2012, 40% of women now working in IT will leave for careers with more flexible hours."
So let me guess, we need more H1-B visas, right?
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
On the other hand, I'll have to manage to afford my own food, electricity, water, gas, living quarters, and vehicle repairs. This is fine; I'm still here because I can't do that yet. Besides storing up money at $35000/year
You're saving $35,000/yr and you can't make it own your own? My income is less than half that, I'm on disability and don't work. Forget if my income was $35,000, if I were able to save I'd be able to save and invest that much and still have plenty of spending money then after a few years I'd have enough saved up to buy a duplex, triplex, or quadraplex and live in one apartment while renting out the others. Actually that's the plan for me now. I have an apartment in a quadraplex my sister owns, and when she builds up enough equity in the building she plans on selling it to me. I'll assume the morgage. Then I'll basically be living free.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Women don't like IT and are leaving. So what! If they find a job that they like better, I say go for it. Why do some people care so damn much about the gender balance in various professions? As long as the people involved in the job produce quality work, who cares if it's a man or a woman? The user of the program won't know. Some people need to get a fucking life.
Over population is not a problem in the developed world. Instead the problem is under procreation, and when there is procreation, it is usually by the wrong people in the wrong environment.
Firstly, the birth rate of developed nations does not sustain the population base. That is why there is rampant immigration. Unfortunately, this is often not selective enough, and we bring the problems from the original countries.
Second, when we do procreate, it is often by the "welfare sluts". Great, now the large families all have five different fathers, few of whom spend any time with the childern, many of them just abusing. These poor kids have more hurdles to overcome than I can imagine.(my hat off to those who do overcome)
Yes, we need more professionals making the VERY LARGE sacrifice of having childern and raising the WELL.
From the summary: by 2012, 40% of women now working in IT will leave for careers with more flexible hours.
Versus what percentage of the men now working in IT? The article doesn't say. That would be a useful comparison. I wouldn't be surprised if it were a fairly high percentage too.
The older I get, the more men I know in IT have kids and families and do the same thing. For most people there's a point where those hideous hours aren't worth the pay anymore when you don't get to see your spouse and kids, so you look for a different job with more regular hours.
I imagine it's probably more noticeable with women in IT because culturally right now, women are more likely to be single parents and not have the option of relying on a spouse to sometimes watch the children.
I don't really think this is a "man vs. woman" thing. I think it's about people maturing and looking at the health of their families. Some people can afford to keep the long on-call hours up if they have a reliable family network. Others don't have that family safety net for whatever reason--divorce, deaths, relocations, etc., and they find that another job gives them better hours for close enough pay (or worse pay, but more take-home pay since they aren't paying for child care with their better hours.)
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I did a contract for Meijer IT on Walker in Grand Rapids a few years ago. This is a classic case of a brilliant Man (Fred Meijer) who built a multi billion dollar empire, and now, the greedy (harvard educated?) kids are running it, trying to bleed out every red cent. There is no such thing as enough money, so the IT staff have faced wage freezes, the great onsite cafeteria (no nearby eateries) basically shut down etc. In the mean time, they had shoved people into managing IT projects that should not have even been allowed in the seperate IT building(another mistake I think). Some of the best contractors I knew there were pushed out because they were smarter than the boss. All in all, a typical disfunctional IT department. The only reason they have any staff left is because the IT economy sucks in the area (mostly rinky dink MS stuff, almost like they have never heard of Java etc.), and somehow the other two larger employers seem not to hire staff from Meijer and vice versa. The story is reported that there is an agreement not to hire from each other to keep the wage rates down. Like many others, my first thought reading the intro was "So, women are smart enought to get out of a cruddy field. Try medicine, where being average is definitely NOT harder than being good at IT, but it is sure a lot more rewarding." I even know of a guy who didn't make it into medicine, but is making just as much selling for a drug company.
Nope. Sorry, Charlie, not so fast. Men have better upper body strength. Women, by and large have greater flexibility. Men have larger muscle mass. Women do better at high G-forces. And so on. Both have advantages for not only different aspects of in-person combat but for other types of frontline jobs. Some experts have been saying that women, once we know how to accomodate them, will turn out to be better fighter pilots. Jeebus! Heinlein was pointing this out in Starship Troopers in the fifties. This is nothing new.
Follow-up studies have demonstrated that women respond to strength exercise in the same rate as men (Westcott 1991). They are therefore not the weaker sex. They are the smaller sex, but on a muscle-for-muscle basis, women are just as strong as men..
Lighter bones, smaller muscles and higher fat ratios make women more suitable for swimming, where buoyancy is an issue. More body fat means more fuel to burn in endurance pursuits like running, cycling, swimming and hiking. Smaller tendons and ligaments along with less bulky muscles allow for greater potential for flexibility. This is a favorable situation for pursuits like gymnastics and rock climbing where flexibility is at a premium.
In other cases, I agree that there are physiological differences, but there, too, it gets kinda messy and the wise experts agree that in some ways what we're seeing is data from male athletes, who have at least five thousand years of expertise behind their training techniques, and women, whose techniques have only been getting suited to their bodies in the past forty years.
I'm a big, hearty fella. Probably bigger than you. And I have very clear memories of sparring sessions where a tiny woman used her superior agility to simply not be where I hit. I went for her, she dropped, rolled, came up somewhere else. And part of it was simply that she was down below where I was used to striking a given blow.
And moving on from there, have you seen all the recent studies about "mean girls"? Funny thing, now that we're finally starting to get useful data, waddayaknow, women aren't always "nicer" than men, they just conceal the blow better. As with my old sparring partner, they hit ya where you're not looking. If you think that this isn't applicable to warfare then you don't know a lot about war.
Lastly, you think that we're "being pussies" because women have a responsible role in society? What a load of crap! The U.S. was letting France and England push us around for years before and after 1812. Korea seized and killed the crew of the Sherman and it took us eleven years, until 1871, iirc, to get around to reprisals. The "backwoods" Seminoles and Cajuns kicked the ass of all Federal interlopers in the Florida swamps for decades before the "revenooers" just gave up and left them alone. Shit, son, there was a period that we were afraid that Venezuala's navy was going to kick our butt. Never in our history, not under Teddy Roosevelt, not under Jackson, have we had a White House as belligerent as the one we've got right now. Why do we have to play it safe with Iran? A.) All of our troops are committed to Iraq and other "War on Terror" stuff to the point that we no longer have, for example, a full strength available Rapid Deployment Force. B.) Ahmedinijad was screwing around, like Quaddaffi before him, as many foreign policy people have suspected all along, C.) England, hard though you may it find to understand, actually is a sovereign nation with their own foreign policy and military and everything. It's not our job to get their soldiers back. D.) IRAN HAS NUKES, YOU DIMWIT!
Your premise is faulty, your data is false, and your conclusions are invalid. Here's a nickel, boy. Buy a clue.
You'll just let the government keep that money, eh? Somehow I doubt that.
Let me explain again...your breeding is not necessary to keep the country running. Immigration is what we need...because native Americans won't work for a sustainable wage. Since we don't need your breeding, we shouldn't be giving you money via the tax code to raise children.
You Leech.
Blar.
Native Americans?? I take it by native americans you mean white guys (from overseas) who killed most of the real natives?
'Sorry, white males have insisted for centuries that they lived in a merit-based society that justified their disproportionate social and economic power.'
No. PEOPLE did bad things. White male is not a valid classification, the color and gender of those people is not relevent. The people who did those things were individuals and individually responsible for their actions. I am not one of those individuals and am neither responsible or liable for their actions.
'It's racist to assume that while ISN'T a race, that whiteness does NOT immediately provide privilege.'
It's never racist to not think in terms of race. It is always racist to think in terms of race.
'I was broke too once. But I do not blame the black or female students just out of college for it, because unlike them I've still got more access to better-paying jobs than they do.'
I don't blame black or female students for my economic status. I don't even blame the laws that give them an advantage simply because they were lucky enough to be born with the right color skin. I take responsibility for my own financial status as you should. I don't have access to better paying jobs than a female black student. I do however protest the laws because they give unfair advantage based upon criteria that is utterly ridiculous.
'Anecdote'
Absolutely meaningless. That is not a white guy and a black guy. That is two individuals. A black man can fit in with the culture of his company just as easily as a white man. It doesn't matter what color you are, you have to fit in, conform, and kiss ass to get ahead.
First, it wouldn't matter if your conclusions were correct since there are just as many incidents that go the other way. Here in Miami it is not at all uncommon for Hispanic businesses and clients to chose Hispanic service providers over anyone else.
Second, there are numerous other factors you ignore. Simply because one is black and one white does not mean that being black or white has anything to do with the result. The result could have been because of job performance. The black individual could have insisted on maintaining his 'blackness' by adhering to street culture. Sorry, the rest of us have to give up our fun pet cultures and music when we stop being teens and grow up. Or, the most likely of all, the white guy was in the right place at the right time and/or knew the right people.
I am confident that in addition to these two people you could probably name lots of white guys who didn't get this once in a lifetime opportunity as well. Perhaps you'd like to give an anecdote where you mention this lucky guy and this other white college who didn't get the opportunity so that you could demonstrate... what excuse for the result would you give there?
'One of the key aspects of sexism or racism is to discriminate,'
You are discriminating when you assume someone shares a characteristic because you have grouped them based upon race. Races aren't real, they are arbitrary collections of non-functional genetic characteristics. You could randomize the characteristics and switch them around and the result would be no more consistent or meaningful.
It is racist to believe someone is probably good at sports due to blackness (and contrary to popular belief, your just as racist if you are a black man coming to that conclusion). It is no more racist to believe a black man is lazy due to blackness.
'Women, it seems, tend to be more emotional creatures. While men, it seems, tend to focus more logic based creatures.'
I wouldn't mention that belief to a logical woman. She will probably get quite emotional.
'I'm of the opinion that we should celebrate and embrace our differences.'
I agree. So long as we don't group ourselves and develop culture based upon non-functional physical traits like skin-color and eye-color.
After the big push attempting to get more women into IT via artificial incentives, when those incentives are gone alot of these same women find no compelling reason to stay. Is this a surprise? I'm in this business because I get to work with computers (kewl!), make stuff (which is great cause I don't have a womb), and play on the internets (cause its hard to get a vagina when you don't have one). Those are the built-in incentives to IT work. They are always present. That's why I'll probably stay in the field for a long time. If I was lured into the business by offers for free porn, and didn't find the built in ones fulfilling enough, when the free porn is gone so am I. Simple. In the end, does it really matter? The whole push to get more women in IT was fucking stupid in the first place. It would be like pushing to get more whites in the MBA. Those with the inclination to make it will be drawn. Those who do not will go where their inclinations take them. Its not a crying shame; its life. Stop trying to control other people's lives so much. Sheesh.
You're doing it wrong--http://youredoingitwrong.mee.nu
White male is not a valid classification, the color and gender of those people is not relevent.
White and male are perfectly valid classifications, else the words themselves would not exist. And white as a 'race' (a social division) most certainly exists: one only has to head to the KKK website or google for "whiteness studies" to see people refer to it. Better than that would be to google for "unpacking the invisible knapsack" for a decent essay about whiteness.
However, since you do not acknowledge that you live in a social world and hence none of the benefits of being white or male even exist, there is no point in responding to the rest of your post.
Also, if everyone does the same, how many people will be able to do all the unrestrained consumption that keeps your economy afloat?
'However, since you do not acknowledge that you live in a social world and hence none of the benefits of being white or male even exist,'
Living in a social world and believing that race gives one white males a benefit are not mutually inclusive. There are clear benefits to NOT being a white male. Those benefits are coded into law and regulations. I can honestly say that being a white male has never been of any benefit to me. Perhaps it could be helpful at a KKK rally (do they even still exist in substantial numbers? I would be surpised if there were more than 20,000 KKK'ers and neo-nazi's in a nation of 200,000,000) but there are no shortage of gang gatherings and neighborhoods where being of another 'race' would carry an equal benefit.
'to see people refer to it.'
Nobody could dispute that there are many idiots who believe in the concept of race and therefore that there are many idiots who refer to race, write papers about race, discuss the qualities of races, etc. That does not make racial lines objective and valid constructs or mean that white males have an advantage in life.
Obviously written by someone who only thinks they know history. What about Hitler and Stalin to name a few? These were social democracies run by secular people and were responsible for more deaths than a significant number of religious wars and it took them only about 15 years to do it! (approx 62 million between them)
I have heard this kind of bias before, and it is founded in a holier than thou bigotry that would make any religious zealot proud! Same mind, just applied differently.
BC
First item : We have one world. Developed World/Undeveloped world/Developing world.... That's a nonsense. One world. That's all we actually get.
And in order to solve the problem of over-population you suggest having more children? Have you really thought this all the way through? Having more children solves nothing, and following your assumptions and the behavior that follows will ensure only that some of the billions that die in horrible circumstances as the ecosystem collapses under the weight of humanity are (potentially) better educated than the screaming masses around them.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
There is no Underdeveloped world or Developing world, it is just one world? You do not travel much do you. Tell the people that in Haiti etc. They are very much stuck in the third world, and they CANNOT get out. Most of them would love to work in a sweatshop things are so bad. Even in one of the better countries (Venesuela) I saw kids scavaging for food in the a garbage dump right near downtown(Caracus).
Lets get one thing straight... THERE IS NO PROBLEM WITH OVERPOPULATION! The problems we have are
1) Western Society consumes like there is no tommorow
2) We don't give a Crap about developing the third world or improving the conditions there
3) There is tons of food, just no reason to distribute it properly. (no profit in that)
4) Third world governments often prevent thier own people from producing properly and/or instability keeps the people from being able to care for themselves.
Question... If you really care, what do YOU do to help those people who you pretend to know something about. Will you match my giving to groups that work in these lands to better the lives. (A few thousand gives you benifits at tax time as well) World Vision etc. do very good work.
Bottom Line, the truth still remains:
The developed world is underprocreating at an alarming rate(to fast of a shrink does not produce a stable society). The underdeveloped world needs help, and they will keep procreating until they get educated.
(By the way, claiming that I said that having more childern solves overpopulation is a nice Strawman. )
Do men get "day care at work, or work-at-home options for someone who leaves to have a child"? Fuck no. Why should women expect to work the same job as a man at the same pay, but get extra time off and consideration because they are female? Dot Brunette, you can't pick and choose the areas in which you want to be treated equally! How something this moronic even makes it out of the mouth of a "30 year IT veteran" is a mystery.