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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.'"
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.
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 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.
~
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?
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.
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.
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.
An entire continent of women were abandoned for the better part of a decade while their men went off to war, then came back shell shocked and broken to women who'd had their families providers ripped away long ago and weren't the tender nurturers they used to be. A unique cultural trauma in the world. For both genders.
Try to be philosophical about it. Other cultures will rise.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
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.
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.
Equality these days essentially means that one group is given an unfair advantage over another: It might be women who expect to work fewer hours and get the same pay, or it is things like affirmative action. In both those cases, and others , the action is self defeating: if the group demands help to be equal it undermines the cause because it doesn't make them equal, it just gives them an unfair advantage over others, and admits that the group being helped is lesser because they need help.
"The quickest way to end a war is to lose it" -Orwell
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."
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.
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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?
You? By yourself? Enjoy your very long vacation, they'll find someone else.
Now, if everyone were to get together, and all of us demand that 24x7 on call has to stop, that might turn heads.
If only someone had a way to get everyone together... what would we call that?
"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.
I know it's a stereotype but almost all of the geek's I know are in stable long term relationships, either married or live in SO's. The people I see who are all alone in their parent's basement are simply nerds, they don't appear to have any real amount of skill or focus, just a lack of social adjustment. I think once they get out of HS most geeks blossom somewhat and are able to make a connection with people not intimately involved with their geeky subjects (or perhaps involved in secondary geeky subjects like say renfairs). Of course the internet and the fact that the richest people in the world have been geeks for a couple decades has probably helped the situation for Gen X geeks.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I'm fine with the whole "gender equality" thing. Men suck. Women suck. They just happen to suck differently.
Case examples (which I've encountered on a monthly-to-weekly basis since around the time I hit that puberty thing: Men muttering (or bellowing) ZOMG WILL YOU LOOK AT THAT ASS?! or otherwise spluttering when some moderately pleasant whatever walks past. I'm a guy, and I find that shit disgusting. Stop it. Women getting pissy and grumpy and muttering (or bellowing) WELL I GUESS CHIVALRY IS DEAD, ISN'T IT?! when you don't hold the door for them, give up your place in line for them, or otherwise bend over backwards for them? You wanted equality, you got it. You can't have it both ways, lady.
Aside, I think anyone who wants to be in the kitchen belongs in the kitchen. A good friend of mine is a far better house-husband (a "mister mom" if you will) than his wife ever was - he's a far better cook, he's much better with the kids, and he likes doing it. And his wife happens to be a far better wal-mart manager than he ever would be. Marxism on a micro-scale.
A few thousand years on and society is still in the zits-and-rat turd mustache part of puberty. If we're still acting like this in a thousand years, then we definitely have a problem.
That's very rarely true on a literal basis. Any "interchangeable" jobs are usually hourly, and every cog in the machine gets paid the same thing.
If you're working on salary, then there's rarely such a thing as the "same position" despite lots of folks having the same title -- and salary is negotiable. For a multitude of reasons (some historically sexist, others not), men do tend to negotiate more and harder over salary.
Much like car prices offered to women buyers (which have been studied quite extensively as it's much easier to isolate than salaries), there's a lot of chicken and egg going on in terms of where the fault lies -- do women accept worse offers in negotiations because they're conditioned to or feel they have no choice, or do worse offers get made and stood by simply because negotiators know women will more frequently accept them?
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Except that there's nothing idiotic about it -- it's the entire point of the article!
Companies want more women. Women want X. Companies who want women have to offer X. If you disagree with X, feel free, but that doesn't make the article or comment any less accurate.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
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
The Forbes U.S. Top Ten:
Bill Gates
Warren Buffet
Sheldon Adelson (casino gaming)
Paul Allen
Michael Dell
The Walmart heirs
This is fundamentally a list of first and second generation entrepreneurial capitalists. The money isn't in the technology , it's in marketing the technology.
Dude, the point is that they didn't have any violence at home, they just up and picked up all the men and put em in boats and carted em off for years and years. It's not a pissing contest.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth