What Bell Labs Was Like C.1967 (theguardian.com)

New submitter niittyniemi writes: There's a rather interesting photo-gallery over at The Guardian which gives an indication of what life was like at Bell Labs c.1967. This was the year that Dennis Ritchie joined Bell Labs and went on to produce a body of work which has been pretty much unrivaled in its influence on the modern computing landscape, even some 50 years later. What's noticeable about the pictures, is that they are of woman. I don't think this is a result of the photographer just photographing "eye candy." I think it's because he was surrounded by women, whom from his comments he very much respected and hence photographed. In those times, wrangling with a computer was very much seen as "clerical work" and therefore the domain of woman. This can be seen as far back as Bletchley Park and before that Ada Lovelace. Yet 50 years later, the IT industry has turned full-circle. Look at any IT company and the percentage of women doing software development or similar is woeful. Why and how has this happened? Discuss.

Comments

The tech industry turned toxic.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the simplest explanation for why women fled the tech industry is that the industry became toxic due to

• Long hours
• Incompetent management
• The inherent disposability of code
• A work-for-hire model that deprives programmers of true ownership of their code
• A growing societal belief that computing was for obssessive/autistic men too attractive to get dates on Saturday night

Re:The tech industry turned toxic.

[supremebob]

Yeah, I'd like to think that most women are too smart to get into IT at this point.

For an example, my wife is a pre-school teacher. In that job, she gets:

1) A pension that pays 80% of her salary for the rest of her life when she retires.
2) 12 weeks of vacation (mostly summer break) a year
3) A 35 hour (8 to 3:30) workday
4) Government health benefits that beat almost anything that you can get in the private sector.
5) Tenured status after 5 years that basically guarantees that she has a job for life

Meanwhile, my IT job looks more like this:

1) A lousy 20% 401k match on 4% of my income. I'll never be able to retire on that.
2) 3 hours of vacation a year (that you almost don't want to take, since you know that everything will go to shit while you're out)
3) A 45+ hour workday, plus on-call hours.
4) Lousy health benefits with huge deductibles and co-pays
5) The constant threat that my job will be outsourced to some third-world country.

And we both get to deal with spoiled brats all day :)

So... who made the smarter career choice?

Easy

[AlphaBro]

It turns out software development is engineering, not clerical work.

Re:huge budgets to hire the best... oh wait..

[thegarbz]

The English language is being pummeled into submission by reddit style reporting on the front page. Discuss.

Re:Here on Slashdot, SJW Work is Never Done

[AmiMoJo]

It's ironic that all the things they accuse "SJWs" of - being perpetually offended, wanting to silence others and shut down debates, demanding everyone agree with them and labelling any dissent as abuse and harassment - is all the stuff they themselves are doing.

Then they tell you to grow a thicker skin, while being unable to scroll past articles they don't like without getting offended themselves.