The boys of IT
via Burningbird: Women in IT stuff
I imagine this is at least part of the reason for the relative lack of women in IT: they feel enormously pressured by the obsessive, almost semi-autistic nature of some of their prospective IT colleagues. In most of the IT groups that I've been involved with, you have to be willing to engage in rhetorical near-war in order to be heard, and you have to put up with challenges to your ideas that are so aggressive, so intense, and so basically anti-social that it's almost impossible not to take them as personal affronts.
In my experience this nails it. I have seen far too many people pull this kind of aggressive oneupsmanship. And there's no reason to be surprised to see some women in IT acting in like fashion - they have to adapt and survive in the field too. It often feels like all defense and no collaboration.
Comments
Both an interesting read and a sad statement on the kinds of social misfits who populate what could be referred to as The IT Ranks. That women are pressured into being even bigger pricks than the men is just ruddy obscene.
It takes all kinds I guess. I count myself lucky to be a Department Of One, most days.
Posted by: GreyDuck | May 21, 2003 5:28 PM