The Third Bit

wow, *one* whole (and relatively useless) paragraph on how to fix the problem… *sigh.

Even though this study claims the situation is complicated, I believe they’ve oversimplified it, as most of the other discussions do.

First my views are that of a male, so take it on that basis. I have 30 experience in IT at various levels.

1) IT is a bruising business with a bunch of egos involved. Many people MAN or WOMAN just aren’t cut to work in that environment. Has nothing to do with sexism. It’s just a personality fit issue.

2) ‘Diving Catch’. The scenario given made me laugh. In my shop the glory of that kind of smokejumper routine would be snuffed out pretty quick. For the next question that would be coming out of my mouth is — “What were the circumstances that permitted this emergency to occur?” Our firm attempts a prevention scenario. Smokejumping is considered a failure. No promotions would ensue.

3) What was not mentioned in the piece is what % of the loss is due to maternity? This occurs in all industries and IT is not immune to that.

4) Mentors. I get the feeling that in this article mentors were only valid woman to woman. [Could be wrong] The concept is oh so sexist on its face. I have not seen a IT shop yet that did not have some guy or gal who was part of the founding team. Now the person I am talking about today does not sit on the board but is still probably doing router installs or managing the server team. (S)He’s happy and approachable and he knows more about the CEO and the power structure than most. [He's probably loaded from stock, but I digress.] Find him or her. They have more data as far as career paths than some equivalent peer level.

At tech companies where I’ve worked, or where friends or family have worked, there seems to often be an underlying assumption that people do not have outside commitments. Little things, like having the all-hands meeting over a late dinner (instead of lunch or during the work day) and core hours that seem to shift later (meetings can be scheduled after five, and can drag on late, but are rarely scheduled before ten) have made the balance unnecessarily harder for some women I’ve known. Maybe they came back after kids, and are willing to work the hours, but can’t or don’t want to stay late. I do think you lose if the assumption is that everyone has a stay-at-home wife. It’s not just women I’ve seen struggle with this – but it seems to hit women more because they are less likely to have a spouse willing to pick up the slack at home.

I don’t see any real reason tech jobs should require more emotional toughness than banking jobs or graphic design jobs. A little toughness is always great, but nurses need to be emotionally tough and assertive in their opinions on matters in their expertise too. The assumption is there, on some people’s part, that social and communication skills mean you’re less technically apt, and that technical discussions are necessarily adversarial. I disagree.

Average of 71 hours per week? That’s *insane*. Nobody should have to work those hours, let alone have 50% of people working more!

Let’s just take everything in the article at face value. First of all, nothing is a bruising business unless people make it so. I think it is generally a “masculine” tendency to regard those situations as both unchangeable, and nobody’s fault. It’s pretty clear to someone who’s getting pumelled that the fault lies with those doing the pumelling. Harald, I’m not saying you are suggesting this, but I have definitely seen examples where such cultures perpetuate themselves by blaming the victim.

Sounds like the arena is totally different in the U.S. than it is here in Australia. It sounds like the only issue is that women are voting with their feet while the blokes, for some reason, are not doing so.

I’ve heard it’s similar here in Australia in law, where macho cultures encourage the same style of cowboy behaviour and long hours.

I’ve yet to see anything to convince me that a tech shop needs everyone to work 71 hours a week in order to be competitive. Here in Australia, it is a little conspicuous that we don’t have any Googles or Microsofts of local software giants, but we certainly have plenty of IT companies, some competing in the international arena.

I don’t think “mentoring” can solve the problem. As far as I can tell, the only way for culture to change is for the top managers to embody the values they want to see ingrained at the bottom, and to rotate managers which can’t participate in that. There are a lot of things people can do, but I would argue that work-life balance and simple decency are actually the most important tools, not technology or mentoring.