I attended a seminar that was focused on why women don't tend to consider a career in technology. It had a panel of women who are in tech and went into their backgrounds and why they love being where they are.
The first panelist took a course in multimedia and ended up continuing into software engineering. Now she manages technology projects. The other three panelists had no backgrounds in tech, but were in the right place at the right time and were offered management positions in tech teams.
All of that sounds great, and I am glad to see more women in tech, however what really irritated me was the fact that each panelist strongly stressed how un-technical they were. One of the audience members asked, "So when you're in a meeting with techies and they're speaking their language, what do you do?" The response from the panel was that every area has their own acronyms and jargon, and that it's OK not to understand everything. I completely agree on that point, there's nothing wrong with not knowing everything. However, they continued to stress how it's not so hard and that anyone can learn to code! Plus, they still don't understand what's going on half the time and they're getting by.
I'm not disputing that anyone can learn to code, and I don't want to make programming out to be some kind of mystical exclusive club open only to those of a specific level of intelligence. I do have an issue with the panel trying to make it sound like you can have absolutely no idea what's going on, have no desire to learn, and be able to work effectively. The whole panel seemed to me like they were saying, "You've got the soft skills, let the techies do their thing and you can just manage them."
It reminds me of Jen, from the IT Crowd. As funny as it is to watch, the thought of having a manager who doesn't care what you do as long as things are running smoothly does not appeal to me at all. Because when things go bad, as they inevitably will, I want someone who can tell our stakeholders, "We're working on a fix. We will update as soon as we can," rather than cracking the whip at us, complaining that it shouldn't have happened, and asking for up-to-the minute reports so that they have something to tell the higher ups every minute to make it look like they're doing something. Or they misunderstand what you tell them, and promise something completely infeasible, but demand that you do it because they already told senior management that it'll be done.
Still, my experience of being a woman in tech is a bit of a mixed bag. One of the senior developers, Mike, was telling me that when he was interviewing for his position, it was down to himself, and one other developer, who was a woman. He said that his area manager wanted to hire the woman, because "that's what you're meant to do, right?", despite the fact that he performed better on the technical test, and had more relevant experience in our area. The developer lead (who would have to work directly with the new hire) argued for hiring Mike instead, and eventually that's what happened. When I heard that story, all I could think about was that my manager was the one who had a strong push to hire me after I finished the grad program, despite the fact that there was another grad who was in the team at the same time as me, and who I think is more technical than I am. However, luckily for us, we were both able to get a job in the team.
Nobody on my team treats me badly because I'm a female developer, at least I've never gotten that impression from them. The worst they do is whenever I go to one of those women in technology events, a couple of them will ask why there are no men in technology support groups or things like that. I got to go to a business women's breakfast where the guest speaker was former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and a couple of people complained again (although they were all happy when I opened my bag of free gifts from the breakfast and shared it with them). So when the next breakfast was advertised for International Women's Day, I invited them to come, but they all complained about how early it was. Sometimes you just can't win.
I've never been offended by any of the jokes the other developers tell, but I think I've been desensitized by a lot of it from playing games online. One of them will apologise to me whenever he thinks he might have gone over the line with one of his dirtier jokes, but that's about it as far as being treated differently goes. I was given easier stories to complete when I first started, but that was more to do with the fact that I was new to the team and didn't have that much experience with the frameworks they use. Now I am being given much more difficult tasks, which is good for my growth, I guess, but sometimes I feel like it's too hard! I always seem to slog it through in the end though, so it can't have been too difficult.
I can't really compare the experience of working as a women in tech to other sectors, as this is my only full time job. I don't know if there was a glass ceiling at the casino or at the supermarket, because I hadn't thought that much about my career prospects at the time. I would like to think that in my team at least, people value you if you can do your job. The conversations are quite nerdy, which I think is awesome though I can understand isn't everyone's cup of tea, but a lot of people in my team are married with kids, and so there's also a lot of everyday life talk. Oh, I should probably remind people that while I do work in technology, I work for a bank, so this might not be a good representation of women in tech for dedicated software companies.
I'm all for promoting gender equality in the workplace, but I don't think that should be done at the expense of dumbing down what the position really entails. You don't need to be a hotshot developer to be able to manage them, but I believe it's best if you at least have some idea of what they're doing. There are tons of posts out there about how why good developers leave, and one of the major ones is bad management. I would be incredibly frustrated if I tried to explain that I needed something from my manager, but they didn't see the importance of it. The manage needs to have faith in their employees, but on the flip side, the need to be able to see when the employees are just walking all over them. If they don't really have the knowledge to back that up, then I worry about whether they can make informed decisions.
That being said, being technical won't necessarily make you a good manager. I recently found out that my manage has been promoted to a new role, so they are looking for his replacement. I asked him why he didn't just promote one of the senior developers on our team, and he said he asked, but none of them wanted the job. I was a bit surprised by that, but now that I've thought about it, some of them would struggle to be a good manager. A lot of them hate getting bogged down by paperwork, and get frustrated at the numerous number of meetings they need to attend. One of them (who has temporarily taken on a project manager role) got really frustrated about not having written any code for two days. My boss said I'd do really well at it, but I told him that I wasn't ready. I don't think I've earned the respect of my peers in order to be managing them, and I don't think they'd take it very well, even if they all turned down the role themselves.
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