• (cs) in reply to Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka:
    Matthew:
    Lynx:
    There ARE females in IT (I'm not using the term "girls" because some of them are old enough to be my mother!). Some of them are very good at it -- in many cases better than me (yes, I know that can be taken to mean I suck...).

    I agree, "girls" is so condescending. I prefer dames.

    I use girls because it pairs well with 'guys'. Guys and women? Yecch.

    The pair is "guys and gals".

    When you get to be as old as my mom, you don't mind using "girls" again. I guess it makes her feel younger.

  • Dave (unregistered) in reply to pitchingchris
    pitchingchris:
    Dave:
    There are 14 people in our team, 7 of whom are of the female persuasion; two are managers and one is a team leader. It's the most women I've ever worked with in an IT job.

    And three of them are hot.

    Sounds like Dave has it made. How does he get any work done ?

    Work? It is to laugh. I have successfully mastered the eyes-up-here, though, which helps.

  • NotanEnglishMajor (unregistered)

    The reason there are fewer women than men in IT is not that women have inferior abilities. It is because they have superior insight. Men are attracted to tech jobs simply because the tech is cool. Women have enough insight to know that these jobs are all being "offshored" to various asian countries anyway and they prefer to persue careers with better security and opportunites for advancement.

    -Notan

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to antiPC
    antiPC:
    But if there are innate gender differences, then you will never know because the situation will never be resolved to your satisfaction to make that conclusion. If innate gender differences were admitted to, IN THE VERY LEAST, then all these discrimination claims would be put in doubt.

    The whole question is whether or not there are innate gender differences, and if there are what sort of trend in IT they would encourage. Without knowing that, it is unclear whether discrimination is worse or better than it currently appears, because the distribution of men and women in IT in the absence of social issues is unknown. Assuming that innate differences support the status quo is a cop out to avoid dealing with real, documented, and undesirable problems.

    antiPC:
    Men and women are different. Things like pain toleration, longevity, intelligence (verbal vs. spatial), disease susceptibility, etc. The actual brain structure is different. These are NOT societally influenced things. The Raven's Progressive Matrices test is a great example: no words, no cultural bias, nothing - just pattern recognition and abstract reasoning - males outperform females. On a verbal test the results would likely be the opposite.

    Men and women are different physiologically. With the exception of intelligence, the things you mention basically fall into that category. On a cognitive level, there is no clear evidence for a gender difference in intelligence overall or intelligence types. This is a common misconception that has been debunked by a considerable amount of research.* Not that it's a closed debate by any means, but there is a growing consensus among those who study this phenomenon that there are no innate gender differences. Re Raven's Matrices, you are probably referring to a paper by Rushton, Skuy and Bons which claimed that the test had no cultural bias. Interestingly, they used this conclusion to try to show that certain races are innately more intelligent than others. Their research was called in to question recently in a paper by Steven F. Cronshaw, Leah K. Hamilton, Betty R. Onyura and Andrew S. Winston, which challenged the methodology of that study.

    Specific analysis of gender and Raven's Matrices was done by Richard Lynn, Juri Allik, and Paul Irwing, who found that as children aged, the direction of gender differences on sections of the test reversed to align with social stereotypes (i.e., when younger, girls did better on sections that would stereotypically be considered better suited for guys). This seems like an indication that perhaps the continuous exposure to social pressures, rather than innate differences, might be a cause of performance differences on the test later in life.

    *For those who want to look into this research more, you might find the following excerpt from a recent meta-analysis of gender and intelligence helpful (everyone else, you can stop reading at this point): ""One of the first to adopt this position [that there are no innate differences in intelligence] was Terman (1916, pp.69-70) who wrote of the American standardization sample of the Stanford-Binet test on approximately 1,000 4- to 16-year-olds that girls obtained a slightly higher average IQ than boys but 'the superiority of girls over boys is so slight ... that for practical purposes it would seem negligible'. In the next decade Spearman (1923) asserted that there is no sex difference in g. Cattell (1971, p. 131) concluded that, 'it is now demonstrated by countless and large samples that on the two main general cognitive abilities--fluid and crystallized intelligence--men and women, boys and girls, show no significant differences'. Brody (1992, p. 323) contended that, 'gender differences in general intelligence are small and virtually non-existent'. Jensen (1998, p. 531) calculated sex differences in g on five samples and concluded that, 'no evidence was found for sex differences in the mean level of g'. Similarly: 'there is no sex difference in general intelligence worth speaking of' (Mackintosh, 1996, p. 567); 'the overall pattern suggests that there are no sex differences, or only a very small advantage of boys and men, in average IQ scores' (Geary, 1998, p. 310); 'most investigators concur on the conclusion that the sexes manifest comparable means on general intelligence' (Lubinski, 2000, p. 416); 'sex differences have not been found in general intelligence' (Halpern, 2000, p. 218); 'we can conclude that there is no sex difference in general intelligence' (Colom, Juan-Espinosa, Abad, & Garcia, 2000, p. 66); 'there are no meaningful sex differences in general intelligence' (Lippa, 2002); 'there are negligible differences in general intelligence' (Jorm, Anstey, Christensen, & Rodgers, 2004, p. 7); and 'the evidence that there is no sex difference in general ability is overwhelming' (Anderson, 2004, p. 829).

    The question of whether there is a sex difference in average general intelligence raises the problem of how general intelligence should be defined. There have been three principal answers to this question. First, general intelligence can be defined as the IQ obtained on omnibus intelligence tests such as the Wechslers. The IQ obtained from these is the average of the scores on a number of different abilities including verbal comprehension and reasoning, immediate memory, visualization, and spatial and perceptual abilities. This is the definition normally used by educational, clinical, and occupational psychologists. When this definition is adopted, it has been asserted by Halpern (2000) and reaffirmed by Anderson (2004, p. 829) that 'the overall score does not show a sex difference' Halpern (2000, p. 90). Second, general intelligence can be defined as reasoning ability or fluid intelligence. This definition has been adopted by Mackintosh (1996, p. 564; Mackintosh, 1998a) who concludes that there is no sex difference in reasoning ability. Third, general intelligence can be defined as the g obtained as the general factor derived by factor analysis from a number of tests. This definition was initially proposed by Spearman (1923, 1946) and was first adopted to analyse whether there is a sex difference in g by Jensen and Reynolds (1983). They analysed the American standardization of the WISC-R on 6- to 16-year-olds and found that this showed boys to have a higher g by d = .16 (standard deviation units), equivalent to 2.4 IQ points (this advantage is highly statistically significant). In a second study of this issue using a different method for measuring g, Jensen (1998, p. 539) analysed five data sets and obtained rather varied results, in three of which males obtained a higher g than females by 2.83, 0.18, and 5.49 IQ points, while in two of which females obtained a higher g than males by 7.91 and 0.03 IQ points. Jensen handled these discrepancies by averaging the five results to give a negligible male advantage of .11 IQ points, from which he concluded that there is no sex difference in g. This conclusion has been endorsed by Colom and his colleagues in Spain (Colom, Garcia, Juan-Espinoza, & Abad, 2002, Colom et al., 2000)."

  • (cs) in reply to JC Denton
    JC Denton:
    nerdierthanu:
    I prefer to be called a chick... am I crazy or is this the most responded to WTF ever?

    Still a long way to go. The cold fusion flame-war is probably a contender though: http://worsethanfailure.com/Comments/Poor_Mr_0x2e__O_0x27_Hare_.aspx? We'll get there.

    Captcha: kungfu. Please, there are ladies present.

    I think the job interview with riddles (with the infamous red or blue hat problem) is the reigning champ.

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to anon

    Addendum to previous post:

    The same article that I quoted at the end of the last post has a section on what seem to be Raven's Matrices (it refers to them as Progressive Matrices): "The issue of whether there are any sex differences on the Progressive Matrices has frequently been discussed and it has been virtually universally concluded that there is no difference in the mean scores obtained by males and females. This has been one of the major foundations for the conclusion that there is no sex difference in reasoning ability or in g"

  • v (unregistered) in reply to Kelly
    Kelly:
    Of course the comments on this post highlight the fact that the idea that women are less smart at math and computers is alive and well, unfortunately. I majored in applied math and minored in CS. And I'd be willing to take on Doug or Welbog in a smartness contest any day.
    But I'm guessing they'd both whup yer ass in a competition to find the person best able to understand sarcasm...Whoooooosh!
  • Michael (unregistered) in reply to John Awkward

    Don't worry, I'm only here to be awkward. And you can try to find grammar mistakes in my post's, but you won't find any.

    There's one.

  • antiPC (unregistered) in reply to anon
    Specific analysis of gender and Raven's Matrices was done by Richard Lynn, Juri Allik, and Paul Irwing, who found that as children aged, the direction of gender differences on sections of the test reversed to align with social stereotypes (i.e., when younger, girls did better on sections that would stereotypically be considered better suited for guys). This seems like an indication that perhaps the continuous exposure to social pressures, rather than innate differences, might be a cause of performance differences on the test later in life.

    How can a test without words, just shapes, be influenced in any way by society? If you have the ability, you will do well, if not, you won't. You can't be educated for a test like this, you can't be discouraged, it is based on your inherent intelligence.

    Studies also show that early childhood education greatly benefits the IQ of small children, but by the time they reach their late teens, its loses that correlation and is highly correlated by genetics (parents). The intelligence of separated twins and adopted children show this.

    Based on the nature of the test, and the fact that adult intelligence is highly based on genetics, it would seem culture is not the case.

  • (cs)

    Wow, there was some bollox being talked on this thread! Quite obviously, there will be anecdotes for both competent and incompetent female IT staff; just as there are for men. On average though, men are better at IT than women, and women are better suited to other professions than men. It's just the way our brains work, it's not sexist. Mind you, is it any wonder that women don't hang around when a light-hearted joke made about a name is turned into a mistakenly dogmatic, pedantic rant without purpose? Seriously, ladies, don't be put off by these socially unskilled nerds. Come work with me! I wash daily, my hair is grease free, and I write good code!

    Giggity, giggity, goo.

  • KickAss (unregistered)

    They should require females to submit their recent photo along with their resume. ;-)

  • my name (unregistered) in reply to KickAss

    I've not heard about IT, but i've heard that if woman wants to be 'Secretute', her photo would be neccessary.

    today's captcha is so boring, so i will not post it.

  • (cs) in reply to Mogri
    Mogri:
    The Steve Rule: in a random group of programmers [from English-speaking countries], there will be more people named Steve than females.

    (With internationalization nowadays, you need the English-speaking countries clause.)

    Odd - I would have bet on "Tom". I have ZERO Steves in my cell phone, address book, or other contacts. I can only name 3 Steves I know personally (4 if you count Colbert).

    Meanwhile, one of the teams I'm working on has 4 Tom's. (No girls, though ;) )

  • csrster (unregistered) in reply to Tp
    Tp:
    He should have been thrilled by the idea of actually having girls at the workplace!! Damn fool!!
    Right because "Hey chicks. Cool. Do they put out?" would have gone down so much better in the interview.
  • david (unregistered) in reply to Doug#1
    Doug#1:
    Girls can do math now?

    When my grand-dad was a young man at Lockhead, it was common for engineers to work with a calculator or a computer. Sometimes they even got married.

  • Iceman (unregistered) in reply to John Awkward
    John Awkward:
    Don't worry, I'm only here to be awkward. And you can try to find grammar mistakes in my post's, but you won't find any.

    post's?

    Sukkel :-)

  • Konamiman (unregistered)

    I don't get the point here. I'm not native english speaker, anyway. Is there any negative sense in the word "girl"?

  • IceColdMan (unregistered) in reply to Konamiman
    Konamiman:
    I don't get the point here. I'm not native english speaker, anyway. Is there any negative sense in the word "girl"?

    Some people might deem it condescending, patronizing or even belittling.

    Captcha:yummy - a female colleague?

  • Master of Sarcasm (unregistered) in reply to Michael
    Michael:
    Don't worry, I'm only here to be awkward. And you can try to find grammar mistakes in my post's, but you won't find any.

    There's one.

    Ooh! You're a smart one!

  • BBQ_ribs (unregistered) in reply to csrster

    tsk, tsk, tsk.

    typical.

    Just 'cuz a guy uses the word "chicks" and "put out" in the same breath doesn't mean he's a chauvinist, OK?

    Some of us straight men out there also wanna get laid by our co-workers without strings attached but we're not misogynist about it.

    Oh, wait... Nevermind.

  • (cs) in reply to Dave
    Dave:
    There are 14 people in our team, 7 of whom are of the female persuasion; two are managers and one is a team leader. It's the most women I've ever worked with in an IT job.

    And three of them are hot.

    Some guys have all the luck.

    As to why there are significantly less women in IT than men: women figured out early on that IT jobs suck and they'd better be left to be done by the blokes. :)

  • Bob H (unregistered) in reply to StrideColossus

    "In the land of the blind the one eye'ed man is king."

    Alpha male is just the top of the food chain, even if that food chain couldn't fight it's way out of a tractor-feed paper tangle.

  • Bob H (unregistered) in reply to ahgan
    ahgan:
    Doug#1:
    Matthew:
    I agree, "girls" is so condescending. I prefer dames.
    broads is the best!
    Better than wench?
    Tip from those with experience: never walk up to the bar and loudly declare "More beer wench!". Popularity with the female German bar manager may fall and the female Welsh barmaid may not respond kindly. Even if it was said in jest...
  • (cs)

    Having got 2/3 of the way through reading the comments, I'd like to add my experiences/thoughts:

    I'm the youngest of 3 girls. I spent most of my childhood playing with boys' toys and boys, or playing with computers and electronics with my dad (wrote my first program at age 7). My sisters were 'typical' girls - one of them ended up in science anyway.

    Since leaving school, I've studied CS and worked as a developer. I've generally been one of 2 or 3 females in a workplace (no matter what the size), and there were maybe 6 girls in my first class, of about 100 people. When I went back to Uni to finish my degree, I didn't spend much time on my own work - I'd generally already finished, and was helping others (yes, even boys). Every where I've worked, I've fitted in with the guys. I don't believe I've ever been treated differently because I'm a girl.

    Except: In almost every job interview I've had, I've been asked how I feel about working mostly/only with guys. If I had a problem with that, I couldn't have got where I am now.

    I hate telling guys not in IT what I do. I've had idiots trying to pick me up by trying to convince me they know more about programming than I do. Just because they're male.

    I've worked with good and great women/girls in IT, and I've worked with crap ones. Just like guys. However, I do think it's harder for a female to be considered good or great, because you have to first prove you don't suck.

    As for it being a good career choice long-term, it's perfect - when I have kids I'll still be working, just from home.

  • (cs)

    Oh - and I'm 'girl' (I mean, come on! I play on playgrounds every chance I get...), not a 'woman' and certainly not a 'gal'. I don't mind 'chick', but 'broad' or 'wench' are usually just guys taking the piss. 'Female' seems to do the job more often than not when I'm speaking, even if it does sound kinda formal. And I'm quite happy to be included in 'guys'.

    Dirty jokes or pictures at work always seemed to bother me much less than my male bosses...

  • Griglars (unregistered)

    I worked for a company that actively had a policy not to hire women. It wasn't in writing, but the guy in charge of hiring said that he didn't hire women techs because their menstruation made them crazy and unreliable. If you challenged this assumption, he always had links to various websites (usually on Geocities and the like) that show how unstable women were, and how their brains weren't built for "complicated technical tasks beyond picking berries," and of course, the inevitable Wikipedia link to PMS...

  • Dewi (unregistered) in reply to jread

    Excuse me, but I cannot feel other that offended here. No one has ever given me a comment in that direction. If you want my picture you can judge for yourself.

  • Rich (unregistered) in reply to kr
    kr:
    No one uses "gals" outside of the South. It's "guys and girls" in most places.

    Now then, now then... [image]

  • bch (unregistered)

    Is the 'WTF' the fact that they skipped hiring a "very technically skilled" programmer so they could instead hire a "friendly and sociable" girl?

    Is "friendly and sociable" the new goal of Computer Science degrees?

  • HonestWorkingMan (unregistered) in reply to Dewi
    Dewi:
    Excuse me, but I cannot feel other that offended here. No one has ever given me a comment in that direction. If you want my picture you can judge for yourself.

    Sounds like trying to prove the exception to prove the rule.

    After reading the majority of the comments most of the ones coming from female developers seem to be along the lines of "I've been programming since the cradle and still I'm not recognised for what's above my deep cut v-neck sweater".

    Women cause all kinds of stress and frustrations within a perfectly functioning development team so don't go and apply at my place. I like my projects finished on time and within budget thank you and my developers have distractions enough as it is.

  • Noogen (unregistered) in reply to HonestWorkingMan

    The real wtf is the line "You mean, you hired one of those GIRLS out there?"

    "It's a dude!" A very ugly dude that dress up like a woman. There's no such thing as a female developer. The proof is not being able to find one in your college class. ;)

  • theboss (unregistered)

    girls make good programmers because they do what they are told. it is a more submissive relationship :)

    just don't have sex with them on the desk.... because you might be asking later, "was that wrong?"

  • theboss (unregistered) in reply to bch

    if they dress hot then yes

  • rupert0 (unregistered)

    I bet that Shanna was not hot ;)

  • (cs)
    He was very technically skilled, but ended up not getting the position because I was more friendly and sociable.

    In other words, great rack.

  • Simmo (unregistered) in reply to Harrow
    Harrow:
    REG: ... And what have women programmers ever done?! <snip/>

    -- from Monty Python's Life of Babbage

    Pure. Genius. Thank you for making my day

  • Simmo (unregistered) in reply to Sean
    Sean:
    Personal anecdotal statistics:

    I've met 5 women in IT in my life. 4 of the 5 were incompetent jackasses who wouldn't even pass a level 100 CS course if I was running the classroom. Only 1/5th of women who try to be in IT are actually good at it.

    I've met countless men in IT in my life. All but a small handful of them were incompetent jackasses etc. The percentage of them who try to be in IT and are good at it is quite close to 0.

    Therefor, I can only conclude that women are better at IT than men. Statistics don't lie. ;)

    What you have related is anecdotal, and is therefore a statistic. Not 'statistics'. My 15-year old daughter could pi55 all over your reasoning before breakfast.

  • KickAss (unregistered) in reply to Dewi

    Yes please send a link to your picture. We will post our comments. Hot or not Hot.

  • KickAss (unregistered) in reply to Mel
    Mel:
    Having got 2/3 of the way through reading the comments, I'd like to add my experiences/thoughts:

    I'm the youngest of 3 girls. I spent most of my childhood playing with boys' toys and boys, or playing with computers and electronics with my dad (wrote my first program at age 7). My sisters were 'typical' girls - one of them ended up in science anyway.

    Since leaving school, I've studied CS and worked as a developer. I've generally been one of 2 or 3 females in a workplace (no matter what the size), and there were maybe 6 girls in my first class, of about 100 people. When I went back to Uni to finish my degree, I didn't spend much time on my own work - I'd generally already finished, and was helping others (yes, even boys). Every where I've worked, I've fitted in with the guys. I don't believe I've ever been treated differently because I'm a girl.

    Except: In almost every job interview I've had, I've been asked how I feel about working mostly/only with guys. If I had a problem with that, I couldn't have got where I am now.

    I hate telling guys not in IT what I do. I've had idiots trying to pick me up by trying to convince me they know more about programming than I do. Just because they're male.

    I've worked with good and great women/girls in IT, and I've worked with crap ones. Just like guys. However, I do think it's harder for a female to be considered good or great, because you have to first prove you don't suck.

    As for it being a good career choice long-term, it's perfect - when I have kids I'll still be working, just from home.

    Have you been helping the guys with their zippers or code. ;-)

  • Boxer (unregistered) in reply to death

    [quote user="death"][quote user="Vechni"] REALLY? I save a Byte. That byte is stored on a drive. A whole byte is written and read less saving electricity(energy). then one byte less is stored in RAM before dispatched to all readers of these pages. A small but real amount of power is saved for not having to send and store it and to process it in each clients end. So you cant say it does not save energy!

    Addendum (2007-10-22 14:24): PS: Think of all the saved CPU cycles in all the devices that touch the data and the saved bandwidth of all the pipes... My name choice may as well in the long run save the mankind that last critical drop of oli...[/quote]

    And think of the extra bytes that could be saved if you had not posted the reply, I think you used up that last drop of oil you saved :P

    I know, i know.... i could've saved some electricity myself by not making this post... but hey.. i am optimistic.. i believe we will never run out of oil.</sarcasm>

    Captcha: Ninjas.. i wonder if they had female ninjas as well?

  • xous (unregistered) in reply to dmitriy

    The real WTF here is that you take these comments seriously. Although I do agree that he should have kept his mouth shut.

  • Tei (unregistered)

    i know a guy that was not hiring girls because most people where male, and he wanted a office free of romantic affairs. i think he have a point.

    i have meet both really awfull IT girls, and brilliant ones.

    anybody like to talk to a women voice, than to a male one. So i think hiring a womens can be a nice idea for a IT position where you need dev's to talk to the clients. the clients will be more happy talking to a women voice. And yes, this is using the women seduction to get more money, and hiring a women because is a women, even with minor tecnical skills than other guy. for a position where the dev will never interface with a client, i dont care hiring a women or a men. for a coworker, maybe i may love more a men, cause romantic affairs can backfire to me, if i hire a women. What If i fall in love with that female? it sure will affect my productivity. I have experience with love, and it hurt.

  • (cs) in reply to KickAss
    KickAss:
    Have you been helping the guys with their zippers or code. ;-)

    Yecch - the code. The zips I wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole. If I was paid. Lots.

    Romance in the office - there's a thing called professionalism. That goes for any workplace - IT or not. Or are you suggesting women (or maybe just the attractive ones?) are banned from working completely, just in case some guy is too immature to be able to focus on his work?

  • (cs) in reply to xous
    xous:
    The real WTF here is that you take these comments seriously. Although I do agree that he should have kept his mouth shut.
    Who is this "you" and "he" whereof you speak?

    It would be much too tiring to keep count, but by my reckoning 100% of the female respondents to this thread know where to find the "quote" button and what it does. The same skillz apply to a mere 75% of the male respondents.

    If you can't perform this fairly simple task in a blog discussion, I don't want to be working anywhere near you in IT. I'll try to ignore whether my female co-worker is "hot," "tepid," or even "What was your name again?" The simple ability to follow instructions and to communicate with her fellows gets my vote every time.

  • Boz (unregistered) in reply to John Awkward
    John Awkward:
    Don't worry, I'm only here to be awkward. And you can try to find grammar mistakes in my post's, but you won't find any.

    post's ????

    what are you replacing ??

    posts is the plural of post

    or has my irony-meter jammed ?? again.

  • (cs) in reply to real_aardvark
    real_aardvark:
    It would be much too tiring to keep count, but by my reckoning 100% of the female respondents to this thread know where to find the "quote" button and what it does. The same skillz apply to a mere 75% of the male respondents.

    How in the world can you tell? I mean, I'm sure you can count the people who have said "I'm female" and the ones who have said "I'm male", but most of the respondents haven't made a comment one way or the other. Do those factor into your numbers or not?

    Personally, I don't care what gender I'm working with, so long as they get the job done and done right. Then again, if they're an efficient and good worker, I barely care what species they are. Sense of humor and social skills are both optional, though I believe in segregating within the group to avoid having the "with" and "without" humor thrown together. Otherwise you get workplaces much like this thread.

  • (cs) in reply to BradleyS
    BradleyS:
    real_aardvark:
    It would be much too tiring to keep count, but by my reckoning 100% of the female respondents to this thread know where to find the "quote" button and what it does. The same skillz apply to a mere 75% of the male respondents.

    How in the world can you tell? I mean, I'm sure you can count the people who have said "I'm female" and the ones who have said "I'm male", but most of the respondents haven't made a comment one way or the other. Do those factor into your numbers or not?

    Personally, I don't care what gender I'm working with, so long as they get the job done and done right. Then again, if they're an efficient and good worker, I barely care what species they are. Sense of humor and social skills are both optional, though I believe in segregating within the group to avoid having the "with" and "without" humor thrown together. Otherwise you get workplaces much like this thread.

    I agree; normally it's difficult to tell gender from blog responses.

    In this case, however, I'm prepared to accept that anyone with an obviously female name is female (and no entries in this category have failed to use the quote button correctly, afaik).

    I am also prepared to assume that anyone who claims to be female is actually female (and I don't remember any cross-dressers, if there were any, getting the quote button wrong either).

    It isn't a guarantee, but if you take the position of, say, AntiPC, you are probably male. There are a lot of these. This is the set including those who can't handle the quote button.

    All other posts fall into the category of "None of the above." I don't remember all that many of them messing up, either.

    All of which is to miss my point. I am stating that there is an apparent correlation between people who can't use blogging software properly and people (male?) who are happy to suggest that they don't want women in the IT workplace because, well, women just don't understand how IT works, do they?

    This apparent correlation is certainly more believable than the bald proposition that "chicks can't code."

  • KickAss (unregistered) in reply to Mel
    Mel:
    KickAss:
    Have you been helping the guys with their zippers or code. ;-)

    Yecch - the code. The zips I wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole. If I was paid. Lots.

    Romance in the office - there's a thing called professionalism. That goes for any workplace - IT or not. Or are you suggesting women (or maybe just the attractive ones?) are banned from working completely, just in case some guy is too immature to be able to focus on his work?

    I was just having fun.

    In that case, all straight men are immature because when we see an attractive woman we can only think of certain things (wink) regardless of how smart the woman is. Although having attractive women in office cuts down on productivity because men are always hoping to get some and always trying to hang around them. It's just the way we are wired, sorry we can't help it.

  • Dave (unregistered)

    It's encouraging that the boss was fair-minded enough to have a problem with the prejudice. Many managers might have overlooked it.

  • Just A Thought (unregistered) in reply to Calli Arcale
    Calli Arcale:
    The weekly software meetings were very relaxed, and conversation often turned to topics which men might find uncomfortable, such as childbirth. :-P Of course, the fact that the project was moving very slowly at the time had a lot to do with the relaxed atmosphere as well.

    Could the project moving slowly have had anything to do with discussions in software meetings about childbirth, rather than, say, software?

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