Women in Tech

[Dallas]

But presumably your ability to network at the pub is dependent on your wife being at home to look after the kids? Does her career require her to network too?

Haha

I think women network more selectively and not always in the pub.

[SueEllen]

I have observed a correlation between women who work in IT and women who drink pints.

Most of the IT laydees I know drink pints in the pub. Very few of the non IT ladies I know drink pints (I honestly can't think of any, but I'm sure I must know some).

So, to get women into IT, get them drinking pints.

(There is a serious point somewhere in this post I think)

I like beer - then again I like most alcoholic drinks........

[darmstadt]

My mother was a real techie, one of the systems programmers on these: Leo Computers Society

[norrahe]

Haha

I think women network more selectively and not always in the pub.

+1

I have to agree with this, I never felt the need to use the pub for networking ( unless there happened to be an event that might be of use there), it might be good for an agent

You have to be selective and find more productive ways of promoting yourself.

[SimonMac]

+1

I have to agree with this, I never felt the need to use the pub for networking ( unless there happened to be an event that might be of use there), it might be good for an agent

You have to be selective and find more productive ways of promoting yourself.

Is that why you lot always go for a piss together?

[mudskipper]

Is that why you lot always go for a piss together?

No, that's so we can talk about you.

[Dominic Connor]

But presumably your ability to network at the pub is dependent on your wife being at home to look after the kids? Does her career require her to network too?

My wife is a bigshot ($1K per hour) lawyer which requires cover for her networking and we have adult conversations about who deals with the kids which is why we're still together after 25 years. The other reason we're together is I honestly can't tell you who has covered more for the other because we don't keep count.

A couple of weeks ago she was at a conference in Rome, talking about ways to screw you people out of your hard earned cash which was heavy grade networking and so the kids and I did a whole bunch of ruins, great fun.

We also of course have a nanny (though we have had a manny as well).

We both do networking professionally, though we have different issues to work through. In my world chatting to people online is normal, in lawyering social networking et al is regarded as seriously down market. There's some irony here; if you've read any of my serialised autobiography on The Register, you may notice some irony here. At 18, she'd scored a gig at IBM's labs using their forums way back in 1988, so she's been an online persona longer than most and at that point she was personally responsible for over 1% of the email volume in the world and no it wasn't spam.

That means as a solicitor turning up at techies drinks she met Roger Sinclair who very much isn't a solicitor and for very good reasons.

She's also pretty and blonde which led to one of the items that justify me referring to her as a trophy wife.

A gang of us were drunkenly arguing about Goedel's incompleteness theorem and one rather pretentious geeks says
"So that's the Goedel you've heard about from Dominic ?"

Mrs Dominic : "No that's the Goedel I did in my maths final at Oxford".

He shut up at that point

[Dominic Connor]

+1
I have to agree with this, I never felt the need to use the pub for networking ( unless there happened to be an event that might be of use there), it might be good for an agent
You have to be selective and find more productive ways of promoting yourself.

Good point, I'm entirely neutral on how you network, but if you're in a domain where the majority do X, it is harder to be effective if you don't do X. A small part of my work involves networking with HRs and so have discovered where the best chocolatier in London holds his tasting.

I suppose I'm a professional networker and have put some thought into optimising my time on this, yet I would query the "selective" part of your comment. Firstly, it is insanely hard to predict which bits of networking are useful, indeed it is tricky even to define "useful" properly.

Second if you only network when you have a clear objective, it tends to show and that can make people less receptive.
As a worked example, last night I went to a do with bankers of the sort I try to sell, I always go to this regular event and am the only HH to do so, even though it is by far the biggest networking thing in the niche I work in. Thus I'm known as one of the guys (it's 90% male) who happens to be a headhunter and so people come to me for a mix of career advice and questionable C++ techniques or just general gossip.

The other HHs who occasionally turn up have clear purposes in mind and are politely but thoroughly ignored and usually end up talking to each other then leaving.

If you seem too purposeful in your networking people will treat you like a salesman and that won't help you as much.

[MyUserName]

In my area (SAP development), I've noticed that the majority of programmers are crap, regardless of sex.

True - if you get too much you are too tired to program, if you get too little you are too frustrated. If you get just enough then you end up persuading the three girls to take the day off with you and do it all again.

[Pogle]

Ah all the usual thinly veiled misogyny is here as expected.
I am a woman and I earn a good living being technical in IT. I am sure that there are lots more like me who could do this too. I suspect I know why they dont though.


However congratulations to Dominic C as for the first time ever I felt compelled to use the 'lgnore List'.

Even MF has not had that honour from me.