More about IT:
Cheap, Fast, and Disposable
My “Leaving IT” post has received some attention; the trackback on Misbeaving.net was picked up by Robert Scoble’s Scobleizer and made it on Computerworld’s blog. Although I found quite interesting my obsession in reading my name quoted by others (think John Milton|Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate: “Vanity! definitely my favorite sin”), I would rather talk about what other bloggers have to say on the status of IT.
In Antigravitas, Jack William Bell talks about the conflict between his love for the intensity of IT work/satisfaction of “cranking up great code” and the realization that indeed something is wrong with the IT culture. But how is IT going to change if women are leaving?
If these are really the big issues for women, then I wish to all hell they would stay in IT. No matter how hard it gets. I wish they would stay, work their way into management, and change things for the better from the inside. Because we need them…
Too bad that sometimes women don’t get the chance to stay in IT and change the system from within. Dori Smith (Backup Brain) writes that the problem is not with women leaving IT, but rather with IT abandoning experienced and qualified programmers in favor of “cheap developers who are right out of college and willing to work 80+ hours a week.”
Shelley Powers (Burningbird) notes that it’s not the first time that women are first lured into the workforce and then sent home when they are not needed any longer. Shelley compares the contemporary attitude towards women in IT to the US Government propaganda during WWII in the strong and well-documented essay When we are needed.
When there is a need in the industry, women are welcome. When there isn’t a need, it’s Rosie the Riveter pack up your rivet gun and get out, all over again.
Some people pointed out that the culture of cheap and fast over good in corporate America goes well beyond IT. For example, Theodicius writes:
… that’s they way it is in almost every company, and the tendency increases with size. I used to work for a Fortune 500 company, not an IT company, and the attitude was prevalent all over the place. There wasn’t an emphasis on quality, despite the lip service. There was an emphasis on speed, and if quality was in the way, it quite often became a casualty.
And for some, this is not really a gender issue: the superhuman demands of the IT work hurt both women and men. And minorities are disappearing from IT even faster than women.
Technorati tags: women, technology
Leaving IT
After 5 years, a few weeks ago I decided I had enough of IT; it was time to quit. The same week I moved from IT to the Marketing department of my company, other two women who have managed me at various times did the same. It seems that we are not alone: Roy Mark wrote a commentary on Internet News (Where have all the women gone?; via Caterina Fake on Misbehaving.net) about women slowly bleeding out of IT (a 20% decrease in the percentage of women in the last 10 years).
I find reassuring that I am not the only one experiencing dissatisfaction with the IT environment. Mark quotes comments about “high-school locker room mentality” and “hostility to women.” In my experience, it’s much more subtle than that. I found that the IT culture, initially exciting and seemingly full of possibilities, in the long run does not fulfill its promises. What I found frustrating is not so much the exclusion from the boy’s club–although there is definitely some of that–but rather the excessive emphasis on speed rather than quality (for a different take on this issue, see Alan Key on the disappointing lack of new and revolutionary programming languages; via Andrew), on execution rather than strategy, and the disregard for the human and caring aspects of building applications (e.g., the quality of the user experience rather than the quality of the code).
I may be wrong, but I am afraid IT management is not paying attention to why we are leaving. I hope that the evolution of technology towards social and connected computing will demand a different approach to IT development and force the boy’s club to open up to the world.
Technorati tags: women, technology
Corporate geese
This evening, leaving the office way too late, I saw a bunch of corporate Canadian geese in a neat business casual outfit (it must have been “bring your chicks to work” day). I have pictures to prove that it was not just workaholic delirium.
Going to work
Done for today…
…time to go home
See more Corporate geese pictures »
Cassandra, the Columbia accident, and Corporate America
You probably have all heard about the myth of Cassandra. Cassandra was the beautiful daughter of King Priam of Troy and his wife Hecuba. To seduce Cassandra the god Apollo gave her the gift of seeing the future; but because she didn’t love the god back, the revengeful Apollo placed a curse on her: her predictions will always be right, but nobody would believe her (more information here).
So, Cassandra told the people of Troy not to trust the wooden horse the Greeks had offered them. Nobody believed her, and Troy was defeated. She told Agamemnon that his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus would kill him (and Cassandra herself); he did not believe her, and they both were murdered. That’s a pretty stinky fate.
Now, I was telling my husband that if Cassandra were a corporate employee, she would have been rated as a Needs Improvement at year-end. No bonus and no merit increase, and a serious risk for a demotion. I can see her appraisal:
Although Cassandra demonstrates skills in analyzing problems, understanding situations, and making accurate predictions, she completely lacks the ability to generate trust in his coworkers and to persuade her team of the correctness of her suggestions. Her communications and negotiations skills are below those of her peers. As a consequence, her contribution to project work is limited or nonexistent.
Cassandra often complains about obscure threats and casts a pessimistic outlook on the future of the project, creating a gloomy atmosphere that does not promote collaboration and teamwork.
Corporate America has zero tolerance for Greek tragedy.
Cassandra Syndrome
Wikipedia has an interesting description of Cassandra Syndrome:
The Cassandra Syndrome is a term applied to predictions of doom about the future that are not believed, but upon later reflection turn out to be correct. This denotes a psychological tendency among people to disbelieve inescapably bad news, often through denial. The person making the prediction is caught in the dilemma of knowing what is going to happen but not being able to resolve the problem.
A few months ago I read the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report, which devotes an entire chapter to the analysis of how NASA’s “can-do-no-matter-what” culture played a strong role in management (bad) decision-making.
I do understand the corporate tendency to reward optimism and can-do attitude. It’s actually really nice to have people around you who are positive and energetic. But sometimes things are pretty bad, and the only way to make them better is to first recognize how bad they are. I just cannot shake this impression that some behaviors I see in companies should be classified as Cassandra Syndrome.
“A tendency to disbelieve inescapably bad news, often through denial.” As much as the employees have an obligation to tell persuasive and articulate stories, isn’t there a similar obligation from management to listen with an open mind to both good and bad news and do some fact checking before dismissing the bad news or accept the good ones?
[And of course, whatever you do, do not EVER use PowerPoint to deliver bad news.]
Theme of the day: Office Angst
Is it just me, or does it happen to you too to have these days in which everything seems to revolve around the same theme, like in a sit-com? The theme of the day for me today was office angst.
Granted, I am sensitive to this particular theme in this period, but still, it feels like it was looking for me.
It started this morning, when I checked out Boing Boing. Xeni Jardin had published this list of Zen flash animations (originally from chaos kitty) and I watched the beautiful British I’m a creep, which I highly recommend (warning: the site is called “Low morale: a series of animations portraying one’s man struggle with working life,” so don’t expect anything uplifting). On the same list, the thematically related and interesting Not my type.
This afternoon, Scott and I went to see Spirit: The Seventh Fire at Fairmont Park. The synopsis:
Spirit – The Seventh Fire tells the dramatic story of one man’s journey to find a balance between the culture in which he exists, driven by the “American Dream,” and his roots, rich in heritage, tradition and connected to the natural world.
And again, the office cubicle was the metaphorical representation of the “American Dream” as well as of the disconnection between our day to day life and our deep needs and longings.
I’ve always thought that one of the biggest failures of corporate America is to have created a work environment where people feel alienated, pressured to the point of rupture, and out of place. True, not everybody feels that way; but judging from the people I know, the number of people who feel their corporate job is just a temporary pact with the devil is just too high to consider the office a healthy and happiness-promoting work environment.
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