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
July 23, 2005
GM, Chrysler, Ford, etc no longer enjoy the dominating market positions of the 50’s and 60’s.
Hundreds and thousands of jobs were (and still are) lost to their foreign competitors who figured out how to make cars cheaper, more efficiently and higher in quality. Oh and … when was the last time you saw an American dvd player?
If you dummies in IT executive and management positions don’t straighten up it’s gonna happen with software too. The states will lose market positions held now to foreign competition.
Unfortunately, I don’t think there is any way to avoid it. The lure of a 750i BMW – NOW – is just so much more appealing than thinking of how to prevent a reality … 10 – 20 years away.
Indians, Japanese and Chinese *will* figure it out. The will make software quality, and ergonomics a priority. They will figure out how to make SOFTWARE THAT DOESN’T CRASH.
United states culture won’t figure it out because the “fast” and “now” culture is too embedded to shift its focus to “quality” and “strategy”.
August 8, 2005
What business shouldn’t learn from open source
Paul Graham writes off everyone with kids and a mortgage and (by extension) a desire for life outside work in a single sentence. And that’s _most people_.
August 8, 2005
That last trackback wasn’t from carsong, but from me, at:
http://www.penmachine.com/2005/08/what-business-shouldnt-learn-from-open.html