roy@phri (Roy Smith) (09/03/88)
I've noticed that when I call a computer company for tech support,
I tend to get to talk to a woman more often than I get to talk to a man.
I'm not talking about the first N levels of people you get to talk to (who
are also mostly women) but when you finally get to talk to somebody who
really knows what is going on. Why is that? I've got several theories:
1) Tech support is a shit job and women always get the shit jobs.
I dismiss this one as being overly paranoid. Of course, the women who read
this group may not agree with me.
2) Most computer types are men. Therefore, if you make most of the
tech support people women, you get mostly man->women interactions. Men are
less likely to rant and rave at a women than at another man, so by making
the tech support folks women you cut down on having to deal with angry
customers.
3) All the really smart people (men) are doing programming and
system design, which are the jobs that require the most brains, and all the
dumb women are left to talk on the phone.
4) All the really dumb people (men) are doing the programming,
and system design so they need the really smart people (women) to solve
customers' problems later, after the products have shipped.
Personally, I think 2 is probably the right answer. Numbers 3 and
4 are just thrown in as equally cynical but opposite ways to look at the
situation. Any comments?
--
Roy Smith, System Administrator
Public Health Research Institute
{allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers}!phri!roy -or- phri!roy@uunet.uu.net
"The connector is the network"edhall@rand-unix.arpa (Ed Hall) (09/07/88)
In article <5697@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> roy@phri (Roy Smith) writes: > 2) Most computer types are men. Therefore, if you make most of the >tech support people women, you get mostly man->women interactions. Men are >less likely to rant and rave at a women than at another man, so by making >the tech support folks women you cut down on having to deal with angry >customers. > . . . . > Personally, I think 2 is probably the right answer. Actually, I'd suspect: 5) Women are traditionally more service-oriented, more communicative, more patient, and more willing to put up with crap. Male customers may or may not be just as willing to rant and rave at a woman, but a woman is generally thought to be less likely to rant and rave back. This is stereotype, to be sure, but also part of the cultural training women receive. So in the real world, sadly, an employer will likely find that hiring women works, on the average... No flames, please--I know that both women and men are stuggling for equality and to reduce male dominance/female submissiveness, and that cultural conditioning of sex roles is slowly changing. But there is a *lot* farther to go... -Ed Hall edhall@rand.org [My sister lives in Salt Lake City, and has had a lot of trouble getting a good job there. One of the problems is that Mormon men do not like working for a woman, so women make bad supervisors, so women aren't hired into positions of authority. It seems to me that you have a similar problem in computing--if people are prejudiced and don't like talking to a man in a support position, then companies which hire men and put them in those positions will have more unhappy customers. Of course, many people (Eric Berne included) thought that customers would hate male flight attendants...TR]
eileenp%teklds.tek.com@RELAY.CS.NET (Eileen Phelan) (09/08/88)
In article <5697@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> roy@phri (Roy Smith) writes: > > I've noticed that when I call a computer company for tech support, >I tend to get to talk to a woman more often than I get to talk to a man. >I'm not talking about the first N levels of people you get to talk to (who >are also mostly women) but when you finally get to talk to somebody who >really knows what is going on. Why is that? I've got several theories: > > 1) Tech support is a shit job and women always get the shit jobs. >I dismiss this one as being overly paranoid. Of course, the women who read >this group may not agree with me. I manage a customer support group. Of your theories, 1 is the most appropriate. There is another reason you don't mention: women in this society are socialized to be more helpful and therefore do well in support roles. This is *not* to say men can't do them or that there is anything inherently sex-related about the job. In general, tech support is a high-pressure job with a high burnout rate. Tech support can be organized so it is a pleasant job. We have worked hard in our group to make it interesting, but then, we also do QA, training, software and hardware development, and anything else that sounds interesting. My group is presently all male; the women have left for even more interesting :-) jobs. Eileen Phelan eileenp@teklds.TEK.COM
julie%thrive@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Julie Rohwein) (09/14/88)
In article <5697@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> roy@phri (Roy Smith) writes: > > I've noticed that when I call a computer company for tech support, >I tend to get to talk to a woman more often than I get to talk to a man. >I'm not talking about the first N levels of people you get to talk to (who >are also mostly women) but when you finally get to talk to somebody who >really knows what is going on. Why is that? I've got several theories: I ran across a researcher last year whose work is pertinent to this observation. His name is Phillip Kraft, and he teaches at one of the SUNY campuses. (Specific information is in my thesis box, which I have yet to unbox. maybe next week :-)). Over the last ten years or so, he has been looking into the status of women in computing, specifically in software. When I heard him speak, he presented a number of interesting results. (If anyone is interested, specific citations will be available when the aforementioned box is unboxed. 1. Survey of a number of persons with "software-type" job classifications -- I don't remember the number off hand Participants were asked to estimate the amount of time spent on the job in various activities. These activities included technical things like coding, debugging and designing, organizational type things like meetings and memo writing, service activities and sales related activites. A cluster analysis (which plots variables based on the frequency with which they occur together), revealed an interesting organizational chart. It showed a technical track and a sales track, both of which merged into a managerial track. These areas were overwelming populated by males. Females, on the other hand, by and large, inhabited an area characterized by "soft and fuzzy" descriptors: dealing with customer complaints, "hand holding", troubleshooting. The female cluster was quite isolated from the other data. Also, the female cluster contained a wide variety of job titles, ie it was not just that most women had service-type, but that in whatever job category they fell into, women found themselves in these roles. 2. Analysis of the types of software jobs held by men and women, along with salaries received revealed a "woman's track" in computer related work. Women tended to hold jobs with little or no possibility of advancement within the place of employment. Analysis of salaries revealed a "woman's salary" as well. When examined versus time spent in the profession, women's salary levels plateaued after a few years, while men's salaries continued to climb. The talk included some intersting anecdotal information as well. Kraft noted that computer programming began as an entirely female profession. As an earlier poster noted, the first programmers were drawn from "computation" departments which prior to electronic computers consisted of women with pencils and paper and BA's in mathematics. Men did not enter the profession in any numbers until the early fifties when the rise of NORAD brought an large influx of money and interest to software development. julie rohwein julie@media-lab.media.mit.edu ...!mit-eddie!media-lab!julie