dana@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Dana Bergen) (06/29/88)
In article <11165@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> marla@Sun.COM (Marla Parker) writes: >The practical aspects of how to switch from being an unemployed history >graduate to an employed software engineer are another matter altogether, >one that I know nothing about. Tech writer->tech support->engineering >seems to work for some people, but maybe someone who has transferred >into software from a different field could write about how to do this. I got my B.A. in English and worked at various jobs that came along; some involved writing, some were secretarial/administrative assistant-type stuff. In 1982 I was working as a secretary and got interested in computers through word processing. (Word processing on a mainframe can be something like programming -- you have to debug your file to get the document to look right.) I took a 6-month commercial programming course and got a job doing applications programming, mainly in COBOL. Applications programming is fine if you are interested in combining technical work with communications/management/organizational skills, with more emphasis on the latter and less on the technical aspects as you move up. I decided I wanted to do more strictly technical work. Making the switch from applications programming to software development looked very difficult. I did not have contacts who could help me. Recruiters basically couldn't/wouldn't help; they want people who are directly qualified for jobs and I needed an employer to take a chance with me. I decided that going back to school was my best bet. I had the good fortune to discover the Computer Science Reentry Program at U.C. Berkeley. The program is open to women and "underrepresented minorities" who want to go to graduate school in Computer Science but have an undergraduate degree in something other than C.S. Through it, I was able to take undergraduate C.S. courses at Berkeley without being enrolled in a degree program (this is normally not allowed). On the basis of this coursework I was admitted to Berkeley for graduate school, where I am now working toward my MSCS. If anyone wants to know more about the Reentry Program, feel free to write to me. Dana Bergen dana@ernie.berkeley.edu
cheryl@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (cheryl) (07/07/88)
Trish asserts that the old-fashioned organization of companies kept an isolated technical core (where supposedly it was easy to keep women out simply by making them uncomfortable and unwelcome) wheras new-fangled organizations have more fluid boundaries, where technical employees are less easily distinguished from managerial, support or sales employees. I agree with Trish that there are these differences in organizational style. But it is then argued that this would make new-fangled companies more congenial places for women in general. I disagree. A new-fangled company might be more congenial for the woman who is not explicitly technically qualified by dint of training or education or experience. And it may even be CONGENIAL for the highly qualified woman. But it might not be the best place PROFESSIONALLY for the highly motivated, highly qualified, technically ambitious woman who wants to be the next Willhemina Gates or Winnifred Joy. It's downright demeaning and stifling for everyone to assume you were somebody's secretary who figured out how to type 'ls' and 'vi' and were suddenly made Technical Coordinator in Charge of Xeroxing Documentation or Manager Of Changing The Paper In The LaserWriter And Doing The Dumps. Particularly annoying is the patronizing attitude on the part of the managers of such newfangled companies, the fact that they portray themselves as some kind of fairy godmother being so kind to these traditionally unqualified women and cutting them a break -- you, Ms. Graduate of Top-Knotch Engineering School INCLUDED. You find yourself wishing there were greater distinctions between the fully qualified engineers and the former secretaries, simply because your education STARTED with calculus, differential equations, physics, chemistry, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, numerical analysis and so on, and here you are being asked to do the same things that 2 doors down someone's doing that was a secretary 2 years ago, and when somebody seeks your advice, it's your former-secretary-female-boss's former-secretary- female-boss asking you "Is Fluid Mechanics a kind of Turbulence?" I have NOTHING against secretaries moving into technical fields, but I DO have something against women being promoted to positions of administrative power over fully qualified women technical core employees, only to have those administrative women impose or encourage their own career path on the subordinate for whom it is completely inappropriate. It is NOT necessary for women graduates of engineering or CS programs to be asked to do a stint in User Services or Customer Support or Technical Writing. Most top MALE graduates of engineering or CS programs wouldn't be. Yet in the New Fangled organization, you can have a woman and a man with exactly the same salary, the same educational background and the same position doing VERY different things after a couple years--the woman having been asked to do a lot of essentially user services, tech support and tech writing tasks; the man having been asked to do (or been allowed the freedom and initiative to choose) purely individually creditable technical accomplishment- oriented projects. It seems to me that the minute women started making it into the technical cores of old-fangled companies complete with their stupid rigid explicit guidelines as to what kind of education and experience qualified you to hold what kind of job--the whole scene had to be changed in order to continue to make women indistinguishable from one another and neutralize women's growing mastery of the old-fangled system. Cheryl
marla@Sun.COM (Marla Parker) (07/08/88)
In article <11735@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> cheryl@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (cheryl) writes: >Yet in the New Fangled organization, you can have a woman and >a man with exactly the same salary, the same educational background >and the same position doing VERY different things after a couple >years--the woman having been asked to do a lot of essentially >user services, tech support and tech writing tasks; the man having >been asked to do (or been allowed the freedom and initiative to >choose) purely individually creditable technical accomplishment- >oriented projects. > I've worked at Daisy and Sun, both companies born in the 80's. I think it extremely unlikely that competent women in the technical core at either company have ever been asked to do the sort of less-core jobs that you describe. It would be a demotion, and viewed as such by everyone. The other problem you describe, the once-a-secretary now-a-manager boss giving poor guidance and making unreasonable demands on her technically superior employees, this is a subset of the general problem of unqualified people being promoted to manage techies. If women are being especially grouped together under the non-technical managers...that would be dreadful indeed. Marla Parker {ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!marla marla@sun.com