On Wed, Oct 06, 1999 at 01:56:33PM -0500, J. Myers wrote:
>
> This was something that particularly bothered me while I was in college.
> Sometimes professors would ask about treatment by my male peers, and if I
> had anything to say other than "they treat me no differently than other
> males," I was told that "boys will be boys" and I'd better learn to live
> with it if I'm going to succeed in "the real world." Fortunately, I have
> yet to encounter workplace situations that parallel ones like the time a
> fellow CS student told me I wouldn't succeed in the field because women
> don't have problem-solving skills. (This was in a conversation in which he
> was kindly explaining to me the differences in male and female abilities.)
>From the other side of the fence...
We recently interviewed people for a sysadmin/developer position. Our
HR guy put on his list of questions to ask in the interview, "How would
you feel working under a female boss" (ie me). Actually, he just pencilled
the question in as one that might need to be asked, and didn't actually
ask it of any of the interviewees, but he did mention it to me before the
interviews and it made me stop and think.
See, I've never had a female boss. Every job I've been in, it's been
male bosses at least 3 tiers up the chain. It hadn't quite occurred to
me how strange it might be for male techies to come into a company where
half the bosses, and half the non-management staff (though admittedly
the ones at the non-techie end of the scale), are female.
See, I'd spent all my time thinking it was weird for females in techie
environments, and hadn't even considered the flip side. At least I'm
used to it :)
K.
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