Reply to post: Logically correct, politically incorrect.

Ladies in tech, have you considered not letting us know you're female?

David Roberts

Logically correct, politically incorrect.

Those with wide industry experience (not just in IT) may well have noticed that like recruits like.

One striking example was a marketing team I worked with who looked like an experiment in cloning. All approximately the same height, build, hair colour and looked as though they shared a single wardrobe. Oh, and spookily they were the same gender. Male, as it happens. I think they spent a lot of thought on fashion issues.

Bias exists everywhere, mainly unconcious but sometimes actively encouraged. It takes a broadness of view and moral integrity to rise above this. Now consider how many members of management you have encountered majored in these two attributes. Consider the involvement of those who fall short in this area with recruitment. The issue is how to circumvent or change the situation.

Positive discrimination is one way. This is unfair in the short term but may be effective in the long term. Hopefully if/when there is gender equality the need will go away and it will cease to exist. Not good if you are a victim, though.

I do note that many commentards are gender neutral in their aliases. Given the tone of some of the comments here this may be an effective way of getting a less biased hearing.

On the education front, my daughter wanted to do an IT course at secondary school. She realised that there was an institutional bias but was willing to give it a go. However at the open day we met the IT guy who supported all the kit and contributed to the courses and he was (in my humble but industry honed view) such a hopeless technically clueless antisocial dipshit that trying to learn anything useful would be counter productive. We discussed it and decided to give the course a miss.

She took an IT related course at University and after working in a number of roles both IT and non-IT she is working as an awesomely paid Business Analyst. Making Daddy very proud. So natural ability can get you there regardless, but I reckon that the problems really lie within schools. Things may have changed, of course.

TL;DR he was, unfortunately, mostly logically correct in his analysis. Don't shoot the messenger. Don't force people to recant their genuinely held beliefs. This smacks of religious bigotry, not reasoned debate.

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