[UbuntuWomen] Choosing a job wisely (Re: Article: Computer World: Why women quit technology careers)

[Tricia Bowen]

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 8:04 PM, Jacinta Richardson <
jarich at perltraining.com.au> wrote:

> Caroline Ford wrote:
> > 2008/6/19 Tricia Bowen <tricia.bowen at gmail.com>:
>
> >> to rethink my career choices. Do I want to go back to a conference room
> >> where men google "anna kournikova" obsessively and display crude pics of
> her
> >> on the projector screen before meetings? Do I want to got back to an
> >> atmosphere where the bosses male lunch buddies get promoted while the
> few
> >> women, who have no position of power, are stuck back in the office doing
> the
> >> grunt work? Do I want to sit in another stinking "war room" pulling an
> >> all-nighter to make the higher ups feel good, when I know the reason
> we're
> >> all here is because of poor planning. Poor planning that was pointed out
> >> months before the launch date.
>
> > This is why I went back to work in the public sector administration
> > and didn't continue my IT qualification. I have far too much self
> > respect to deal with these people.
>
> I'm not going to try to talk you out of your decisions, I understand there
> are a
> lot of reasons people make the career choices they do.  However, I do want
> to
> say that not all IT jobs are this bad.  In fact, I'd argue that _most_
> aren't,
> but I don't have statistics so I could be wrong on that bit.  If you
> enjoyed
> doing IT, even if you didn't enjoy where you worked, I would encourage you
> to at
> least look around at IT jobs when you start looking for jobs to restart
> your career.
>
> Unarguably the *best* jobs that exist are the ones you can find through
> networking.  So put LinuxChix, UbuntuWomen and any other group of contacts
> you
> have to work.  Ask here for leads to jobs (to be sent to you privately), in
> your
> city/state, preferably in businesses that we're working in or have worked
> in or
> have other good reasons to feel are women-friendly.  You may be surprised
> at
> what you find.
>
> All the best,
>
>        Jacinta
>
I've tried applying for jobs at local colleges, which have jobs with sane
hours and healthy work environments, but I keep getting the "over qualified"
response. I was told by one woman that she couldn't see how I would be happy
installing someone elses program instead of writing my own, even though I
stressed that I would not have a problem with that. It doesn't mean that I
wouldn't joke that I could write that bloated program in ten lines of perl,
but at this point I could care less about writing the program myself. I just
have to figure out a way to convey that on interviews.
--Tricia
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