I haven't written about sexism in the Information Technology field in six and a half years. Any time I have ever written about gender issues, sexism or discrimination in IT, and particularly when I wrote for O'Reilly, there would be many comments by men who would get all defensive, tell me it's all in my pretty little head or if I would just get tougher and ignore it it would all go away. Others would fall back on sexist stereotypes, claiming women are just not interested in computing or are simply not as good at anything related to math, science and engineering than their male counterparts. Those who inevitably argue that the problem doesn't exist demonstrate just how pervasive the problem is with their comments. Never mind that IT is still dominated by young, white men plus a smattering of young Asian men. Other minorities and women are grossly underrepresented. Never mind that women have left IT in droves over the past 14 years and when interviewed they cite the hostile workplace that is the reality of many if not most IT shops. Nope, there's nothing wrong at all.
Last month I went through an interview process with a large company in a nearby state. I turned down what would have been the highest rate of my career as a Senior Linux Engineer. It paid about $10K more than I earned in a contract in Texas last year. Why did I walk away from an offer like that? I was told there are 400 people in IT, all male. I would have been woman #1 in 2014. When I asked about whether I might have problems in that environment the gentleman who would have been my boss said, "I'm the manager. I'm in a position to make sure you have no problems." That's when I knew that I had to walk away. If he had said, "I know my people. You won't have problems." I might still have taken the job. To think he can dictate attitudes and corporate culture told me that a lot more was wrong than even I saw in my interview process, and I had a bad feeling about this position pretty early on.
It's 2014, isn't it? I've been in IT since 1980. I have never seen an all male IT department before. Even worse: I worked for one of this company's direct competitors years ago and the ratio of men to women in my group was 60/40. Sexism in IT hasn't gotten better in recent years. It's gotten far, far worse. Still, I expect lots of comments from people, mostly men, in denial about this. After all, things are just fine for them.
I have pretty much decided to continue to build my consulting business even if it means less money in the short run than a corporate or government position. At least in my own business I have some control of the environment, even if I have to work a lot harder for every dollar.
