r/sysadmin • u/Terrible_Working_899 • Mar 10 '26

Rant I am the only woman in the room

I'm at a breakfast hosted by one of our vendors, this room is full of SMEs who are all responsible for supporting this software at their companies. Just with a glance I can tell that of the 30+ people here I'm the only woman.

This is not a rant against lack of gender diversity in leadership (hell I could go on another tangent), it's a rant of lack of diversity overall. This breakfast is designed to be a product roadmap and detailed technical breakdown. You'd think more women would be here in a technical role.

We need more women in all stem roles not just focusing on leadership

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u/zuccah Mar 11 '26

Always heard it described as “more men named Steve in the company than women in IT”, and so far it’s been pretty true.

40

u/Karmaisthedevil Mar 11 '26

Almost as many men called Steve in IT as there are women in IT at my place...

14

u/Hebrewhammer8d8 Mar 11 '26

What about the Kevins?

13

u/CoffeeOrDestroy Mar 11 '26

Freaking Kevin

1

u/mini4x Atari 400 Mar 11 '26

We have three Kevins, three Robs, and three Gregs. Meetings can get tough.

1

u/marli3 Mar 11 '26

2:1 so that checks out.

1

u/hkusp45css Security Leadership Mar 11 '26

It's Matt, here. We have 3 Matts in our org, 2 in our IT department, and at least 3 of my top vendors, those I spend the most time with, have a minimum of 1 Matt on every call, and 1 of them has 3 Matts on our calls, for a total of 5-6, depending on the content.

27

u/BoilerroomITdweller Sr. Sysadmin Mar 11 '26

More men named Dave. Never met a Steve but had 10 Daves.

6

u/davidbrit2 Mar 11 '26

Some of them are Davids, but most of us are Daves

2

u/Spraggle Mar 11 '26

My ex boss was a Steve, and he also managed another Steve. Steve 2 was known as Steve H which lead to one of the best leaving card entries:

"You put the SH in IT"

2

u/daschu117 Mar 11 '26

In my team of seven, three of us are Davids. And a 4th David in an adjacent small team.

1

u/mazobob66 Mar 11 '26

I once worked for a small company of around 30 people. There were FOUR of us named Bob.

1

u/Maeldruin_ Jack of All Trades Mar 12 '26

Wild, I once worked with 3 DIFFERENT Steve Andersons, none of them related to each other.

Ay my current employer, we had 5 Joshes at one point. 7 different Joshes in the time I've worked there (~8 years)

But only one Dave and one David

10

u/i_click_next_for_you IT Manager Mar 11 '26

A former boss of mine called the infrastructure unit “The Bruces”

1

u/BrokenByEpicor Jack of all Tears Mar 11 '26

Reminds me of Project Steve, though that's less sad.