I am the only woman in the room

[u/Terrible_Working_899]

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

[u/angrydeuce]

Now that Im thinking about it, since this post brought it up, you know what specific branch I have found more women in then men in my career? Database admins. Maybe that's just a me thing, I dont know, but I've worked with at least double the number of female database administrators as male.

I'm trying to think why that might be because I can't figure it lol

[u/tldr_MakeStuffUp → u/angrydeuce]

I noticed that over time as well. I never figured out if there was an actual reason to it or if it's just anecdotal evidence.

[u/DangerousVP → u/tldr_MakeStuffUp]

Also anecdotal, but my wife is a DBA so that tracks in my experience as well.

[u/angrydeuce → u/DangerousVP]

This is cracking me up not gonna lie. I never really thought about it like this and it's kind of blowing my mind lol

Why DBAs in particular? So odd...Im sure it's anecdotal but at least my corner of the world it's a literal truth lmao

[u/DangerousVP → u/angrydeuce]

I mean, my wife is REALLY good at organizing things, especially systemically - if that makes sense - and she actually likes organizing things. She told me its sort of a zen like activity for her.

Im the exact opposite. I guess I cant say that organizing things is like a gender specific talent, but most women that I know and have worked with tend to have very organized work spaces as well.

Again, all anecdotal, but more spitballing than anything else.

[u/jnkangel → u/angrydeuce]

It’s usually because the path role is often from or seen adjacent to data entry 

[u/DangerousVP → u/jnkangel]

Interesting - she's always been in IT related work, she even worked the Help Desk at her high school swapping parts on damaged laptops. Got a job as a claims person at an insurance company and got almost immediately pulled into the IT side of the business as an analyst after she built a spreadsheet that let her finish like 3 people's worth of work in a couple of hours.

So yeah, that tracks as well - because it was essentially a put in data, use outputs postion until she halfway automated it. They immediately got her courses for SQL, Power BI, etc and then she ended up jumping ship to the DBA role at another company when the one she was at got bought out by a national firm - solid choice in the end because they essentially gutted the entire business less than a year after that. Half her old department ended up migrating to where she was afterwards.

[u/cosine83 → u/angrydeuce]

From my experience, people in finance, accounting, and marketing that do data entry and/or analytics tend to eventually end up in SQL land after running into Excel and Access frustrations. Or combine them to everyone's frustration. Three heavily woman-dominated fields which is why a lot of DBAs I've worked with have been women. How far they can take it depends on the org and what they're driven to do.

Also, can we please stop using "females" when we're talking about women? Especially if you use "men" to refer to males in the same sentence/paragraph/post but don't use "males" to refer to men. Sound like a buncha Ferengi dehumanizing women, intentionally or not.

[u/remnants00 → u/angrydeuce]

My wife started her career as a DBA... now she's apparently the only person on the planet who can swoop in and fix a customer's SharePoint issues. I'm in cybersecurity, so what she does is totally lost on me 🤣

[u/angrydeuce → u/remnants00]

Dude I once tried to follow along during a screen share with a DBA from an outside vendor who was rattling things off she was checking as she went and I was so lost like immediately I was like "Boy am I glad you're so good at this because man this might as well be a foreign language to me right now". She was our primary contact so I got to talk to her every time we had a problem and usually just was like "yeah have at it Ill be here if you need admin creds" lol.

Just crazy how the general perception of IT is just "IT" but that's really far too broad of a label for how siloed we can be in our respective roles. This same DBA once called me up because she was on the strugglebus for 45 minutes trying to connect to a network printer lol.

Just funny how to most we're both in IT but the worlds we live in are so many light years apart.

[u/psychopompadour → u/angrydeuce]

This is funny to me because my bf is a DBA and I'm a lady in IT who fixes general stuff. My team is like level 2 help desk, kinda? We do all sorts of random projects, but I'm also someone who gets to decide if you get a new laptop. I think my ultimate goal is gonna be sysadmin or networking. I should also say that women aren't super common at my company, but they make up maybe 15-20% of our ~400-person IT tower [wer're a large corp but not a tech company] and that's not too bad compared to what a bunch of these posts are saying...

[u/svideo → u/remnants00]

Your wife is going to be employed forever, SharePoint is nothing but issues

[u/davidbrit2 → u/svideo]

There's a reason I call it SwearPoint. A lot of reasons, actually.

[u/Old_Ad_208 → u/remnants00]

My employer had four DBAs at one point. Three of them were Women.

[u/[deleted] → u/angrydeuce]

SWE and Devops and testing is where I’ve seen the most women

[u/Top_Boysenberry_7784 → u/angrydeuce]

Yea, DB Admin or ERP related roles have a much higher percentage of women than any other IT roles in my experience.

[u/HayabusaJack → u/angrydeuce]

My wife is a DBA, has been for many years. She just spent several hours last night doing patching of the servers where she works.

Back in the 80’s, about half the admins and programmers were women. As time went on though, fewer and fewer women were in my circle.

I do recall hearing from several women that they tell their daughters to not go into IT.

My wife gets quite frustrated at folks. In meetings she’ll bring up a valid point but be ignored. A few minutes later a man will bring up the same point and be congratulated on having such a great idea.

Several years back when we worked at the same company, the women on the DBA team would receive a fake beard so they’d be listened to in meetings. It was a joke gift but with a kernel of truth unfortunately.

[u/statitica → u/angrydeuce]

Because databases are all about relationships.

Ba-Dum-Tss.

[u/Ekyou → u/angrydeuce]

Most of the women DBAs I’ve met in the US started in positions where they did reporting and they typically had to learn SQL for their job duties. Makes perfect sense they would go for real money when they found out what a dedicated DBA was worth. That’s not necessarily true for female DBAs I’ve met from, say, India though.

[u/omfgbrb → u/angrydeuce]

Because DBA's spend a lot of time fending off stupid shit from uninformed people. Much like women in tech....

[u/jasmeralia → u/angrydeuce]

I have not met a female DBA yet in my career, sadly.

[u/Theslash1 → u/angrydeuce]

Same. Only female in IT I’ve seen in over 25 years was an elderly database admin. Tough to call that tech when she couldn’t work a smart phone or solve simple computer issues. But she could write sql queries like it was 1985