Women returners in tech

[MotherOffCod]

Is anyone else noticing a trend for women returning to work after child-rearing years getting into deep geek tech?

I’m my area of the UK it’s a big thing, and seems to be escalating.

Bloody brilliant area to get skilled up in once your kids are older and you’re ready to dig in again.

Anyone else in this sphere? My feeling is that it’s a major opportunity for smart women who’ve been out or the workplace for a while, but have time and opportunity to re-train in exciting new fields with high demand and low supply.

[FinallyHere]

What advice would you give to avoid getting sidelined in a tech PM role?

My advice would be to build the skills of the people around you so that they can operate successfully without you.

Being able to delegate to and provide support doe others will free you up to get involved with the more strategic roles.

Having visibility of a good few years out is the best bet to avoid being sidelined. Only people who cannot delegate successfully will get stuck as too important to risk moving. Good luck.

[EBearhug]

I've been in tech since the mid-'90s. I would say the culture varies a lot between different employers and even different departments for the same employer. That's true in other sectors, of course - nowhere has a monopoly on dickhead managers. I refused to go for interview with one company because they had one token woman showing on their Web pages with pictures of all their board and senior managers - and I told the recruiter why, but I've no idea if they passed that on.

Certain areas tend to be more male-dominated than others. Systems administration and networks, plus hands-on physical work with hardware and in datacentres are male. Business analysis, project management, UX (user experience) stuff tend to have more women. It's always changing, and new roles appear that don't currently exist. Cybersecurity, big data and AI/AR are big areas currently.

A lot of women in tech have taken less traditional routes, done other things first, and I think that helps bring a broader perspective to things. Far more of my male colleagues did computing at school and at uni, and it's all they have ever worked in. But you don't want everyone to be clones if each other, but to have complementary skills.

One of the benefits of it being male-dominated is that salaries tend to be higher - but there is massive variation in the same role with a city bank or a government organisation, a small or large employer. There can be a lot of perks. It can have flexible hours (I rarely have an issue starting late or finishing early or taking a long lunch or even mid-morning or afternoon medical appointments,
as long as I don't miss meetings and do at least 40 hours a week,) but it can also be intensive, especially approaching project deadlines, and some roles can have a lot of out of hours work or on-call.

Don't forget that women have been in tech from the very start of computing- Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, the ENIAC women, Stephanie Shirley, Radia Perlman, Wendy Hall and many others. It's very definitely not all Turing, Gates and Jobs. Men just got more involved as they saw there was money to be made. And as Karen Spärk-Jones said, "Computing is too important to be left to men." That's more true than ever before, because there are increasingly few areas of life which don't involve tech somewhere - it's our past and our future, and we need to be there as much as men.

[NiceTwin]

@MotherOffCod I have no desire to get back into it now. My work life balance is far more important than money.
I spent many of my years in cold datacenter cut off from the outside world as phones were left outside. The systems were under a 4hr SLA, as 3rd line support, by the time the problem got to me, it was serious and time was limited.
The maintenance window was 12pm Saturday to 6am Monday, lost count of the amount of times we worked right through to get everything back up and running.
OS upgrades of the most complex systems were done over a bank holiday weekend to ensure we were all done and dusted in time. I was head hunted by the system manufacturer and although sorely tempted, I am glad I didn't make the move as life would have been even more hectic.
Just goes to show though that if you can teach yourself enough to get your foot in the door, the opportunities are there, or at least they were.
Nope, not a cat in hell's chance I'd go back to it.

[FinallyHere]

These are all really insightful comments

The other reason that I would encourage people, especially women, to 'get into tech' is because unlike the more glamorous roles like for example marketing, demand for people seems to have outstripped supply right from the very beginning.

Knowing that there are vacancies elsewhere so that if you are good, even if you are just reasonable at your job, you can easily walk into a different one anytime you please, is a good position to find yourself in.

Employers who know they need to attract and retain their staff are more likely to offer decent pay and that elusive flexibility.

Not saying it's easy, but there are opportunities for those who want them.

[Tanith]

Your post really brought the memories back, NiceTwin!

We once gave up a bank holiday to test the new UPS. It was a very new technology at the time: a giant battery, designed to keep the computer site running if there was a power outage, and we'd had a lot of those.

All the IT systems managers, operators, tech support etc. were in and the Director was present for the Big Occasion. We did all the system backups, the pre-checks etc., we were ready to go! We held our collective breath and... hit the power button to cut off the electricity supply to the room.

There was the dreaded whirr as the whole computer room shut down. The site manager hadn't charged up the UPS...

I remember thinking then (as one of only two women in the room) "A woman would've read all the bloody manual!"

[MotherOffCod]

I’m renowned for my ability to find a problem or potential for a problem with anything I look at. I’m finally learning to glide my eyes past them when I’m not being paid to find them.

[NonnyMouse1337]

There was the dreaded whirr as the whole computer room shut down. The site manager hadn't charged up the UPS...

I remember thinking then (as one of only two women in the room) "A woman would've read all the bloody manual!"

😂😂😂😂

[EBearhug]

We planned to turn a datacentre over to a diesel generator as a DR test. Someone (man) had decided to save costs by not refilling the diesel tank.

[NiceTwin]

@Tanith

We had a campus setup, where if the datacenter died, all the services would shut down and move to a system down the road.
Our datacenter manager did the perfect test on a Friday afternoon and hit the emergency stop with his arse.
He was popular that day!!

[Thelnebriati]

@EBearhug

We planned to turn a datacentre over to a diesel generator as a DR test. Someone (man) had decided to save costs by not refilling the diesel tank.

Diesel goes off if stored incorrectly. There should be a can stored safely near the generator. If you keep diesel in the generator you have to run it regularly and keep the tank topped up.

[JamieNorthlife]

Hi, can someone help me direct where to find training, not very expensive because my finances are not great at the moment. Im 40 and worked in Healthcare for over 15 years but feeling seriously burnout. I want to change carers after my maternity leave. Tya

[ForeverFloating]

Reading this thread with interest, desperately need a change of direction and a new job! At the moment, I update websites via Wordpress, create the content and same for social media, but also do all the office running and administration, there is zero progression in my workplace and I’m bored. Tried teaching myself coding and got a good grasp of HTML and CSS but gave up during JavaScript, it’s beyond me. There must be something in tech that suits me but i have no idea which direction to go in.

[Lucyshall]

Hi! Thank you for recommending us (Digital Women)! So many of you have joined the community over the past few days so I thought I’d register here and just say hi.

And I want to echo that if anyone needs any help or support, the Facebook community and our free online resources are available to everyone. Feel free to ask anything, it’s a safe space. 😊

[MotherOffCod]

@Lucyshall

Hi! Thank you for recommending us (Digital Women)! So many of you have joined the community over the past few days so I thought I’d register here and just say hi.

And I want to echo that if anyone needs any help or support, the Facebook community and our free online resources are available to everyone. Feel free to ask anything, it’s a safe space. 😊

Hello!

(Lucy is the leader of Digital Women, so this is exciting!)

Great to hear there’s been attention coming your way from this thread!

Maybe you guys could do a guest blog or AMA or webchat with mn.

[MujeresLibres]

I've only read the first page, but I was surprised and pleased to see this thread. I've been in IT for over 20 years but have found it difficult since having a kid and going part time, even though this was still 4 days a week. I was always in fairly balanced teams with regards to men and women, but still the men tended to get promoted into the better-earning techie roles and the women encouraged into softer management-type roles. I've given up on web development, I don't really enjoy it now, but I'm hoping to retrain into data analysis. Good to see many women making an impact in tech.

[MotherOffCod]

Hello mujeres.

Data driven decision making is a great field to move towards.

I’d give my eye teeth for someone who can work properly with analytics and explain it in ways that normal business people can use and understand.

[BuffySummersReportingforSanity]

Data is the field I'm going into - combined with my existing expertise. I'm having a barrel of fun, and I'm reliably told that data scientists who can actually talk the business language (which I can) are basically unicorns.

[MotherOffCod]

Total unicorns. Definitely.

[letsgotimesgoing]

Hi, thanks for posting - this thread jumped out at me because this is me! I have been out of the workplace for seven years looking after two DSs and am now retraining on a bootcamp and hoping to go into fintech. Absolutely loving Python! Still getting my head round SQL... Agree that there seems to be a really strong, supportive community of women who are doing something similar. Thanks for the Facebook group recommend - will head over there now.

[ICouldHaveCheckedFirst]

Love this thread.
I began coding in 1980 ... suffered through the sexist 90s, was made redundant twice and no the men were not made redundant moved into web development then moved out of IT altogether, and recently retired anyway. I still miss coding!
It's encouraging to read about so many women getting into IT either for the first time or as returners.

[MotherOffCod]

The thing is, loads of women don’t know about this as a retraining option that could work for them

Once you know it’s there, it’s not hard to find free learning resources and get stuck in, but I’m not sure there are lots of ways that women can hear about it in the first place.

[BasementSlacks]

OK so how number-oriented would you have to be to learn any of the computer coding languages from scratch and then hire yourself out professionally? Would it realistically take A-level or degree level maths to be able to learn to the level that you could freelance at a decent rate?

Sounds like a great gig to get into for a returner but I wondered if it requires a strong head for figures. Or is it more like learning a new language or a musical instrument, when it’s more about really sustained practising and immersion in it?

[EBearhug]

I don't think you need to be very highly numerate, unless you intend to work in a particularly scientific field where you would be working with high level maths as part of that. Some roles do need a lot of maths, but many don't need more than a solid grounding. I haven't got higher than GCSE maths, but I know what an integer is and understand number bases - but most of what I do is basic arithmetic.

Understanding logic is more necessary, but you can learn that. Basic coding probably doesn't even need as much as GCSE maths (though I'd be surprised to see a tech job which didn't expect GCSE as a minimum.)

There is probably an element of language learning - it can be a great field for jargon...

[RedToothBrush]

There are places that are doing schemes to offer female candidates bursaries through university into IT careers.

Worth looking into as an option.

[FinallyHere]

Would it realistically take A-level or degree level maths to be able to learn to the level that you could freelance at a decent rate?

It definitely does not take A level Maths to puck up coding. It does, as PP mentioned, take some logical thinking.

For example, making a cup of tea, is there any difference between the following two sets of steps.

Example A

• fill kettle
• boil water
• pour water on tea bag / tea leaves

Example B

• add tea to pot
• pour water over leaves
• heat water

If you can predict the different outcomes in these two example, you have sufficient logical thinking to code.

There are lots of roles in IT which do not even require coding skills, but it's always useful to have some background.

In our technology department, a lot of the development is outsourced so that there are ten testers employed for every in-house developer. We also need Analysts to understand the problems to be solved and hence clarify the requirements, change management people to keep track of everything that is happening in the environment and project managers, well, we have lots of them regardless

We have a backlog of projects and the only constraints are the number of good people available to work. Very definitely worth following up

Please find out more, here is an example of a relevant scheme but there are loads

http://getintotech.sky.com