Finally!!!

I am a woman working for an IT department in a Fedearl agency.. Just 2 women in a department of over 25 persons. As a woman being able to relate to total introverts is hard. "Hanging out with the guys" and "guy talk" takes extra effort in a work place. As a woman I seem to represent everything they abhore or fear or like about women, without first trying to connect with me as a simple colleague. Some men seem to know and let me know that I am there for a paycheck but they are there to keep moving ahead. Well meaning people within IT encourage me to try slots in other departments where my skills and ability will be better utilized... I wonder if they hear what I hear them tell me.

There may be a few other factors influencing a woman's choice about the "IT" field. If you are not a doctor it gets annoying to work endless hours and be on call regardless of how many years you have spent in the field. Actually, the longer your tenure the worse it gets.

I recommended the field to my daughter before she started her college career. She asked me how I could possibly enjoy doing something where you could work all the overtime that you did not want to, get called in the middle of the night and still never get everything done.

Now add outsourcing to the list of variables....

39 years ago I became an insurance adjustor, one of the first females in the nation to do so. I experienced the same emotions Elizabeth is feeling. I stayed in it for ten years because I knew I was blazing a trail for other young women. And where am I today? Teaching IT and striving to recruit more women to the field.

I agree with the approach that Carnegie is taking as I can not stress the importance to kids or even colleagues seeking graduate degrees the positive impact that education in Information Technology will have on ones career. I am a women with a Masters in Business Information Technology and undergraduate degree in business. I came full circle in the business world when I obtained my masters in 2005.

Regardless if you are female or male you must recognize the line between business and IT is blurring for those that want to be in an Executive position today. It is necessary to speak the language of technology so others can understand it and also use this knowledge so you as an Executive have a handle on the bottom line which is your financial reporting from your system of record. Today with regulations like SOX and Section 302 management has accountability so anyway you look at it creative or not IT should be a fundamental part of your education plan.

More good news! As Sandra probably knows, the Commonwealth of Virginia is gradually and probably inexorably moving to the position that IT and computer science courses should be optional for all Virginia Community College students. This is because, as we know well, all young people are "computer literate." Business majors will now be able to get more training in internationalization and global commerce so as to prepare for more IT jobs to be "offshored" - after all, as we are now aware there won't be enough Americans to do the IT work. The other alternative will be more H1B visas as Microsoft has requested.

I've been in IT for almost 20 years. It's been a uphill battle much of the time because of the male-dominated aspects of the profession. But I've always managed to prove my competence quickly and was never afraid to stand up for myself.

The truth is, I really enjoy what I do. I've usually had positions where the opportunity to learn and expand my experience was available. Although part of my job requires hours at my PC, much of my time is spent working with other departments, learning what they do so I could support them and give them the tools that they need to do their jobs better. It can be really creative and challenging. There is no such thing as a routine day. True, the job can be frustrating, and I am on call weekends and holidays and vacations, but the rewards outweigh the painful aspects. I don't consider myself a "nerd", although I've met my share.

Girls (and boys) need to learn that IT isn't about sitting in a dark room in front of a terminal. In many positions, it means having the ability to interact with all levels and departments of an organization, and understand their needs. It means being responsive to the people you support and being able to analyze a problem and come up with a solution, whether it is a report, a program, an application or hardware. Or maybe training users to use the technology they have.
I am very lucky to be where I am. IT is more than churning out code. And much of that can't be outsourced to someone overseas.

Trying to fill a shortage by focusing on the people least likely to fill that shortage is a silly and inefficient use of resources.

First, I applaud the shift away from the bits and bytes to a higher level relationships. Think of this as a more strategic approach to the use of computers. This parallels the development of programming languages, getting away from the machine code into the higher order logic.

Second, I applaud approach of finding people with the potential to be future leaders. Of course, this is ambiguous as it doesn't begin to address whether they mean leaders in the computer industry or leaders in our society in general. And the distinction makes some difference not worth going into here.

I take exception to the claim that "Women [in IT] are the canaries in the coal mine." It is just plain wrong. You might just as well count the people one standard deviation shorter than the norm as to count a gender. The canary as an early detector of danger is most nearly equivalent to the number of applications to IT specific majors / departments / schools.

Other than a misguided belief that some equality might be achieved by "forcing" people into a field in which that have no interest, WHY oh why must people keep trying to push a gender, race, (add all the other anti-discriminatory classes) into a field in which they have less interest than some other class of people.

If someone did a study and found more women were vegetarians than men, would you think it appropriate to try to push more men into being vegetarians?

In the nature v. nurture debate, I used to fall more on the side of nurture. Raising a child now, I see just how much initial "wiring" nature provides and nurture can at best hope to help guide nature's children.

If you say "brainwashing" to someone, the immediate reaction would be to think "what an evil thing to do." Yet, if you would attempt to force people (in this case women) into something they don't desire, then you are trying to do the same thing. That you attempt to do so by redefining the definition/focus of the cirriculum as compared to directly attacking the victim makes little difference.

Yes, I am given to hyperbole to make a point.

Bob Boyer, Ph.D. Computer Science

When people bail out of a profession, it's usually because the balance between working conditions and compensation are broken when compared with other professions.

How many other professions are like IT where one's co-workers treat us as servile slaves, subject to abuse and outsourcing on a whim. No matter that many in IT could be doing those other jobs better than the arrogant jerks who abuse us.

It looked like an interesting way to move business into a more efficient future. The reality has been far less interesting.

"Emphasize the creative potential of computing, not the bits and bytes." Sounds like sell technology based not on technology but on the benefits of it's features and functions and the impact on the problem, situation or circumstance at hand i.e. make it applicable.

In the business for nearly 20 years, have had no real problems. Enjoy what I do, do it well and am accepted. The above is partly due to the willingness to adapt and recognize that often the key to managing technology is managing to work around the advancements and features to acheive the desired end.

I have bounced between IT and the Business for the last 14 yrs in the High Tech industry. IT ends up being populated with a bunch of developers that can't think outside of the box. Chance are they have a CS degree that has taught them how to think in ones and zeros. I end up being more successful on the Business side because I can translate functional requirements into technical specs and the Business sees me as more valuable there than in IT.

Carnegie Mellon needs to understand that Computer Science is not IT. Sure there are some aspects of programming in an IT environment, but a degree in Computer Science will not get you there. They need to offer Computer Information Systems (CIS), Networking, Telecommunications, etc as well. CIS programs typically include some programming classes, but the majority of core courses are more in line with your typical IT job.

A well-rounded IT individual with not only have CIS, but they will also be educated in Business Analysis and Project Management, both are heavy hitters in an IT environment and allow you to fully understand the needs of the end user.

What we don't need are more CS people, men or women, in IT.

I also used to be a headhunter for Software Engineers, which typically hold a Computer Science degree. All Carnegie Mellon is doing is putting more people on the street as Engineers, which is a good thing, but most Engineers don't want to work in IT.

I am a professor of computer science at Shippensburg University. Only 5% of our undergraduates are women, but they are trying to reverse this situation. They produce a podcast that is designed to connect computer science topics to current issues and to show the creativity and puzzle solving that computer science requires. The hope is that we can use this to reach out to girls in secondary schools to address the stereotypes that girls report. Creating this podcast has certainly helped us retain the women we have as it has given them a strong community, but we don't know yet if it will help with recruiting. Our students would be very interested in any feedback, so please check out their website: http://webspace.ship.edu/wics

I'm at a loss to understand why we need to micromanage the number of people in a specific field? Why can't we simply let people take up what education and careers they choose?

What is the "correct" number of women in any field? Who would be so arrogant as to claim they know the "correct" number?

I'm a woman who recently graduated from CMU with a computer science degree. I'm not going to say that CMU's strategy for attracting women to the department is right or wrong, but I have a few comments.

1) Prior experience and love for programming is a strong indicator of future success in and love for computer science or software engineering in most cases. When CMU stopped taking only the kinds of people who'd been hacking C since birth, and instead also considering leadership skills and other academic achievements, this definitely increased the diversity (however you want to define it) of the admitted students. But it meant that many of these smart, but "new to coding" students didn't end up liking it, and switched majors. This includes many of the women the policy was intended to attract, and indeed, it seemed to me that women were far less likely than men to actually complete the degree once admitted. These women were definitely intelligent and driven; they just weren't right for comp sci. This seems to support speedmaster's comment.

2) Having to hear "you only got in 'cause you're a girl" from my male peers nearly killed my desire to be in the computer science department all by itself, even without all the other often-mentioned factors keeping women from the field. I hate the fact that my gender matters, and I'd rather know for sure that I got in on a completely level playing field. I suppose graduating with a high GPA is my vindication here!

3) On the other hand, a huge gender imbalance creates a horrible environment. It discourages truly qualified and competent women from the field, and makes the ones that are there miserable. One of the things that IT employers want to see in candidates is business, people, and communication skills. In order to develop those, CS majors need to be in a "normal" environment and learn to work and get along with all sorts of people, not just other male nerds who play computer games all day. (I know, I know -- it's a stereotype. But go to the CMU CS building and you'll see what I mean.) Now that I work as a software engineer, I can see how much companies would benefit from having diverse technical teams.

So we're left with no clear answer.

One more thing, to quickly clear something up:

Leslie -- you're absolutely right that CS isn't IT, and Carnegie Mellon knows this. The department mentioned is the Computer Science Dept, whose business it is to educate computer scientists and future engineers, not IT professionals, exactly as you said. Most CMU CS graduates do not end up working in IT. (I don't know if this is true of other universities, but CMU's got this one down.) There is a separate information systems major in the school of humanities and social sciences which focuses on business skills and project management.

Both fields and majors have few women and are trying to change this, so the fundamental point of the article still stands, I suppose.

Marina - I find your first comment very interesting. I have been carefully following the research on the subject out of CMU for my dissertation and have not yet read about the attritian rate. Are you aware of any forthcoming research on this?

Amy --

This paper: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~lblum/PAPERS/women_in_computer_science.pdf

mentions attrition rate, but as the author says, it's very hard to get a meaningful picture, since there weren't and still aren't very many women in the department overall.

I was speaking purely from personal experience and didn't measure anything scientifically.

As a CMU CS alumni I support more women getting into CS. But not by lowering the requirements to get in. I used to always pride myself on my ability to hire a very talented CMU CS graduate who had been programming since he/she was 10. When you pick up programming at the age of 10, you know you love CS.

But that was thrown out the window with these changes. As a result I no longer hire from CMU. I think emphasis should have been placed on raising women up to a higher level, but the admissions process should have never been changed. CMU used to be full of antisocial geeks and nerds who have been into computer since they were kids, that is what made CMU great. A kid that picks up programming and shows that inclination has that instinct and drive, it's in the brain and you cannot deny it. That is what I want as an employer. Now CMU is like any other program out there.

So I wouldn't be celebrating just yet, the free market has a lot to say about these experimental changes.

I have been in the IT field for over 25 years. I am still in middle management and find this field very disheartening. Over my tenure in IT, where it once was a 50/50 gender filled field, the playing field has shifted dramatically towards the male dominance. Still sitting in middle management, my male superiors do think and act differently than the once 50/50 population allowed the management to behave.

I would disuade women with higher business aspirations to enter the IT field to move ahead. You are not welcomed as a peer and not allowed to excel. This is based upon my personal experience in over a dozen different businesses in New England. The glass ceiling has doubled in thickness and since I am nearing the end of my career, I have lost my aspiration to be CIO anywhere. I am well qualified and certainly experienced, but don't see the women making a difference to those joining the IT world. I think my predecesors who left the IT world knew something and I should I have followed long ago.
Sign me totally discouraged!

I have been working in IT in some capacity for the last twenty-five years. Where is it written that the number of men and women in any given field of endeavor has to be equal? If the number of women in IT is falling and it is not due to discrimination, so what? I would love to have more women in IT to talk to and hang around with, but not at the expense of the profession. There is no injustice here. There is no problem to fix. By shifting its emphasis away from programming proficiency to some poorly defined floating philosophy, CMU is devaluing its IT programs. How will attaining a devalued degree help women in the IT workplace? Personally, I think it would be better to spend ones time maintaining and updating IT curricula and less time trying to make them politically correct. Provide an outstanding IT degree program and accept into the program without bias those who can show proficiency in the IT field and that is politically correct enough. Devaluing IT programs is not the answer. Honestly, what are they thinking?

CMU Alumni (sic) (It should be 'alumnus') is an embarrasing example of why women are correct in abandoning - or shunning - the "IT profession." Employers with that degree of myopia do permeate the profession, especially in SMBs.

The benefits of diversity and ventilation are more recognized in larger firms, although they could be more immediately monetized in entrepreneurial shops.

As the father of two daughters (who, CMU Alum, were programming at the ages of 4 and 8, eat your heart out!), I am pleased that they have absolutely no interest in pursuing a career in IT. The definition of IT that CMU alumnus is following is the one that will disappear into the global economy. IT is dead! IT lives (in every aspect of business)!

While I don't know all the details of the CMU's policy (just what's written here), it seems to fall in line with what's needed in the workforce. As Leslie and Marina have already stated, there are two types of workers needed. CMU seems to be seeking to educate those who will be ready to work in IT, not as pure coders but as people that can align technology to business goals and raise corporate IT to become a strategic business asset.

I don't see this policy as a lowering of standards, but as a reflection of the changing needs of the workplace.

Having to hear "you only got in 'cause you're a girl" from my male peers nearly killed my desire to be in the computer science department all by itself, even without all the other often-mentioned factors keeping women from the field.

I think this comment offers the key. The way to attract and retain women is to stop discrimination and to prevent reactionary elements from creating a hostile atmosphere.

I have just left the IT arena after 20 years. I wonder how much of the exit of women from IT has to do with the change in personnel due to off-shoring or out-sourcing to other countries.

Although I was open to working with individuals from all cultures, this behavior was not reciprocated (nor required by management). How will the impact of off-shoring and additional H-1B Visa employees impact all women? Perhaps IT is just one of the first fields to identify an issue.

Who was it that mentioned a canary in a coal mine?