Girls Can’t Be Programmers, Part 2

I always find it interesting whenever I hear stories such as Sam’s in Girls Can’t Be Programmers. I have been pretty much studying programming also but I also dive into computer engineering (working with hardware and telecommunications). I’m pretty intuitive as to how people treat me and interestingly, I very rarely felt discriminated against. It is possibly due to the fact that I am a visible minority who has grown up in Vancouver, Canada. My tomboy (still so at this age) personality and my keen sense to learn might also have to do with the perception, especially with my peers

I was interested in computing from the get-go when I got my first computer. Even with 7 years of clicking and HTML experiences, by the time I entered university to get a career in computing, I realized I didn’t know how to program in the strictest sense of the verb. I understood code just fine, but would be completely lost as to what to do with an empty screen and a page of specs. I had to repeat the programming course and retook it over a summer semester. (I’ll say first that I’m lucky and grateful for the teachers/mentors I’ve known.) That summer semester was when I literally had one-on-one with the same instructor and eventually all the abstract concepts hit me. Never was there a look, an utter, nor a gesture that would indicate I shouldn’t learn how to be a programmer or anything sexist.

Another instructor I confided in my lack of abilities the semester before didn’t blink an eye either. He simply directed me and emailed to some resources with alternative languages (Python) in which to learn from.

Now about my peers, this is what I found on one of their blogs:

So he [an instructor] starting going over XML and XSL, which I know fairly well enough. [Referring to me] was doing the old head-bobbing falling asleep thing. hahaha, I guess it was pretty boring. She’s a pretty interesting girl. Much more tech-savvy than other girls in the program. You’d expect them to be into that kind of stuff being in that program, but most of them don’t seem to be.

Very flattering comments! I can only guess that maybe I show a worry-free can-do-it attitude for him to perceive that.

Onward to the job force, I recently finished a practicum where I provided desktop support for a global corporation’s internal staff. I was hired alongside a male classmate from my program. By the end of the contract, I seem to have surpassed him in every possible way — in dealing with people, fixing computer hardware, and fixing software problem quirks. He was certainly more skillful in some areas when we first joined, but I eventually learned what he knew and continued to research better processes. Ignoring our differing personality and social traits, I believe it’s the latter that allowed me to have a better performance review than my classmate. I don’t think I had to make extra effort, but to ensure future employment, it seemed like the thing to do. Other than that, I think the company staff and folks within our IT department regarded myself and him on a pretty equal level playing field. I was surprised at this perception considering it’s a traditional hierarchical company, but that’s what I sensed.

Also surprisingly, out of a team of ~12 IT personnel, there were 4 females who held their position for a long time. They were the DB administrator, intranet admin, email admin, business applications programmer, and a sole desktop supporter. That stat is simply staggering. It was almost a letdown that I didn’t get to experience being the sole female in the force ;)