Letters to the Editor
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It's the pay
I don't have time to read all the responses, but I hope someone else has mentioned it. It's the pay!
I work in biotech, and the pay frigging sucks. There is no 2 ways about it. We bust our asses essentially doing big pharma work and get paid shit. Literal shit. Even with 2 promotions at my company (Scientist II)I would still be making less than 40K on paper! What's the fucking point? For that amount of money, I PLAN to drop out of the work force when I have kids. I know I could cook/child sit and keep a comparable lifestyle. As I am approaching the decision to have children soonish, it seems more and more likely that one of us will give up full time work. There is no way I could afford child care on what I make.
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Engineering is a different ball of wax
I feel to add to the engineering is douchey to women column.
Absolutely! I went to engineering school, and there is something wrong with most of those guys. They are weird and smelly in high school, never learn to be social, and then think women should fuck them because they make 60k. I feel very bad for female/gay/black engineers, and my heart breaks for them. I might have greatly enjoyed that type of work, but the prospect of being harangued by men who hated me because I wouldn't fuck them wasn't very enticing. Even for good money.
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Why be a techie?
"..tech work tends to be underpaid and undervalued relative to management and sales. It also tends to get outsourced, and the specific technical skills require frequent updates (e.g. an IT who could run a network in 1998 needs a whole new set of knowledge to run a network in 2008), while managerial skills remain more or less constant. ... So if you want a transportable job with a higher salary, you are better off *not* doing tech work. If you have the social skills (and many women do), it behooves you to stop being scientists quickly, and move into management. -- rocket999"
You bring up some seemingly valid points, and would have been very valuable advice to anyone earning a salary from tech skills in the 1990s. Now, though, your warnings about tech jobs are outdated, irrelevant or just wrong, and your conclusion that “it behooves you to stop being scientists quickly, and move into management” is ridiculous. First of all it is hard to be clear who or what you are talking about, when you mention tech work, IT personnel and scientists as if these are all interchangeable and comparable things. Science is a discipline, it’s a body of knowledge; a tech or technology is just a tool, tech work is any work primarily involving tech. Someone doing tech work doesn’t necessarily have to update their skill because they’re paid for what they can do with it, for their ability to use it for analysis, modeling, art or other results. IT personnel are paid precisely for their constantly updated knowledge of current systems. Your warning that specific tech skills require frequent updates is irrelevant for IT personnel; there may have once been but are no more any IT personnel (or any people in the developed nations) who do not understand that IT's job entails constantly updated knowledge of IT, and most of them seem to particularly enjoy any chance to attend a conference or buy new “toys,” which makes “frequent updates” a positive aspect, increasing job enjoyment and increasing job security. Tech workers in general are at this point well aware of the outsourcing threat. These techies increase salary and job security by increasing their tech skills, increasing knowledge, learning a skill that can't be outsourced, etc. Example: an AutoCAD tech can increase job security by learning WaterCAD, GIS, land-surveying, GPS or even how to repair the damn plotter that’s always breaking down – all of which are transportable skills that individually and in various combinations can provide income ranging from adequate to very comfortable.
The suggestion that a science or tech worker should transfer to management in order to get a good salary and job security is just ridiculous. This is based in part on the two false assumptions that 1. Management skills never advance or need to be updated, and 2. Management jobs are more secure than tech jobs. Intuitively, we see the need for tech expertise expanding(even management has specialized tech to keep up with now, further evidence that it becomes increasingly more ridiculous to refer to "tech work" as some kind of discipline, it's like lumping together hair stylists, plumbers and rocketship builders together as "tool users"), while most companies have found that one key to increasing efficiency and profitability is to minimize the need for management, because it's pure overhead cost. Another flaw in this analysis is the failure to consider a very important factor in career choice, enjoyment. Many people do tech and science work because they are interested in it in the first place, and some even love their jobs. Although some choose tech work for the salary, the personality type that enjoys science and/or tech often ranks job enjoyment above salary (over a certain minimum). People who are attracted to science and/or tech usually are introverted personality types who enjoy fiddling with things, not with people; this introverted type, in general, would likely be unhappy or even incompetent in a management job. For those in science or tech jobs who are not averse to management and who would prefer a higher salary, switching to a management job with higher income may require going back to entry-level in a new career, retraining and/or an associate’s degree. It doesn’t make sense that someone would choose to start at entry-level and/or go into college debt unless they just really hated the science and tech field. To gain more money and security, it makes more sense to build on existing knowledge and experience, raising salary and security higher than current levels instead of starting all over at what would most likely be lower levels or debt burden.
I decided to pick this argument apart because it bothers me that a letter encouraging women to leave the science and tech fields, in such an illogical and ignorant manner, was chosen as editor's choice in response to this post. Okay the real reason I just wrote all that was to avoid doing my own science/tech work.