Letters to the Editor
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work life balance
Amity, I see your point, but it's not anti-intellectual to point out that often, science does not lead to a decent work-life balance, or a reasonable pay scale. And that many people recognise this early on in their careers, while others (like me), do not.
After all, as an alternative I suggested becoming a lawyer. Not exactly an easy field, that.
Don't misunderstand, science works out fine for many people, but for a lot of us, especially in industry, it tends to be mostly drone-work that is only sometime intellectually engaging. On the other hand, while academics often do more interesting work, many of them have to work their butts off just to get the grants that maintain their positions from year to year, and not all of them work in institutions that even offer tenure. Talk about lack of job security.
So yes, avoiding science can be a very smart choice, depending on your priorities.
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Going on 10 years as an Isolated Female Software Engineer
I am a female software engineer going on my tenth year in the business.
I feel that I get along great with most of my male coworkers, but I definitely feel isolated. I've almost always been the only female on my team. I've had the boss that makes the "that's what happens when you let a woman touch a computer!" jokes and the other boss that attributed a woman's strong opinion to "being on the rag". I get the stares when the guy at the table makes the borderline-sexist joke and everyone looks to me, THE ONLY WOMAN, for a response and I have to play it down to fit in. I've gotten past constantly having to hear how unattractive the women in Computer Science/tech are from my male coworkers/classmates and pretend it doesn't hurt my feelings. I can't help but notice that most of the few other female enigneers around me have really fancy degrees and qualifications while the majority of the males are mostly mediocre, but smart. I watch as my male coworkers go out for beers and not invite me even though we always get along great at work. I've gotten a couple times now, "Oh.. I thought you were in the marketing department!" even though they had no basis to think that. All I can say is... it wears on you after a while. I feel like the males around me have no concept of how isolating it is and honestly, I don't really expect them to. And I certainly wouldn't want to come off as whiney!
There's no question that being an engineer is usually a crap job that goes underappreciated, especially in the corporate world. I would say that is the biggest motivating factor for wanting to get out for both men and women. But it's just harder for a woman.
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CitizenRob on making choices
[rocket999] was clearly saying that making the choice to be a scientist is like making the choice to be poor and treated poorly.
To be poor relative to what? Relative to bankers and financial magnates? Of course, but also irrelevant — unless you mean that the only way we should measure the value of work is through its remunerative value, which is precisely what anti-intellectualism is.
Science is fundamentally an academic discipline, and scientists (and engineers) enjoy a comparatively high standard of living compared to other academics. If you aren't good at academics, then you won't go into an academic field, period. That doesn't make you "smart."
And as for being treated poorly, it's hard to see that. Treated poorly as a replaceable bench chemist at an industrial cartel? That's hardly surprising. Believe me, industrial cartels don't treat their accountants any better.
Traditionally scientists have enjoyed fairly high social standing, again especially compared to other academics in American society.
What the likes of Bill Gates are complaining about when they talk about a lack of talent is this:
As the information economy matures, design, not just information management, is becoming an increasingly important part of work. Americans in technical fields — science, engineering, computer science — are just not well-enough educated in that respect to be competitive.
That is why Americans are being laid off in droves in favor of overseas outsourcing, and yet there's still a huge unmet demand for architects, designers, planners, technical managers, and so on.
It's evident in the field in which I work (part science, part engineering) everywhere one looks. The quality of work done by American firms is crap. The quality of work done by overseas firms is equally crap, but much less expensive.
The people who can and do produce good work are few and far between — and (wherever they were born) were invariably educated at an American university — one that taught theory instead of just practice.
But even there, a huge amount of introductory undergraduate education — and not just in science and technology but across the board — is downright remedial. It's stuff that everyone should already have learned in high school, but didn't, because American high school education is appallingly, inexcusably ineffective.
So sorry not to blow consoling sunshine up anyone's butt, but that's the way it is. And until we take responsibility for the lack of care in how we educate ourselves and our children, we get the (lack of) economic choices we deserve.
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Carly didn't do it.....
"How Carly F. did it at HP I would love to know, although HP was known for having a much different corporate culture than most engineering companies."
Carly is a law school dropout with a degree in literature - just one of the problems she had in the HP engineering culture. HP is not any different wrt how engineers are treated. After many years in engineering, I left HP because of the excessive hours, unreasonable project deadlines and the lack of technical expertise (Carly included) in management. Although this is not a gender specific issue, the fact that women typically take on more responsibilities at home, makes the unreasonable working committments extremely challenging. It's time for companies to stop talking about "work-life" balance and show some progress in these areas.